Today was an eventful day. If all the rest are easier, I'll be happy. The morning was marked by a great talk by Jesse and Robert on RT. We got an overview of the structure and implementation of RT, and some useful examples of hacking it to do our bidding.
Lunch was the most important part of my day, it was with my editor. I've been behind, and communication has been poor between us, but nevertheless I've been working my butt off. I was still nervous, as I always am about these things. It was a good meeting though, we had a lot to talk about and I think we're all happy. David turned out to be a very nice guy. His co-hort, Betsy (I believe, I hope I'm not getting that wrong) was also wonderful. Progress was made and I kept my lunch down.
The afternoon began with a hacking and intrusion detection talk. It was interesting but I felt I had no real application. At pair the staff has been trained to notice social engineering, and when we develop we're always way too paranoid about security. This probably puts us at the right mind set to get some of it right.
Half way through the talk I decided to move on. I went to the speakers lounge to work on my talk and the most bizarre thing happened there. ESR had arrived (no big deal there) and without a visible weapon. That's not strange. What's strange is that when I corrected him on his answer to "Is Larry on at 7pm?" he lied in retort. He claimed that Larry did start at 7pm, but the schedule had the OS Awards then (him!). I pointed out that the OS Awards were being presented then and he said, I quote, "I'm MCing that and I can authoritatively tell you that no awards will be given tonight." More on that later.
I didn't have time for a proper meal, so I went down to the UG Leaders BOF put on by Marsee Henon. I have to tell you, she's amazingly effective. I really admire her ability to interface with UGs on behalf of O'Reilly without making everything a sales pitch. The only disappointment: the cool shirt was XL! Folks, please, not everyone is XL. The shirt is now unusable to me and my puny M frame. Seriously, it won't shrink enough. Use L and have a few XL for exceptions.
Next, and right away, was the DBI Driver BOF. This was good information on DBI v2.x, noting changes and fixes. The long and short is that Tim has gone to wonderful lengths to ease the burden on driver developers, which means your drivers should stay safe. This means your applications shouldn't care, at least not too much, about which DBI version you're using.
Now, on to the OS Awards. Remember the Eric episode? What's so ironic is that he did get up and present awards, one to Larry! Not only was Larry first, but ESR also gave awards! Shock, dismay, roast beef! Where was I... oh yes, Onions go nicely with roast beef. Larry was next up with his State of the Onion speech where, by and large, he spoke about nothing at all useful. He drove a single point home at the end, and was effective in getting there: Thanks. That's what he had to say. I liked that. Paul Graham explained us to ourselves afterward. Explaining the problems hackers face fitting in to normal society. That was my take. While I don't claim to be an extraordinary hacker I did relate to many of this points on work and environment. Sometimes I related so strongly I was nodding my head out loud. Well that's what it feels like when you're doing those things in a large crowd and you realize it. Perl's White Camel awards were given by David Adler to deserving recipients. Some couldn't make it so Ann Barcomb presented pictures on a laptop for audience reference. It was amusing. Finally, Damian gave "Live, the Universe, and Everything." A very entertaining talk on ... everything.
By the end of the night I felt proud of one thing. I've aligned myself with a community of people which, and this always feels like the odd part, all like a programming language. The last part seems irrelevant, because all the people are really wonderful. Perl shined last night, proving why we're the wonderful. We, as in the people.
Nothing interesting happened the rest of the night. I tried to eat a 1 pound burger from the sports bar and when I met Masque he redirected me to some stranger because I didn't know what he looked like. I asked for Masque and Masque himself said "oh, that's him," and I believed him. It was late, I'm allowed to act the fool.
Posted from caseywest.com, comment here.
