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Since Thanksgiving I have…

Sunday, Dec 12th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Upon returning from New England, where I spent Thanksgiving, I fell victim to a horrible cold that left me feeling pretty awful for about 3 days (thank goodness I work from home, I took some naps but didn’t need to call out entirely), and had a long tail that stretched on for 10 days. It was such a relief a few days ago when I finally started to have mornings where I didn’t wake up with a runny nose and cough.

The first weekend in December began with MJ’s work holiday party at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on Friday evening. I had never been to the museum and for the party it wasn’t really set up for wandering around exhibits, but I was able to see the fascinating Mastering the Game: A History of Computer Chess exhibit and they had live demos of their Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2 (I saw its twin in London at the Science Museum a couple years ago, but didn’t see a demo then). I’ll certainly have to go back after they’ve finished renovations and can have a more complete tour.

Saturday morning I drove up to ZaReason in Berkeley to pick up a demo and review laptop. I had approached them earlier in the week to request a demo when I learned a client would be in town and was interested in an Ubuntu demo – unfortunately none of my laptops were up to the task (so, do I demo the Pentium 3 running Debian and fluxbox, or my pink-and-covered-with-pony-stickers Dell Mini9 with Ubuntu 8.04 on it? Oh dear…). They quickly put together a basic Strata Pro 15 for me with a 40G SSD and 10.10 installed. My review of the laptop will be coming once I finish up with some more battery life tests, but so far I’m quite impressed and am seriously looking at the Strata 13 (perhaps my only complaint thus far, the 15 is toooooo big!). After I picked up the laptop it was off to an uneventful dentist visit and lunch at Tad’s Steaks on Powell, which for a whim was a pleasant surprise – good food, reasonable prices and generous portions. That night MJ and I went out to see Tangled at the Century theater in the Westfield, a theater I hadn’t yet been to. Tangled was delightful, I am tempted to go see it again.

Sunday was blissfully plan free and I took advantage of the time to catch up with the mountain of email and tasks I had on my list from before Thanksgiving. Plus I was able to do some tests on the Strata 15, get my holiday cards all written and do some much-needed work around the condo. And as silly as it sounds for it to be a noteworthy thing we bought and MJ installed a new sliding trash can for under the kitchen sink. Why noteworthy? This is the only one we found with slim enough measurements and a reasonable size can (for the curious: 8 gal. Undercounter Pull-Out Can)! It’s working out really well, it’s nice to finally have a proper kitchen trash can. That evening I chaired an Ubuntu California team meeting where James Tatum and I unveiled a demo of the team website, which we’d been working on for a couple weeks. Hopefully we’ll be planning to launch it by the next meeting (December 19th).

This past week was also filled with a lot of catching up and preparing for upcoming events, the only event I went to all week was the San Francisco Ubuntu Hour on Wednesday night which we wrapped up with dinner over at Thirsty Bear Brewing Company on Howard. It was while we were enjoying dinner that I saw the adorable case that one of the attendees had for her Android phone, she bought it from the freshonmondays Etsy shop out of Oakland – and she does custom ones! I ordered mine the next day, magenta Android on a light pink case, I should have it within the next couple days. One of the things I had been meaning to catch up on is some software testing projects, both infrastructure and beta stuff (the Debian Squeeze Beta2 installer came out last week). I’ve found that for this infrastructure work I’ve been increasingly using KVM on my desktop for quick virtualized installs rather than Xen on my firewall. It makes sense as a natural progression, since Xen requires virtualization-aware kernels and my new desktop, having the virtualization bit and far more power makes a whole lot more sense for testing more vanilla installs. I’ve also been doing a fair amount of work with KVM’s failover mechanisms and storage solutions (drbd is still king for a cheap solution, but it’s not as bulletproof as I had initially thought), and obvious limitations aside I am quite liking how simple and useful libvirt is. I think my next virtual install will be some testing of Xubuntu 11.04, the awesome Xubuntu dev team is shooting for XFCE 4.8 for this release and just finished rebuilding the plugins for the new panel, exciting news!

