Sun, 28 May 2006
Still jet lagged
Although I've back from DebConf6 for almost a week now, I somehow still suffer from the jet lag. I am rather surprised by this since I usually don't have too many problems with changing my sleeping times and also the jet lag when going from Germany to Mexico was practically neglectable.
However, this one is a real sucker! By now my sleep times are pretty much erratic, I have an almost constant headache and my stomach gives me trouble after each meal. Surprisingly I didn't have any problems with such stuff when I was in Mexico! I was neither sick nor heat struck or dehydrated. In fact I didn't even have so much as a sunburn. But ever since I got back, life has been pretty yargh.
Why am I posting this?- I feel like whining
- I've been almost constantly offline since I got back - let this be an excuse
- I've been pretty grumpy since I got back - let this be an excuse
- My backlog is still lieing idle for the most part - let this be an excuse
- I feel like whining
Posted at: 23:05 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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Wed, 24 May 2006
Back home from DC6
So, I am back home. After a 24 hour journey we arrived at Tolimar's
place Sunday night, after a journey that sadly was not as nice as the one
to .mx. First we departed about 1/2hr late from Oaxtepec since the
backpack of a fellow traveler was ridden over by a car. Than our taxi
driver charged us 900MXN for the trip to the airport, although we had
agreed on 800 before we left.
Once in the airplane our machine had an
engine problem and could not take off. We waited for about 2.5hrs while the
inside of the plane steadily got hotter and hotter. Due to this we also
missed our connecting flight at Heathrow and were rebooked on a later
flight. Probably due to this Tolimar's luggage didn't make it on the same
flight and had to be delivered to his house on the next day. Once we had
finally reached Frankfurt we went to bed and slept for 16hrs straight. Got
back up at about 5pm today, took the train to Hildesheim and am now finally
home!
No DebConf6 conclusions yet. I am in full EndOfEvent/jet lag mode and feel deader than the frozen chicken (Chicken! Of all things!) I just dug out the icebox of my otherwise totally cleared out fridge. At the moment the predominant feeling is a mixture of "Wow, that was a trip!", profound tiredness and regret about all the things I had planned to do but found no time then.
PS: Bubulle, flattery won't help you. I'll get you for this!
PPS: Time to write postcards. ;)
PPPS: I'm freezing!!
Posted at: 00:55 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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Sat, 20 May 2006
Materials concerning my talk ...
will be put up on my website sortly. (I.e. as soon as I fixed the typo and replaced the transparent png that f***s up OpenOffice's PDF export IN EVERY SINGLE SLIDE :( I should really start using beamer or magicPoint or something ...)
Posted at: 20:59 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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DebConf 6 - Random fun stuff There is a couple of things that we have a real abundance of:
- Huge insects that produce an incredible amount of annoying noise
- Cats and baby kittens (aaaaw)
- Chickens, especially chicken legs
- Tamarind flavoured water (tasty)
- VW beetles and VW buses (serving as taxis and normal public transportation buses. Hint: If it's white and turquoise, board it. If not, don't!)
- Epura filtered water bottles (cowards! ;-))
- Thinkpads (all over the place)
- People looking for the server room / info room key
- Real nice fruit, lots of!
- Creative sunburns
- Limes (mostly in halves)
- Straw hats
- Brixen boys
- SUNSHINE
Some more random remarks:
- The group picture has been taken. Why everyone has their mouth open? "Everyone say Tequilaaa"
- Christian: thanks for all the praise! You've always been my favourite pupil ;)
- When I got out of the pool the other day, wearing my really fancy new
bikini (special DebConf purchase), I got a compliment from the pool guard!
He said: "You swim well." :-| - Mucho luurve goes out to Benny!
- Christian, we took a Taxi, but apparently the bus works, too.
- People at home: I've been dropping roughly one safety
precaution per day. I eat whatever looks tasty, drink tap water and have
ice in my other drinks. I only put on sun screen of special occasions (i.e.
day trip), walk barefoot without looking down all the time, and don't check
my bed for scorpions before getting in.
I am still fit as a fiddle!
Seems Mexico isn't such a dangerous place after all. Relax everybody! :) - Mexico: I'll be back. One day. Promised!
Posted at: 20:35 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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DebConf6 - Formal Dinner
Not much to say about the formal dinner. It was certainly a night to remember. A couple mishaps but also a lot of fun once the excitement had subsided. For more detailed accounts of that evening please refer to Joey Hess' wonderful article. For an account of the following night, or rather its results, please refer to debian-private or this DebConf6 blog post.
