Yesterday, I felt absolutely wretched. This used to happen to me a lot at conferences. I’d get sick the first day or two, and miss a lot of stuff. I spent most of yesterday napping.
I feel a lot better today, but am still very tired.
This afternoon – in about 2 hours – I’ve got my mod_rewrite presentation, and then tonight I’m MCing the Lightning Talks, since Fred and Fitz aren’t here this year. Could be fun. You should come.
The first night in Amsterdam, I went straight to sleep, so yesterday was pretty good. Last night, I was up almost all night, or so it seemed, and today I am exhausted. Which is bad, because I have to talk all day long. I’m going the second day of the “Apache Nuts To Bolts” training class. JimJag did day one.
The presentation bit is here. Yeah. I know. Comic Sans. Get over it.
Lunch was great, but now I’m tired *and* full, so the afternoon is going to be a little long. Just 3 hours to go.
I’m in Amsterdam again. ApacheCon starts tomorrow, and I’ll be doing a two-day Apache HTTPd Server training class with JimJag.
I slept quite a bit on the plane, which was unexpected. So I’m going to try to stay up instead of napping, so that I can sleep tonight. Perhaps I’ll take a stroll downtown – perhaps as far as Rembrandt Platz. But now that I’m deciding to go somewhere, I’m starting to feel … very … sleepy.
This year, preparing for ApacheCon has been unusual. I guess it changes every year, but this year I really would rather be staying home. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that the conference will be fabulous. It always is, both as a technical conference, and as a time to catch up with longtime friends. But the trees are just starting to green, and it’s warming up, and I will miss my family an awful lot. And I’m just not that exited about Amsterdam. I’ve seen Amsterdam. I’ve seen the bits that truly interest me, and may try to go to the Van Gogh museum again this year, if I have time. But I don’t care for the red light district, and I don’t care for the coffee shops, and I don’t have a lot of cash laying around to spend on the admittedly amazing restaurants, so I expect to spend most of the time in the hotel working on long-past writing deadlines, which I’d really rather do in my own home.
That said, I’ll say again that I’m sure the conference will be amazing, and as soon as I get there and get immersed in it, I’ll have a good time. Just not real fired up about it right now, with just 4 hours left before I need to leave for the airport.
I wonder if I packed my toothbrush …
Shameless Plug:
ApacheCon EU is just a few weeks away. I’ll be doing a two day training on the Apache HTTP Server, along with Jim Jagielski. He’s listed as the instructor, but we’ll both be tag-teaming on this.
Day one will be an overview of the entire server product, and day two will be hands-on, recipe-based examples, showing you how to do specific tasks that come up every day as a web server admin.
Here’s the training description.
Here’s the conference website.
Come see me in Amsterdam. It’ll be lots of fun. And I’ll be going down to the Van Gogh museum on Wednesday afternoon. You should come with me.
ApacheCon EU 2009 registration is now open!
23-27 March — Mövenpick Hotel, Amsterdam, Netherlands
http://www.eu.apachecon.com/
================================
Registration for ApacheCon Europe 2009 is now open – act before early bird prices expire 6 February. Remember to book a room at the Mövenpick and use the Registration Code: Special package attendees for the conference registration, and get 150 Euros off your full conference registration.
Lower Costs – Thanks to new VAT tax laws, our prices this year are 19% lower than last year in Europe! We’ve also negotiated a Mövenpick rate of a maximum of 155 Euros per night for attendees in our room block.
Quick Links:
http://xrl.us/aceu09sc See the schedule
http://xrl.us/aceu09hc Get your hotel room
http://xrl.us/aceu09rc Register for the conference
Other important notes:
– Geeks for Geeks is a new mini-track where we can feature advanced technical content from project committers. And our Hackathon on Monday and Tuesday is open to all attendees – be sure to check it off in your registration.
– The Call for Papers for ApacheCon US 2009, held 2-6 November
2009 in Oakland, CA, is open through 28 February, so get your submissions in now. This ApacheCon will feature special events with
some of the ASF’s original founders in celebration of the 10th anniversary of The Apache Software Foundation.
http://www.us.apachecon.com/c/acus2009/
– Interested in sponsoring the ApacheCon conferences? There are plenty
of sponsor packages available – please contact Delia Frees at
delia@apachecon.com for further information.
======================================================
ApacheCon EU 2008: A week of Open Source at it’s best!
Hackathon – open to all! | Geeks for Geeks | Lunchtime Sessions
In-Depth Trainings | Multi-Track Sessions | BOFs | Business Panel
Lightning Talks | Receptions | Fast Feather Track | Expo… and more!
I invariably get to these conferences and then don’t have the time or inclination to keep a running commentary. This one is no different. There have been a few really good talks, but mostly, it has been really good conversations, meeting people that I either hadn’t met before, or hadn’t spoken with in way too long.
Highlights so far include:
Meeting Ivan Ristic of mod_security. He was scheduled to come to ApacheCon Stuttgart, and then was unable to, due to real life getting in the way, as it so often does. It was great to finally meet him, and his talk was fabulous. I’ve often said about my own talks that it’s all stuff that’s in the docs, so why do people come. I’m sure that everything Ivan talked about is in the docs, but his talk was amazingly valuable anyway, since it showed me things in one hour that would probably have taken me months to discover. And I’ve been using mod_security for years already, and wasn’t aware of them, or didn’t quite understand the syntax. Did you know that mod_security 2.5 lets you write rules in Lua? Crazy.
Speaking with Andrew Ford. I met him first in London in 2000, and I’m not sure if I’ve spoken with him since then. Certainly not more than a handful of times. He’s the author of Apache Pocket Reference – a great book, but greatly out of date. The cover proclaim that it covers Apache 1.3.12! Andrew is working on a new edition, which is truly good news for Apache httpd administrators. And we can hope to see Andrew on the documentation list in the coming months, which is also good news.
After hours dinners and chats have been fantastic across the board. Reconnecting with people that I only see for one or two weeks a year is always a highlight of ApacheCon.
But, as usual by this time in the week, I’m definitely ready to get back home, so there’s this tension between really wanting to be here, and really wanting to be home. Good, both directions.
Arrived. Photos from my window.
Didn’t sleep much on the plane, due to the unabated natter of a very loud woman sitting right behind me. Got a little nap, but still feel rather bleh.
Going to try to walk around a bit, see some things. I suppose I should wait for Chris, but I can’t get his attention.
With ApacheCon Amsterdam now just around the corner, I got the Amsterdam Moleskine. You should come to Apachecon Amsterdam, too, so that you can justify getting such an amazingly cool book.
