I’ve been down to Les Suites and booked extra space for three BSDCan people.

I’m just now booking a room for a speaker who did not respond with travel details in a timely fashion. I’m not pointing fingers or blaming… but when the conference organizer asks you to provide information that is vital to your travel/accommodation, it is pretty much on your own head to do this promptly. I also found out that he has not yet bought his plane ticket. These are the things that add to my stress level.

I just process an email from asking about his registration confirmation. Yes, I’ve been late on them. But in this case, I sent out the confirmation before he asked. It bounced like this:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
A message that you sent has not yet been delivered to one or more of its
recipients after more than 72 hours on the queue on server01.technotop.nl.

The message identifier is: 1JtTHW-0001qN-LD
The subject of the message is: Re: BSDCan 2008 - user registration
The date of the message is: Tue, 6 May 2008 15:56:40 -0400

The address to which the message has not yet been delivered is:

bsdcan@example.net
(ultimately generated from bsdcan@example.net)
Delay reason: mailbox is full

No action is required on your part. Delivery attempts will continue for
some time, and this warning may be repeated at intervals if the message
remains undelivered. Eventually the mail delivery software will give up,
and when that happens, the message will be returned to you.

I replied to him… but I’m not sure he’ll get it until he empties his inbox…

Do not forget Mother’s Day.

I’m at Starbucks. It’s 0833 and I’m processing email again.

One attendee has said they cannot attend. I’ve refunded and adusted their registration accordingly.

A potential sponsor has become a committed sponsor and I’ve answered their questions regarding how best to get material to the confernce venue on time.

I sent off some more travel confirmations for speakers.

And some more registration issues.

It is now 1018. I’m ready to head to Les Suites and make some last minute arrangements.

I’ve spent the last 3.5 hours going through the PGCon payments and registrations. It went well, despite the situation.

I’m still at Starbucks. This is a great place to work from.

I just got a phone call from a friend who will be meeting me here shortly. I must go.

It’s now noon. I’m caught up on my email.

I’ve fixed a small problem with the PGCon website where payments were going to bsdcan.org not pgcon.org. Both wind up with me, but it can confuse someone who does not know the two conferences are heavily connected.

I’ve responded to a tutor who wanted to ensure he had the right gear in the room for his tutorial.

I’ve assured the vendor that the address I thought was wrong for their venue is actually correct. False alarm.

I’ve told a speaker that yes, instead of taking the train, they can bring their car and we’ll reimburse them.

I’ve let a volunteer know that I’m sure we can put them to work.

I’ve replied to a sponsor giving them the shipping address for registration bag inserts.

I’ve agreed to be a go-between for sponsoring someone coming to one of the conferences.

I’ve said yes, having a job-fair is a good idea.

Now, on to that list I drew up on Thursday night.

Just after midnight Friday morning, it started. Terrible stomach aches. It lasted all night and all day. It’s now Saturday about 10:30 AM and I still feel crap. I’ve spent most of the past 36 hours in bed. I’m sipping a peppermint tea hoping my gut pain goes away.

It’s time to catch up on email.

Thursday - wrapup

It is now 2224. I’m in bed. Detroit beat Dallas. Significantly.

After leaving Starbucks, St Laurent, I head downtown for the OCUUG meeting. St Laurent you say? Yes. I was at Elmvale Acres shopping center getting my watch fixed. One of the strap pins was loose and the watch kept falling off. It has also needed a new battery for perhaps a year. For the past two days, it displayed nothing. The couple in the jewelry shop were very helpful While they did the work, I wandered through Home Hardware and the LCBO. While at the latter, I enquired about a particular whiskey I bought last Christmas which I quite liked. They had none.

Back to the shop. Pick up and pay for the watch. Over to Starbucks and do some more email. In this round:

• Send off another proof to the sponsor.
• Clarify something for the supplier regarding that proof.
• Confirm a registration and payment for an attendee from China.
• Inform a sponsor that their inserts need to be here early next week in order to get into the registration packs, which we will probably do on Wednesday morning during the first set of tutorials.
• Confirm a set of complimentary registrations for a sponsor

That address issue for a venue, mentioned in a previous post was a false alarm. Yes, there is another establishment with the same name, 23 miles from downtown. Same street number. Slightly different street name.

When I arrive at the OCUUG meet, Dru is already there. I order a beer and we start dividing the BSDCan badges up and sorting them. Diane Bruce arrives shortly thereafter and she helps. Finishing up the BSDCan badges, we proceed to do the PGCon badges. We finish all this in about 25-30 minutes.

Our inside contact at Bell Canada arrives and we talk about various issues, including the atrocious behaviour that often occurs during strikes. Odd how equipment gets damaged during strikes that is never others affected. Very strange indeed. We also discussed the throttling that TekSavvy reported Bell Canada was undertaking. This has been very big news all across North America. Well, it made Slashdot didn’t it?

