Wil Wheaton, a geek like me

One of the highlights of yesterday was a trip over to Powell’s technical bookstore, which is the most amazing bookstore I have ever been in. Let’s put it this way: This is the only bookstore that I have *ever* been in which has a better Apache collection than I do. 😉

Anyways, Wil Wheaton was there, reading from, and signing, his new book, “Dancing Barefoot.” I have to admit that I didn’t expect much, but I was very impressed. It’s stories about his time on Star Trek, but, more than that, it’s about being young, and a geek, and unsure of oneself, and trying to deal with the world. He read one story, and an excerpt from another. He’s a very good writer. And he was very good at reading it as well.

I got a signed copy of the book, and have already enjoyed a number of the stories.

See also his remarks about it, and about the conference. He seems like a pretty cool guy.

Geocaching this morning

I feel like a complete idiot, and I’m sure that someone is cursing my existence. I was suposed to meet someone at 5:30 this morning to go caching. I waited for an entire hour for him to show up, and then went to check for his full name, so that I could call his room. I had been waiting in the wrong place. I’m amazingly disappointed, as I was really looking forward to doing some difficult caches. Not to mention having gotten up at an ungodly hour to do it.

OSCon, day 3

I’m not entirely sure how it became Wednesday already. Sheesh.

OK, last night I was out until 3 this morning, and so I’m a little worn out. Last year, I left everything early so that I could get sleep. In doing so, I missed out on some stuff. So I determined that this time I would attend everything I possibly could, be the last to leave, and get everything possible out of the week. So, this morning I am a little ragged.

Tim O’Reilly gave the same talk that he gave at ApacheCon. Well, different title, and a few different examples, but essentially the same talk.

Next, there was a talk about Eclipse, which is apparently very cool and shiny if you like that sort of thing. I think that if I cared at all about Java or IDEs, I would have had the patience to endure the speaker saying “uh” every 5th word. No, I’m not exaggerating.

Right now, I’m in Justin’s AAA talk, which I will hopefully be able to pay attention to, but I need to make sure I’m ready for my talk, which is immediately after. Migrating to Apache 2.0.

OSCon, day 2

I’ve been in an Extreme Programming class all day, and it has been very useful, although I’m not sure 1) that it is immediately applicable to my job or 2) that I could really say *how* it is useful.

In part, it was cool in that we worked on a cool project, which looks interesting to continue working on after today.

OSCon Day 1

07/07/03 15:45:29

Not much to say so far today. I gave my “intro to apache” talk this morning, which, by some great miracle, I managed to finish on time, even though the first hour of the talk took an hour and a half. This afternoon I went to the first half of the DocBook talk, but was getting nothing out of it. Admittedly, it was a pretty good introduction, but by the end of the first half, I feel that he’s unlikely to get to anything that will teach me something I don’t know.

So, for the second half, I intend to attend Schwern’s talk on testing. I think I’ve been to this talk before, but I’m sure it will be entertaining, if nothing else.

Meanwhile, the network is down, which is irritating me a great deal.

Tomorow I’m supposed to attend the Extreme Programming talk all day. That could be interesting, or it could be a lot of stuff I already know. I really am not quite sure yet.

Some time in the morning, it seems that something on the network was producing a ton of UDP traffic, and killing the network. Now there are signs all over the place telling OSX users to turn off Rendezvous to help save the network.

So, I want to complain and moan on IRC, but, of course, I can’t get to IRC. It’s deeply annoying, and merely serves to increase my irritation. Sort of a feedback loop of sorts.

Second cache, aborted

07/06/03 13:53:45

Some folks were going to go geocaching with me, but apparently something else came up. I’ve found one cache so far today, but they are all just so far away that I really need wheels, and I can’t justify spending $25 each way for cab fare. And none of the rental places seem to be open. Annoying. I need to get out to at least one other cache in order to drop off these travel bugs I have. And it would be a great shame to only find one cache the whole time I’m out here. So perhaps I can get a car tomorrow afternoon, if I can’t find a rental place open today.

Post-caching

Just got back from my hike. I am worn out. The trip back was a little more direct, and all downhill. I am having the breakfast buffett, and am determined to get my money’s worth! Just saw gnat + family, and Uri + family.

Caching in Portland, chapter 1

Sitting at 45°29.858N, 122°42.511W, a few hundred feet from the first find of the day – Council Crest. The idea was to have a short stroll before breakfast. It was just 1.75 miles. 2 hours later, and probably 5 miles of switchback, I found it.

I left a hot wheels, a Chrisman Mill wine cork, and a travel bug called Rock Climbing General.

It is also worth mentioning that when I stepped out of the hotel, I was at 9 feet elevation, and I’m now at 1038 feet elevation. About 300 feet of that was up one set of stairs!

Photos at http://buglet.rcbowen.com/photos/2003/Jul/OSCon/Geocaching/

OSCon, day 0

07/06, 7:25am
OSCon Day 0

It being 3 hours from my time zone, I woke up rather early. I took the opportunity to write a letter to the Transportation Security Administration. I have no illusions that I’ll receive an intelligent response from a real person, however, I have included the entire note below for your edification. Please note that I put a great deal of time and thought into this, and that it is something that I feel very passionately about. Not that I think it’s a great or eloquent note, by any means, but if you have any desire to share all or part of it with anyone else, please feel free to do so. ie, I explicitly place this in the public domain, and heartily encourage you to send it on to your congress critter, if my efforts can in any way help in the fight against the police state that we appear to be slipping into.

The Margin Is Too Narrow