pleia2's weblog

Brew at the Philadelphia Zoo!

2008-08-24T02:20:00Z

On July 26th Michael, Bob, Mike and I attend the first Brew at the Zoo at the Philadelphia Zoo! In the years past it was held at the Norristown Zoo, which was fun but they have much cooler animals at the Philly Zoo - when I heard it would be held in Philly I had to go.

We arrived toward the beginning, hit a couple beer booths and then went to explore the zoo. It was quite a treat to be at a 21+ event in the evening, the crowd was pretty mellow, the weather was beautiful and the animals were awake! The $40 ticket price was worth it just for such a great visit to the zoo.

Bald eagle and prairie dogs - not near each other, luckily ;)

Elephants! They are leaving to zoo soon because they can’t afford to keep them and upgrade their habitat for an appropriate happy lifestyle. Sad sad, I loved seeing the elephants at the zoo. The other photo is a fishing cat that looked a bit like Caligula :)

Puma! Too bad the action shots didn’t come out, it was evening and the pumas were all creeping up on each other and attacking each other. And a photo of the red pandas. Love red pandas…!

There were peacocks wandering around the zoo. The first photo has a picture of a baby peacock too, the other showed how really wandering around they were - access to dippin’ dots and m&ms if they so wish! ;)

The last time I was at the zoo all the big cats were gone off to other zoos while Big Cat Falls, their new habitat, was being built. The biggest treat to this trip was Big Cat Falls being open and being able to see all the big cats. The tigers were my favorite, it was a warm day and the tigers were really into being playful and jumping in the water.

Biggest treat was the cats and not the beer? OK, the company was great too, aside from the friends we went with we met up with with a bunch of other people we’ve gone to other beer events with. The food was good too, they had a lot of free food this time around, it lasted throughout the festival. The beer? Microbrews rock, but the lines didn’t, and neither did the breweries running out of beer. You’d end up spending a half hour in line for a taste of beer, and when it came down to it I’d much rather be wandering through the reptile house with a bottle of water than standing in line - so we did. Not even a buzz by the end of the night, but I had a great time anyway. Hopefully next year they’ll sort out the issues and the event can go better overall.

My Network! (and a little ledgersmb)

2008-08-22T03:43:13Z

When I moved back into the house we decided to give me my own network (along with my own external IP address) - yippee! First thing I had to get? A spiffy reversal, as seen on R2D2’s hostname:

-!- R2D2 [~astromech@alderaan.princessleia.com] has joined #rainwreck

From there I built my network.

R2A6: Laptop (Ubuntu Hardy)
R2D2: Primary desktop (Xubuntu Hardy)
HAN-S: Secondary desktop, mostly a movie player (Kubuntu Hardy)

..wait, Xubuntu, Kubuntu AND Ubuntu? Yeah, I kept finding it was useful to have one of each around between what I prefer, what I support at work and what I support in the community. Or I might just be insane, the jury is out.

R2Q5: Backups and IRC Bots (Debian Sparc Etch)
R2B1: Firewall (Debian i386 Etch)
R21U: 1U Testing server (Debian i386 Sid)

Hey look, Debian and Ubuntu tie!

Plus my Linodes, a printer and a VoIP phone. On Monday evening I got Nagios2 configured for all the machines it made sense to monitor.

Nice.

DNS, DHCP, all looking spiffy. I still lack a good backups infrastructure, which really bit me Tuesday evening - oops. Must get this online…!

elizabeth@r2d2:~$ ping r2q5
PING r2q5.alderaan.princessleia.com (192.168.42.3) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from r2q5.alderaan.princessleia.com (192.168.42.3): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=8.02 ms

Yahoo!!!

Simcoe helped with none of this.

Oh, and for those of you keeping up, I released the Debian package of LedgerSMB 1.2.14 on Alioth this evening along with a better README file (thanks for your help jadoba), so far tests well - have at it! The LedgerSMB folks are close to a 1.2.15 release with some big fixes, so if you’re interested in testing be sure to hop on over there and pitch in.

Mini-Golf

2008-08-15T02:56:38Z

I love mini-golf, lousy at it, but love it. It had been years since I’ve gone, but this year my friend Stephen and I were able to hit a few courses through the spring. The first was Village Greens in Strasburg on a day that was a bit too cold to be playing mini-golf, a fun course - not too fancy or expensive, not too run down. Very fun, and there were cute little waterfalls, I’ll have to go back.

