usernamenumber
Jan. 26th, 2004 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberJust got back from New York. Working from home this week, but it looks like I'm going to be super-busy writing courseware. Woo. Anyway, wrote this over the last coupla days. Sorry it's so long. Consider it compensation for having posted nothing about what I've been doing for so long. I spent the last three weeks in Columbus, Roanoake and NYC (hint for those in CA, FL and the like: IT'S WINTER!!!!). Not that I'm bitter or anything... Anyway, I'll try and write something about Columbus later, as it was my first real experience with snow in years. For now, retroactive New York posting:
------------------------
Usually my lack of any sense for where I am in a city, even a familiar one, is a hindrance. In New York, though, it makes the experience that much more interesting. Yesterday I was taking a cab home when we drove through Time's Square. I didn't realize where we were until I looked out the window. It may sound trite, but it really doesn't matter how many times you see Time's Square on TV or in the movies. The vibrance, quantity and, above all, the size of the signs, the lights and the buildings they sit on is just overwhelming I can't even bring myself to call it tacky. It's so... there that the experience as a whole demands to impress itsself upon you and be appreciated.
Another demanding experience: The next day I was taking another cab to Linuxworld and we passed a vacant lot. In the middle of the lot were two large I-beams that had been welded into a lonely cross. I realized then that I was looking at the site of the World Trade Center. Not much else to say about that.
Change of subject (sort of):
I was really bummed on Thursday because I'd hoped to catch Linuxworld (big annual Linux tradeshow) and/or a show and ended up missing both (missed getting tix for the show by barely 5 minutes). Add to this getting too little sleep the night before and I was seriously depressed. I went out and had curry followed by cheesecake (don't ask), which should have been a one-two knockout punch of comfort food. Instead it did little more than make me full to the point of dicomfort for my walk home. Going to bed early was probably the best thing I did all that day.
Flash-forward to the next day: I had an exam to give which, if I really, really did everything as fast as was humanly possible, might get finished in time for me to catch the last hour or so of Linuxworld. Of course, things didn't got as fast as humanly possible and by the end of the first section of the exam, my hopes of making it to the expo were dwindling. Then, just as I was about to start my introduction to second half of the exam, Ean walks in. Ean is the Red Hat instructor who normally covers New York, but has been working the expo all week (thus my presence on his turf). So anyway, Ean walks in (wearing a red fedora, no less) and says "why aren't you at Linuxworld?" I give him a "ha-ha" laugh and get ready to start things up when he takes the exam document from my hands and tells me to get lost. Woo! Linuxworld here I come (with uberthanks to Ean).
I hopped in a cab and made it to Linuxworld with about three hours to spare. Not as much time as I'd liked, but more than enough to see the expo floor. I was and still am infinitely grateful for the opportunity to make Linuxworld for the first time in almost 6 years, but on some level I was a little dissapointed with the content of the expo floor. Since Linux is getting more and more "for real" in the business world, more and more of the booths are for companies selling uberhardware I could never afford and deployment plans for networks I will never manage as long as I'm teaching. There were still some cool geeky booths and a few worthwhile freebies, but the number of booths that were there strictly for the sake of "Neat Stuff(tm)" seemed fewer. The most interesting thing about the expo by far was the people. I really wish I'd had more time to get to know some other Linux geeks, but just in the time I was there I met a number of interesting folks including:
* A fellow I met on my way out who had an earpiece/mic combo in one ear and an eyepiece over one lense of his glasses. The eypiece superimposes a 640x480 display from his "rig" (homemade, wearable computer), which he wears in a satchel over one shoulder or integrated into a vest, over his field of vision. On one glove he wears a "chording" keyboard that he's modified to be worn on one hand. He says that he's learned to type faster with it than with a qwerty keyboard. His wearable, which he generally uses lying down, is the main system that he uses at home and at work as a sysadmin at Vassar. Wow.
