ApacheCon
Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I went to ApacheCon in Stuttgart, Germany - thanks to the conference for sponsoring me through my talks. The conference itself was ok... definitely not a Perl conference. My talks were the only Perl ones and they were not very well attended (10-15).
My flight over to Germany was one of my worst travel experiences. 24 hours of travelling and 4 legs of flights and no exit row/bulkhead seats (I'm 6'7" with long legs, so regular seating is crammed, to say the least). We were held up in JFK for 1.5 hours just taxi'ing, due to bad weather, and this made me miss the Stuttgart connection, so two more flights!
Another lovely encounter (this should have been quite a piece of foreshadowing): there was a fellow traveller who also missed the Stuttgart connection and he was wearing an Apache hat, so the guy I was sitting next to, that I told I was going to a software conference, said, "Hey, I bet he's going to the same conference." I shoulda said "No." Anyway, after some conversation, he asks what I'm going to be talking on and I say "Perl." He goes "Oh. ... Well, I guess you could develop web applications with that."
resisting further comments here
I took over 200 pictures while I was there - including my trip to Wilhelma (a pretty nice zoo) and the Mercedes-Benz museum.
Stuttgart itself was a pretty nice city, but not very English-friendly. My German lessons handled being able to talk and understand very basic things, but when people were talking to me ... well, that was a whole other situation. So it was an ordeal to go out & about.
Probably the best example was that my wife wanted to pick up some Birkenstocks. This involved several trips throughout the city. Also, the way that people shopped for these shoes was very different - they would go in and try a general shoe and then order their specific need and 4-5 days later, they'd pick it up. My wife had specific needs, which didn't lend itself to the general stock. It wasn't until my last store that I got lucky ... well, sort of. No English, so shopping was fun ... "Do you have Birkenstocks?" "Blue?" "Leather?" "38?" "Uh, I need to go get more cash." (that last one I said in English)
Bottom-line: I gained a new appreciation for foreigners who struggle with English when in America.
Bottom-line #2: I don't think I will go on those type of trips without my wife, anymore. It'd be nice to share these type of experiences (at least the good ones ;)), plus she's a great supporter for the bad ones.
Books
Been reading up a storm:
