Phone Conversations Are Hazardous

I truly hate talking on the phone. Business calls? Happy to have them when email won't cut it. Maintaining long term voice communication with friends and acquaintances when I can have a 'logged' discussion via IRC, GChat or email? Thank you, but no thank you. I have way to much going on in my life. Logs are required for getting stuff done. I'll gladly charge my phone to SMS you rather than pick up that land line.

Over the past year, though, I've learned to somewhat get over this whole phone aversion thing with my female friends. Specifically, Skyping with Lynne in Sydney. Video chat ++. There are no logs, but since it's kind of like being on your own TV show, I always remember what happens.

Then again, that's just me and Lynne - we play off each other well. Lynne and I keep threatening to tape our road trips and get our own YouTube show, but we've never managed to do it. Lynne, we really need to do this. I think we'll probably get to it around 2010 and it'll be set in New Zealand. Worked for Peter Jackson.

Lynne flew home a week ago, right after the first day of the Nonprofit Software Development Summit. This conference just rocked, btw. We'd spent the weekend herding cats at MeetBSD. MeetBSD featured copious amounts of dancing, and there was much rejoicing.

We also spent a week and a half touring the East Coast, which was eventful but not particularly restful. These things happen, though - I am fortunate to have many good friends to visit. Spent time in Boston thinking about Free Software, Obama and Crafting with Jag and Naphtali. They are two of the most awesome people ever. Lunch with the Free Software Foundation folks. Josh was in California getting acclimated at his new job, but he'll be out to California soon.

Walked the National Mall and went to the Smithsonian with Lynne and MJ. Ate delicious Southern Food. Drank delicious Taittinger champagne. Saw Addison randomly on the street, leaving a Drupal documentation sprint. Had a hotel room with a truly awesome shower.

D.C.'s highlights always remain the same for me: the Jefferson Memorial and the Hall of Minerals. So many beautiful shiny things, so many different structures and colors to engross the eye. Every time I visit I think that everyone who lives there could ostensibly visit them every day, free of charge. Spent a lot more time mulling about freedom at the statue of Thomas J.

Missed Arlington for the first time, which I regret. Stopped in a few small towns in Maryland and Massachusetts. Escaped from New York via the George Washington Bridge. Saw a few other friends here and there, caught up with even more online since I was in their time zone. It was good.

Which leads me to the entire point of this post. I looked at my iPhone (a.k.a. Steev - more on our impending breakup later) for the first time today and realized Randi had SMSed me about heading to the DNA Lounge. While it's a Monday night, it's also Thanksgiving week and not much is going on at work. Meh, why not? Since I'm out of AT&T's range here, I had to call. Sigh. Dialed. We began to do the version of the quick update, task-oriented, planning conversation about the evening, but turned out it just wasn't going to happen. C'est la vie, and likely for the best. Then we tried for the quick update, task-oriented version of gossip. Epic fail on that, though we have truly set a new standard for euphemistic discourse. Included in this conversation was at least two minutes spent discussing how much we hate using the phone.

When Randi finally walked out of the office to her car for the drive up to San Francisco, I pointed out once again that phone conversations were, in fact, awful and hazardous. We'd come to a particularly pivotal moment in the story, and we'd have to take it up later. It's like being stuck in a looooooong commercial break during your favorite Soap Opera. (Mine was Dallas.) Erg.

Decided the Soap Opera actually totally uninteresting, so I decided to watch James Bond instead. And James Bond, of course, makes me feel like writing. At last the poor blog gets updated. :)

Live and Let Die is the only Moore I can really palate, and that's because the New Orleans settings are beautiful. MeetBSD came with a visit from the lovely Louis and I saw Rob the next week at the Nonprofit Dev Summit. Erin swung into town to drive home with Louis. It's time to get back to New Orleans again soon, I can feel it.

I suspect I ought to do more work on this phone aversion for the sake of my carbon footprint. Chat can do in a pinch. Still, nothing beats having coffee with the people you love. Or iced tea. Or champagne.

