FUDCon Tempe 2011 is here in just a few short days.  Some of the people I would expect to attend, aren’t going to be at FUDCon this year.  I am going to miss their presence immensely.

• It’s the first FUDCon without the master of karaoke, Greg DeKoenigsberg.  He’ll be missing out on the warm weather and friendly collaboration for sure.
• I know my good friend, David Nalley isn’t going to make it either. I have been at so many Fedora events with him, it will sure be a bit lacking without his late nights and overall good nature.
• I’m also saddened to hear that Karsten Wade won’t be able to attend, he will surely be missed with his community insight and valuable opinions.

There are others, in fact, who I know probably would like to come.  These specific instances stood out to me because I think of them as amazing contributors.  Their consistent attendance at events like FUDCon have encouraged me to return year after year to events I now love. Mind you, the above folks I mentioned aren’t missing from Fedora overall.  In fact, I know that each of them and many more who can’t make FUDCon this coming weekend in person can still participate and contribute from afar (and will likely do so).

I see a new generation of contributor helping to grow Fedora into a grand new direction.  I’m interested in seeing where this road will take us, and I think that’s the joy.  With each new contributor in a community like Fedora, we continue down the path of the best of free and open source software, but we can meander into realms we had never thought of before.  This is what excites me!

Like I said, I’m on my way to FUDCon Tempe for what is no doubt going to be an awesome event. Right now, I am sitting in my hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona.  A mere 151 miles, about 2 hours at 75mph, from the Courtyard in Tempe, Arizona, where most of our attendees will stay for four days.  I should easily be there by early afternoon tomorrow.

Mind you, this trip was planned for me to be eight days, two travel days to and from Salt Lake City.  Just this afternoon, we spent about 3.5 hours at the amazing Grand Canyon National Park.  If you get a chance to visit this amazing natural canyon, at 10 miles across, do it!  Our little family had a great time seeing the sights and riding the buses around.  By the way, dusk is really amazing at the park, don’t miss that either.

The FUDCon planning committee has crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s.  Thanks to sponsors like Google, Rackspace, and of course our hosts, Arizona State University, we get to have food and fun while working toward our common goal.  Thanks to all who put in such hard work to make this event rock!

See you all in just a few days!

Cheers,

Herlo

If you click to add a new calendar item into Google Calendar, you get a new button “I’m Feeling Lucky”…

After clicking this new button I recognized, here’s what I got:

Woohoo!  So right before the Ubuntu/Fedora Release party on May 3, I have a date with Jessica Alba!  Nice!  I might blow off the release party if the date goes well…

I tried this a few more times and here’s the results I’ve received.  I’ve got dates with:

• Anna Kournikova on May 5 at 4pm
• Eric Cartman on May 10 at 6pm
• George W. Bush on May 6 at 4pm
• Matt Damon on May 8 at 8pm

Wow!  I’m popular.  Who else, what else did you get?

Cheers,

Herlo

This week Aaron Toponce and I are in Mountain View. We decided it’d be fun to go visit Google. We snapped a few pictures, and spent about 10 minutes on their campus when all of the sudden….

Three big security guards started running at us and yelling for us to leave! We ran from them, and although they were big, they were fast too. So we ran harder! They still couldn’t catch two nerds (one who never runs – that’d be me!) no matter how hard they tried.

Okay, so none of the above paragraph is true. Except that there were a couple of guards, and they did ask us to leave. But they were really nice about it, and the guard that escorted us out informed us that we couldn’t take pictures. But we snapped a few before they’d told us, so here they are:

Afterward, Aaron and I just laughed and laughed about “getting kicked off Google’s campus”. Its a pretty funny thing. We sure enjoyed our tour of Google though. They have a very nice campus with some cool views. Google is quite amazing and it sure appears that they take care of those bright engineers.

The security guard said that if we came back with a friend or contact, we could roam free. We still can’t take pictures, but hey, it sure sounds fun. I think I’ll try to find a friend now that works at Google, just so I can get the personal tour.

Cheers,

Herlo