Category Archives: Uncategorized

Full weekend

Apart from the time wasted tinkering with Drupal (it appears very probable that Drupal auth breaks under https, according to several rather unclear postings I found) it has been a very full weekend.

On Friday night, we went to the Good Friday service, and it was, as always, very sobering. I had agreed to read something, and didn’t understand that I was to select the thing that I was going to read. Fortunately, John had picked two things, and gave one of them to me. Having rather insufficient time to prepare for it, I found the reading to be rather more moving that I was really prepared for. It was, however, a very good reading, and I’m glad it worked out that way.

We went to the Aviation Museum on Saturday morning with Sarah and Ben, who were visiting for the weekend, and had been camping at the Horse Park. Then they went off to a tour at Maker’s Mark, and my Sarah and I went to the kite festival at Jacobson. Didn’t actually get any pictures, which is a shame, as there were dozens of very interesting kites, as well as hundreds of more mundane ones. I didn’t actually want to fly my kite, because there were so many kites up and so many of them were getting tangled. Sarah got a dragon, and we flew that briefly.

Then we went looking for a motorcycle. It seems that neither Sarah nor I are prepared to part with the Jeep, but I’ve got to find a way to spend less on gas. And I *really* don’t want to pick up a new car payment, as the Jeep is paid for. So it seems that perhaps getting a motorcycle to run back and forth to work might be a possible solution. However, with the weather being so gorgeous, everone’s inventory is very low, and the price range of what I liked was rather higher than I expected or can afford. I guess I’ll just have to keep looking.

Tinkering with Drupal

I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time this evening tinkering with Drupal. I’m impressed with the thought that went into the database design, with flexibility and extensibility always the obvious priority. However, when you make something extensible, people extend it. And it seems that half of the modules out there have, as documentation, a README file that says “Install as normal”, and offer very little else in the way of help.

When I asked a question on #drupal, I was apparently a little too frustrated, and the tenor of my question sparked a lecture on the nature of open source documentation. It was the fairly standard bit about how one is supposed to fix the documentation (or software) rather than complaining about it. All true, and completely worthless and time-wasting. There are times when open source people can be very tiresome. When stuff is good, it’s because we’re brilliant. When it’s bad, it’s because you don’t contribute enough.

On Closing Anna Karenina

My sister passed on to me this poem by Billy Collins, the poet laureate. It’s *brillliant*, I tell you! At last, someone else who agrees with me that Anna Karenina is unmitigated drivel.

On Closing Anna Karenina, by Billy Collins

I must have started reading this monster
a decade before Tolstoy was born
but the vodka and the suicide are behind me now,
all the winter farms, ice-skating and horsemanship.

It consumed so many evenings and afternoons,
I thought a Russian official would appear
to slip a medal over my lowered head
when I reached the last page.

But I found there only the last word,
a useless looking thing, stalled there,
ending its sentence and the whole book at once.

With no more plot to nudge along and nothing
to unfold, it is the only word with no future.

It stares into space and chants its own name
as a traveler whose road has just vanished
might stare into the dark, vacant fields ahead,
knowing he cannot go forward, cannot go back.

Really wireless

I’m posting from 32,000 feet over the Atlantic. Not that I have anything particular to say, except that having a broadband connection at 32,000 feet is pretty darned cool. I had hoped to skype Sarah from here, but the cabin noise is so great that, although I could hear the other end perfectly clearly, they couldn’t hear me. Bummer. I guess I’ll have to call from Chicago.

Skype Out

My phone didn’t work this weekend, and so I was unable to call Sarah. Yesterday evening, we called Danese to discuss some things, and use SkypeOut. I had never tried it, and was *very* impressed with the quality of the call, which was not much different from using a real speaker phone. So I’ve signed up for SkypeOut, and just called Sarah using it. Unfortunately, either I got the time wrong, or she was sleeping in, as she wasn’t up yet. But it was very nice to talk with her. I’m not quite clear on how it actually works, and Lars assures us that it’s not actually secure, but, hey, I got to say good morning to my little person, so it’s good enough for me. 🙂

Heading home

I’m in the Dublin airport, waiting to go home. I got here rather early – I always prefer to be early rather than late. I’ve had a great time while here, although everything seemed very rushed. I’m really looking forward to being back in June when there will be more time to see things and more time to spend with folks. Noirin and Colm were an *enormous* help – we simply couldn’t have done it all without them. It’s going to be a great conference.

All the same, I really want to get home, and I hope I don’t have to spend overnight in Chicago.

