June 2008 Archives
I tried to write down everyone I met at YAPC. This was an impossible task because the hallway track was the most dynamic fastest paced track around. If I have forgotten someone, please let me know.
2008-06-15
Larry Wall (TimToady)
Josh Ben Jore (diotalevi)
2008-06-16
szabgab
Allison Randal (BigAl)
Hercynium
Bruce (Util)
Tye McQueen (tye)
Dave Baker (DaveBaker)
Aperion
2008-06-17
Andy Bach (a)
Randal Schwartz (merlyn)
songmaster
I didn't wake up in enough time to make the very first talk. I checked out of the hotel. I will not stay there again. It was way over priced and no one bothered to call me back to find out if the wi-fi got fixed (it didn't) even after several inquiries on my part. It was just way over priced - but from what I hear, it beat the dorms.
I did make it to chromatic's Rescue Your Doomed Project. It was great. The slides were 1 liners and the rest was speaking. For each warning sign, there was advice on how to recognize it in others, how to recognize it in yourself, and some things you might do to address them. It was a bit biased towards Parrot - but it made sense for chromatic to draw experience from that. The part it didn't cover was was how to recognize when reversing the sinking ship was impossible and when to jump ship. I had an opportunity to talk to him afterwards and was going to mention this but it seemed like we were swarmed with people and I had to make arrangements for lunch with Larry.
Larry was very accommodating. No one could really agree on a time or a place but he was very gracious and we all appreciate that. Lunch was at a sub shop (that thankfully had lettuce wraps). There was no place to sit inside with all of us, so we sat outside and chatted for about 20 minutes before heading back to the lightening talks. Several people showed up that were not PerlMonks (yay Larry). That was good, because we made sure they promised to sign up.
I had to leave for the airport fairly soon but I did want to catch a few of the lightening talks.
The zeroth talk was by Frag on "What I learned at PyCon". He experienced technical difficulties and left the stage.
The first was Jerry building a brand new language targeting Parrot in only 5 minutes using the Parrot Compiler Toolkit. The second was Jeff getting that new language working on mod_parrot in 5 minutes. He fired up Apache and the browser and showed it working live. There were many ooohs and aaaahs.
Frag's technical difficulties were over and he came back to the stage. This was a very highly entertaining and informative talk. I am glad he had the stones to come back given how bad we all gave him a hard time originally.
I headed for the airport - good thing I did too - traffic was bad. I felt very sick in the car but was fine by the time I got to the airport. The lines were long but fast and the flight left on time. I got home around 9:30PM and gave my wife a big hug and kiss.
It was VERY VERY good but I am happy to be home.
I did make it to chromatic's Rescue Your Doomed Project. It was great. The slides were 1 liners and the rest was speaking. For each warning sign, there was advice on how to recognize it in others, how to recognize it in yourself, and some things you might do to address them. It was a bit biased towards Parrot - but it made sense for chromatic to draw experience from that. The part it didn't cover was was how to recognize when reversing the sinking ship was impossible and when to jump ship. I had an opportunity to talk to him afterwards and was going to mention this but it seemed like we were swarmed with people and I had to make arrangements for lunch with Larry.
Larry was very accommodating. No one could really agree on a time or a place but he was very gracious and we all appreciate that. Lunch was at a sub shop (that thankfully had lettuce wraps). There was no place to sit inside with all of us, so we sat outside and chatted for about 20 minutes before heading back to the lightening talks. Several people showed up that were not PerlMonks (yay Larry). That was good, because we made sure they promised to sign up.
I had to leave for the airport fairly soon but I did want to catch a few of the lightening talks.
The zeroth talk was by Frag on "What I learned at PyCon". He experienced technical difficulties and left the stage.
The first was Jerry building a brand new language targeting Parrot in only 5 minutes using the Parrot Compiler Toolkit. The second was Jeff getting that new language working on mod_parrot in 5 minutes. He fired up Apache and the browser and showed it working live. There were many ooohs and aaaahs.
Frag's technical difficulties were over and he came back to the stage. This was a very highly entertaining and informative talk. I am glad he had the stones to come back given how bad we all gave him a hard time originally.
I headed for the airport - good thing I did too - traffic was bad. I felt very sick in the car but was fine by the time I got to the airport. The lines were long but fast and the flight left on time. I got home around 9:30PM and gave my wife a big hug and kiss.