The next was Dutch Gardens in Ephrata. It was run down and quite old, but it was very inexpensive (especially since we went on a day when they were doing a $1.50/game promotion!). And hey, mini-golf of all kinds is fun, even when old.

Then there was Garden Golf and Go Karts in North Wales. This is one of those really nice, expensive places that I’ve only been to a few times. It was crowded, but the weather was beautiful and the course was very nice.

Finally there was Dinosaur Park Mini Golf in Niagara Falls! It’s no secret that I love this kind of campy attraction. And after a sunset ride on the SkyWheel this was the perfect late evening thing to do.

Not sure where my next mini-golf adventure will be, but I really did love the campy-ness that was dino golf. Themed mini golf wins!

The Last HOPE

2008-08-15T00:06:37Z

Last month I attended The Last HOPE with my friend Mike from New Jersey. It was a really fun weekend during which I took no pictures - so I sorted through Mike’s photos and am posting them to pass them off as my own.

In spite of waiting years to go (Mike’s bugged me last time around to go), one of the most exciting things about the weekend was meeting people I’d known online but had never met in real life. Shortly after arriving I met up with Dan Christensen, who I know through some of the Linode guys, we’ve chatted on IRC some. Soon after Mackenzie Morgan and I found each other through txt-o-location, I’ve known her for quite some time through work with Ubuntu. After the first panel I attended was “attacked” in the hallway by Leigh Honeywell and invited to a party Saturday evening, unfortunately that was the only time we bumped into each other that weekend, I’ve worked with her a lot in Ubuntu Women and it would have been cool to talk more off-IRC.

From the Steven Rambam talk - he didn’t get arrested this year, but he’s a bit much for me. And a picture of one of the RFID receivers that were placed throughout the hotel for The AMD Project.

The AMD Project was pretty cool, people who pre-registered had the option of getting badges with RFID transmitters that would track you through the conference. The released the metadata last week, so I was able to snag info about where I was from I arrived Saturday afternoon through closing ceremonies Sunday. They also synced up the locations with some of the talks, so you can also see talks I attended. Neat… except for when my cellphone turns into a transmitter …or maybe that’ll be the twitter of web 3.0.

Friday night a bunch of us got together for a sort of LinuxChix dinner at Ninja New York that Katie organized. The restaurant was more than a little campy, but the sushi was fresh and the place was a real treat. I got to meet Jennifer and her husband for the first time as we navigated through the subways of NYC, and was also able to see Laura (and her talk at HOPE!) and meet her new husband. Surprisingly I also got to finally meet Simon Law as well. We’ve known each other through Ubuntu stuff for a couple years (he used to work for Canonical) but never crossed paths until that night. It was a pleasure to meet, we got to thank each other for our Ubuntu work ;)

Sunday was all talks for me. I got up early and lurked in the 18th floor hallway with my laptop until the talks started, when I migrated into the Hopper room and camped out all day.

Adam Savage was a guest speaker at the con! Very cool. And a photo from prior to the closing ceremony when the networking team was discussing how the setup went.

Things wrapped up Sunday evening. So I stole Mike’s camera and took his picture, he returned the favor by snapping a lousy picture of me, hah!

Then we needed some dinner so Dan, Mike and I met up with Mike’s friend dedsysop who lived in the area and I’d only known vaguely through IRC and stories until then. He’s a New York local and took us to a good nearby pizzeria before we took the 10:30PM train back to New Jersey, and then from there I drove back to Philly, not getting home until past 1AM. Long weekend, but loads of fun - I’m certainly planning on going to The Next HOPE.

Last month I went to prison

2008-08-13T20:38:27Z

A few years ago I was watching an episode of History Detectives titled Prison Plaque which researched the history of a discarded plaque found during some restoration of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Immediately this made it on my mental list of places to check out. Trouble with mental lists is that they are forgettable, and it wasn’t until I was riding down to a PLUG meeting with mukidohime recently that I remembered it, he was picking up a friend of his for the meeting and we passed the Penitentiary. I finally got my opportunity to go last month while my friend MJ was in town, Nita and I headed down there with him on a Sunday evening for a couple tours.