* The guy who wrote "the book" on Snort (a security tool) and, as it turns out, was also responsible for the bastille security script I used back in the day. Very, very nice guy. And only at Linuxworld do women come up and ask to have their picture taken with a unix security expert as he signs copies of his book on intrusion detection systems. *smile*
* The developer of a project I'd heard about before but forgotten about: a free, open source Dance Dance Revolution clone, complete with playstation dancepad compatability via a third-party adapter. I'd heard of the project before but never seen it. It's GORGEOUS. Plus it uses your own MP3 collection and you can create custom dance files for each song. Woo! I am so ordering that adapter. The project's even written in my current language-of-choice, python.
* Another intersting meeting was with a guy from Lycoris. Lycoris is a smallish company, but well known in the Linux community for their commercial-only, supposedly super-duper userfriendly distribution of Linux. I'd never paid much attention to them until I saw this guy with Linux running on a tablet PC. I had no idea anybody had actually gotten a Linux tablet PC working in any useful way, but these guys had bugged various hardware manufacturers for drivers and spec info and had in turn started selling tablet PCs preloaded with their distro, including support for handwriting recognition and everything. So anyway, I start talking to this guy and he goes into a lot of detail, apparently assuming I was a developer myself, about how they'd gotten all this stuff accomplished. We chat for a while more and then I notice his badge. He's the CEO. Another one of those "only at Linuxworld" things. *sigh* My dad's gonna kill me when he finds out my business cards haven't arrived. So many missed opportunities for "networking".
Anyway, Linuxworld finished up and I took a cab uptown to the cheap tickets outlet where I bought tickets to see Forbidden Broadway. I figured everything else on the menu was either something I'd be able to catch touring (hairspray), didn't care about that much (Aida -- by Elton John(???)), or should really see with Lizbeth (Little Shop, the revival of which is supposedly very, very good, fyi). So, was forbidden broadway worth it? I wrote the following before and after seeing it:
Before the show:
Reasons I should take it as a sign that seeing Forbidden Broadway was the Correct choice of activities tonight:
1) The ticket at the discount ticket outlet cost $31.00. I had exactly $31.00 in my pocket.
2) My bank has an atm directly across the street from the ticket outlet, thus mitigating the downside of emptying my wallet for the ticket.
3) After a fascinating walk first through Time's Square and then down 42nd street (where 42nd street was playing, no less) "Some Enchanted Evening" was playing on the PA as I took my seat. Alright, already. I get it! I should shut up, stop stressing about how much of my cab fare I can expense and relax.
Here's the strangest thing as I sit in the audience waiting for the show to start (yes, I'm sitting in the audience writing livejournal updates on my laptop. Stop snickering.) I first heard forbidden broadway while I was in high school 6 or 7 years ago. I'm now at it's 20th anniversary performance. Almost every theater geek that I know has at least heard of the show, so it's not like this is some obscure dinner theater company. Imagine my surprise to find that they perform in a theater so small it wouldn't look out of place in a highschool. I count 215 seats in the whole place! The stage is old and small, small enough to be flat, which is another thing I didn't expect to find on Broadway. The walls are decorated with parody-posters for famous broadway shows: "More Miserables", "Rant" and an Oklahoma parody that says "OLDREVIVALS!" with a picture of an 80-year-old Curly on it. But the best piece of decoration has to be the sign on the bathroom door: "Urinetown".
The PA is playing a medly of brodway themes and has been for the last 40 minutes or so. Only now almost every song is an overture from some show or another. The problem with this is that since every overture has that "BEHOLD!! Our magical show is about to begin!!" feeling to it, I keep getting startled, thinking the show is starting with each new track.
After the Show:
Well, it was about as good as I expect. As with the FB mp3s I'd listened to before, about half of the songs were funny, a quarter didn't ammuse me much because I wasn't familiar enough with the show they were parodying and the remaining quarter didn't ammuse me because I just didn't find them funny. All in all, it was worth $31.00. Heck, just the bit where they make fun of Sarah Brightman (singing "Time I Said Goodbye") was worth $31.00.
