by This is the second of a four-part series; the first part is here.
I officially hate my laptop; I had just typed a nice long blog entry, and the dodgy mouse whatsit decided that I meant “back” instead of “new tab,” so I get to retype it all. Blargh.
Anyhow, this afternoon, after a free lunch, I took a virtualization class with Bob Plankers, who was both energetic and informed about the topic. It was of particular interest to me, since our first VMWare box will probably be ordered while I’m in Phoenix. One thing someone noted about SysAdmin Days as opposed to the big conferences like LISA or USENIX general is that the tutorial attendees tend to already be doing or using what is being discussed and, as such, are more engaged in the subject matter. This was certainly true of my virtualization class, where I was one of two or three who was not already using VMWare or Xen. Anyhow, I left class quite excited about the possibilities that VMWare and — soon, with RHEL 5 — Xen present to us, and several new goals on my todo list.
Following the afternoon session were invited talks, which I skipped to get Linux on my laptop working again. Shame on me. But, I’m happy to report, I have a mostly-functional Fedora Core 5 install now. If I had Opera and Freeciv, it’d be perfect.
We then adjourned to free dinner, provided by everyone’s favorite Borg 2.0, and an open bar. We piled as many bottles of wine into our greedy little arms as we could and went on to the annual LOPSA members’ meeting, which was full of very positive news; our little organization is getting all growed up.
However, all areas are still looking for volunteers, particularly the tech team. Check out the Projects page or email the volunteer coordinator if you have a few hours to spare. Especially you PHP programmers; I opened my big mouth, and now they’ve got me down for several big PHP projects. (For the record, I hate PHP; I just happened to do it for 5 years.)
The BoFs after the LOPSA members’ meeting kind of disintegrated, which was likely due, in part, to the copious amounts of wine available. Still, I was able to hold my LDAP BoF, although LDAP came to stand for “Liquor Drinking Admin. Professionals”. I’m happy to report, though, that the “hallway track” here is just as good as at LISA or USENIX — if not better. We chatted for hours about individual problems, issues we all face, why we’re S.A.s, tequila, goat farming, and more. I even added a few things to my todo list after hours.
The nice thing about blogging this is that I’ll be able to give a (redacted) version of it to my boss to justify the $BIGNUM he spent getting me here. Hooray for multitasking.
See you all tomorrow.