Inside one of the original cells in the facility, and a look down death row

Down the corridor of a 2 story segment of the prison, and a guard tower as seen from the grounds

Cats from the Linda Brenner: Ghost Cats Exhibit, and some a case of home made knives from the prison

Nita with a rock, getting ready to break out and MJ behind bars

I’ll have to go again when I have more time to explore, the museum closes at 5PM and we got there pretty late in the afternoon. It was a lot of fun, and there are all sorts of nooks and crannies to explore, complete with self-guided audio tours you get with the price of your ticket.

Current (and I’m so behind w/ blogging…)

2008-08-10T14:08:49Z

So, I still have the following things to blog about: Visiting the museum that is Eastern State Penn in Philly, HOPE (plus meta-data from rfids was released this week!), the Phildelphia Brew at the Zoo, all the minigolfing I’ve done this year. I’ll try to catch up some today. But I want to talk about stuff happening Now for a bit!

My ToDo list is huge. I’m starting to think I should come up with a system of recording all the stuff I do for various volunteer things so I have a better handle on where I’m spending my time - but then I remember that creating such a system would end up on my ToDo list and be more work. Oh well, I’ll just continue working away at it until everything is done.

The plan today is to tackle a bunch of things on said ToDo list. And then this evening I’m going out to finally meet the_karen_show at Sly Fox in Phoenixville!

This week was a long one. A lot of maintenance stuff to handle at work before a herd of new projects comes in. Bright side - by Thursday I was feeling considerably better sinus infection wise, this morning I woke up feeling almost completely normal (cough is lingering, but that’s normal). On Friday I spent my lunch break mowing the lawn - and got stung by a yellow jacket. I’d never been stung by anything before and it was highly unpleasant, I don’t want it to happen again.

Friday evening Michael went out with a couple friends and I got tickets to see The Dark Knight again - but this time in the IMAX with my friend Mike from NJ. Unfortunately on my way out to the theater while driving on 422 my car started bleeding coolant all over the expressway - eek! I didn’t realize until my engine was in the overheat zone (and I got a beep notification from my car). I quickly got to the nearest exit and hit Wawa for some coolant. Unfortunately my car takes special orange coolant, not the green stuff I put in - and mixing the two is bad. Doh. Anyway, the green stuff cooled my engine enough to get me home, and then Mike came to “rescue” me at the house so we could still make it to the movies. We arrived at the theater just in time for the movie to begin - but had to suffer with front row seats in the sold out theater. So we missed dinner, but when coming back to Schwenksville after the movie around 1:30 AM we stopped at the Collegeville Diner for some pancakes. Michael and I have affectionately called that the Zombie Diner, since there is a very good sushi place next door that we frequent which shares a parking lot - and people coming out of the diner tend to look somewhat zombieish. Imagine my surprise when Mike and I pulled into the parking lot and there was an old style HEARSE in the parking lot. For real it’s the zombie diner!

Yesterday morning I called the local Pontiac dealership to see if I could get Blinker in to check out her leak (I don’t know a local mechanic I can trust, so I always go to dealerships for repairs). I ended up spending the whole day there. Luckily they had (crappy) wifi, so I was able to complain on IRC the whole time ;) but there wasn’t bandwidth to do much else. Turns out that the thermostat was going bad, it let my engine overheat and caused all the coolant to boil out. They did a flush of the system and replaced the thermostat. $350 and 5 hours later I finally was able to go home with fixed Blinker. She also needs her breaks looked at and new tires before winter, maybe next month. Ah cars.

Trains w/ Michael

2008-08-10T00:56:23Z

Last month Michael and I headed out to East Stroudsburg for a day trip. We had planned on going to an Amish farm tour, but upon arrival found it to be a bit of a tourist trap (hah!). So we ended up going over to the train museum. I knew about it because I’d been there earlier in the year, but with summertime came the opening of the train yard - which I had yet to see!

We stayed at the museum until it closed, being surprised at how many fatalities befell the early railroad workers, that was a rough time in our history.

Ater the museum we then headed to Isaac’s, a local chain, for a small dinner. What was on the menu? Hot sandwiches on soft pretzel bread. We both ordered the roast beef sandwich and enjoyed immensely. Craving another now.