And thus ended my New York adventure. There's still some other stuff I haven't talked about, like how it had just finished snowing when I arrived and how nice It was to get back to that balmy Florida winter. =:) Oh, and can someone please explain to me how so much ice ends up on the friggin sidewalks? Snow I understand, but one would expect snow to either stay snow or become water and flow off the sidewalks. I crossed entire half-blocks of sidewalk and at one point, an entire plaza covering and a half-inch thick sheet of ice. Oh, and if you ever go to New York at this time of year. Buy a hat or earmuffs or something. *shiver*
------------------------
Usually my lack of any sense for where I am in a city, even a familiar one, is a hindrance. In New York, though, it makes the experience that much more interesting. Yesterday I was taking a cab home when we drove through Time's Square. I didn't realize where we were until I looked out the window. It may sound trite, but it really doesn't matter how many times you see Time's Square on TV or in the movies. The vibrance, quantity and, above all, the size of the signs, the lights and the buildings they sit on is just overwhelming I can't even bring myself to call it tacky. It's so... there that the experience as a whole demands to impress itsself upon you and be appreciated.
Another demanding experience: The next day I was taking another cab to Linuxworld and we passed a vacant lot. In the middle of the lot were two large I-beams that had been welded into a lonely cross. I realized then that I was looking at the site of the World Trade Center. Not much else to say about that.
Change of subject (sort of):
I was really bummed on Thursday because I'd hoped to catch Linuxworld (big annual Linux tradeshow) and/or a show and ended up missing both (missed getting tix for the show by barely 5 minutes). Add to this getting too little sleep the night before and I was seriously depressed. I went out and had curry followed by cheesecake (don't ask), which should have been a one-two knockout punch of comfort food. Instead it did little more than make me full to the point of dicomfort for my walk home. Going to bed early was probably the best thing I did all that day.
Flash-forward to the next day: I had an exam to give which, if I really, really did everything as fast as was humanly possible, might get finished in time for me to catch the last hour or so of Linuxworld. Of course, things didn't got as fast as humanly possible and by the end of the first section of the exam, my hopes of making it to the expo were dwindling. Then, just as I was about to start my introduction to second half of the exam, Ean walks in. Ean is the Red Hat instructor who normally covers New York, but has been working the expo all week (thus my presence on his turf). So anyway, Ean walks in (wearing a red fedora, no less) and says "why aren't you at Linuxworld?" I give him a "ha-ha" laugh and get ready to start things up when he takes the exam document from my hands and tells me to get lost. Woo! Linuxworld here I come (with uberthanks to Ean).
I hopped in a cab and made it to Linuxworld with about three hours to spare. Not as much time as I'd liked, but more than enough to see the expo floor. I was and still am infinitely grateful for the opportunity to make Linuxworld for the first time in almost 6 years, but on some level I was a little dissapointed with the content of the expo floor. Since Linux is getting more and more "for real" in the business world, more and more of the booths are for companies selling uberhardware I could never afford and deployment plans for networks I will never manage as long as I'm teaching. There were still some cool geeky booths and a few worthwhile freebies, but the number of booths that were there strictly for the sake of "Neat Stuff(tm)" seemed fewer. The most interesting thing about the expo by far was the people. I really wish I'd had more time to get to know some other Linux geeks, but just in the time I was there I met a number of interesting folks including:
* A fellow I met on my way out who had an earpiece/mic combo in one ear and an eyepiece over one lense of his glasses. The eypiece superimposes a 640x480 display from his "rig" (homemade, wearable computer), which he wears in a satchel over one shoulder or integrated into a vest, over his field of vision. On one glove he wears a "chording" keyboard that he's modified to be worn on one hand. He says that he's learned to type faster with it than with a qwerty keyboard. His wearable, which he generally uses lying down, is the main system that he uses at home and at work as a sysadmin at Vassar. Wow.
* The guy who wrote "the book" on Snort (a security tool) and, as it turns out, was also responsible for the bastille security script I used back in the day. Very, very nice guy. And only at Linuxworld do women come up and ask to have their picture taken with a unix security expert as he signs copies of his book on intrusion detection systems. *smile*
* The developer of a project I'd heard about before but forgotten about: a free, open source Dance Dance Revolution clone, complete with playstation dancepad compatability via a third-party adapter. I'd heard of the project before but never seen it. It's GORGEOUS. Plus it uses your own MP3 collection and you can create custom dance files for each song. Woo! I am so ordering that adapter. The project's even written in my current language-of-choice, python.
