Rode in the 2011 Pedal Pittsburgh event. 15-miles this time, as Emily’s dad joined us. Tour took us through Downtown, the North Side, the Strip District and the South Side. Great fun and a tasty burger at the end.
Up somewhat late. Managed to miss shelves being installed in the cellar under the porch.
Lunch at Smallman St. Deli with the in-laws. One of Emily’s friends from high school was there… he’s going to be spending some time at CMU and was in town scouting living quarters.
The Smallman St. Deli Rachael is a modern marvel.
Stopped at Lowe’s to pick up some poison-ivy poison and a storage box for the porch. I put together the storage box while my father-in-law installed a partition on the lower deck — precursor to an eventual hammock situation.
Dinner on the deck. Grilled flank steak and vegetables. Wonderful food, wonderful times.
Saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Pretty entertaining and better than the last two but still not as awesome as the first.
Went grocery shopping during my lunch break. Unexpected advantage of working from home is opportunities like this. Got in a little exercise walking to and from the store and got to shop during a relatively uncrowded time.
After work went out with Emily, Greg, and Jim to dinner at Stonepepper’s Grill then to see Thor. The movie was definitely entertaining but it didn’t quite have the magic of the first Iron Man. I did like the cheesy overacting style that seems to crop up any time Kenneth Branagh is involved.
More training. Getting more deeply engrossed in the new build system. Coworkers on IRC are very helpful in determining when I’m wrong vs. when the documentation is wrong.
Watched The Brothers Bloom from Netflix with Emily. Great story and phenomenal acting. How did I not hear about this movie earlier?
Training continues. Have to unlearn most of my habits from my previous job and relearn them for this one. Lots of packaging-related stuff to absorb. Concepts behind build system are the same, but details are completely different.
Off to guitar lesson. Mostly review, which is nice since I was out of town for last week’s. Some ensemble playing which is particularly challenging for beginners.
Up early; first day of “real” work for Canonical. Long commute from bed to living room. Could get used to this.
Began engineering training. Apparently training docs haven’t been updated in a while and some processes have changed. Now I get to update the docs as I’m learning from them. More fun than just going through them mindlessly I suppose.
Spent the evening goofing around on the computer. Still shaking off the last bits of jet-lag.
To Wexford for Ted and Sara’s bridal shower. First time I’ve been invited to a co-ed shower since college. Ran into some folks I haven’t seen in years. Sat at a table covered in Disney princesses. You know, the usual.
Hung out with Justin and Praise on their front porch for a while, enjoying a beer and some nice weather.
Long wait at the check-in desk. Looks like the self-check-in machines were broken, but in such a way that each person got to try to check-in twice before being sent to the desk to have it done manually.
Got myself checked in and made my way to the gate. Lots of other UDS folks also heading to Frankfurt. Talked to a few of them. Sat next to one of the other OEM team members on the plane.
This time the connection through Frankfurt airport went smoothly. I did have to head out and find the US Airways check-in desk to grab my remaining boarding passes but I had plenty of time and made it to my gate without incident.
On the plane back to the States I sat next to one of the gentlemen from Monday’s Frankfurt Airport Support Group. We caught up a bit and soon after we took off he was fast asleep.
Finally caught the end of Green Hornet. The movie itself was OK but it seems like Seth Rogen’s style of comedy didn’t really fit the character or tone of the movie. It just felt off. Also watched a documentary on rice that led to a nice 40-minute nap and another on personal flying vehicles that I actually found fascinating. Also watched the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day which was surprisingly entertaining.
Arrived in Philadelphia and waited an hour in line to go through immigration, then through customs and another half an hour to get back through security for my flight to Pittsburgh. Once again no hiccups but I was in no mood to stand in line all evening.
Landed in Pittsburgh just ahead of a thunderstorm. Unfortunately they can’t unload baggage from an airplane during a lightning storm so about three planefuls of people had to sit at baggage claim for an hour and a half before we could collect our things and head home. Emily showed no end of patience and even had a granola bar and a bottle of pop waiting for me in the car when she picked me up. Have I mentioned that I am a very lucky man?
We drove home through some heavy rain. Unpacked and passed right the hell out.
Up rather late, had to skip breakfast. Probably for the best.
First session of the day was a roundtable discussion about desktop technologies that will appear in the next release. Most notably there was lots of discussion on porting the manifold Ubuntu-specific tools and apps to GTK/GNOME3. (notes)
Next was a review of desktop performance. Much time was spent looking at timing diagrams of what took how long to do what during startup. There was also some discussion of which programs were causing the CPU to wake up most often. (blueprint, notes)
Then there was a session on speeding up software upgrades. Apparently there are lots of post-install operations that are run multiple times depending on which packages are updated which could be delayed to run once at the end of the upgrade. Other tweaks and some crackerific hacks were also on the table. (blueprint, notes)
After lunch there was a group of “lightning talks”, quick 5-10 minute presentations on cool things going on with the project. Lots of improvements to Launchpad and byobu.
Thanks to a lack of interesting sessions after that I had a chance to walk around Budapest for a while. I ducked into a couple of shops and generally tried to take in as much as I could before returning for the wrap-up talk.
At the wrap-up Jono announced that the next UDS will be in Orlando. I haven’t been there since I was a kid so I’m looking forward to seeing it with a different perspective.
At 7 the UDS party got into full swing. There was free food and drink, music and merriment. The Ubuntu Allstars is a group that gets together for every UDS and puts together a loose set over the course of the week to be played at the after party. The music ranged from ballads to blues to classic rock and 80s pop. Matt Zimmerman sang a rousing rendition of George Michael’s Faith.
Around 10 I’d decided I’d had enough fun and called it a night. I was exhausted from this marathon week and had to catch a shuttle at 7AM to the airport. Sleep came easily.
e after party. The music ranged from ballads to blues to classic rock and 80s pop. Matt Zimmerman sang a rousing rendition of George Michael’s Faith.