Following dinner we headed to the East Stroudsburg Railroad for a wine and cheese railroad ride! It was a very nice time, they had a local red and white. I stuck with the red and it was nothing to write home about, but it wasn’t bad. The cheese was a pretty standard assortment of gouda, cheddar, a jalepeno spiced cheese and another mild cheese. There was also fruit, but the hot day made for that being eaten up pretty quickly. The train ride itself was about 45 minutes long, a straight ride through corn fields and the countryside and back. I’d do it again.

On the way out of the area, we took a quick detour to Dutch Haven. Dutch Haven is a pretty campy looking place, and full of touristy knick-knacks - and the “place that made shoo-fly pie famous. Huh, I’ve never had shoo-fly pie before! So we enjoyed the free samples and picked up a pie to bring home. Sooo sugary, but I enjoyed it :) Hurrah for exploring Pennsylvania! I’ve since heard of another cool local thing to do - coal mine tours. Pennsylvania is a huge coal area and there are now whole attractions built around these tours, sounds fun :) Maybe next weekend.

New R2D2!

2008-08-05T23:31:07Z

While at the Trenton Computer Festival this year, my festival-mate and I were snagged by a colo selling off a bunch of old and unused equipment - cheap. It was the last hour of the festival, so they were really trying to unload stuff, I admit to being the one who finally got suckered in. We walked away with quite a catch though, and since then I’ve been building up my new desktop around the motherboard and CPUs I purchased that day.

My new desktop, dare I call it that, is now up and running. It only lacks a graphics card, which I’m getting for free tomorrow night. Specs are as follows…

Intel Server Board SE7525GP2 w/ 2 dual core 2.8ghz Xeon CPUs: $150

2 x 1GB 184-PIN REG DIMM 128MX72 DDR PC2700: $150
(server board, requires registered DIMMs)

Chenbro SR10568-AL Chassis and mounting plates: $100

680 Watt Power Supply: $40

Sony PATA DVDRW: $35

WD 500G PATA drive: $100

Soundblaster Live card: Free, from 2001, snagged from old PC

ATi X300: Free, from a friend.

Total: $575

Sure, I probably could have done better cost-wise if I didn’t go with server-class this and server-class that (certainly my case, power supply and RAM expenses could have been lower), but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I plan on this beast lasting me a long time, it’s replacing a desktop I’ve had since 2002.

Made the leap to flatpanel

2008-08-02T22:28:27Z

As seen here, I was one of the last geeky holdouts I know to still have a CRT for daily, normal use. Well I, sorta on a whim, left that camp today and while at Micro Center picked myself up an Acer AL2216W flatpanel monitor.

Boy does it shine! I’m very happy with my purchase.

(Also, Micro Center is a dangerous place - last time I was there I walked out with two new harddrives - now ths! I was only there to grab a cheap OEM dvd-rom drive…)

Sinus Infection

2008-08-02T14:39:00Z

OK - a break from pretty photos of my trips for a moment - I have a sinus infection. I’ve never had one before, and I have to say it’s quite unpleasant, mostly due to the length of time it’s had me feeling miserable. Congestion, cough, headaches, exhaustion. I think this started with a cold I had a couple weeks ago that made me miss a couple days of work, it went very bad cold > mild allergies > sinus infection. Even worse, it’s the summer. My body wants to sit in cool, crisp, air-conditioned rooms, but my sinuses want warm and humid. The result? I obey my sinuses, because they give me a headache if I don’t obey. Yuck yuck. And I’m feeling a bit down because of all this, so I want to eat, but food either tastes like nothing or just tastes *weird*. Sigh.

I’ve been on antibiotics since Wednesday night, so hopefully I’ll start feeling better soon.

Network configured

2008-07-26T13:35:50Z

I have my new network set up at the house. Michael gave me a static IP of my own (and a pretty reversal coming soon!), so I now manage my own network at the house. I’ve developed into quite a capable sysadmin over the past year, and running my own firewall and network will allow me to further develop those skills - plus I won’t need to nag Michael every time I need a port opened. Since I needed my network and machines configured for work anyway, I spent a bunch of evenings this week setting it up.