I will make you iced tea. I will bring the champagne. Please don't make me use the phone.

The desrt and the Snow

Or the perfect end to an awesome week....

I left Boston on Friday afternoon not long after a lovely breakfast with Michael Hutchinson and a brief visit to Novell's Boston office, complete with a trawl through my inbox in their massage chair. Miguel was out and about at demoing some cool new Moonlight stuff, so sadly didn't get a chance to say hello to him. Spent my flight next to a fellow Drupalcon attendee, a gentleman working on putting together a start up focused on creating community oriented work/exploration spaces. I'm once again impressed to see so many civic minded business ideas coming to the fore.

An hour cab ride through Friday evening traffic later, I found myself at casa de Trow, and not long after eating an incredible burrito. To those who claim you cannot get decent Mexican food in the Midwest, I say "fie on thee." This place was kind enough to be open 24 hours a day and appeared to serve all manner of yummy breakfast items, though I wasn't able to indulge in any of those. They also brought us two kinds of salsa and some pretty sweet pico de gallo. The number of types of salsa presented to you, assuming of course the salsa is edible, is a great way for demarcating the so-so hole in the wall burrito joint from the truly awe inspiring purveyor of delicious carne asada. If the salsa is inedible, just leave immediately. Really. Your innards will thank you greatly, as will everyone you know, or at least everyone who likes you well enough to feel squeamish when you mention your recent bout of food poisoning.

Friday evening, it snowed. A bit. Not much. I nonetheless found it fascinating. Mind you, I've been in a snow storm, California style, which pretty much meant ten minutes of snow at Lake Tahoe, all of which melted immediately. Sure, California gets real snow, I just haven't experienced it. Which tells you that, comparatively speaking, we don't get enough snow to make it part of the every day life of the average Californian, and certainly not the average Silicon Valley denizen. This whole snow falls, sticks to ground, stays thing - utterly unrecognizable by me. The snowing subsided quickly, though, but left a beautifully clear, crisp evening in its wake.

Saturday morning, I worked out all the inevitable knots that come from couch surfing, then headed for breakfast at lula. We're spoiled for choice in the Bay Area for restaurants offering free range meat, organic and locally grown produce and all those other tasty treats that make food taste, um, good, but lula is truly a cut above. Hand made, organic and nitrate free sausage patties? Meyer lemon marmalade? Marvelous. Truly. Particularly since I'd been musing with a fellow attendee of MJ's birthday bash about making Meyer lemon marmalade, though since I'd never done it I thought it would be a more difficult experiment. Now I've got a good idea to work back from.

Headed into Google Chicago, as I had a few things to get done, and suddenly got a ping from desrt. In yet another example of why flying a certain airline whose name really ought to be "Disintegration," he'd missed his connection and was forced to stay overnight in Chicago on his own dime. Not good. He still had a few hours to kill before finally getting on his way to the GTK+ Berlin Hackfest, so he cruised downtown and we met up for a coffee. We realized we hadn't seen each other since UDS Mountain View, which is clearly far too long and provided clear rationale for a random, two hour round trip journey to the big-G.

Right about the time Ryan pulled up, it began to snow again. Really snow. Once again, I was enthralled. We spent the next two hours hanging out in the 8th floor mini-kitchen, raiding the snack bins for future travel needs and catching up on all things GNOME. While talking to Ryan is always a pleasure, I can't help but think it was made even more delightful by doing it next to the window, hot java in hand, snow falling outside, looking out over the city skyline at Marina City. Bliss.

I left Ryan on the Blue Line heading for ORD. Headed out for dinner with Ben and his wife Frances, who were kind enough to share their home with me that evening. In addition to relaxing and enjoying a lovely dinner, staying at their home gave me the opportunity to do more research on this whole 'parenting' thing. Everyone marvels at the energy of babies, but I suspect it has a great deal to do with the fact that a 'meal' for them consists of wandering back to their plate food over a two hour stretch, in between bouts of constructing train tracks from oversized pillows and playing fireman. Or whatever else it is that toddlers get themselves up to these days. Efficient fuel distribution mechanisms these little creatures have got. It continued to snow.