Ireland, day three

We finished scheduling the talks, and saw the conference facilities, today. It’s going to be another great conference. From 210+ talks we had to select 72, which wasn’t an easy task. But I think we came up with the best possible schedule that we could. I hope everyone is satisfied, although it’s always hard to have to tell folks that they’ve been rejected.

With any luck we’ll send out the speaker notifications in the next 2 or 3 days, then we can post the schedule on the website.

We went out for a little bit of geocaching. It was pretty cold, and rained and hailed briefly while we were out. We found the Iveagh cache in Iveagh Gardens, which is a beautiful little park just down the road from the hotel. We also visited St. Steven’d Green, which was very beautiful too. I got some pictures. I’ll see in a moment if any of them were any good.

I’ll be leaving tomorrow, and I don’t imagine I’ll be online much more between now and then.

Ireland, day two

We spent all day yesterday selecting talks, but we’re still not quite done. A little after 9, those of us who are 5 timezones over finally realized that it wasn’t 4pm, so we packed it in for the day and went to a nearby pizza place, where they had great calzone. It was somewhat after midnight when we got back to the hotel, so I’m still rather tired today. Hopefully we’ll have everything schedule by lunchtime, and we can do a little geocaching on the lunch break.

I brought 3 travel bugs that Sarah made, and wants dropped off while I’m here.

Ireland, day one

I’m in Ireland, and it is beautiful here.

Colm and Noirin met me at the airport, and brought me to the hotel via the most curcuitous route possible, I am sure. I have a sneaking suspicion that Colm did it on purpose just to confuse me. 😉

It is warmer here than I thought it would be. Noirin and I went for a walk after I got here, and got caught in the rain while we were walking, but it really wasn’t unpleasant. We were heading somewhere to find some dinner, when Colm called and said that Ken was awake and looking for us. I hadn’t pounded on his door because I was sure he’d be napping. So we came back and got Ken, and went looking for some dinner.

On the way, we stopped by the Long Room Library, at Trinity. It was *amazing*. I could spend weeks in that room, I am sure. However, you have to be someone special to actually touch the books. We also got to see the Book of Kells, which was stunning. a 1300+ year old book, and still in very good condition. Very beautiful.

Of course, I couldn’t take any photos of any of this. But you can find many photos online, I’m sure.

We went to The Porterhouse for dinner, and I had Beef and Stout, which was a delicious beef stew that reminded me of my Turi days. Mmmm. Colm joined us a little later. I asked embarrassing questions about Ireland and its relationship to the United Kingdom, and Colm and Noirin set me straight on my ignorance. It’s a great big world, and I feel that I know so little about it.

We all went out geocaching, but it was getting rather cold and rainy, and got colder and windier the longer we looked, so we eventually gave up and came back. I went straight to sleep, as it was about 9pm and I’d been up for 30+ hours.

Today we’ll be meeting to select the talks for ApacheCon, see the venue, and other conference-related activities. Hopefully we’ll have a schedule by this evening, but it may be tomorrow before we’re actually done.

Ireland, day one, sort of

I’m in Heathrow, waiting for my next flight. I arrived at the gate as they were closing the door, and they wouldn’t let me on. So I have to wait another hour. Not a big deal, I guess, but I’m *so* tired. United “Economy Plus” is way *way* more comfortable than Delta – lots more leg room – but it’s still not quite the same as being in my own warm bed. So I got perhaps 2 or 3 hours of sleep on a night that was at least 5 hours shortened. I think. I’m not entirely sure what timezone I’m in. I’ll figure it out in time to go back home. 🙂

This is the most convoluted flight plan I think I’ve ever had. Well, Moscow was convoluted, but that’s half-way around the world, so one expects that. I flew over Dublin about 2 hours ago, and hopefully I’ll finally get there in about 2 hours.

I will *never* use cheaptickets.com again. Ever.

Turns out I misread my itinerary on the way home. I read that I was arriving in Chicago at 7pm, leaving Chicago at 7:45 and arriving home at 10. Turns out that’s 7:45 the NEXT MORNING. I’m very very unhappy about this. How could that be a reasonable flight? Hopefully I can fly earlier on standby, or perhaps find someone to pick me up at the airport. I really don’t want to have to spend the night at the airport.

I suppose my terrible itinerary with too-long and too-short layover times is my own fault, since I clicked OK and bought the ticket, but it’s still very annoying that it was put together as a supposedly-sane itinerary in the first place. Grr.