It was VERY VERY good but I am happy to be home.
I got up and took a taxi to campus. The first talk of the day was Social Perl. It was a 20 minute talk and the speaker waited 10 of those minutes to be introduced. It seemed like a really good talk (about using Perl to manage all your profiles on the social networking sites) but he ran out of time and was leaving the conference immediately.
The second talk was Dave's FEY talk. This was one I was actually a bit interested in (for the SQL generation feature and not the ORM). Unfortunately, it too was a 20 minute talk and Dave ran out of time. Oh well, I asked him to put his slides online and he did :-)
Next I went to Josh's Perl 5 VM - Symphony of Horror talk. Wow. This is one that I thought was too advanced. Actually, this is one of the things that I had problems with in the talk abstracts. Selecting "beginner", "intermediate", or "advanced" is way too subjective. Even for someone who considers them self an advanced perl programmer - if they have not written any C, have any familiarity with the perl internals, or the op tree - they probably didn't get anything out of this talk. Ironically, this is Josh's prerequisite talk to some of his more advanced talks. I suggested providing a list of assumed knowledge items. I think I was the only one with a question or comment.
The next two talks were Stevan Little's Moose talk and Patrick Michaud's Rakudo talk. These were both very good. I am more interested in Moose now than I was before. I didn't really need to be sold on Rakudo - I already follow it. There just wasn't anything opposite it that I was interested in.
I had the BBQ today - made sure I knew exactly where it was. It was about the same quality of food as the cafeteria but it was cooked on the grill and was only $5. Besides, it is about the people (and later about the beer).
After lunch I went to Jeff's mod_parrot talk. Wow. I absolutely abhor coding anything web related but this was neat.
Next I went to Patrick's Parrot Compiler Toolkit talk. This I thought I already knew about (hanging out in #parrot and all) but wow - very very cool. I didn't realize how far this thing took you in creating a new language to target parrot. You are provided both a top down rec-descent parser and a top-up precedence parser that work in tandem. This is fantastic stuff. This isn't just me spreading Perl 6 and Parrot advocacy. I was truly impressed.
I skipped the last talk of the day. There was a job fair in the lobby and I wanted to see what the market was like since I have never worked as a Perl programmer.
The banquet and auction started at 6.
It is tradition for the PerlMonks attendees (thanks Bruce for letting me know) to pool their money to bid on one of the Perl celebrities for lunch the next day. Since we we were pretty sure that we were going to win, Tye and I worked it out so that it looked like we would be competing against each other rather than working together. Since the money was for TPF - we didn't want to get Larry for the cheapest amount possible.
I ate with a couple of guys that seemed not to be too extroverted. It was a nice conversation but I had drinking - er um, bidding - to do. There was both a silent auction and a live auction. I only bid on one item in the silent auction - "Programming Erlang". I had to go up 3 times on my offer because someone else was crazy enough to spend too much on it. In the end, I won.
I had just returned from the ATM when I saw that "Hanging out with Randal" was about to go for $44. I immediately bid $60. Then I asked if I could bid $65 NOT to hang out with Randal. Unfortunately, I said Larry when I meant Randal so everyone knew how drunk I was getting. Well my bidding must have done the trick because then I had competition. The counter bid was $110 and Tye had agreed to contribute $20 so I bid $120. The 3 of us decided to pool our money and bid $200. We ended up shooting pool which was nice. Randal and I got a chance to talk about Smalltalk and Seaside.
The next item that I was interested in bidding on was a hand calligraphy copy of "The First Letter of Erudil to the Monasterians". Unfortunately, I needed to save my money for bidding on lunch with Larry. Fortunately, no one else seemed to know who Erudil was or what the letter was all about (here I thought everyone must be a PerlMonk). The put the item aside and then went to lunch with Larry - or so Jess thought.
