Fresh Code

The conferences were lots of fun but we were so ready to be home. Our flight wasn’t until around 15:00 though so we didn’t have to rush. We got up, dressed and worked on packing before walking to a grocery store for some breakfast type food. We ended up getting bagels and hummus. I also grabbed four boxes of this tasty smoked tofu we can only get in Canada.

After we ate we decided to just grab a bus and wait at the airport with everyone else. Security and customs were a breeze and we were at our gate before we knew it. We talked with Steven, a really nice guy from Salem, Oregon who attends the monthly PLUG meeting. Our flights were fairly uneventful but for the 1.3 hour delay at Dulles. The pilot made up most of the lost time though and we landed only 20 minutes past our originally scheduled time. Sweet! I read The Martian the entire time. It’s SO good!

Wayne picked us up and it was so good to have my arms around him. I sure miss him when we travel. Luckily he’s coming with us on our trip to Pittsburgh in about a week! We ate a quick dinner of leftovers and headed to bed. As usual Wayne had clean sheets waiting for me. They were our new, really nice, bamboo sheets. Our bed felt amazing!

Today I learned about this interesting bit of physics.

Oh man we were soooooo tired. We stayed up far too late last night but it was too much fun so who cares?! Andrew and I went to a breakfast place we had been wanting to try last year but were unable. They have vegan pancakes. They didn’t open until 10:00 though so we ended up missing the first talk. The pancakes were awful! Oh well 🙂

I tried to stay awake for the talks but it was tough. We had a fire alarm midway through the day though and that woke me up! After the conference was over we all headed to a restaurant/brewery for the after party. They were great about hooking us up with vegan options even though it was a pre-planned menu. We had a ton of fun eating great food and talking to everyone. We had a flight the next day though so we decided to head out at 22:00. We started making the rounds to say goodbye to our friends but were made to sit down with a whole table of OpenBSD people. That meant we didn’t get out of there until about midnight! It was worth it. We had a great week.

Today I learned that trying to make a tech environment inclusive by promoting the idea of not seeing gender has the effect of driving away women and minorities.

Andrew and I grabbed a quick breakfast of oatmeal from a nearby shitty coffee shop. We were in a hurry though because we wanted to make sure we had seats to see the keynote speaker. Stephen Bourne was the guy who wrote /bin/sh. He was so interesting and so funny. It was a great talk.

We watched several other very good talks, lunch was provided and then more talks. Andrew went to another talk while I stayed out in the hall. I happened to see Dr. Bourne walking alone so took the opportunity to approach him and tell him how much I liked his keynote. He was happy to hear it and joked that it was probably really boring.

After the talks Andrew and I walked in the rain to an Ethiopian restaurant. The food was once again yummy! We were a bit damp from our rain walk so we stopped by the apartment and threw our sweatshirts in the dryer for a while and then headed to the Royal Oak to see if anyone was hanging out. The place was packed and there was Stephen Bourne sitting at a table with a bunch of other people. He waved us over and they made room for us to sit with them. I spent the next five or so hours talking Dr. Bourne’s ear off and encouraging him to tell me stories. We were also sitting with Kirk McKusick and Mike Karels. I didn’t know them before today but they were right there in the beginnings of Unix. Their stories are amazing! The thing that really struck me though is that they know what they did was cool and fun but they were completely down to earth and friendly. I had the best time.

Today I learned so many things. Kirk McKusick designed a display that was used on the space shuttle. It had something to do with radar and the space shuttle docking mechanism. I’m not entirely sure. There were so many interesting stories.

We were up early and on our way to the airport. It was an uneventful trip and we very easily found our way to our apartment. As luck would have it the venue was in a different building this year so we were in an ideal place.

We got settled in and wandered over to the dorms to meet other BSDCan attendees. There were eight of us and we went to a yummy Indian place. I had WAY more food than I could come close to finishing but it was delicious. We hung out for a bit at the Royal Oak which is the bar where everyone seems to migrate to. It’s also where attendees pick up their badges. We were pretty tired after our long day though so didn’t stay out horribly late.