By 7:30 or so, it was time to head out. Dru helped me check out the address which raised questions earlier in the day. We drove down to York street and visually sited the dinner venue. Yes, it does indeed exist down there, despite what Google does not know. I’ll contact the vendor tomorrow and confirm what their event broker has told them.

Having confirmed the site, I dropped Dru off so she could catch a bus home.

Arriving home at about 8:10, I watched the remainder of the hockey game. Had some of that whiskey I mentioned. I also made some notes. Here are my plans for Friday:

• Arrange a room at Les Suites
• Call Subaru regarding an odd sound in the car
• Announce the PGCon dinner arrangements
• Make an appointment with the doctor since I’m in town
• Same with the dentist
• Add a few things to the map:
  • PGCon dinner
  • U of O parking lots
  • Starbucks near U of O
  • Hard Rock Cafe as a reference point for the PGCon dinner
• Mention the alternative accommodation at Algonquin campus
• email the PGCon speakers regarding their accommodation
• Put out a call for FSR radios for use during the conference
• Add the PGCon dinner to the schedule

It is now 2046. I’ve been listening to CBC radio. I’m pretty tired and my alarm is set for 0630. A lot to do on Friday. Friday night is dinner with my parents and their friends Elaine and Tony.

… night

It is now 1642.

Lately I have printed badges and invoices for both BSDCan and PGCon. More will be printed later, but this is the bulk of the printing.

I’ve been proofing more prints for the PGCon t-shirt. Processed more registrations and payments. Ran to Walmart to purchase some paper for the printer. I struggled with printing badges because of paper jams. Eventually I used the side-feed instead of the paper tray. Things went much easier then.

I managed to fix a code problem with the extraction of names, titles, and organization for the badges. It was sorting by name, instead of last name, first name.

I contacted the U of O to confirm a room for the PostgreSQL Developer Summit (this is by invitation only, so if this is the first you’ve heard about it, sorry, you’ve not been invited). I also firmed up the catering numbers for BSDCan, now that we have a better idea of how many people will be there.

In about an hour, I’ll be meeting with the OCUUG group for their monthly beer and pizza. Dru will be there, amongst other people. We’ll split the badges from their sheets, sort them, and place them into the badge holders.

I also corresponded with a sponsor letting them know that an address they proposed for a venue is not the street they think it is. It’s about 23 miles from where they think it is. Thank goodness I Google map’d this name!

Registrations continue to come in for both BSDCan and PGCon. BSDCan is over 200. And PGCon over 145, with more registrations sure to come.

Tonight is the semi-finals. Dallas is at Detroit. Game starts at 7:30 PM. I’ll probably miss the first period and a half. I did have some plans for what I’d do while watching the game, but I cannot recall what they were now.

I was awoken today at 4 AM by a truck reversing. You know those lovely beeping sounds. Hmm. And this was with earplugs. It was loud.

By 7 AM, I was in my car on the way to my “office”. So far, I’ve managed to send off a letter of invitation to Australia and another to Texas, check some email, and get started on my list of tasks.

I have some PostgreSQL Developer Summit details to finalize.

It is now 0832 and I’ve just finished processing my incoming email.

A speaker has requested a copy of his travel plans. I’ve sent him a PDF.

I picked up Eric at his office on the way home. He and I caught up on the trip along March Road to his place. Then he got on his home computer to continue his work day and I got on my laptop to catch up on more registrations. I noticed that more PGCon registrations are flowing in and so are more for BSDCan.

Diane Bruce send me some PNG files which will be used as a screen saver for the opening session of BSDCan. I had asked on chat@ for help with this. Diane came through. Thank you.

We dined on pulled pork. Always a great choice. Then we watched the latest episode of Medium, and I headed home at about 7:30 or so.

I started going through the mail I picked up. There was a lot of junk mail to process. In amongst the material destined directly for the recycling bin, I found a number of cheques. Tomorrow I will update my cash flow documents so my accountant will know about these checks. There’s nothing more annoying than having your accountant ask you what this deposit for $235.94 last May was for…. I can’t possibly remember. So I document and save. At the same time, I’ll reconcile the checks with the registrations and send out the confirmation notices for those attendees. The next step will be a trip to the bank to deposit said cheques. People that attend conferences don’t bounce cheques. Well, at least not for my conferences. I’ve never encountered one.

At about 9PM I started assembling the registration computer, the screen, and the printer in order to print off some invoices. The invoices were on the MacBook. The Windows computer had the printer driver. Simple solution: transfer the invoices (in HTML format) to the other computer. How? Hmm, network. Well, could do wireless… then what? scp? well, no. Ahh, thumb drives. Simple.