I have a zillion things to blog about and piles of pictures to share. My trip to Niagara Falls with Stephen, going on a Wine and Cheese train ride with Michael, my trip up to HOPE with my friend Mike from New Jersey. Hopefully will have downtime soon to get to writing about all these things…

I was listening…

2008-07-26T12:59:16Z

…to a show on NPR and somehow in the conversation it came up that people only write in diaries when they’re sad. I was never one to write in diaries, and in my blog I find that I do the complete opposite. I haven’t been the best at posting lately, and although I’ve been busy and going on trips with close friends a lot over these past few months it hasn’t succeeded in completely masking the deep sorrow and feeling of loss over the failure of my marriage.

After months of self exploration of all kinds, heartache, lies and honesty, and a couples therapist, Michael and I have decided to try again. I moved back into the house this week (financial and “I need grounding” decision), and I’m leaving soon to finish moving the last of the furniture. I’m hopeful about this new attempt, much that was once buried has been flushed into the open and I feel we owe it to each other to give it another go.

Things will be different this time around.

New, irresponsible, shiny

2008-07-15T15:06:25Z

I was at the mall with a friend yesterday helping him buy some jewelry as a gift for his cousin. It dawned on me that I’ve developed the girly love of shiny things over the years, and that I didn’t have enough. So I splurged on something I’d seen last year and had filled me with geek girl glee.

Oh so pretty.

New PrincessLeia.com Design!

2008-07-15T03:29:26Z

My friend Jay promised me a bit ago to put his mad design skills to use on a new design for PrincessLeia.com. He came through today as expected and after work I excitedly wrote up the template html, which I installed this evening.

The result? See for yourself:

A-ma-zing!!! Thank you Jay!

It’s about time I had a professional design it rather than relying on my own paltry design skills :)

Simcoe Street in Niagara Falls, Canada

2008-07-09T04:02:32Z

While browsing the tourist maps I noticed Simcoe Street! Since my little kitten is named Simcoe, I had to go exploring. So I dragged Stephen through the suburbs so I could walk down the entirety of Simcoe street and take pictures.

Ubuntu at Best Buy: Package Details

2008-07-08T18:10:16Z

I learned this morning via #ubuntu-us that they’re now selling Ubuntu at Best Buy, and couldn’t help myself: during my lunch break I swung out to Best Buy to drop $20 on a copy.

It wasn’t easy to find, I spent about 10 minutes searching through their software section, past their big Microsoft Windows Vista and Office displays. I finally found it on the bottom shelf with lots of other miscellaneous software.

What did I get for $21.19 (after tax)?

Spiffy packaging!

An Ubuntu Hardy, 8.04, CD, and a small quickstart booklet:

The booklet came with a Registration Number, interesting (I whited it out here).

It’s very exciting to see Ubuntu carried on the shelf by a mainstream store like this, even if it is on the bottom shelf right now.

DONE: Peter Murphy, Wall-E, Pancakes and Beer; TODO: HOPE, Brew @ Zoo

2008-07-08T06:09:21Z

I just returned from Niagara Falls, Canada on Sunday night, I have tons of pictures and lots to say, but before that I’ll catch up on other, non-linuxy, things I’ve been up to the past week or so.

Last Sunday night I took Michael out for an early birthday outing to see Peter Murphy at the Troc in Philadelphia. The concert was amazing! One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. I discovered Peter Murphy back in 2002 when I was browsing Michael’s mp3 collection on our network. Love at first listen. My favorite song ever is Socrates the Python. So when the opportunity to see him live on his own (rather than touring with the Bauhaus and NIN as he did last year) at the Troc was something we really couldn’t pass up.

I also saw Wall-E, and Pixar didn’t disappoint. Cute, deep, visually satisfying and original. Probably the best movie I’ve see this year. So I went with my friend Mike from NJ. Prior to the movie we wrapped up our respective rough days by hitting Michael’s Deli in KoP. I think I’ve blogged about it before, they’re a jewish deli and diner with a surprisingly fantastic beer selection. So dinner last night? I had a couple Monk’s Flemish Sours and some pancakes, Mike went with Chimay and some French toast. Mmmm breakfast and beer at 8:30PM.