By the end of the evening, I was nearly done with Good Omens and was all read out, so I settled in to watch a few episodes of Torchwood, a.k.a. "totally without a doubt the best show ever." Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, was all right, though I am not sure how much I buy the ever mounting tension between Gwen and Captain Jack. Awesome Bond reference nonetheless. Why anyone thought Tom Jones' pathetically written and suboptimally sung Thunderball an acceptable substitute for Dionne Warwick's gorgeous croon escapes me. Sleeper was much, much better, reminiscent of the incredibly powerful Cyberwoman. I was about to nod off so I left off satiating my Torchwood cravings there.

I spent today in the pursuit of baby observation, purchasing knitting supplies, watching the new Doctor Who and crunching along the frozen ice on Chicago's streets, careful not to slip but fascinated by the feel of it beneath my feet. It continued to snow a bit, but by afternoon the sun shone brightly and a squirrel here and there bounded from fence post to tree, which Frances assured me is a sure sign of the approach of spring.

I even finished Good Omens. I know you'll be proud of me, Lynne, and yes I will now get more Terry Pratchett and, gasp, will even read it. More quickly than two months after you put it in my hands, no less.

I'm settled into my hotel now, looking forward to the coolness that will be the Open Source Team's All Hands meeting this week. Now, though, it's time to tuck myself into the sweet embrace of Goldfinger and get some sleep. Boston awaits until I have the head space to write about it meaningfully.

Nearly There...

This past week has been a hectic one. Been working on a project that I'm just putting the finishing touches on now.

Spent yesterday redoing the master and guest bathrooms, complete with the inevitable clean up required by yet another plumbing problem. It was not pleasant. It did, however, result in getting some beautiful new shower curtains up, which in turn inspired me to gussy up the bathrooms in general. The curved shower curtain rod, shown here with actual towels, just plain rocks. It feels like the shower is two times bigger now. From an aesthetics perspective, I'm much more excited about the guest bathroom, though those outdoor light fixtures really, really need to go. I still can't imagine what the previous owners were thinking.

I spent the first half of today thoroughly engaged in my never ending battle with the laundry. That's the trouble with laundry - it just never goes away. While I'll admit a certain perverse joy in washing clothes, putting them away I could simply do without. Except that you can't, so I finally break down and hang/fold/toss into drawers and life becomes much more zen for a few days. I was bustling about rearranging the linen closet, as that's an excellent way to avoid actually folding the linens, when the phone rang.

It was my Mom. My Dad had, apparently, suffered a mild stroke this morning and was at Stanford Hospital. I was in her car heading there about 40 minutes later. My Mom said he was okay and that his tests didn't show any damage, but I don't think anyone is ever really prepared to hear the words "your father" and "stroke" in the same sentence. Well, I sure wasn't.

The weather all day has been gray, wet and rainy. Good weather for staying inside and puttering around the house. It let up a bit by the time we arrived at Stanford, and we reached my Dad's room mostly dry. He was in great spirits and feeling wonderful. His sense of humor was as strong and quirky as always. He said all the numbness in his face and arm had subsided. He was a bit grumpy that he hadn't eaten all day and that they'd only feed him ice chips. We laughed a lot.

Dad told me to stop worrying almost immediately after I sat down next to him, but I didn't stop until he started cracking jokes about us sneaking him a plate of rustic vegetables and some tomato soup. Having snuck many a snack into hospitals, usually in gummy candy form, I would have complied. When someone sick asks for something that healthy, how are you supposed to refuse? Then Mom quite rightly pointed out that in this particular case it was a big no-no, citing several signs on display in the ER this morning regarding not feeding patients who'd suffered stroke, so no food smuggling occurred. Infinitely pragmatic, my Mom.