Posted at: 19:44 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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DebConf6 Day Trip
As anticipated things began to run much more smoothly once the
conference had actually kicked off. Which was quite good, since
Wednesday/Thursday were pretty active days with the Day Trip on Wednesday
and the Formal Dinner on Thursday. I had not been to sure whether I should
go on the day trip or just stay home and sleep in for once, go to the pool,
rest a bit and basically do all the other stuff I didn't get around to
since I got here. In the end I did go though, and I am really happy about
it now. At least for me the day trip was a full success! We were picked up
around noon by a fleet of absolutely awesome fifties buses, all
streamlined with loads of chrome, pastel colours, saints icons, playboy
bunny heads and nice comfortable plush seats.
Xochicalco is a pretty
interesting site and our guide gave us a really nice tour of the museum and
the ruins. I didn't really mind the heat since I had put on enough sun
screen and brought long loose fitting cloths and a lot of water. Such
equipped I actually even enjoyed the dry heat and of course the spectacular
site. As usual, I did take pictures and haven't found the time to actually
upload them yet.
After the tour of the ruins we went for a late lunch to some place of which I sadly don't remember the name. The food there was the best I've had through the whole DebConf and it was pretty fun. One of the kitchen ladies wanted to take a picture with me. Don't know why, but it was pretty amusing since the whole kitchen crowd seemed to have immense fun with the whole thing. So, whatever, maybe one day I'll come back and find the picture on a wall. Who knows :)
After finishing our meal we went to Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos State, which has a large handicraft market. Unfortunately I had taken much more time for the lunch than anticipated so we only had 45 minutes to have a walk and buy some souvenirs. But it was fun anyway. The only drawback of the day was that we had to skip the guided tour in Cuernavaca since we were so late and had to be back to Oaxtepec for dinner. But there is already quite a list of stuff I actually wanted to do when here, so a tour of Cuernavaca goes to the long "One day I'll be back" list.
Summary: Great Day Trip! Well done. Cool buses!! Have to extend that once I am back *sigh*
Posted at: 19:20 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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Wed, 17 May 2006
DebConf 6 - the first days
DebConf6 has now officially started! So far I sadly haven't seen any talks, since I've been busy with orga stuff (making signs, collecting reimbursement forms, receipts, passport copies etc, speaker training, chasing people for information/keys/cables/...). I hope I'll have more time once things get going.
I've also given two speaker training sessions already, one on Saturday and another one on Sunday evening. They've both been pretty well attended (six to eight people, which is the almost ideal size to have a decent number of opinions but still don't have it take too long for everybody to have a go.) The Sunday evening session was a bit shorter since it was scheduled pretty late (21:30) and most participants (including me) felt tired after a while. I also noticed that I started being rather unconcentrated, so I only did a few more active exercises and skipped the rather dreary pronunciation stuff. I haven't yet received much feedback on the sessions but all attendees seemed to have fun, and there definitely was noticeable improvement in people's speaking skills over the time of the workshop.
It is now Wednesday morning and everyone is getting ready for the day trip. I am really looking forward to it, even though my ankle is still acting up a bit (sprained it last week). I will also take my camera along and hope to finally take a few pictures.
Posted at: 16:47 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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Sat, 13 May 2006
Arrived in Mexico
It's taken a while, but now I am finally in Oaxtepec and online! The journey was not too bad, pretty long of course, but otherwise fine. The vacational centre in Oaxtepec is a great venue! Tasty food, nice rooms, comfortable hacklab, beautiful surroundings and a laaarge pool. It's really warm here and I am truly enjoying myself. The internet uplink caused some trouble during the first days, which is why I haven't posted earlier, but everything is fixed now and everybody is in good spirits. There are still the usual minor annoyances, but overall we're fine.
Tomorrow the official conference will kick off with the DebianDay. A special day with more general talks aimed at beginners and interested locals. The day after that the actual developer conference will start, featuring talks, workshops, round tables and lots of BoFs.
I am particularly looking forward to tomorrow since it's also the day when maxx arrives, bringing along his old laptop for me to use. I've been without one since I arrived here, since my own one is still broken, and it hasn't exactly been fun being without a laptop. (Not to say it truly sucked!!)
Posted at: 07:12 in /english/debian/events/debconf6
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