Over that past weekend I also got Blinker, my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am GT, transferred to me officially. She now has a PA plate, the title in my name, and Wednesday morning I dropped her off for inspection… which she failed. A worn out tie rod and a bad break like were her downfall, so I got them replaced, tossed in an oil change and walked out with a significantly lighter wallet but a passed inspection. So the car was ready for my trip to Niagara Falls! I also finally received my PA title in the mail today from Harrisburg, so she’s all super officially mine now :)

And since I can’t seem to stay in town lately, I decided to head with Mike from NJ to HOPE, the 2600 convention, in NYC in 2 weeks. I just received the tickets in the mail late last week. I’ll be staying in Jersey Friday night, and crashing with friends in NYC following a LinuxChix-ish get together at 9PM at the Ninja. Should be a lot of fun, I’ve wanted to go to HOPE for several years and finally decided to make it a priority this year since it’s the last one (gasp!).

Aaaand the weekend after HOPE I’ll be going to the Brew at the Zoo. Last year’s event was a blast at the Norristown Zoo, but I was so excited to learn they’re having a change of venue this year - and moving it to the Philadelphia Zoo! Awesome! The PHILLY zoo in the evening with just adults and microbrews! I should snag some tickets, and some fellow drinkers and a designated driver. Volunteers?

The only trouble with my inability to stay in town lately is gas prices. Now I’m not one to complain about them, and this isn’t a complaint, but I think $4 is officially the mark where I really start noticing the expense. I’ve really had to cut back on other things to afford to drive to all the places I want to drive to, but I really have no place to complain, I have no commute so pretty much all the driving I do is optional/fun.

Finally, I’m moving out of Nita’s this month. I am thoroughly thankful for her for offering me space here, she’s really a great friend, but it’s been almost 5 months and it’s time for me to move on. I need to be somewhere bigger than a room where I am comfortable, I think I’ve done all the healing I can under these circumstances and need a change of living arrangement. More on that later though, I have a lot of thinking to do, wish me luck!

Ubuntu Classroom Needs Volunteers

2008-07-02T00:00:54Z

Now that all of us have “recovered” from the busy Hardy release, we’re prepared to get back to work on the Classroom Project.

The idea of the Classroom Project is to provide a place for teams and individuals to:

Host their classes
Promote their classes

Classes range from teaching users how to use Ubuntu to teaching them how to contribute back to the project.

The Classroom team itself focuses on a variety of tasks that are required for managing the joining of expert teachers and students, such as contacting interested teams, doing marketing and confirming that conflicts don’t come up. This is where you come in. Following our last meeting (meeting minutes here) we’re having a discussion on the mailing list regarding the defining of tasks, and have created a volunteers page aggregating these tasks, along with a place to sign up:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom/Volunteer

Please join us! Or drop a note to our mailing list if you’re part of a project that wants to get involved in holding classes with us.

Ubuntu Pennsylvania MythTV Seminar

2008-07-01T02:04:03Z

Last year Matt Mossholder held a very successful MythTV seminar using Mythbuntu for the Ubuntu Pennsylvania team. Due to the great interest in the community and much remorse from folks who missed the first session, we hosted a second session on June 21st.

The session went very well, with approx a dozen people in attendance, several with their machines ready to either install or solve problems with their existing installs (I brought along my roommate’s box, which had a remote issue that I haven’t had a chance, or inclination, to look at). The session began with a presentation and then moved into discussion and building and fix-ups. I went home with a fixed remote and a very happy roommate!

Details from the session: MythTV Seminar and Installations by Matt Mossholder

The two presentation documents from the seminar can be found on Matt’s site:

Our host, The ATS Group once again provided a fantastic location with a conference room, plenty of power and internet access, and this time around sprung for pizza and other refreshments!

And finally, WRT the radio program Alex and I appeared on a few weeks ago the company I work for has done a very flattering press release promoting it: LinuxForce Systems Administrator Elizabeth Bevilacqua Interviewed. *grin, blush*

Ubuntu Women Project Status - Mid 2008

2008-06-25T04:45:30Z

The last time I posted a status update on the project was August 2007.

