Gathering supplies – Dan Langille's Other Diary

I was not feeling good in the morning. I have no idea why, but I had one lousy headache. I felt nauseous and crappy. I stayed in bed and dozed for an hour or two. By 9:30, I got up and had a bit to eat. Still felt bad. I heard from my dad that the did not finish until 2:30AM after four overtime periods. Wow, I’m glad I didn’t stay up for that one. I was still feeling like some was jumping on my head so I took two Advil and slept it off. I knew I was meeting Matthew Wilcox (Debian project, and now working for INTEL) for lunch and didn’t want to stand him up. I called him about 11:15, explained the situation and said it would be 12:30 before I got to his place. No worries. I stopped at Wireless Wave in St Laurent shopping center, picked up the two SIMs and was on my way to meet Matthew.

I arrived at Matthew’s door at roughly the expected time. We chatted, we did email, we extracted stored supplies from his basement, and it was lunch time. We walked over to the Royal Oak, had a leisurely lunch and caught up on gossip. I also chatted with the District Manager (Dave Bennett). As is tradition, every BSDCan (and now PGCon) starts at the Royal Oak. Registration starts at the pub. Everyone meets everyone and has a good time. I reminded him to stock up on Guinness as that always seems to be popular with our groups.

Back at Matthew’s place, I ran Windows Update on the Windows 2000 Server that acts as the registration desk’s computer. If you are a zealot, you may be wondering why Windows? Because it works. The wireless just works. The printing just works. That can’t be said for other OS yet. Well, yes, perhaps for Mac, but I don’t own a Mac. I do not want to fuss with the system. I want it to work.

While rummaging amongst the retrieved gear, I found another WAP and a UPS. OK, that’s one less thing to do today. I don’t need to buy a UPS. Score!

By the time Windows Update had finished, my calendar alarm went off giving me 30 minutes notice of my 4PM meeting with U of O. Packing up the gear into the car, I bid Matthew farewell and headed over to U of O. I met with my conference contact for about an hour and went over the rooms, catering, and audio/visual requirements. Each year is pretty much the same. That’s the primary advantage of using the same format, same venue, same suppliers, year after year. I can concentrate more energy on the conference content instead of worrying about infrastructure.

At 5pm, I headed home and had a quick dinner with my parents. Then it was off to the west end of Ottawa to pick up the Google swag. Back home, drop off the swag, and head to Starbucks to download more email. My folks do not have broadband.

Today, via email, I have dealt with:

Sponsor queries regarding their swag
Confirmed payment for a few attendees
helped a speaker amend details of his talk
amended BSDCan t-shirt proof and replied to supplier
let sponsor know about t-shirt proof

It is now 11:53 PM as I type this. I plan to get 8 hours sleep tonight, mostly to cure this head pounding. So that means up about 8am or so. I always wake up with the sunrise, no matter what time of year. Hopefully I can trick my eyes into believing it is still dark. This room faces west, so that may help.

On Tuesday, my main goals are;