Tag Archives: apachecon

ApacheCon planners meeting

I did eventually make it to San Diego, and the planning meeting has gone well. We have a *great* schedule for this year, and it’s going to be a good conference.

No, I can’t tell you yet. But hopefully we’ll have the notifications sent out REAL SOON NOW, and have the schedule up on the web site.

Unfortunately, as usual, there were lots of good talks that we had to reject, just due to time and space, so there will be some folks disappointed. That’s one part of it that I really don’t care much for, but we have to choose the talks that will bring attendees.

There’s a few last-minute things we need to discuss this morning, and then I can head back home. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m really looking forward to just being home for a while, and not having to go anywhere. At least until some time in October.

Waiting for Godot

I sat on the runway in Lexington for about 2 hours because … well, it’s convoluted.

First of all, a small and relatively insignificant part failed. It’s the little motor that starts the jet engines. Sort of a starter motor. Which is ok, because the engine was already started, and that’s the only time that it’s ever used. But they had to have some paperwork to let them go ahead and take off with that part faulty. So we sat and sat and sat, until they had the necessary paperwork.

2 hours.

I would have thought that, seeing as we’re in the information age and all, it would be possible to get that kind of approval in under 2 hours. But apparently it’s way way more complicated than I can possibly comprehend.

I arrived at A15, and ran all the way down to E2, at the extreme opposite end of the airport. (Well, I took the train for most of that way, but ran down the various terminals.) my flight was to leave Atlanta at 7:04pm, and I arrived at the gate at about 7:06pm, to be told that the plane had just left. I was booked on the next flight to San Diego, which was, predictably, leaving from A19.

Well, that flight was *completely* full, and I was on standby. At the very last possible minute, they called my name, I ran down the boarding hallway, and got in a seat. About 3 minutes later, the gate agent comes back on the plane and says, no, they’ve changed their mind, someone else has checked in, and I’ve lost my seat. So I had to get up and get back off of the plane.

So close.

So here I am at the Crowne Plaza, waiting for my dinner. I hope it’s good. I’m famished. And in the morning I will go the rest of the way to San Diego. Hopefully.

Why is it, do you suppose, that every time I fly through Atlanta, my flight has the gate changed, is delayed in some fashion, and/or is overbooked?

I am *so* glad I don’t have to go anywhere for a while.

Last one for a while

I’m in the airport *again*. This is getting more than a little wearisome. I’m off to San Diego to check out the conference venue for ApacheCon US 2005, and to choose the talks that will be presented. We have somewhere around 170 proposals that we have to go through, debate, and winnow down to … however many slots it is that we have.

I’m really looking forward to being home for an extended period of time. It seems like I’ve been travelling since the beginning of July, but I don’t think it’s been quite that long.

Slashdot comments

I don’t know why I read the comments on Slashdot. It just depresses me. How can people *be* so stupid?

Yes, most of the time I read slashdot at +5, so that I only get the top-level idiocy. But when the article is about me, I want to see what people had to say. I really should save myself the trouble.

Something like 75% of the comments were complaints about the fact that it was in PDF, or misinformed remarks about the font that I used. It’s not Comic Sans, by the way, but I fail to see why it makes so much difference even if it was. Folks need to get over themselves a little bit. Your font preferences are preferences. They are not scripture.

Of the few comments that actually had to do with the presentation itself, probably 2/3 of them completely missed the point. This was a lightning talk. That means that I had 5 minutes to convey a point. The fact that I left out technical details, glossed over some points, made tongue-in-cheek remarks, and told a few half-truths are a side-effect of the presentation medium. The more detailed version of the presentation will come over the next few weeks.

And for the morons who felt the need to make the “then go fix it” remark, if you had paid attention you would have noticed that I have fixed several of the things, and other folks are working on some of the others. And of course if you had been there, you would have heard that as part of the presentation itself.

