OSCON 2009 adventures
I think that I've found a new term to describe myself. Adventuretarian. I live off adventure.

OSCON
This was my second year at OSCON, and my first visit to San Jose. Unlike last year, where I was a self-described OSCON rockstar, this year I was happy to take a more relaxed approach. I wasn't giving as many talks, the talks I gave were all quite technical, and I didn't keynote. However, that doesn't mean I didn't have fun; far from it!

This OSCON I played around a bit with outfits. I'd picked up a pirate hat earlier in Portland, and used it in my tutorial when talking about PAR, the Perl Archiver. The hat ended up being one of my best fashion decisions ever, as it found its way into photo shoots, restaurants, and social events. In terms of getting noticed, or being popular with small children, or having random people say "Arrrr..." as they walk past, a pirate's hat is awesome.

My other outfit was my Star Trek uniform, used for my talk on The Art of Klingon Programming. It's not something I can ever imagining wearing for more than an hour or two at a time, as it's hot, and doesn't breathe. Of course, it's fantastic when you want to hang out with the cast of Trek in the Park.

Talking of The Art of Klingon Programming, it looked like it came across smashingly well, but I had forgotten to remind the audience to rate the talk if they liked it. So if you were there, and you enjoyed the session, go rate it now. ;)

I went to less parties than last year, and so met fewer people, but I was able to spend more time with people who I really enjoy as a result. One of the highlights was a beach trip down to Santa Cruz and around to Half Moon Bay, with some pretty spectacular beaches, cliffs, and even a light-house.

San Francisco
After the conference was a trip to San Francisco, staying with Julian (the most amazing photographer ever), and Jackie (the most amazing story-teller ever). Julian and Jackie's house was a hub of creativity and creative people. If I hadn't been so happily exhausted for OSCON I would have made more of it, but as it was I feel I was almost bordering on impolite by crashing and immersing myself in e-mail.

The next day involved a relocation to Skud's house, a home-cooked meal (my first since Schwern's excellent cooking in Portland), and discussions about San Francisco burrito etiquette, gender issues, booth babes, Australian history, pirates, musicals, and conferences. Skud, Schwern, Jacinta, myself, Valorie, and Andre, who I thought I had never met went out for lunch and ice-cream. Of course, in true small world fashion, Andre was Australian, and knew me from linux.conf.au. He's now working for Pixar, which sounds pretty sweet.

My last day in America involved Schwern, Jacinta, and myself going of a tour of the more touristy parts of San Francisco. Crabs and clam chowder seem to be a big deal in these parts, and I was given a "sample" of chocolate that I'm sure provided me with my daily intake of sugar in a single bite. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time for a big get-together of all the SF residents and visitors before I had to fly out. The flight home was good, with an unexpected exit row seat providing lots of legroom.

Home
The only downer of the whole experience is that Jacinta had managed to wrangle me a cool (first generation) Google Android phone, which I discovered that I loved dearly, but which seemed to have fallen from my pocket inside the taxi home. Attempts to recover it were without success, and without having first recorded all the handset details I can't remote-brick the phone, so it's unlikely I'll ever see it again. Jacinta's now given me her android phone, and while I feel incredibly special and grateful, I'm paranoid about losing it, too!

Today I'm preparing my new laptop, which is about twice as awesome as my old one, comes with a three year worldwide warranty, and costs only a third of the price. Moore's Law + USA = Laptop win. I'm also paying bills, sending out invoices and faxes, paying super, catching up on tax, and generally doing all the things that keep a small business running.

Tonight I'm on a flight to Europe for YAPC::EU, which possibly represents the first conference ever where I have all my talks prepared and ready before the conference starts. I'll be back in Australia in a couple of weeks time, no doubt exhausted from my trip and looking forward to the next one.

Around the world with Perl
I've just finished my trip to the USA, which included adventures in Portland and San Francisco/San Jose and surrounds. I had a blast at OSCON, and will post memoirs soon. Right now I'm about to board a plane, fly back to Melbourne, do a stack of paperwork, and then fly off to Europe for YAPC::EU.

A huge thanks to everyone who brought me goodies, showed me around, took me adventuring, let me crash on their couch, took photographs, brought me food, gave me hugs, listened to my talks, commented on my talks, cycled back from hiking, took me to ice-cream, or any of the above.

Portland Adventures II
Today is my last day in Portland, and wow, what an adventure it's been. Friday was spent writing slides, relaxing in tea-houses (green mango bubble-tea with wifi rocks!), and a trip to Beer and Blog at the Green Dragon.

Beer and Blog I was particularly pleased with on many different levels. Ua had invited me to this fine establishment at last year's OSCON, and this represented me arriving, albeit a year late. I had a chance to socialise with cool new people, although I didn't realise just how cool some of them are until I did my research.

What made Beer and Blog really special was that during one of my conversations there was a comment that, "there's another Australian here, he's only just moved over". That other Australian was Mike McClure, with whom I went to University, but had not seen in about a decade!

Oh yes, Beer and Blog also had free beer. That also made it special. ;)

That evening was I was given a tour of Portland by Schwern, Kate, Ua, and Nick. That included beer, dinner, a walk along the river, and a trip to Voodoo Doughnuts. I'd been assured many times that my life would not be complete without having gone to Voodoo Doughnuts, and having been there, I can agree.

While I've been in Portland, Selena has been a wonderful host, and I'd felt that I'd been a terrible guest. Selena is a morning person, and I routinely came home late, slept in, and disappeared at odd times for ice-cream or doughnuts. On Saturday morning, I was determined to buck this trend.

Portland Adventures
Last year I went to OSCON 2008 in Portland, Oregeon (PDX), and had a fantastic time. I made many great friends, and fell in love with the town and its people. I was looking forward to returning to PDX every year, but unfortunately this year OSCON moved to San Jose.

Not to be denied the Portland experience by mere conference shifts, I arranged to arrive in America a week early, and re-visit PDX the week before OSCON. I'm here right now with Jacinta, and have had an incredibly social time with friends both old and new.

We've been staying with Selena who has been nothing short of amazing. Accommodation, network access, food, transport, good coffee, and most of all fantastic company have made me feel extremely privileged. