OLF, Laptop woes, and Updates

Written on Monday, October 13, 2008 at 9:50 AM by jkeyes0

It's been an eventful few weeks, to say the least. Where should I start?

OLF (Ohio LinuxFest) was this past Saturday. Basically over 1000 geeks gathered in one location to discuss Linux's past, present, and future. Sponsors and other organizations set up booths to show off their products and services while handing out SWAG (stuff we all get). HP had set up a movie room where all sorts of open source and linux-related videos were cycled through during the course of the day.

There were lots of presentations, but I only managed to make it to a few. I sat in on part of the Xen virtualization presentation, but my attention span is slim and I was running on just 3 hours of sleep (plus 1/2 hour in the car). I also participated in the Foresight Linux Conary/rBuild BOF (stands for "Birds of a Feather" IIRC). Lots of great new information and it looks like it will make packaging for Foresight much simpler (not that it is terribly difficult to begin with). I floated between some other presentations, but ended up just browsing around the booths for most of the time.

At random etank and I ran into Jono Bacon and were somewhat starstruck, I must admit. We introduced ourselves and talked for a few minutes about the Kentucky LoCo team we're a part of and some thoughts on how to raise awareness/interest in it. It was definitely thrilling.


Other news: Last week, the DVD drive in my laptop died. I called Dell to get it replaced, and they told me I had to take it into Best Buy. Note to self: never buy a computer from Best Buy again. The guy at Geek Squad was awesome. He was very helpful and knowledgable, and made the process pretty painless, until he mentioned that it was going to be mailed to a "laptop repair center" offsite somewhere, and could take up to a month to repair. Argh! At least it's covered under warranty.

In my laptop downtime, I have clung to my work laptop. I decided in honor of OLF, I would install Ubuntu on it and virtualize my XP system to it. This could not have failed more spectacularly. From what I understand, something in newer HP laptops doesn't like VMWare converter, and it loses its activation because of it. So basically I've got a wonderful Ubuntu install, and a Windows XP virtual guest machine, but it doesn't work. I may have to call to have it reactivated, or I guess I could run the converter on my work desktop and go from there... who knows?

Yet other news: The wife is 21 weeks pregnant today. We found out last Wednesday that we're having a boy (read our other blog for more info). With the looming prospect of being a parent, I'm becoming more and more apprehensive. I think I'll be a great dad in the long run, but I don't know how I'll do with the day-to-day stuff.

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