Wait, it was this week. It only seems like it was last week. I left early on Wednesday so I could get home in time to leave on another trip the next day. I meant to write about it when I got home, but not only was the plane delayed by four hours (leaving me five hours to go home then come back to the airport), but they also left my bag behind. They like to say it was "a lost bag", but I had to keep reminding them it isn't lost, it's just not with me. I didn't get any sleep that night, spent the next day traveling, and a heck of a lot of time trying to get Northwest to tell me about my luggage. They weren't handling well that I flew to Chicago but they had to deliver my bag to Deadwood , South Dakota. I'll have to write about that nightmare later, but now that it is over, I can talk about YAPC.
I did the four days of our Learning Perl course in one day, and with only a few breaks. I was going at light speed, and even then I think I got through most everything. I did skip the chapter we still have on DBM files saying that most people don't need it. Some guy near the back asked what a DBM file was, and I replied "See what I mean?" I got a lot of positive feedback, which I guess is a good thing even though the class is ten times better, has way more jokes, and lots of extra Perl tidbits.
I was completely exhausted during the whole thing because I accidently stayed up to 4 am the night before. Don't fell bad for me: when I went out in search of food (all night hot dog carts in Toronto!), the Pugs folks, who were just down the hall from me, were in the middle of a hack-a-thon. I was going to stop in to see if I could fetch anything for them, but they looked like they were pretty deep into their world so I just let them be.
On the boat cruise I ended up bidding $200 on Higher Order Perl (the previous bid was $140, I think), thinking someone would rise to the challenge and outbid me. The bids on everything had been pretty low so far (c'mon guys, it's charity, not EBay!) so I goosed it a little. I ended up with the book, and as I was looking at it sitting on the table in front of me I thought "What I am going to do with another one of these". It did have an autograph and fancy Japanese chop inside it, but I'm not the type for that. I gave it back to Uri, the auction-meister, if he could auction it for at least $100. Jesse Vincent, who lost ot me last time got it for $140.
Allison brought a bunch of Llama 4 samples, and I ended up signing my first Llama signatures. I think my signed copy auctioned for $5, which was pretty good for the last five minutes of the auction when Uri was clearing out the inventory before the ship docked.
I spent quite a bit of time with the people behind TPF talking ideas and what can happen in the future. I'm just an interested person though. I figure I had my time when I ran Perl Mongers and now its someone else's turn. There are plenty of opportunities for up-and-coming people to make a name for themselves if the same-ol' people make some room for them. :)
I got to meet, in person, The Perl Review's designer, Eric Maki, and we went through the current issue noting all the design things we didn't like. Josh McAdams was hanging out with us because I had just done an interview with him for Perlcast (no idea when he'll publish it), and he said that he couldn't notice any of the things we were bemoaning. Eric and I have a couple of special projects up our sleeve, but I have yet to recover enough to think or say anything about them.
During YAPC I also finished up the final QC for the Llama book. That means it should be just about ready to print. I'll have more details on that later, but I'm thinking about about following mjd's example and having a book release party.
There must be more that I'm just too tired to remember.
Re:Web Page Comments
brian_d_foy on 2005-07-02T15:55:25
Ah yes. Interested readers will have to check out the source to my personal web page to see about that.:)