Yesterday was another day full of catch up work, perhaps most worthy of note I finally got some of the Ubuntu Women mentoring documentation tackled. We also finally purchased health insurance for both the cats, going with Embrace Pet Insurance with a high deductible since we’re really looking to have this in case of accident or chronic illness. For dinner we headed up to North Beach for dinner at The House, which turns out to have the most exquisite creme brulee.

Today we headed up to BerkeleyLUG. Good meeting, good pizza, and Jack Deslippe was kind enough to give away some of the little Android figures, of which I now have one of (thanks again Jack!). This evening was spent with the thrilling task of grocery shopping which, admittedly, we hadn’t done properly since before I left for my Thanksgiving trip.

This week is shaping up to be a busy one. Tomorrow I am taking the afternoon off to join others in an interactive studio audience to promote Linux in schools on ABC 7 Live. We’ll see how it goes, at the very least it will be interesting to be part of a studio audience (I never have before) and to meet others who are interested in technology in education. I’ll be sure write up a full report of the experience and to take pictures as I’m able! Tuesday we’re attending the annual HOA meeting and event in the lobby of our building, Wednesday I’m leaving work early again (I am so fortunate to have an understanding boss!) to head over to the Partimus Fundraising Event at the Creative Arts Charter School. Thursday evening following the Americas Membership Board Meeting I’ll be enjoying the night in, no doubt catching up on project work which will spill into Friday. Saturday is MJ’s birthday! Not sure what we’ll do during the day, but a trip to his favorite sushi place is looking good for the evening.

Filed under: life

Computer Engineer Barbie has a penguin

Friday, Dec 10th, 2010 by pleia2 | 23 Comments

I voted for it and I was pretty excited when I heard about Computer Engineer Barbie becoming a reality. I pre-ordered mine (product page here) as soon as I could and finally received it today!

Unfortunately work tore me away from my new toy and I sat it next to my desk. Then, while doing some upgrades this afternoon, I glanced over and noticed a penguin. Yes indeed, on the left hand edge of the case Barbie has a big penguin on her shelf!

Computer Engineer Barbie has a penguin on her shelf :)

Now I’m even more excited! Hooray Tux!

Filed under: pink, tech, ubuntu planet

Thanksgiving in New England

Tuesday, Dec 7th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On the evening of Tuesday November 23rd I took a redeye flight out of San Francisco to a connection in Newark, New Jersey and then up to Manchester, New Hampshire. I didn’t encounter any security issues (just had the typical metal detector in the lane I was in) and the slight delay out of SFO didn’t impact my connection at all. Upon arrival in Manchester on Wednesday morning I picked up my rental car at the Manchester airport which, upon reflection, was the first time I’ve ever rented a car (partners I traveled with had, but I had never done it myself). My Aunt Meg’s house was an easy half hour drive from the airport and she had a room and comfy bed prepared for me to crash for a few hours. Excellent!

Wednesday night my cousins Melissa and Brad came by, Brad with his wife and two young kids to have an early Thanksgiving dinner. All the typical trimmings, and stuffing with whole cranberries in it that I must replicate in the future since I love cranberries but am not too keen on the cranberry sauce from cans. It was a really great evening, and it was great to meet Brad’s family and catch up with Melissa.

Thanksgiving! After saying goodbye to Brad’s family in the morning, Aunt Meg, Melissa and I headed over to the retirement community where my grandmother lives to enjoy their large catered dinner, and enjoy we did! I was able to spend some time catching up with my grandmother before and after dinner. We also spent some time watching the first half of a movie my grandmother recommends, Days of Heaven – it’s now in my NetFlix queue so I can watch the rest.

On Friday I drove up to Maine to finally see my mother’s new house and to spend dinner with her, her boyfriend and my little sister Annette. The drive up took a little over 3 hours and I was fretting all week that the weather wouldn’t turn out well. I was pleasantly surprised when the forecasted poor weather cleared out early and I found almost my whole drive up not only free from precipitation, but quite beautiful. On the drive up I also took some time to take some photos, including Pedro O’Hara’s American Mexican Irish Cuisine (just, what?), snow (this satisfied my snow quota for the year) and a Moose Hill Rd sign (it was so very Maine). I also got to meet my mother’s pets, which currently consist of a giant macaw (ugh, birds), a tiny tortoise and several cats, one of whom is a fluffy Simcoe.

