Carol Rutz’s Annexe

Met some friends from last year, mailed some books I’ve purchased from Powell’s. Heard negative feedback from convention-goers regarding the “People for Geeks” tutorial, mainly complaints that the tutorial was condescending. I will have to keep my ears open for any other feedback.

Heard Mark Shuttleworth last night as well as r0ml. Great speeches, and r0ml has pointed out about the parallels of software development to Quintillian’s five canons/stages of oratory. “There is no new thing under the sun.” I’m trying to remember the guy who gave that odd Perl/timespace humor talk.

Finally, a sad note: Estelle Getty, also known as Sophia from the Golden Girls, passed away yesterday. Watching the Golden Girls was part of my family’s television viewing, and we would get a kick out of Sophia’s tactless wiseacre tough Sicilian persona. She will be remembered and missed.

Yes, I’m in Portland right now, and 30 minutes from now, the Open Source Conference will begin at the Convention Center. And tonight, Ubuntu’s Mark Shuttleworth will be speaking at the Mission Theater.

BTW: If you can, drive down to Pine State Biscuits and get yourselves a Reggie sammich.

After I’ve posted that OSCON registration was open, they added more stuff. One very interesting talk by Kirrily Skud Robert will be on learning protocol for interacting with the non-geek world. I followed a link to a great post on how geeks view the dress code protocols (casual vs business casual, etc).

On business casual and geek casual, they pretty much hit it on the head. But for me, I strayed on the “geek formal” aspect. I am aware about black tie and white tie matters, and I was surprised that no one yet mentioned how various scenes of Anime/Manga featured black tie affairs.

Here are my categories of geek attire:

Muckety-Mucks: You muck about at home or at grocery stores. Sweats and shirt. Degree of wear and tear unimportant. Perfect for marathon movie viewing. Just practice good hygiene.

Geek Casual: T-Shirt or sweatshirt and jeans or pants. Nothing too worn out.

Geek Business Casual: Crisp, ironed non-wrinkled tee, sweater or polo, with Dockers or dress pants. I prefer Threadless t-shirts and any geek-printed shirt whose fabric is from American Apparel. AA shirts are soft cotton and very smooth weave. Denim can be allowed if it’s tailored right (Diesel, 7 For All Mankind, etc)…but YOU MUST defer to the management. In my case, where I’m working now does not allow tees, and denim is only allowed on Fridays (for a small donation to a charity kitty). There I follow Non-Geek Business Casual.

Fancy Casual: When I go to church, depending on feast days and functions I wear either Geek Business Casual, Non-Geek Business Casual or something from Chico’s. Whatever Chico’s sells is Fancy Casual.

Robert noticed that women dressed more like men in Geek Casual. That’s because Geek Attire is unisex. Not only that, it’s also the most forgiving to women’s figures. It cuts down on the catty comments about muffin-tops and it covers up any physical phenomena that women do face (viz. bloating, weight changes, etc).

AND NO, IT’S NOT AN APRIL FOOL.

To me, it means that I will be making plans to head out. Hopefully, I’ll be there (barring anything different).

For me, there will be sessions and tutorials that I want to attend. For example, Akkana Peck will have a tutorial on the GIMP and how to do some magic with that. I want to learn how to use that better than before. And there is this TCP/IP troubleshooting tutorial by Darren Hoch. And of course, there is Zak Greant’s The Age of Literate Machines. He was the first guy who welcomed me into the Open Source community, when I first attended OSCON last year.

The Prediger is hoping that I would return with more pens and shirts for him.

Last night, I spent the evening looking at the Tiga scheme this blog is based upon. I want to add a picture promo for the OSCON coming up in July, so I made a “widget” to stick it on the sidebar, and it worked.

When I got word that OSCON is accepting proposals, I realized that soon, registration will open. I told the Prediger about it, and he shared in the joy. He knew that I will learn and network and meet new friends…and get new pens for his collection. And when I go to Portland, I’ll be more able to take part as I will know more Java than last time.

This is O’Reilly’s 10th Open Source Conference, and I’m sure it will be fun and packed with new ideas. It is interesting that Microsoft is sponsoring it as a platinum sponsor.

Also, I’m planning to register for Ubuntu Live as well. I’ve been using Ubuntu at home and trying to be more masterful at it.