Events FAD

A group got together in Raleigh this weekend to talk about Fedora Events. The first part included talking about what works and what does not work for FUDcons and FADs. Everything from budgets, sponsors, locations, advanced planning, live streaming, post event replays and recaps, surveys, and more.

It sounded interesting and I had a little time on Friday while I was proctoring an exam so I popped into the chat rooms. I would have stayed longer, but I spent the afternoon rearranging travel plans after I received an alerted that my flight home for Saturday was cancelled because of the snow in Raleigh.

Max says that Mel and Jon really offered great summaries of the first day of the FAD. The work continues at the hotel in Raleigh with even more people remotely testing the live streaming and remote participation aspects of events.
At least that work was already a major part of the agenda!

Meanwhile, I go straight to my next teach job without a night at home.

-SML

And my car is old too

So the plan was to go get my teeth cleaned then come home and finish laundry and cleaning and packing for my next trip. I have three weeks in a row of travel and for one of those I will probably drive rather than fly. The car will need an oil change when I get home and it would be a 120,000 service as well but everything is up to date for the upcoming trip.

So it seems I am all organized for the next several weeks, right. Then you know *something* is going to go wrong. The "service engine soon" light comes on early this morning. This is normally an emission thing. Not urgent but not something you leave until after a long drive out of town. And today is the only day I am in town and the service center is open.

So the result is a couple of emission related items and a couple of 120,000 mile items and a large enough bill that they offer a free rental car for the day.

Ok, I leave the car, I take the rental, I continue home to deal with that laundry and cleaning and packing... and leave the house key at the service center... and the spare is not where it is supposed to be...

So much for getting in a nap before the ballgame tonight.

-SML

I refuse to grow up!

Flash back about 3 years to a playground and a small child.

me: I'm coming up the ladder behind you.
child: No, this is just for kids.
me: But I'm a kid (at heart).
child: No, you're a grown up.

ouch.

Then today I went to get my eyes checked because it seems to be getting harder to read - particularly a few weeks ago trying to read to the same (no longer so small) child.

Dr: Your eyes are fine. Your prescription has not changed. Try taking your glasses off to read... and maybe find a brighter light.

There were also phrases such as "2-5 years before bifocals" and "normal for your age"

Translation: you are just starting to get old.

Mom just laughed.

-SML

Cats can count

Cats can count, or at least keep track of days. This is not news to any cat owners, myself included, but it was brought to my attention this week.

I usually travel for 5 nights with occasional trips that are 4 or 6 nights. My parents act as cat sitters when I am away. My cats are never happy with this arrangement but after 10 years, they tolerate it and are usually under foot looking for food and back scratches.

My last trip was for 8 nights and I was due home very late that last day. Weather was also raising questions as to if the late flight would even happen. My parents stopped in to feed the cats.... and got hissed at. They had had enough. When I got home later that night I was snubbed at first. Then throughout the night I was awakened with purring and nudges for scratches. Forgiveness? More likely payback.

-SML

Year in Reveiw - Year Ahead - Home sweet Home

I actually spent more time at home this year than I have in a while. I had a couple of work projects that let me work from home. That was good. The other time was for lack of work. That was bad. I had the time to work on projects but was resisting spending the money on any of the projects. The weather also did not cooperate as much as I would have linked.

I did get the gutters cleaned and gutter guards installed. I also did get the retaining wall put in along with some of the grading to fill in behind that. I still need to put the stone on the top and also the on the front porch and the patio. I know what I want, I just need to go pick it out and get it delivered. It has been too cold and wet to work on anyways. That task gets moved to the spring list. I also still need more mulch but there is a little more grading to do and for the past few months it has been too wet. I do not want a drought or anything, but getting 6 months worth of rain in such a short time this fall has not been fun either.

Inside I had picked out some additional lights to replace the plain light bulbs that I have been living with for a couple of years. One was on backorder but finally arrived. I also lucked into finding a dining room light while out picking up ceiling fans for the bedrooms. Those have all been installed now.

I have ideas for some additional organizing of the office and painting a couple of rooms which are probably next on my list. The larger projects are going to have to wait for a while yet.

It is nice not having anything urgent so I can actually enjoy the projects.

-SML

Year in Reveiw - Year Ahead - The geek stuff

So I thought I would join the masses and reflect on the past year and the new year. What I did, what I did not do, what I want to to do next.

I did get to FUDCON 11 last Jan and really enjoyed it and then did a lot of docs work and wiki cleanup for Fedora 11. I did not get to do as much work on Fedora 12 within docs though I did more testing as part of a separate project. I also had to miss FUDCON 13 but I am looking forward to getting a bit more involved again with docs and I still want to learn more about packaging and do more than just lurk in infrastructure.

There really is not anything new for me in the Red Hat world. I still enjoy teaching. There was not as much work as I would have liked, but I got by and so far the new year is starting well. The classes did add something called "interactives" and I am getting used to those. I also really like the new instructor setup procedures. I am hoping to see a new version of RHEL this year - Fedora is so different now! Oh, and Summit is back in Boston this year and I really want to attend. I should be able to swing the travel costs - anyone want to sponsor me for a conference pass?

I have learned a bit more about organizing, resizing, cropping, and generally working with photos. I also got a new camera! In addition to learning more about taking photos and managing my photos, I would like to learn more about inkscape and I plan to work on some player profile collages for the basketball booster club.

I was going to learn more about content management systems this past year but that seems to have gotten lost. Meanwhile I now have three specific projects that I can help with as a learning tool. One wants to use Alfresco which is java based (not my interest), one is using Zicula (php based). The last one is looking at Drupal (also php based) but another option there is also Zikula since there is already some Postnuke (the predecessor to Zikula) available to them.

I definitely need to clean up my new laptop which has been used recently for rawhide and F12 testing and get it the way I want it so that I can add some virtual machines with the different CMS and start learning and comparing. I'll need it fixed up for F13 work as well.

-SML