Going to LinuxCon!

So a couple of weeks ago, a coworker said to me: "Hey, you going to LinuxCon? It's here in Vancouver." I had no idea. I took a look at the schedule (Greg Kroah-Hartman! Matthew Garret! Linus his own bad self!) and started to think about it. I hadn't budgeted for it, and it was the last three days of my vacation...but yeah, I wanted to go.

I checked with my lovely wife and she said it was okay with her. I checked with my lovely boss, and he said it was okay. I checked my budget and decided I (well, work) could afford it. And now, I'm busy checking the schedule to see when I should be out the door to arrive (looks like about 7am).

There's a lot that I want to see. The FreeIPA talk, Puppet and OpenStack, Linux and Finance...it's going to be a good time. I haven't seen a lot of Twitter traffic on LinuxCon, but I'm afraid I won't be able to contribute much. However, I will be writing up the day's experience as I do with the LISA conferences. So, you know, sharpen up your copy of Lynx, 'cos this text-only layout won't optimize itself.

In other news:

• 3- and 5-year old kids are surprisingly adaptable. When we say something like, "It's 4.30 in the afternoon and we're bored, wanna drive to a beach?" they cheer. And then they keep their cool for the half hour of preparation and the 20 minute drive. We would have KILLED for this level of spontaneity two years ago.

• I got a new scope! It's an 8"/200mm SkyWatcher dob from Craigslist. The owner stored it outside ("but only in the summer") so it wasn't in the greatest shape. But it works, and I'm happy with it. And I was able to see Jupiter's Great Red Spot yesterday morning with it, which is hard -- it's quite pale, and not bright red at all these days.

• I'm taking my oldest son (5 years) to camp out overnight at the Aldergrove Park Star Party this Friday. We're both looking forward to this. Originally I was just going to stay out late and drive back, but then I found our old tent when I was doing some cleaning...and camping out just makes a lot more sense. It's going to be a long day for me -- duck out of LinuxCon, come home, and drive out to Aldergrove -- but hopefully a lot of fun. I'll power up on Red Bull or something.