You are not obliged to make comments on things that you don’t understand. It’s best to keep your ignorance to yourself.

Slashdotted

It appears that I was Slashdotted for my “Why I Hate Apache” talk. Fortunately, I put it on an apache.org server, not on my own, which appears to have suffered quite a bit of heartburn over the weekend. Unfortunately, that means that everyone blogging about it doesn’t trackback or pingback to here, so I don’t know about them.

There will be a series of articles (probably in OnLamp.com, in the “Day In The Life Of #apache” article series, that discusses each of the points that I raised in that presentation. It was, of course, more than just a little tongue-in-cheek, and I’m doing more than just complaining. Several of the problems have been fixed (a couple of them at the conference) and it was more about raising awareness (as well as making a room full of inebriated geeks laugh) than about just complaining. I really do hope to see if we can get most of these issues fixed in the relatively near future, and that those that I am able to, I’ll fix myself.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to bed.

Conference winding down

Just a few more talks to go in ApacheCon EU 2005. It’s been a really fun conference. A lot of interesting things have been accomplished with the help of the synergy of hacking on things together. I’m hoping to go to the “Testing PHP with Perl” talk in a little while, and then on to the closing session. I’m really pleased with how things have turned out.

I didn’t personally get as much done as I would have liked to, but I was part of making some interesting things happen, as well as planning for some other interesting things that might happen soon. Assuming, off course, we can actually keep the momentum going and make things continue, in spite of the demands of Real Life.

Lightning talk

I just gave my lightning talk, “Why I Hate The Apache Web Server.” I haven’t had that much fun giving a talk in a long time.

The motivations of the talk were multiple. I was speaking on behalf of #apache users everywhere, and complaining about the stuff that I’m tired of apologizing for every day in IRC. But, more than that, I hope that attendees looking for a place to plug in will see these as things that they can work on. With several exceptions, the things I complained about are pretty universally recognized to be really annoying. The things that there are disagreement on, well, they were a bit of a cheap shot. Oh well. 😉

I’ve put the presentation on my apache.org site in pdf format, if you want to see it. Oh, and at least two of the things mentioned in the talk have already been fixed, one of them today.

Catching up

I’ve been doing a positively terrible job of keeping up with blogging at this con. The plan is to get caught back up tomorrow morning, but who knows if that will actually happen. There have been really great presentations today, and there’s a very interesting BOF this evening.

The Lightning Talks are about to start, and I’ll be giving my “Why I Hate The Apache Web Server” talk (subtitle: things I’m tired of apologizing for on #apache). Woohoo!

Saturday entry

Written on my Palm, some time Saturday afternoon.

Arrived in Stuttgart approx 10am. I got a little sleep on the plane. Although they repeatedly promised that the flight was going to be full, it was almost empty and I had three seats to myself to spread out on. Still, not exactly the height of comfort.
As seems to be my tradition at ApacheCon, I had an “incident” with the hotel bathroom. The shower is one of those detachable showerheads, and the pressure is enough to put holes in you. Well, I turned it up to full power, and it got away from me, whipping around and soaking everything like something out of looney tons.
The hotel is quite a hike from the train stop. But, I managed to make it here without any problems. I thought, about halfway here, that I was lost, but a kind passerby assured me that I was on the right path. Apparently the German that I learned in highschool has not completely abandoned me, but he very quickly realized that I would do better if he talked to me in English.
Yes, I know, this is very stream of consciousness, and out of order. I’m still pretty tired even though I got a little nap.
Brian McCallister just interrupted my stream of consciousness, and we had a very nice dinner together. Sander is here too, but I haven’t seen anyone else. I imagine a lot of people will show up tonight and tomorrow.
I had a little walk around the area after dinner. Thre is a little biergarten down on the corner, and an orthodox church another block along. I had a swim when I got back, and I think I’m about ready to crash.
Photos will be HERE as soon as I get around to uploading them. There are also some on Flickr, some of them mine.