Life is so good, it gets better every day

See? It can be done!

Ask and you shall receive. Jonathan, you rock my world.

A Crazy Mix of Personalities

The best thing about GNOME is that you get people from right around the word, all sharing a common interest. But they’re all amazingly different and whacky people – it’s awesome, and incredibly refreshing. There’s Germann, an incredibly dedicated guy doing so much good in Chile. Last year he sold his laptop so he could buy a ticket to come to Dublin. That just blows my mind, and I’m glad he’s back for another year.

There’s also Mikael. He wasn’t going to attend GUADEC, and then he decided to come at the last minute. The reason wasn’t to listen to the amazing line up of speakers, but the people and to meet up with old friends.

And then there’s Waugh….

It’s a Small World

It’s a pretty small world generally. It’s even smaller in Kristiansand. As people start to arrive, you can no longer walk down the street without spotting someone who’s here for GUADEC. Yesterday was a pretty cruisey day for me – catching up on mail, heading off to the climbing wall for an hour or two, before meeting Mikael, Alex and Edd. We searched for Alex’s hotel for a few hours before finally figuring there was some Red Hat screwup with the hotel rooms. Apparently it’s Seth’s fault. Last night we spent a few hours in Paddy’s Irish bar – somethings never change, aye?

The Big Board Meeting

Yesterday’s board meeting brought tears to Luis’ eyes. It was a pretty hard core day, and sometimes not hugely satisfying. Jeff had done a kick ass job on putting together an agenda and that consumed us from 9am right the way through to 7:30pm, with only a few minor breaks.

It’s pretty fair to say that the board this year has mostly sucked. We’ve all been busy with our regular day jobs and haven’t had very much time to squeeze some board actions in our schedules. That’s why the annual board meeting is so amazingly good. You get 7 people into a room [Bill, Jody, Leslie and Malcolm unfortunately sending regrets] and you’ve got their attention 100%. We had some pretty tough issues to face this year, especially Jeff’s ‘Will GNOME continue to be relevant?’ agenda item. In many ways we’ve had a successful year for the project, but it’s been quite hard to identify what those successful elements are, given there’s a huge amount more that needs to get done. Hopefully we can keep brainstorming for the duration of the conference.

Flying High

Hanging out with the GUADEC dudes was pretty excellent yesterday – they’re a really awesome bunch of people, with Rolf taking me out for a spin in his plane. Unfortunately it was a short 10 minute flight, but it was a really cool experience. Thanks dude!

Best GUADEC Ever!

I’ve arrived in Kristiansand after more than 48 hours of travelling. I’m pretty happy to be at the end of it, and I think booking with Lufthanza and flying to Stavanger were pretty bad choices. I got to sit in a cramped plane with sweaty Russians and Germans with no TVs behind the seats, and then had the joy of waiting at the train station for 3 hours before I could get started on the 3 hour journey down to Kristiansand. After a quick shower at the hotel, I wandered over towards the college for the volunteer meeting. I figured the college was close enough to walk over, but when the heavens opened with some pretty torential rain, I gave up and returned back to the hotel completely soaked. Okay, so not the best start ever, but having hung out with the GUADEC guys today, this year is going to totally rock.

GUADEC Around The Corner

It’s hard to believe that GUADEC is next week, and that I leave for Norway in a day’s time. Not hugely looking forward to the long haul flights and my itinerary isn’t all that kind to me – probably being awake for at least 48 hours before having to get a train down from Stavanger to Kristiansand. I’m looking forward to the conference and to my week back in Dublin seeing friends and family right throughout the trip. Having already travelled a lot this year though, it’s hard to get excited by another journey.

Okay, so why aren’t they blogging?

I had a rather startling thought this morning reading through PlanetSun. Why aren’t people like Jonathan Schwartz and Scott McNealy blogging on blogs.sun.com? I for one would love to see some entries from them, and this level of openess from Sun. Come on guys, get with the program [grin].

Ka Mate

So Pia managed to find her way down to Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, and we organized a bit of a roadtrip leaving early Friday morning for Dunedin. The start of the trip was pretty unpleasant, with the car feeling like an icebox. We’ve been meaning to fix the heat in the car for a while, and I think this might be the wake up call I need to book an appointment at the mechanic. We drove inland towards Mount Cook, past some amazing landscapes, but also some pretty dismal tourist spots which we had a bit of fun at. Managed to win at the stone skimming contest, but embarassingly lost at the snowball fight. It was good to catch up with her again, this time for long enough for a chat. We narrowly made it to Dunedin in time for Pia to catch up with some of the guys in Dunedin. Best of all, I got told many stories to embarass Jeff. Hooray!

Dunedin was quite a nice place, and we got some wonderful weather heading out along the Otago peninsula to see some albatrosses. We bailed on seeing some yellow eyed penguins and opted for an afternoon in the Speights brewery tour. Much more beneficial. The All Blacks game was game. It was a pretty intimidating atmosphere for the tourists to play in, and with a deathly cold night the rugby suffered a little bit. There were sparks of magic from the All Blacks, but a rather disappointing score of 30-3 to the All Blacks showed out a pretty weak English team. Looking forward to the South African game in late July. Had a pretty relaxed Sunday heading back to Christchurch, dropping off a present to Carolyn’s friend Ange along the way. Finished up the day with a nice take away from the Noodle box. Yum.

School Ban.

Fascists!.