Uri put the next item up for auction - the right to auction off Larry. The bidding didn't move to fast but then a confused attendee named Jess bid $60. She was pretty surprised that not only did she not win Larry, that she would have to stand up in front of everyone and auction him off. We (the PerlMonk contingent) had already spoken on what our max numbers would be and I was volunteered to do the bidding. Tye would occasionally bid against me to make things seem more interesting. When it looked like we would win for $350, Uri told Jess that she could go with the PerlMonk's group so she actually did get Larry - Tye couldn't get out of his seat fast enough to bid $400 (you would think there were no attractive female geeks the way some folks were behaving). In any event, I immediately replied "PerlMonks bid $450". There were no counter bids. "Going once, Going twice". I interjected and said "PerlMonks ups their own offer to $500". Again, this was for TPF.
Around 11, Randal indicated he had to go because he had to get up at 4AM and I decided to leave with him so we could share a cab. While Randal and I waited for a taxi, we had a conversation with Larry who was calling it a night as well. Once I got to the hotel, I prepared to checkout the next day.
The second talk was Dave's FEY talk. This was one I was actually a bit interested in (for the SQL generation feature and not the ORM). Unfortunately, it too was a 20 minute talk and Dave ran out of time. Oh well, I asked him to put his slides online and he did :-)
Next I went to Josh's Perl 5 VM - Symphony of Horror talk. Wow. This is one that I thought was too advanced. Actually, this is one of the things that I had problems with in the talk abstracts. Selecting "beginner", "intermediate", or "advanced" is way too subjective. Even for someone who considers them self an advanced perl programmer - if they have not written any C, have any familiarity with the perl internals, or the op tree - they probably didn't get anything out of this talk. Ironically, this is Josh's prerequisite talk to some of his more advanced talks. I suggested providing a list of assumed knowledge items. I think I was the only one with a question or comment.
The next two talks were Stevan Little's Moose talk and Patrick Michaud's Rakudo talk. These were both very good. I am more interested in Moose now than I was before. I didn't really need to be sold on Rakudo - I already follow it. There just wasn't anything opposite it that I was interested in.
I had the BBQ today - made sure I knew exactly where it was. It was about the same quality of food as the cafeteria but it was cooked on the grill and was only $5. Besides, it is about the people (and later about the beer).
After lunch I went to Jeff's mod_parrot talk. Wow. I absolutely abhor coding anything web related but this was neat.
Next I went to Patrick's Parrot Compiler Toolkit talk. This I thought I already knew about (hanging out in #parrot and all) but wow - very very cool. I didn't realize how far this thing took you in creating a new language to target parrot. You are provided both a top down rec-descent parser and a top-up precedence parser that work in tandem. This is fantastic stuff. This isn't just me spreading Perl 6 and Parrot advocacy. I was truly impressed.
I skipped the last talk of the day. There was a job fair in the lobby and I wanted to see what the market was like since I have never worked as a Perl programmer.
The banquet and auction started at 6.
It is tradition for the PerlMonks attendees (thanks Bruce for letting me know) to pool their money to bid on one of the Perl celebrities for lunch the next day. Since we we were pretty sure that we were going to win, Tye and I worked it out so that it looked like we would be competing against each other rather than working together. Since the money was for TPF - we didn't want to get Larry for the cheapest amount possible.
I ate with a couple of guys that seemed not to be too extroverted. It was a nice conversation but I had drinking - er um, bidding - to do. There was both a silent auction and a live auction. I only bid on one item in the silent auction - "Programming Erlang". I had to go up 3 times on my offer because someone else was crazy enough to spend too much on it. In the end, I won.
I had just returned from the ATM when I saw that "Hanging out with Randal" was about to go for $44. I immediately bid $60. Then I asked if I could bid $65 NOT to hang out with Randal. Unfortunately, I said Larry when I meant Randal so everyone knew how drunk I was getting. Well my bidding must have done the trick because then I had competition. The counter bid was $110 and Tye had agreed to contribute $20 so I bid $120. The 3 of us decided to pool our money and bid $200. We ended up shooting pool which was nice. Randal and I got a chance to talk about Smalltalk and Seaside.
The next item that I was interested in bidding on was a hand calligraphy copy of "The First Letter of Erudil to the Monasterians". Unfortunately, I needed to save my money for bidding on lunch with Larry. Fortunately, no one else seemed to know who Erudil was or what the letter was all about (here I thought everyone must be a PerlMonk). The put the item aside and then went to lunch with Larry - or so Jess thought.