Unfortunately the seafood restaurant we ended up at for dinner was out of broiled lobster – oh no! My trip to Maine was without my beloved lobster! That disappointment aside, it was a nice dinner and it was nice to see everyone.

Since it was Black Friday I had decided early on to skip my pilgrimage to the L.L. Bean flagship store in Freeport, until I remembered that it’s famously the only thing in Maine open 24/7. Besides I didn’t get lobster, I couldn’t skip the trip to L.L. Bean too, it would insult my Mainerness! I haven’t yet completely traded “wicked” for “hella” after all. Fortunately, 9:30PM on Black Friday at L.L. Bean was, while certainly more busy than a typical 9:30PM, parking wasn’t hard to find and it wasn’t busy enough to be uncomfortable. I was able to browse and buy a couple things (even if I completely forgot to pick up a new flannel shirt). The drive back to New Hampshire was eventless (no moose!) and I was able to get back before 2AM.

Saturday I drove down to Massachusetts to meet up with Mike Rushton, Martin Owens and Paul Tagliamonte, all of whom I’ve known for multiple years via my work with Ubuntu but had only ever actually met Martin in person previously. We had lunch at a local place and then headed back to Mike’s place to see his sysadmin heaven computer room (monitors and computers everywhere!). Mike’s wife arrived shortly after we did and surprised us with giant Ubuntu cookies she had made specifically for us from the bakery she works at – wow! There were no leftovers.

When I got back to my Aunt Meg’s early in the evening I quickly changed and headed back out the door to meet up with my Aunt Elaine, cousin Erica and her 1 year old daughter and my Grandmother at my Grandmother’s again for dinner. It had been 5 years since I’d seen my Aunt Elaine or cousin Erica, and of course I had never seen her beautiful little daughter. The evening was spent with more catching up with all the news of each others lives and then we all headed out shortly after 8PM.

I spent the rest of the evening chatting with my Aunt Meg and packing my little suitcase (in which my stuff + new acquisitions barely fit!). I have to say that it was one of the most heavily slanted reward to stress ratio visit with family I’ve ever experienced, the only stress I encountered was my typical shyness and worries about things not working out. All the visits with family members were short but rewarding and my Aunt Meg was a gracious host who made me feel perfectly at home in her home (unusual for me, but it was clean and safe, she had fresh healthy snacks and I had plenty of guilt-free alone time and schedule flexibility).

Sunday morning I headed off to Manchester for a 1PM flight. Breezed through security (no line! no scanners! cheerful TSA agents!) and took advantage of the airport’s free wifi to catch up on some emails and tasks. Manchester is my favorite airport. Unfortunately I got stuck in Newark with a 5 hour delay after our plane broke and they had to find a replacement. I finally got back to San Francisco shortly before midnight, where MJ picked me up and we went out for some very late, but much needed, dinner. I’m fortunate that I have a boss was sympathetic to my “I will be starting late, I didn’t get home until 2AM” excuse the next morning!

Filed under: family, travel

Would you like a holiday card?

Saturday, Nov 27th, 2010 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

Every year I try to send out a big batch of wintertime holiday cards to friends and acquaintances online. Reading this? That means you! Even if you’re outside the United States!

Drop me an email with your address if you’d like one: lyz@princessleia.com (Please put “Holiday Card” in the subject so I can filter it appropriately).

Typical disclaimer: No, I’m not a Christian even though I do tend to celebrate a secular “Christmas” with pretty lights, and the cards will non-religious in theme (just like last year, they’ll probably be pink, or have penguins, or both).

