alex.polvi.net

Jumped out of bed and ran for the hills (to get to the bart station). I
dropped some things off at Scott’s room, and then went to meet the Gentoo
folks for breakfast. This time they were where they said they would be. It
was neat, I finally got to meet Lance, Jeff, Kurt, and Corey (the people
I work the most with). We ate, then promptly went to the conference.

The Gentoo folks had exhibitor passes, leaving me at the front entrance
with the rest of the Linux minions. I noted that there was a keynote
about to happen and jumped on it. Right as I walked in I saw Jason,
Scott, and Jalal… saving me a seat (good thinking guys). The first
speaker was the CIO from Orbitz. Everything he said was rather yada yada
yada. The real keynote was with the CEO of Red Hat, Matthew Szulik. It
too was rather uninteresting, but at least he showed a little about
giving back to the community.

At 1000 the conference officially opened. I immediately went as visited
with the Gentoo guys at the Gentoo booth. Pretty cool. After bs’n for a
few it was already time for a conference. I went and saw “Introduction
to LDAP”. Most of the stuff was really basic (to be expected), but I
was able to get a few questions off to the author of the o’reilly LDAP
book. I really wanted to go to the advanced ldap talk, but I thought
it was tomorrow and was wrong. Oh well. I soon went back to the exhibit
floor and started collecting swag. My first big score a usb stick from
Intel. Soon after that CNN (i think) interviewed me, we talked about being
a student in the open source culture. I continued on with my swag hunt,
and found all sorts of stuff. Most of the substantial things needed
you to swipe you card. I probably signed my soul off to 30 different
companies… but I got a free shirt out of it! We dorked around the
conference floor most of the day. In the evening we had the OSDL thing,
and the Gentoo BoF followed up by dinner.

The “OSDL VIP Reception” was an open bar with a bunch of very important
looking people. We did our best to fit in. I talked with some folks
from the IBM Linux Tech Center, Adobe, the OSDL, and various other
companies. Pretty interesting. A lot of people had their head up their
asses. When Scott and I walked out to go to the BoF we looked at each
other and went, “What the heck?”. All those people were there to make
money… and it was like they didn’t even know what they were dealing
with. The OSL seems like it would be a great interface between these
big companies and the community. They send us $$$ so they can say they
support the FOSS community, and we dish it out. We would act like a swag
proxy for enterprise to developer relations.

At the BoF Scott got up and talked to the devs. He did a good job. We
then gave everyone a shirt and tool. Hopefully they will all wear them
tomorrow. Kurt made a comment about having “Unlimited bandwidth”, which
he must be referencing section 7 of the OSL bylaws (joke). Alas, a lot
of names to faces.

Tomorrow is the OSL related talk — should be fun. Hopefully I can get
my hands on new swag too! I also hope to get to see Larry some more.

Alex
Tue Aug 3 23:54:20 PDT 2004

Today was the first day I actually got to play in the city. First thing
I had to get downtown. The plan was to meet up with the Gentoo folks
and have breakfast. I thought I showed up at the right time and place,
but no goofy nerds to be seen. So, I went to the apple store to see if
I could get shell access so I could find jformans phone number. As it
turns out, the apple store does not think too highly of letting users
have shell access. The native terminal app in OS X was disabled. I
poked around on a few different machines in hope that I could find one
without the disability, no dice. After giving up there, I went back to
the meeting place and still no Gentoo. Seeing as I was across the street
from Scott’s hotel, I went over there.It was about 1030 and they had just woken up. Something about it being a
late night throwing bibles out the window… I didn’t pick up the whole
story. Anyway, we ran down and ate some lunch/breakfast. By this time
I had found Jeff’s phone number (using Scott’s Internet connection). We
got in touch and decided to meet up. We (the OSL guys) walked across the
street and found the Gentoo guys. They were all laughing at us because
of our orange t-shirts. I laughed too, four dudes walking down a street
in bright orange… its pretty funny. None the less — we all said hello
and then went our separate routes. I believe they went to the fisherman
wharf, while we decided to go to get our passes and stuff at the LWE
check-in spots. After we did that we went to the Sony store (saw a X505),
playstation store, and the apple store. I enjoyed going to all of them.

Things really became interesting when I called John Gilmore. It
sounded like he was rather busy, but he still offered to have dinner
this evening. I took him up on that. A few hours and a taxi ride later,
I was at his house. We chatted for a bit about cryptography — and he
gave me a copy of the “Cracking DES” book he had contributed to. Then we
went to the basement and saw the machines that actually did crack DES. It
was really neat, pictures to come soon. After that we went out to dinner
at a brew pub very near Haight and Ashbury. As we were walking down the
street, Gilmore noticed a flier that said something to the effect of
“Celebrate the meaning of the f’ word.” Not knowing what it was he bent
down and took a look. Ironically enough, it was a flier for an EFF event
that is later this week. It just shows that the people doing the marketing
for the EFF are doing a good job of attracting the right crowd. Once we
found a place to eat we chatted of many things; his businesses and my
ambitions. One interesting comment he had was with regards to business
partners. “When you are wondering if you found a good partner, ask your
self this, ‘would I bring them with me to the next business?’” This
made my think of relationships such as friends. If I could do it again,
would who would I take with me? That sort of thing. He also made a few
comments about starting a business with very little money. That way
you will appreciate every customer that comes through the door. It will
make you listen to customer demands, thus making you better. I will keep
this in mind when working with the entrepreneurship program at OSU. I
bought him dinner, and we wandered back to his place. By this time it
was getting late so we talked about bus schedules, and I was off.

I wandered down the street for about 10 blocks, then arrived at the
appropriate bus stop. Right as I was boarding some guy put a ticket in
my hand and asked for a dollar. It was a bus pass, so I took it… the
bus driver seemed to think it was OK. The ride took another 20min,
plus a 5min hike straight up a hill to et back to Larry’s.

Here I sit. Time for bed, big day tomorrow… I hope to meet up with
the Gentoo folks for breakfast.

Alex Polvi
Mon Aug 2 23:58:59 PDT 2004