We left after being there for two hours or so. My Dad should go home tomorrow after an MRI to confirm that all is actually well. Phew. Crisis averted.

I saw this sign in the elevator bay at Stanford. I know I'm easily amused, but this one's just great. Especially when you're nervously skulking the halls of a hospital trying to figure out why you can't find the elevator. Or the stairs. Or a sign telling you where either of those things is hiding.




Where, might I ask, was my would-be-but-forbidden robotic traveling companion? Said rumored robot surfaced during neither of my trips on said elevator. Even though it had a sign. I hadn't thought to bring my own, either.

Headed home, had dinner. Updated some wiki pages and what not. Now I'm hanging out on IRC. I still have a great big pile o' laundry sitting on my bed. I think I'll cajole myself into doing it by watching The Living Daylights.

<random aside>
It's getting hot in here. That does not mean I'm advocating nudity as a lifestyle choice.
</random aside>

Musings on LCA & Back to Real Life

I said I'd post my thoughts on linux.conf.au 2008, so here they are. The program was excellent. I'll leave it to those better versed than I to comment on the technical aspects, but I particularly enjoyed the LinuxChix Mini-Conf and Elizabeth Garbee's Introduction to Open Source Animation, complete with audience accessible clay figurines. All the Keynotes were great; Stormy Peter's "Would You Do It Again for Free?" is real food for thought given some of the discussions going on around money in open source. Open Day rocked. Many thanks to the Olliver family for the open source dance mat and RepRap ring love. I didn't get to hear from Karl about his trip to Papua New Guinea, but I did get a chance to bond with Aaron over a power strip. Sharing free couch with James, James and Pascal was a definite highlight. Adam, Brad, Joel, Lee, Sam and Tim, it is always wonderful to see you. A couple of pleasant evenings were spent in the pursuit of dancing. I petted possums in the park next to my hotel with Cat and Lynne. Melbourne is a lovely city.

It was great to see the usual suspects, and to meet many more of you at the 'Student' Party. I hope you had as much fun getting early evening gelato as I did. Lemon gelato is just so awesome, particularly in a slightly humid atmosphere. If I asked you to ping me, please do; I'd love to hear from you. Ditto if you were promised t-shirts.

Finally, I was tremendously impressed by the work of the 2008 organizing committee. Their care and passion really showed through in the little details, from making the Penguin Dinner open to all attendees to providing refillable insulated water bottles. I saw many fewer plastic bottles in the waste bin than I'm used to seeing at conferences. I loved the juxtaposition between the cathedral for the Speaker's Dinner and the bazaar for the Penguin Dinner. I saw one of the greatest demos for women in tech ever - ask me about it next time you see me.

I won't be back to LCA next year, as I'll be in Auckland getting married, then honeymooning. No doubt paths will cross again sooner rather than later.

It's good to get back home, though. I spent Saturday and Sunday puttering around the house, enjoying my home brewed coffee and rearranging the bathrooms, putting away the last bits of what I'd packed for my past three week jaunt. And doing tons of laundry. As much as housework lacks excitement at the best of times, when I have been gone awhile I love how doing it grounds me and puts me back in sync with being home. Ben and I finally ripped out the nasty old shower doors in our bathroom on Saturday evening. Bliss. But now I must determine what type of shower curtain really defines me as a person. That's much more complex.

My best guy friend, David Wilkins, came over with his husband Gerardo last night. We had what our guests were gracious enough to christen Kung Pao Vegetable & Citrus Chicken Stir Fry. It tasted great, I just need to work out the amount of fruit juice in the sauce. Ben's General Tso's Chicken still beats any of my Asian inspired dishes any day.

Whilst not puttering about or entertaining, I watched The Living Daylights and Equilibrium. Live and Let Die is playing in the background now.

I spent much of today writing ~1K lines of HTML for what should be part of the first changelist I check in at work. Life is good.