Filed under: Uncategorized

Vegas Jaunt

Monday, Nov 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

The Friday before last I was able to take off from work a couple hours early so I could run down to the airport and catch a 5PM flight from San Francisco to Las Vegas to meet MJ. The first hurdle was the notorious body scanners, which SFO has and I avoided. Half the lanes in that particular security point were still using the standard metal detectors so I went through one of those lanes. I doubt I’ll have as much luck with I fly tomorrow night though. Security conquered, it was off to my plane. In spite of usually flying with Star Alliance, MJ and I decided to book our flights on Virgin America since the miles were negligible, price was acceptable and we wanted to check out their new, sparkley planes. I have to admit that I was impressed, their planes really were new, they had nice leather seats and their entertainment systems were first rate – plus they use Linux, and I got to have a peek at it at the end of my flight when the systems rebooted and the penguiny bootup screen showed it’s very Linux interior.

Upon arrival I grabbed a taxi down to our hotel, the Encore, where MJ met me outside the lobby. The hotel was gorgeous and MJ surprised me with 51st floor room that had a stunning view of the strip. Bags deposited and breath caught, we headed downstairs to have a tapas-style dinner at one of the downstairs restaurants before heading out to the strip. The last time we were in Vegas I didn’t get a chance to see the fountains at Bellagio, so we made that our first real stop. From there it was to see the chocolate fountain! On our walk back we saw the last show of the night of the fountains caught a video. So pretty! We wrapped up the evening with a stop at BLT Burger at The Mirage, where I discovered on my first trip to Vegas they serve amazing spiked milkshakes.


Bellagio Fountains from the strip


Bellagio Chocolate Fountain

Saturday I had planned to check out the pools, but in spite of the desert location, it actually can get quite cool in Las Vegas – in fact, it was cooler in Las Vegas all weekend than it was in San Francisco. Swimming was out, so we started off our day at the acclaimed champagne brunch buffet at Wynn (the hotel which Encore is an encore to). The food was excellent and the desserts amazing – they even sparkled! I ate way too much.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon at Siegfried & Roy’s Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. We visited this last time we were in Vegas, but MJ noticed a sign outside the Mirage declaring that they now had a couple baby white tiger cubs! They didn’t disappoint. The dolphins were a treat (video) and at the far end of the big cats exhibit they had a whole pen reserved just for the two baby tigers. With them was a trainer who played with them and was eager to answer questions that people had. Getting good photos of them was hard, but I did get a couple of short videos, Baby white tigers in Vegas 1, Baby white tigers in Vegas 2.

Saturday evening was spent on another trip to the Bellagio, MJ treated us to my very first Cirque Du Soleil show, O. The show was a real delight, amazing acrobatics, the whole stage turning from a stage to a pool and back again dozens of times during the show. After the show we headed over to Treasure Island to round off the evening with some games in their casino.

Sunday morning we ordered room service and ordered the most decadent thing on the menu, lobster eggs benedict. And enjoyed it along with our view of the strip, yum!

We had to check out by noon, but our flight wasn’t until the evening, so we left the Encore and headed down the strip to New York New York, probably our favorite venue to play at on the strip. I grabbed some delicious New York pizza for lunch and we parted ways. I went over to the Luxor to finally see the Bodies: The Exhibition. I really enjoyed the Exhibition once I got over the gross factor, probably the most fascinating (read: grossest for me) being a human spine, I picked up a spine pen in their gift shop to remember my revulsion. The rest of the afternoon was spent between New York New York and MGM Grand playing slots (I came out ahead this time!) and visiting the MGM Grand lions.

Our flight home was at 8:45 MST, which got us back home by 11:30 PST. Awesome little weekend jaunt, we’ll have to do it again sometime soon! But I was happy that this past weekend was one spent around town getting errands done and doing much needed chores at home.

Tonight’s plan: Pack for trip to New Hampshire tomorrow night and finish up a thousand little loose ends project-wise, since I don’t know how much internet access I’ll have in NH.

Filed under: animals, travel

Pink laptop earrings

Tuesday, Nov 16th, 2010 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

Behold, pink laptop earrings!

But I can’t take credit for finding these goodies, when Melissa was visiting a couple weeks ago she picked up a pair at Claire’s at The Westfield Mall in San Francisco, when I saw them I knew I had to snag a pair for myself. I tend to describe Claire’s as “that store where all the 12 year olds get their jewelry” but for those of us who like kitsch (and for earrings that match your Ubuntu release codename, yes, those are koala earrings) it’s a wealth of fun earrings and accessories, while I was there I also picked up some more penguin earrings.

