OSCON — Day 5
I had set my alarm to go off at 9 since the day didn’t start until 10:45. I figured I would need that time to pack and get ready for the day. I was woken up a few minutes after 8 by a house keeper that had just walked in. Maybe she knocked? I don’t know. I didn’t hear it because I was asleep. She could have quietly left, and I would have never known. Instead she started saying very loudly in broken English, “So sorry, sir! Sorry! So sorry! Didn’t know you were here! Sorry! Go back to sleep. I leave now!” Yeah. Like I can go back to sleep after having a strange Asian woman wake me up like that.
After she was gone, I drug myself out of bed, took a shower, got dressed, and then started packing for the trip home. I brought a large army duffel bag that had a week of clothes in it, a book, and my toiletries. After packing, the bag was SO FULL OF STUFF that I broke one of the zippers closing it. Fortunately, it had another zipper, and I took more care to close it this time. I also had to use the OSCon shoulder bag to pack my dirty clothes in there. If I didn’t have that bag, I’m not sure I would have been able to get everything home.
I checked out of the hotel, and I asked them to hold on to my two bags of stuff because they were large and heavy. I didn’t want to lug them around all day. They gave me two claim tags, so I can get my bags later. Once I was done with that, I walked to the conference. I got there in time to hear a few keynotes, but none of them were worth remembering. It was just a talking head blathering on about the way they are adopting open source stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.
My first session of the day was entitled Updating Your Testing Toolbox. He had some good stuff in there, but it was all high level. Lots of good ideas for tools to use (most were Firefox plugins) and a few other side projects. I came away with a good list of stuff to test out once I get back to the office.
My second session was supposed to be Testing With Selenium, but that session was canceled at the last minute. I looked at the schedule for the other sessions at that same time, and not a single one interested me. I decided that it would be a good time to conserve my energy. I just hung out, checked email, browsed the web, and did lots of nothing for a while. There was a single session after that one called Open Source Hardware. Interesting idea, but I was tired, and I didn’t feel like sitting there for an hour listening to someone talk about something that really doesn’t affect me, and that I don’t have the skills to affect. I decided to just continue to hang out until 1:30 when the Closing Get-together came around.
I expected the closing to be a speech or two from some big-wigs, and hanging out. There were no speeches. It was just hanging out and talking with my fellow geeks. That was a good thing. I needed some time to just sit and veg.
After the closing there was a tour of Free Geek which is a local organization that repairs “obsolete” hardware that is donated, throws Linux onto the computers and gives them to low income families. I think it’s a great idea. The tour was at their facility about 2 miles away, and the plan was to walk. Like I’ve already said, it’s been a long, long, long week, and I just didn’t see myself making it there and back.
I skipped their tour, and headed to the hotel to get my bags. I got my bags from check-in, and sat there reading my book. I finished the book off, and reshuffled some stuff around my bags to get a fresh book out. I made sure to remember to pack away my Leatherman, so I didn’t try to get on the plane with it. After sitting there for a while, I decided that I needed a little food and drink to get some energy for the trip to the airport. I headed across the street to a Starbucks. I sat there for a while, and talked to one of the head honchos of SourceForge. I had about three hours before my flight, so I decided to head to the airport. I drug all of my crap the half block to the train station. I managed to get my ticket right as the train that I wanted showed up. I piled on, and talked to some locals while heading to the airport.
I got there, and managed to get one of those little carts that you can rent, so that I didn’t have to carry my stuff around the airport. That was a life saver. My main bag was just an old Army duffel bag. No wheels or shoulder strap, or anything like that. I hung out for a few minutes and talked to a guy from the University of Georgia named Michael that I had talked to several times during the conference. We swapped cards, and moved on. I got my boarding pass, and had my bags weighed. My big bag came in at 46 pounds. Oi! No wonder it was a pain to carry.
I got to my gate with about two hours to spare before my flight. I pulled out my fiction writer’s group stuff, and started going through it for the next day’s meeting. I always seem to do it at the last minute. I got through that, and went back to reading my book. About an hour before the flight was supposed to leave we were informed that a nasty storm in Denver had delayed our flight for an hour. Ah well. I was ok with an hour delay. A little later they bumped it to an hour-and-a-half delay. I was ok with that as well. Shortly after that, the time was changed to a two hour delay. That was going to hurt. This meant that I was going to be getting home around 4 AM after the flight, getting baggage, and driving home.
Yep. Sure enough, I didn’t get home until right at 4 in the morning. Kiara woke up when I got home, and we had missed each other quite a bit. We sat and talked for a while, and I didn’t manage to get to sleep until about 5:45 in the morning. I was exhausted, and I was asleep almost right away.
The trip was worth every penny, every bit of effort, the lost sleep, and the crazy schedule. I learned more than I ever thought I would. I met more people than I thought I would, and I got to learn about new companies, new products, and new ideas. I really hope to be able to return next year, but that’s a year off. We’ll see how it goes at that time.
Now it’s back to a normal schedule, normal life, and my everyday duties. That’s also a good time. I’m not sure I could have handled more than a week of going and blowing that hard. Now I have an entire year to save up my energy to head back for OSCon 2008.