Uri put the next item up for auction - the right to auction off Larry. The bidding didn't move to fast but then a confused attendee named Jess bid $60. She was pretty surprised that not only did she not win Larry, that she would have to stand up in front of everyone and auction him off. We (the PerlMonk contingent) had already spoken on what our max numbers would be and I was volunteered to do the bidding. Tye would occasionally bid against me to make things seem more interesting. When it looked like we would win for $350, Uri told Jess that she could go with the PerlMonk's group so she actually did get Larry - Tye couldn't get out of his seat fast enough to bid $400 (you would think there were no attractive female geeks the way some folks were behaving). In any event, I immediately replied "PerlMonks bid $450". There were no counter bids. "Going once, Going twice". I interjected and said "PerlMonks ups their own offer to $500". Again, this was for TPF.
Around 11, Randal indicated he had to go because he had to get up at 4AM and I decided to leave with him so we could share a cab. While Randal and I waited for a taxi, we had a conversation with Larry who was calling it a night as well. Once I got to the hotel, I prepared to checkout the next day.
I got up at 7AM and got a taxi over to the IIT campus. After a bit of confusion as to where exactly the conference was, I got registered. I made an impulse decision to turn my id badge over and write "Limbic~Region" in large bold letters with a black felt tip pen rather than use the front which had my real name in small print and competing colors. This was a VERY good idea. It was very surreal for people to walk up to me and say - "hey, I know you - you helped me with <some problem> on PerlMonks".
I went into the auditorium for the first few talks. I really enjoyed the first two talks by Karen and Jose.
I was a bit confused by The Perl Foundation's annual report. For some reason, I was expecting to see things like how much money was spent, who and what it was spent on, etc. It was mostly a FAQ of TPF. That isn't to say that I didn't appreciate the talk that was given much more than I would have a boring financial report - just that the title made me think something other than what it was.
Larry's keynote was about Perl 6 and technical in nature. This too was surprising to me since I have checked out many talks he has given in the past and this seemed a-typical. I have been following Perl 6 and Parrot for years, so I enjoyed the talk but after, I heard many people commenting that they didn't get it and some didn't like it.
Lunch was at the cafeteria - primarily because I couldn't find where the outdoor BBQ was. I ran into a couple of guys in from CBS Sports in Florida. Lunch was decent for cafeteria food but also a bit pricey.
The first talk I went to after lunch was Schwern's Skimmable Code. I was a bit disappointed. It was a good talk - it was just stuff that I thought was common knowledge. That just shows how naive I am. There were good nuggets in there - get in, get it done, get out. I did raise my hand at the end and suggested that next time, the talk should cover the situation with long if/elsif/else chains. Schwern apparently misunderstood and thought I was asking a question (such as how to deal with them). He stated that you could use the same techniques already discussed or use a hash (hinting at dispatch tables which is what I was suggesting in the first place) but decided not to go down that road due to time constraints. *shrug*
Next I went to "Handling the Ball of Mud". I was again disappointed. Again, it was a good talk - but I thought it stayed way to surface level to be considered intermediate. Having discussed this with several attendees I came to the realization that my expectations were too high and unrealistic. The conference is only $100 and the attendees cover the entire spectrum (beginner to advanced, sysadmins to web programmers, interested in perl 5 only to interested in perl 6 only). From this point forward, I took Jose's "it is about the people and about the beer" advice from his talk to heart and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the conference.
The last two talks I went to was Strawberry Perl on Win32 (good talk - neither excited nor disappointed) and then the PAR + PDF + FUSE talk. The last talk was a bit too nitch for me. This was my first regret - I think I would have preferred to have gone to Barbie's talk on Understanding Malware.
After day 1, Tye, Josh, Dave Baker, aperion, and myself went out to Pizzaria Due for deep dish pizza. A couple of us didn't have passes for the green line train so we had to be creative in getting there. We had a waitress that probably could not have been any less interested in us. We got too much pizza, had great conversation, but very lousy service. I asked Randal the next day (he and another group showed up) if he had any problems - he didn't. At least I know it was the waitress and not the place.
Dave Baker and I decided to walk down Michigan Avenue. The architecture was amazing. Dave used to live here about 20 years ago and was a font of knowledge. Just as it was getting dark, we went to the top of the John Hancock building (94th floor) which had a 360 degree observatory over looking Chicago at night - it was amazing. Of course, I thought of Jean and how much I would like her to be here with me to see this and then I remembered I had left the camera behind - not good.
