Vacation update, part I

So I’ve been traveling since June 6th, and so I haven’t had as much time to update my LJ log. (It seems that I’ve had network access, or time, but not both.) So here’s a quick summary of my vacation in June before the Kernel Summit/OLS….

Sunday, June 16th: I checked out of my hotel in Monterey, and start driving up to San Jose. I took the scenic route, up route 1, and then swing by Santa Cruz. Just on a whim, I tried to contact two friends of mine from my VA Linux days. John wasn’t around, but Ben was. So I paid a surprise visit to Ben, who was thrilled to see me, and we had a lot of fun reminescing about old times at VA.

Later that afternoon, I drove up to Sunnyvale to ‘s house, where I stayed as a houseguest for a few days. We had dinner and had a really good, deep conversation about all sorts of things; where we’ve been, how we’ve grown, etc. As CJ put it, it was neat.

Monday, June 17th: Had lunch with my old manager at VA (and friend), Walt. He’s now at one of the large number of storage startups in Silly Valley. (There’s so many of them that they can’t all possibly all succeed.) It was really good to hear see how he was doing.

Dinner was with some folks at MontaVista, who wanted to talk to me about GPL issues and Linux binary modules. I don’t know if they found it useful, but we covered some basic ground, it got me a free dinner. 🙂

Tuesday, June 18th: Most of the day was speant making the final organizational touches for the kernel workshop in Ottawa the following week, and packing for an early start the next day. I had a quick lunch with . We didn’t have that much time to chat, but it was still fun to get together. Dinner was supposed to be with a second cousin living in San Francisco, but it turned out that she had to cancel on me at the last minute. So I had dinner by myself at a local sushi restaurant. Yum!

Wednesday, June 19th: I got up at 6am (ugh) so I could catch an 8:30am flight to Reno, so I could visit another old friend from my VA Linux days, Leonard. After running a few errands he had in Reno, we drove up to his place in Lake Tahoe. After lunch, and we hike part of the Tahoe Rim trail. According to his new GPS (new toy!), we hiked 6.7 miles, and climbed approximately 1200 feet.

Thursday, June 20th: Disaster! I discovered in the morning that I had forgotten to pack my passport, and tomorrow I was supposed to fly to Ottawa. Oops. So I send out a e-mail to a bunch of friends, asking for help, and one of them Fedex’es it to me. But it does mean that I have to stay in Lake Tahoe one more day (good thing) and miss a Summer Solstice party in Ottawa that I had been planning on attending (bad thing).

Friday, June 21st: While waiting for my passport to arrive, Leonard and I have massages given by a professional massage therapist. Mmmm! Must find a good massage therapist in the Boston Area. After lunch, I’m finally reunited with my passport (whew!), and Leonard and I hike another part of the Tahoe Rim Trail, which was much more scenic.

One good thing about getting stranded in Lake Tahoe for an extra day. It’s given me a lot more time to talk to Leonard, and as a result our friendship has deepened. We’ve had time to talk about experiences with past and (hopefully future) girlfriends, our perspectives on life, and lots of other topics. It turns out that Leonard also knows and from years ago.

Saturday, June 22nd: I get up way too early (5 a.m.), so I can get to the Reno airport, and then spend the rest of the day bouncing through San Jose, Chicago, and finally, Ottawa. I finally make it to my hotel in Ottawa at 11pm, and almost immediately fall into bed.

Sunday, June 23rd: Spend the morning catching up on e-mail, and in the afternoon, I wander over to the conference center, to make sure everything is in order for the kernel summit. Since I’m the program committee chair, I feel responsible…. but fortunately, the volunteers from OLS and the Usenix staff are completely on the ball, as always. Everything is all set up, including the wireless network. Whee! The opening reception begins at 6pm, and at 8pm we all adjourn to the bar….