And while I’m on the subject of pink laptops, Computer Engineer Barbie (complete with her pink laptop!) has gone on pre-sale and is currently scheduled to start shipping on November 24th. I bought mine!

Filed under: pink, ubuntu planet

Oh the neons are a gleamin’ and the gamblers are a dreamin’

Friday, Nov 12th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Leaving in a few minutes for my flight to join MJ in Las Vegas!

Encore

I’ll be back late Sunday night.

Filed under: travel

California Ubuntu Hour * 5 + Debian

Tuesday, Nov 9th, 2010 by pleia2 | 3 Comments

This month the Ubuntu California team has really embraced the Ubuntu Hour, we have a whopping 5 planned across the state the next 10 days!

Tomorrow night I’ll be hosting the San Francisco one.

San Francisco Ubuntu Hour
Time & Date: Wednesday, November 10th @ 6-7PM
Location: The Roastery, 199 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco
Details: LoCo Directory: Ubuntu Hour San Francisco

And to mix things up a bit, we’ve scheduled the next Bay Area Debian meeting across the street just following.

Bay Area Debian Meeting
Time & Date: Wednesday, November 10th @ 7-9PM
Location: Henry’s Hunan Restaurant, 110 Natoma St, San Francisco
Details: Bay Area Debian meeting at Henry’s Hunan Restaurant

So please, feel free to join me in attending both!

map

Unfortunately The Roastery is still labeled by the old name on Google Maps, Cafe Trieste

For public transit and other comprehensive information about how to get there, see the Debian announcement.

At both locations look for the Ubuntu t-shirts and penguins! At Henry’s Hunan I have reservations for dinner under “Bay Area Debian”

Filed under: events, tech, ubuntu planet

November Bay Area Geeknic

Tuesday, Nov 9th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Late last week Melissa Draper spent a couple nights at our home at the tail end of her visit to San Francisco. Friday evening we headed up to Ghirardelli Square for some ice cream sundaes. Then, having finished dessert, we headed back home to meet up with MJ to go out to dinner for a nice piece of Philadelphia at Jake’s Steaks.

Saturday we spent at the latest Bay Area Geeknic!

Coming from the Northeast US, having a picnic in November is a completely foreign idea to me. The weather was warm and sunny, so perfect! In November. I am going to start missing the snow pretty soon.


Robert Wall, Melissa Draper & me, photo by Mark Terranova

More photos by Mark are up here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tuxwingsgroup/Geeknic

Mark brought along lots of delicious veggie foods:

And on other grills we made up piles of hot dogs. Mark’s penguin suit came along to the Geeknic too – and for those with flammable concerns, no, he didn’t actually grill in the penguin suit, we were doing some fun promo shots for Geeknics ;)

I’ve put more of my own photos up on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157625344546226/

We ended up with 20 or so people coming out and in all had quite a successful event!

Filed under: events, tech, ubuntu planet

In which San Francisco parties for 4 days

Saturday, Nov 6th, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

It sure was quite a week to live in San Francisco, plus we had lots of visitors!

MJ’s father and father’s partner, Susana, were in town over the weekend, so on Friday night we joined them for dinner at Chaya on the Embarcadero. Saturday we met at Ferry Building for lunch and browsing of the farmer’s market, and later that evening ended up in Noe Valley at Firefly Restaurant.

Sunday was Halloween! For lunch we all met up down at Fisherman’s Wharf for some tastey fish street food, after which we headed up toward Giardelli Square for our afternoon entertainment, but first I got to admire the gorgeous day looking out over the bay and be yet again thankful to live in such an amazing place.

MJ’s father planned for us all to go on an Electric Tour Company Segway Tour. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the tour, but given my weakness for tourist things I was positive that I wanted to go. The tour starts out with 40 or so minutes of a group of 10 people learning how to use Segways and getting ready to ride them through the streets of San Francisco. I was a bit apprehensive about this and it took some time until I was comfortable riding the thing, but they were great about making sure we were comfortable before leaving the parking lot. The thing with Segways is that the more you think about it, the worse you’ll do on them. Once you get the basics down about how to get on and off them without falling (or bruising your shins) and realize that the handles are only for steering and not to cling on to for dear life, the rest sort of comes to you.