As an advocacy project, we don’t make the swift changes that development projects make, but I’d like to comment on that previous post and move forward with what we’ve accomplished in these past 10 months. The primary concerns in the last post were: lack of direction (no RoadMap) and poor image in the community. The goal was to change both of these things, as well as transform our Courses program into something useful for the whole Ubuntu Community.

How are we doing with these goals?

Thanks to a considerable amount of work by emmajane we now have a RoadMap

We’ve transferred our Course program into a partnership with Ubuntu Classroom, which is working through formation and hosting regular classes, but is well on its way.

I’ve seen overall participation of women in the Ubuntu community and in leadership positions grow over the past year. Regardless of the reason (certainly much of the credit goes to these women directly, and less to this project), it’s giving the community a better impression of women within the project and gradually decreasing the surprise within the community when people see women participating.

Ubuntu Women is focusing more on helping women and getting involved with core projects (like Ubuntu Classroom) rather than striking out on our own initiatives which led some to believe our project was separatist. We’ve come back to our core values and narrowed our focus to the issue of women in Ubuntu (and F/OSS in general).

In keeping with a return to our core, we’ve worked to make the website and wiki documentation be more specific to our goals and easier to navigate. There are fewer “off-topic” links, with the assumption that folks looking for more Ubuntu core materials will be looking in a more appropriate place, and come to the Ubuntu Women site for women-specific resources.

We’ve committed to a monthly article in Full Circle Magazine

Finally, we recently had a meeting where many of these things were discussed and plans for moving forward outlined. In particular, we’d like to see our mentoring program become more of a success. We saw considerable interest for Ubuntu Women mentoring during the meeting and I’m hopeful someone will pick up where Vid and I have left off with the mostly idle portion of this project.

Meeting notes from our latest meeting are now available here: http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Meetings/20080612

…also, I really must get better at Team Reporting again. Missed the deadline this month, oops :)

Ubuntu Hardy on Computer Corner + podcast!

2008-06-20T20:42:47Z

On the 12th of this month Alex Launi and I were invited back to WCOJ 1420 AM’s Computer Corner to discuss the release of Ubuntu Hardy.

As with last time, Alex and I met up with Gene and Joe shortly before 8AM for the 8-9AM broadcast. Jim graciously donated sticky buns and dropped off a whole bunch of Hardy CDs for the Computer Corner guys and some for me to give out to the local LUGs.

The show went well (even if in the beginning Alex and I had quiet mics!). We were able to discuss some of the features of the Hardy release, let the audience know that there were free CDs available from Canonical, and we were invited to come back more often - hurrah!

The podcast is now up, I am borrowing hosting from Stephen Nicols for this podcast - so thank you Stephen! You can download it here:

http://www.chinnodog.com/files/cc061408.mp3

Beer, radio, metal

2008-06-15T18:23:55Z

It’s been a busy weekend. Friday night I met up with Stephen for dinner at Union Barrel Works in Reamstown. I’d never heard of this brewpub, and their beers were pretty mild, but everything in the sampler we got was clean finishing and good (Sampler: Kolsch, Mai Bock, Pale Ale, Dopplebock, Dubbel, and one other I’ve forgotten..). The food was good and reasonably priced, and it’s right down the street from Stoudt’s so it’s good to know there are other options for good food and beer around there. I didn’t stay out too late though, since I needed to get up early the next morning.

I got up shortly after 6 on Saturday morning to hop down 202 to be the guest on another Computer Corner show to talk about Ubuntu. Once the podcast is up I’ll post it and discuss this more.

After the show I drove back home, relaxed for a bit and then headed out to Jersey to meet up with my friend Mike and 4 of his friends to grab some lunch and then hit that evening’s Iron Maiden concert. Now metal isn’t really my “thing” - if I have a “thing” when it comes to music. But I do enjoy a bit of it from time to time, and I tend to enjoy concerts of all kinds. Plus, I’ll try anything once! So we grabbed lunch, left Mike’s around 4:30, got parked, picked up our tickets, and were seated by 7. We went with box seats, which were a bit expensive but when the sky opened up and a huge thunderstorm swept through we were glad to have the seats we had - and doubly glad we didn’t go for lawn seats, those people got drenched.

The first opening band had the lead singer who was the daughter of one of the Iron Maiden guys. I’m not much of a judge of metal, but I wasn’t overly impressed. I’ll be fair though, they had just released their first album so they’re quite new at this. The second opening band was Trivium, and while really not my style I found myself enjoying their set a lot.

