The Mandelbear's Musings

It's been a good day. Met the flower_cat in SEA; she'd arranged for someone to meet her and wheel her around, so all I had to do was collect the baggage and rent the car. Avis gave us a PT Cruiser -- cool-looking, and drives well, but the controls are confusingly different from my Honda, and cargo space is quite limited. Ended up with two bags and the walker in the back seat to accomodate the wheelchair and large suitacase in the back. Even then it was tight, and the rear visibility was nil with the wheelchair in the way.

But now, we've been well fed and made welcome in the Big Green Monster, and the Cat is sleeping beside me even as I type. Folks seem to go to bed early around here; I'd been kind of looking forward to some late-night conversation. Tomorrow, perhaps.

No idea what's happening tomorrow. Real-time scheduling, and likely to be pretty relaxed. I'm hoping that everyone will get the one-on-one time they need with me and/or Colleen respectively, and that there will be music and burlesque at one time or another. Other than that it's all pretty open.

I've been having breakfast in the hotel this trip rather than the Continental breakfast at the con: protein and potassium are my friends.

I'm really glad I've developed the habit of keeping my room key in my right-hand pants pocket. I hardly ever leave a room without my pants. I have been known to leave without my shoulder bag. Recently.

The Red Lion at the convention center is undergoing extensive renovation. Sure, the carpets have been torn up most of the weekend. OTOH, the WiFi works perfectly in the rooms; this is the first year that's been true.

I've been trying to figure out how many years I've been coming to OSCon. This must be the fourth; first year I believe I was in the Inn at the Convention Center, and I've been at the RL at least twice before. I see LJ tags for OSCon 2006 and 2007. OK, also posts in 2005, and apparently none in 2004.

I've taken to wearing a luggage strap as a belt. Infinitely adjustable instantly, and no metal at all. Needs a way of temporarily attaching something that looks like a buckle when I want to be dressy.

The San Jose airport is also being extensively renovated; Terminal C has been rejiggered to put all of the shops inside the security zone. Finally. They also have free WiFi. Finally.

I still hate the Mac. The apple key, which exists only because they're using a one-button mouse, is exactly where I expect the ALT key to be. Emacs uses Alt-Q to rewrap a paragraph, and Alt-W to copy a selection. Fortunately you can configure the terminal to ask before closing a window or a tab, so as long as I run emacs in a terminal window and not the native version, I'm comparatively safe. (It also took me a long time to figure out how to configure the terminal to treat option as alt.)

The Mac laptop's keyboard is still wretched.

The food has been very good, though I don't like the fact that breakfast has been being served downstairs in the exhibit hall instead of upstairs outside the room where the keynotes are given.

I've been taking realtime notes (in a text file, using emacs). It would have been possible to turn that into real-time blogging using a couple of well-designed scripts and makefiles, but that will have to wait for the next time.

The continental breakfast was down in the exhibit hall this morning; I bagged it and went back to the hotel for something with protein and potassium (i.e. hash browns).

I don't really like eating alone, though. Grabbed coffee and conversation back at the conference; the hotel may have bacon and eggs, but the con has melon and Charbuck's. Need both.