Me, MJ, MJ’s father (Susana took the picture)


MJ and me on our Segways!

When we wrapped up the Segway tour we all headed back to our respective home and hotel. That’s when San Francisco started going a bit crazy…

October 31st was exceptional for a number of reasons:

  1. It was the night of the 4th game of the World Series. The San Francisco Giants were playing the Texas Rangers in this 4th game and at the beginning of the game the series score had 2 wins for the Giants and 1 for the Rangers, and in spite of football’s dominance in the American sports scene, we do still love our baseball.
  2. Halloween! San Francisco loves Halloween, it may even be the biggest holiday here. People dress up and have parties for days, and on Halloween itself the parties in The Castro are legendary.
  3. Melissa Draper was in town October 31st was her birthday!

I managed to plan my night such that I could be a part of all these exciting things. Once we were back home we flipped on the first part of the World Series game and I got my witch costume together. We watched until MJ left for dinner with his family and I headed over to Thirsty Bear to meet up with Melissa and some friends to celebrate her birthday with some good food and beers. It ended up working out pretty well, in spite of the game Thirsty Bear wasn’t crowded so we could secure a quiet table near the front, and we could hear the cheers of the folks who were there so keeping up with the score wasn’t a problem! The Giants won the game, resulting in a 3-1 lead in the series, and we enjoyed a lovely dessert of cinnamon churros & spanish hot chocolate.

From Thirsty Bear a few of us decided to brave the crowds of the Castro and experience just what it was like to be down there on Halloween. We met up with Mark Terranova who was dressed as a penguin and after making our way through crazy crowds along Castro Street we ended up hanging out at Toad Hall.


Random Halloween partier, Mark, Melissa and me

Castro Halloween experience under our belt, we ended up heading home shortly before midnight.

Monday! Aside from it being a typical work day, it was the 5th game of the world series. Would the Giants win and take home the title of World Champions for the first time in 56 years?

They sure did. I watched the game at home, hoping desperately in the final innings, with Giants leading, that the game would be over in time for our 8PM dinner plans with MJ’s father and I’d be able to see it finish – and I lucked out. The whole city then erupted in cheers, screams, sirens, fireworks and honking horns when the final inning ended with Giants in a 3-1 lead. Our whole streetcar trip down to the Castro for dinner at Starbelly Restaurant was accompanied by the celebratory noise. Dinner itself was nice and quiet, and I enjoyed a nice mushroom pizza, and we were able to get home before the “riot” celebrations broke out later in the evening.

Now the first major league game I went to was back in April when the Giants played the Phillies and I’ve since fallen in love with the game, going to an A’s game where I got a signed baseball and to their stadium for a tailgate party, then to another Giants game in August where they played the Cubs. I then watched several of the post season games from home as they beat the Phillies to end up in the World Series. What a ride :)

Tuesday was voting day! In San Francisco when it’s time to vote you receive a couple of 100+ booklets with voting material in them with the propositions and candidates. This was my first time voting here so I got to see all the work it takes to make an informed decision – and it sure is a lot. That night saw one of the few Republican to Democrat switches in this season (our new governor is a democrat) and although Prop 19 failed, there was a fair amount of celebrating going on around here.

Wednesday was the Giants-win-the-World-Series parade! It took place on Montgomery and Market Streets, so I was able to somewhat see it on Market from our roof:

And I headed downstairs to mingle with the crowd for a few minutes before heading back to work:

The event ended up at city hall where thousands gathered for speeches and collective celebration (this time far more peaceful!). When I went out to lunch there was confetti all over the streets, the bars were overflowing and people everywhere where decked out in the orange and black of the Giants. What a day!

Thursday the city seemed back to normal aside from some “Let’s go Giants” chants now and then. Melissa (whose birthday I mentioned above) was our second visitor of the week, arriving at our place on Thursday afternoon and was here for our Geeknic today, which I’ll post photos of in a later post. Now off to the airport and to wish her well on her way back home!

Filed under: family, san francisco
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