During the set change to Maiden was when the thunderstorms rolled in. The crowd was already pumped, and the storm really “charged” the whole place, cheers erupting for each big wave of lightning and thunder. Around 9 Maiden came on - and played an amazing show. This was my first metal show, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the music was loud and fun, the crowd was great, the sets were spectacular, the pyrotechnics were awesome and the band really rocked out, the lead singer running all over the stage with different costumes throughout the show. Wow, it was fun. I really must go to one again sometime!

When the concert wrapped up I got my first taste of having my ears not work properly after a metal show. A couple of the people I went with had earplugs, which after last night really seem like a good investment, my ears are still ringing a bit. Four of us then went for food at a diner not too far from where Mike lives, and finally around 2:30AM I made the drive home - putting me back home around 3:30AM. As such I didn’t wake up until noon today. Mmmmm sleep.

Now I have some Work to do - starting on a data migration for our accounting system, later I’ll be heading over to the house to work through some financial stuff with Michael.

The weekend isn’t long enough.

Planet PLUG!

2008-06-12T04:46:36Z

Over the past couple months Jonathan Magen has been working toward the launch of our own planet for PLUG. It’s now here! The announcement went out this evening and the planet is live with the first few feeds:

planet.phillylinux.org

Great work yonkeltron :)

Weekend in DC - Part 2

2008-06-10T21:02:22Z

So, just like my trip out to San Francisco, I managed to make my trip to DC during a heat wave. Highs near 100 don’t agree with me but by staying hydrated (carried a water bottle with me EVERYWHERE) and taking a reasonable number of breaks was the key to me getting through Saturday. Sunday we went back and forth about whether or not we should go to the National Zoo due to the continued hot weather - but in the end my need for cuteness won over concerns about heat and we ended up having a great day.

After breakfast and coffee at Illy it was checkout time and then off to see the animals!

Kin(d|g) Hippo!

It’s very important to twitter

The lion wasn’t remotely interested in the delicious ducks in his habitat

It was after 5 by the time Stephen was able to drag me away from the zoo, which was good of him since we needed to get back to PA at a reasonable time. On the way out I picked up a stuffed red panda toy who joined us for dinner at Chipotle (which I’d never been to) before returning home. The red panda’s name? Chipotle.

Good weekend, but it’s nice to be home and out of the sun and heat - I got a bit sunburned due to my typical neglect to wear suntan lotion, oops :)

Weekend in DC - Part 1

2008-06-10T21:00:41Z

I spent this past weekend in Washington DC. I went down with my friend Stephen on Thursday night. Friday was a work event for him, and I was able to work from the hotel (not something I can do often, but I love how flexible my job can be!).

Friday night was a company dinner at Sequoia that I was able to go along to, a very nice place! (If a bit awkward at some moments, “No, I’m not his wife…”)

Saturday was Smithsonian Museums day. Our destinations were the Museum of Natural History and the Air and Space Museum. But first was an early lunch at Potbelly where I enjoyed a Wreck sandwich with “the works” - not typically my style, but quite a delight. Then we hopped on the Metro from the hotel and got off at the Smithsonian station, where we were welcomed by the sun beating down on the Nat’l Mall during the heatwave that lasted all weekend!

Nat’l Monument! They’re setting up for the Smithsonian Folklife Event so there were all sorts of tents and things around.

First stop was the Natural History Museum to see dinosaurs!

Rawr.

Unfortunately EVERYONE wants to see the dinosaurs, so the place was packed and after spending less than an hour wandering around the exhibit we made our exit to check out other parts of the museum.

Penguin Skeleton

Thylacine (background) - recreation of the critter that got presumably extincted by the Dingo (foreground)

Then it was on to Air and Space.

We ended up going to see 3D Sun in the IMAX, but not seeing much else there at the Air and Space Museum simply because we were hitting the end of the day. Dinner was at Penang where I enjoyed the spectacular Sarang Burung: Formed fried taro filled w. scallops, squid, shrimp, corn, carrots and black mushrooms topped with cashews on a bed of crispy rice noodles. Yum!

..partially eaten, it was so good I had to snap a picture