* Another intersting meeting was with a guy from Lycoris. Lycoris is a smallish company, but well known in the Linux community for their commercial-only, supposedly super-duper userfriendly distribution of Linux. I'd never paid much attention to them until I saw this guy with Linux running on a tablet PC. I had no idea anybody had actually gotten a Linux tablet PC working in any useful way, but these guys had bugged various hardware manufacturers for drivers and spec info and had in turn started selling tablet PCs preloaded with their distro, including support for handwriting recognition and everything. So anyway, I start talking to this guy and he goes into a lot of detail, apparently assuming I was a developer myself, about how they'd gotten all this stuff accomplished. We chat for a while more and then I notice his badge. He's the CEO. Another one of those "only at Linuxworld" things. *sigh* My dad's gonna kill me when he finds out my business cards haven't arrived. So many missed opportunities for "networking".
Anyway, Linuxworld finished up and I took a cab uptown to the cheap tickets outlet where I bought tickets to see Forbidden Broadway. I figured everything else on the menu was either something I'd be able to catch touring (hairspray), didn't care about that much (Aida -- by Elton John(???)), or should really see with Lizbeth (Little Shop, the revival of which is supposedly very, very good, fyi). So, was forbidden broadway worth it? I wrote the following before and after seeing it:
Before the show:
Reasons I should take it as a sign that seeing Forbidden Broadway was the Correct choice of activities tonight:
1) The ticket at the discount ticket outlet cost $31.00. I had exactly $31.00 in my pocket.
2) My bank has an atm directly across the street from the ticket outlet, thus mitigating the downside of emptying my wallet for the ticket.
3) After a fascinating walk first through Time's Square and then down 42nd street (where 42nd street was playing, no less) "Some Enchanted Evening" was playing on the PA as I took my seat. Alright, already. I get it! I should shut up, stop stressing about how much of my cab fare I can expense and relax.
Here's the strangest thing as I sit in the audience waiting for the show to start (yes, I'm sitting in the audience writing livejournal updates on my laptop. Stop snickering.) I first heard forbidden broadway while I was in high school 6 or 7 years ago. I'm now at it's 20th anniversary performance. Almost every theater geek that I know has at least heard of the show, so it's not like this is some obscure dinner theater company. Imagine my surprise to find that they perform in a theater so small it wouldn't look out of place in a highschool. I count 215 seats in the whole place! The stage is old and small, small enough to be flat, which is another thing I didn't expect to find on Broadway. The walls are decorated with parody-posters for famous broadway shows: "More Miserables", "Rant" and an Oklahoma parody that says "OLDREVIVALS!" with a picture of an 80-year-old Curly on it. But the best piece of decoration has to be the sign on the bathroom door: "Urinetown".
The PA is playing a medly of brodway themes and has been for the last 40 minutes or so. Only now almost every song is an overture from some show or another. The problem with this is that since every overture has that "BEHOLD!! Our magical show is about to begin!!" feeling to it, I keep getting startled, thinking the show is starting with each new track.
After the Show:
Well, it was about as good as I expect. As with the FB mp3s I'd listened to before, about half of the songs were funny, a quarter didn't ammuse me much because I wasn't familiar enough with the show they were parodying and the remaining quarter didn't ammuse me because I just didn't find them funny. All in all, it was worth $31.00. Heck, just the bit where they make fun of Sarah Brightman (singing "Time I Said Goodbye") was worth $31.00.
And thus ended my New York adventure. There's still some other stuff I haven't talked about, like how it had just finished snowing when I arrived and how nice It was to get back to that balmy Florida winter. =:) Oh, and can someone please explain to me how so much ice ends up on the friggin sidewalks? Snow I understand, but one would expect snow to either stay snow or become water and flow off the sidewalks. I crossed entire half-blocks of sidewalk and at one point, an entire plaza covering and a half-inch thick sheet of ice. Oh, and if you ever go to New York at this time of year. Buy a hat or earmuffs or something. *shiver*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 12:34 am (UTC)so, you'll come visit Sean and i when we move to NYC, right?
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 01:31 pm (UTC)...if I end up back there again. If we move to SD. That probably won't happen. Sadness. =:(