I got the invoices over to the Windows computer and opened them in Opera. All of them. This takes a while. In short, you select the files in Windows Explorer, then drag and drop them into Opera. This overloads the system and it takes a while for it to open all the files and render them. I went upstairs, grabbed an orange, and watched what my parents were watching: Deal or No Deal, from Estonia. Howe Mandel is great.

Back downstairs. Oh, I opened the files in alphabetical order. Which means the file I’m looking at now starts with Z. Which means they’ll print in reverse alphabetical order. Oh well. Close Opera, start again. Back upstairs. More Howie. See a guy win $218,000 (or so). Back downstairs. Oh. BSDCan 2007. Damn. I have invoices from last year. Search and destroy. Find all files in this directory with BSDCan 2007 in them. Delete. OK, I have about 105 invoices. That’s not enough. There should be more.

I decide to defer printing invoices until I can get back online and double check the invoices. If I had more than dial up here, I’d do that, no worries. But as it is, I’ll do it in the morning.

It is now 2203. I think I’ll head off to bed and get to sleep early. There is road construction nearby and they start at 7AM. There’s nothing like the scraping of a road grader on asphalt to wake you up early. The more sleep I get before sunrise, the better. That way, I can have breakfast, shower, and head off to Starbucks early, get the invoices done (again) and be ready to hit the bank with the deposits as it opens.

Good night.

I’m now at Eric’s for dinner. Leisa will be home after a meeting. The kids are upstairs on their computers. It’s 1631 as I type this.

After my last entry, I headed out to Barrhaven to pick up mail at the Greenbank location. I had quite a bit waiting for me. The UPS Store staff are so good to me. They earn their money and I get very good value from it.

Having retrieved several cheques (yet to be processed) and the pens for both PGCon and BSDCan, I headed to the nearest Starbucks to get back on the net and start printing up badges. Sorry, Bell’s Hot Spot is not working. Lovely. So I eat my lunch and continue trying. No luck here. I head back to the other Starbucks on Coventry Road. That was working.

Sorry, no good here either. I phone Bell. Twenty minute later, after going through numerous configuration settings, they acknowledge *they* have a problem and are fixing it. Lovely. So not only have I wasted twenty minutes of air time, and driving from one location to another, your monitoring system isn’t good enough to recognize a problem and notify someone. I am not impressed.

By now, it’s about 1245 and I start processing badges and invoices. Each attendee needs a badge and an invoice. I could send out the invoice automatically via email. This would reduce the workload at conference and reduce paper consumed. Nice idea, but to do it right, it needs to be a PDF and I haven’t gotten that far yet. Patches welcome. No, please, do not make suggestions as to what I could do. I want *you* to do the work.

The badges were pretty straight forward. Over the past 5 years, I have documented the procedure rather well. I run the SQL, drop the data to a text file, and do a mail merge into a Word document. Yes. I do use Microsoft. Get over yourself.

After generating the word document, I make slight adjustments so the badges look good. Some people put very long organisation names, or none at all. These require manual adjustments so they don’t look like BSDCan has done a half-assed job.

On to the invoices. This is not so well documented. At least it wasn’t before this year. Now it is well documented. It took me about 30 minutes to figure it out. Now I have a bunch of HTML files that I will load up into my browser and send to my printer. I’ll probably do that tomorrrow. Or perhaps tonight, depending on what time I get home.

I no longer need to track down an ATX power supply. The speaker will be bringing one. I just need a power cable for him.

Another speaker told me he’s booked his own accommodation. Great. One less thing for me to do.

I contacted two speakers and asked if I could move them from Residence to Les Suites. They are arriving on the 15th. Les Suites are booked full on the 13th and 14th, and I have two speakers arriving on the 13th and could use the Residence room for them. I have yet to hear back from those two. Hopefully they will reply soon.

I also heard from a speaker who would like a Letter of Invitation. I sent him off a draft copy for him to fill in the blanks. When he returns it, I will create a PDF on BSDCan letterhead and ship it off to him. This will probably help him when he crosses the border. He’s right. He should have asked for this months ago.

I phoned my U of O conference contact and left a message. I’ve done the catering numbers and have totals for BSDCan. She’ll probably call me back on Thursday.

The amended proofs for the PGCon t-shirt arrived. I sent them off to the sponsor for approval. They made suggestions. I replied. We’ll see.

A speaker asked me if he could withdraw, in case we were overbooked. I said it would be nice if he wrote up his talk.

I processed a few more registrations that were cleared up by email replies.

I sent off an email to speakers telling them that if they haven’t already heard about a room for themselves, then I’ve not done it and they should contact me.

I refunded a BSDCan attendee who will not be able to attend.

And now it’s 1651 and Eric’s son Adam is playing Super Smash Bros. Lovely. Hopefully we can eat soon. I’m starving.