Today I learned about this very nifty website, What is Code?

Today is Andrew’s talk and it’s first thing in the morning! We were up and ready early so we could head to the room and get him all set up. I sat up front so I could take pictures of him. He was nervous and wasn’t feeling that great but he did such a good job anyway! I found out afterward that Larry Wall sat through his talk! He’s the guy that wrote Perl.

There are so many Perl luminaries at this conference. It’s interesting to see people practically fall over when they see these people who have paved the way just standing there chatting with everyone. The famous people don’t think they are so famous though and it’s really endearing. Andrew works with a couple of them and I had no idea they were a big deal in the Perl community. Graham Barr and Tom Christiansen are two of them. Really nice, smart people.

In the evening Andrew and I met James who is an ooooooold friend of mine and his wife Elisa for dinner. He was actually my first boyfriend when I was 15. Damn we are so old now 🙂 It was great to see them and to catch up on life. The food we had was so awful though. But we had a nice time so that’s ok. We went straight to bed since we had an early flight to Ottawa in the morning.

Today I learned that The Martian is a really good book!

Andrew and I were going to go to LinuxFest Northwest this weekend but we really didn’t want to leave again after just getting home from a two week trip so we canceled but I had found a super cool medicine cabinet on Craigslist and it was up in Seattle. The plan was to pick it up while we were up at the conference. That wasn’t going to work now and Seattle was a pretty far drive just to get a medicine cabinet.  The seller was headed to the coast on Saturday though and was willing to meet us near Olympia. That sounded perfect as that would only be a 1.5 hour drive. Wayne and I could just run up there and come right back home. Andrew had a doctor’s appointment so he stayed home and we hit the road. It was a beautiful drive up. We had moments of fog, rain and bright sunshine over and over as we made our way there. We met the seller and loved the cabinet. We decided to drive into Olympia and get some breakfast. We had never been so it would be fun to check out a new city. I found a nice cooperative cafe with lots of vegan options. They weren’t too busy so we got a table right away. I think we got there just in time though because soon they had a bunch of people waiting. The food came quickly and it was tasty. As we were eating Wayne suggested we go antique shopping. What a great idea! It seemed like a good place to do that and when I looked for nearby antique stores there were several.

We went to the closest one and immediately saw two slipper light fixtures we just loved. The woman who owned the store said they were on commission from a man named Jerry who has a store of his own as well as antiques at a few other vendors. She suggested we go look at all of his fixtures. We went up to his shop which was just a block away. His grumpy old father was manning the shop when we got there and didn’t give us the time of day but Jerry soon showed up and was really nice. We looked at all of the lighting in his store but didn’t see anything we liked as much as the others so he told us where he had more stuff. We made our way down to the other places and found some other inexpensive things we liked but didn’t really find any lights we liked as much. Each time we would go to another store Jerry was either there or showed up shortly after. Apparently we were there during the annual Olympia Art Walk and Jerry is very involved in it so was going from shop to shop all day long. It was nice to have him wherever we went so we could ask him questions! We still didn’t like anything as much as the first two lights though so went back to the first store where we negotiated an excellent price for both fixtures and no tax since we are from Oregon. Jerry was happy and we were happy. We will definitely go back up to Olympia when we are looking for other vintage items for the house.

Wayne and I had been there for the better part of the day and really needed to be heading home so we got on our way but both realized we should go to the bathroom before we got too far down the road. We spotted a Fred Meyer so pulled off the freeway but then saw a Costco where we needed to go anyway. We figured that would save us a Costco trip later. It was an excellent idea. They had everything we were looking for including the two pack of large bottles of Cholula! We loaded up our purchases and continued home. It was a successful day for sure.

Today I learned that Olympia is a really cute city. We will definitely go back and spend more time checking out more than antique stores.