I got a cab back to the hotel, called Jean, and called it a night.
I went into the auditorium for the first few talks. I really enjoyed the first two talks by Karen and Jose.
I was a bit confused by The Perl Foundation's annual report. For some reason, I was expecting to see things like how much money was spent, who and what it was spent on, etc. It was mostly a FAQ of TPF. That isn't to say that I didn't appreciate the talk that was given much more than I would have a boring financial report - just that the title made me think something other than what it was.
Larry's keynote was about Perl 6 and technical in nature. This too was surprising to me since I have checked out many talks he has given in the past and this seemed a-typical. I have been following Perl 6 and Parrot for years, so I enjoyed the talk but after, I heard many people commenting that they didn't get it and some didn't like it.
Lunch was at the cafeteria - primarily because I couldn't find where the outdoor BBQ was. I ran into a couple of guys in from CBS Sports in Florida. Lunch was decent for cafeteria food but also a bit pricey.
The first talk I went to after lunch was Schwern's Skimmable Code. I was a bit disappointed. It was a good talk - it was just stuff that I thought was common knowledge. That just shows how naive I am. There were good nuggets in there - get in, get it done, get out. I did raise my hand at the end and suggested that next time, the talk should cover the situation with long if/elsif/else chains. Schwern apparently misunderstood and thought I was asking a question (such as how to deal with them). He stated that you could use the same techniques already discussed or use a hash (hinting at dispatch tables which is what I was suggesting in the first place) but decided not to go down that road due to time constraints. *shrug*
Next I went to "Handling the Ball of Mud". I was again disappointed. Again, it was a good talk - but I thought it stayed way to surface level to be considered intermediate. Having discussed this with several attendees I came to the realization that my expectations were too high and unrealistic. The conference is only $100 and the attendees cover the entire spectrum (beginner to advanced, sysadmins to web programmers, interested in perl 5 only to interested in perl 6 only). From this point forward, I took Jose's "it is about the people and about the beer" advice from his talk to heart and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the conference.
The last two talks I went to was Strawberry Perl on Win32 (good talk - neither excited nor disappointed) and then the PAR + PDF + FUSE talk. The last talk was a bit too nitch for me. This was my first regret - I think I would have preferred to have gone to Barbie's talk on Understanding Malware.
After day 1, Tye, Josh, Dave Baker, aperion, and myself went out to Pizzaria Due for deep dish pizza. A couple of us didn't have passes for the green line train so we had to be creative in getting there. We had a waitress that probably could not have been any less interested in us. We got too much pizza, had great conversation, but very lousy service. I asked Randal the next day (he and another group showed up) if he had any problems - he didn't. At least I know it was the waitress and not the place.
Dave Baker and I decided to walk down Michigan Avenue. The architecture was amazing. Dave used to live here about 20 years ago and was a font of knowledge. Just as it was getting dark, we went to the top of the John Hancock building (94th floor) which had a 360 degree observatory over looking Chicago at night - it was amazing. Of course, I thought of Jean and how much I would like her to be here with me to see this and then I remembered I had left the camera behind - not good.
I got a cab back to the hotel, called Jean, and called it a night.
This year, Chicago won the bid to host Yet Another Perl Conference which is the first Perl conference I have gone to.
I got up at 5:30 AM. The cab was scheduled to come at 7:00 AM. It was Father's day and both of my girls were in bed. Not a great start to my trip. It got worse. Just as we were pulling back from the gate, the captain informed us that due to weather in Chicago - we would be sitting still for a minimum of 90 minutes. It ended up being two hours. When I finally did arrive in Chicago, I got in a taxi to go to the hotel.
I seriously thought it was some kind of a joke when I saw the room that was nearly $200 a night. It was a closet. The wi-fi was non-existent. I was starving so I found my way to the hotel's restaurant. It was 1:00 PM and they were only serving brunch. To give you an idea of how over priced it was, a bagel with locks was $14.00. Since I got in later than planned, I decided to skip the parrot hackathon. I lounged around until it was time to go to the pre-conference dinner. I was the first one to arrive. I had a splitting head ache so I decided to start drinking the summer brew.
