Well, I've tried blogging before, running the backend server software myself. Maybe not having to maintain the software/hardware will actually let me think about posting to the blog!

10/17/2008

New toys are cool

So I ordered a new toy: a Grandstream GXP-2000 VoIP phone to use with Fedora Talk. After a little bit of consternation, I got it to work! So here's the settings that I used in case someone else is interested: SIP Server: fedoraproject.org SIP User ID: jstanley (my FAS account name) Authenticate User ID: jstanley Password: (the password that I set in FAS on the VoIP option) Use DNS SRV records: yes NAT Traversal (STUN): yes Then in the advanced settings I set the STUN server to stun.ekiga.net, setup syslog since I was having issues (which wasn't incredibly helpful), and that's about it! You can reach me at extension 5102788 on Fedora Talk, which has a PSTN gateway at (919) 424-0063 or a few others that you can find on the Fedora Talk webpage!

10/13/2008

Finally home from OLF

Well, I sure did have an interesting travel day today. I signed up for Flight Status Notifications from AA for my flight today, and checked my Blackberry when I was about ready to leave for the gate to find that my flight was delayed (from 11:10 to noon, not a big deal). Then I thought to look at my crackberry again, and found that the flight had cancelled...arrggghh. Called AA reservations, and they had automatically rebooked me on some crazy route going through Chicago. I figured that was the best they could do, and resigned myself to waiting 5 hours beyond my original flight time in the airport. I went up to the AA lady at a gate (not my original gate, they'd taken care of everybody at the original time of the flight that I didn't show up at the gate for since it was delayed, right?). Shew as like "where have you been, we took care of everyone from that flight earlier...", I explained that because of the delay, I hadn't bothered to even check further on it til I was to head for my gate, and found that it was cancelled. Anyhow, the lady was real nice, and booked me on a USAirways Express flight from CMH to LGA, which worked out nicely. I got on the plane, and the flight attendant told me that in order to get a Coke, it'd cost me $2. I didn't think that this was a great deal of money, but I figured that for $2, I'd get a 20oz bottle, not the 12oz can. How wrong I was! Had to have been the most expensive Coke I've ever had! It was good though. Moral of the story: 1) Show up on time for your flight, even if you know it's late. 2) Never buy a Coke on USAirways again, unless you like being ripped off.

10/12/2008

Pictures from Ohio Linux Fest

Sorry I didn't do two things: 1) Post these earlier 2) Take more pictures Anyhow, you can find 21 pictures that I took at OLF, some good, some bad, some indifferent here. :)

Ohio Linux Fest and FADNA recap

Well, FADNA just wrapped up, but I'm staying here til Monday. There were like 13 of us at the first ever FADNA, a great turnout! At Ohio Linux Fest, I worked with Clint Savage and Brian Powell in order to make a script for a USB creation station that will automatically create a USB stick when you insert a key into the machine via a udev rule. Clint formatted his external hard drive with JFS (arrrggghhh!), and I didn't have the right JFS userspace tools on my F9 laptop, so I couldn't use it. Good thing that I had the foresight to buy a 320GB external drive prior to OLF and rsync my local mirror to it, so that I could install the JFS tools :). Also because of having a mirror with me, I was able to spin an updated iso for the creation station with updates as of when I sync'ed to it. The image unfortunately came out a bit oversized for a CD, by about 7MB. Not a big deal, since it was intended for use on USB. However, a gentleman did come up who had a machine that wouldn't work with F9 GA (he had one of the Samsung drives that had a / in the serial number), so I had to burn the respin to a DVD for him, and he was incredibly happy that we could do that! After we got the USB creation station working (minus the udev rule), we went in to the booth, I made a few USB sticks throughout the day. Work on the udev rule and automagically creating them will be undertaken soon, so what we'll have is a remix that will Just Work(TM) Today at FADNA, we discussed the expectations of Fedora ambassadors, the new-founded mentorship project, and various marketing items, such as the making of the Event Box and the Ambassador Kit, and what components will go in there. There's a hackfest that's planned for FUDCon in Boston in January in order to actually assemble an Ambassador Kit (we want to have the specs for the ambassador kit prior to Boston, so that we can actually focus on design and assembly there). All in all, this was a VERY fun and productive weekend for me, well worth the trip out to Ohio!

10/10/2008

Ohio Linux Fest, Day 0

Well, I arrived safely from NYC, and I'm now checked into the Holiday Inn Express in Grove City where we're having FADNA, and several other folks are staying I believe. I've never been to Columbus before, and found the airport rather nice - however, the signs at the airport are eerily the same as they are at LGA - same font, color scheme, etc. I think that for both of those airports, someone just called up Generic Airport Express and said "one large airport, please!" :) Seriously I liked CMH better than LGA, but probably because LGA is in the middle of a massive renovation project at the moment. In concourse C of LGA there's not even a bar where one can sit down (I've flown AA out of LGA before, but never from concourse C, which is a different security checkpoint, so you can't even use the stuff on concourse D...arrrggghhh!) Anyhow, enough airport talk, how's what I came here for? Brian Pepple picked me up right on time at CMH, we grabbed a quick bite to eat to hold us over til dinner, and then went back to the airport to pick up Paul Frields.dropped Paul off at his hotel, and then drove me down to Grove City, which brings me to where I am now :) More to come later, after the pre-party at Brewer's - hopefully they have good microbrew, with a name like that! :)

10/04/2008

Hi-ho! Hi-ho! It's off to Ohio we go!

OK, maybe my comedy isn't so good, but I just made late reservations to be at Ohio Linux Fest next weekend! I look forward to seeing a lot of folks there. The main reason that I'm going, however, is for the first FAD North America! Should be a good productive time. The only bad part was that the only semi-reasonable cost flight that I could get back was Monday morning. Oh well, got plenty of vacation days to burn!