A few people showed up and I shot some pool and drank more beer. The buffet was $30 a head and beer was $5 a glass. I should have ate more food and drank less beer. I met a few folks I knew from online but decided to head back to the hotel around 9PM since I was very inebriated and I still wasn't sure how to get to campus the next day.
I called Jean (10PM her time). She told me that Jasmine had started going potty - literally overnight. Grrrr - this better be worth it.
I got up at 5:30 AM. The cab was scheduled to come at 7:00 AM. It was Father's day and both of my girls were in bed. Not a great start to my trip. It got worse. Just as we were pulling back from the gate, the captain informed us that due to weather in Chicago - we would be sitting still for a minimum of 90 minutes. It ended up being two hours. When I finally did arrive in Chicago, I got in a taxi to go to the hotel.
I seriously thought it was some kind of a joke when I saw the room that was nearly $200 a night. It was a closet. The wi-fi was non-existent. I was starving so I found my way to the hotel's restaurant. It was 1:00 PM and they were only serving brunch. To give you an idea of how over priced it was, a bagel with locks was $14.00. Since I got in later than planned, I decided to skip the parrot hackathon. I lounged around until it was time to go to the pre-conference dinner. I was the first one to arrive. I had a splitting head ache so I decided to start drinking the summer brew.
A few people showed up and I shot some pool and drank more beer. The buffet was $30 a head and beer was $5 a glass. I should have ate more food and drank less beer. I met a few folks I knew from online but decided to head back to the hotel around 9PM since I was very inebriated and I still wasn't sure how to get to campus the next day.
I called Jean (10PM her time). She told me that Jasmine had started going potty - literally overnight. Grrrr - this better be worth it.
Father's day isn't until tomorrow but I got a surprise today. I guess Jean must have told Jasmine that I was leaving for Chicago tomorrow because as I was coming upstairs, Jasmine was coming downstairs holding something that was wrapped in tissue paper. I assumed she was into something she shouldn't be so it was no big surprise when she said "it's for you Daddy - it's a present". I figured she had been caught in the act and was plotting her alibi. It wouldn't be the first time.
When Jean told me it actually was for me, I was very happy to see it was a framed picture of my girls. They have this place in the mall where they dress up your kids and take a professional photo. It was great.
When Jean told me it actually was for me, I was very happy to see it was a framed picture of my girls. They have this place in the mall where they dress up your kids and take a professional photo. It was great.
One of the greatest feelings in the world is experienced when you get home from work and your daughter realizes you are there and she drops whatever she is doing to come running to the door to meet you screaming "Daddy's home, Daddy's home".
Last night, that experience was made even more memorable. I have worn a beard for the most part since I was 15. Obviously it was off during the Army and on other rare occassions. Yesterday morning before work, I shaved my beard off. When I came home, I rang the doorbell and heard Jasmine screaming - Ding Dong, Daddy's Home.
When I opened the door, she got quiet. She tilted her head and stared at me for a second before somberly saying "You're home now Daddy", followed by another pause and then "you got the mail". I reached down and took her hand and rubbed it on my face. She still didn't understand why I looked different. Then I told her - "Daddy shaved off his beard".
Her eyes got big and bright, a smile returned to her face, and she exclaimed very loud
"You're feathers are gone!"
Off and on, she would stare and make comments about my beard or feathers being gone but she got used to it pretty quick.
Alyssa on the other hand wasn't so easily convinced.
Normally when I come in all I have to do is look at her and she gives me her cock-eyed smile and waves her hands up and down indicating she is excited to see me. Tonight was very different. She just stared with the most concentrated look.
Everywhere I went she followed me and stared. This went on for quite a while. I even held her - she didn't crack a smile or give any glimmer that she knew who I was (other than not crying).
Then, while I was sitting in the comfy chair with the laptop I looked over at her and Jean on the couch. A lightbulb when off in her head and she realized who I was. She gave me the biggest grin you can imagine for someone so young. She was very happy to figure out who I was and to have Daddy home.
Recent Comments
Jaime on Things Jasmine Says: Everyone i
Jaime on Books I have read recently: You READ?!
derby on When your 2 year old knows more than you: Ahhh ... m
Brad Cathey on Books I have read recently: Have you s
parv on Car Trouble And Customer Service: That was a
Mike (blokhead) on New website deployed: Looks good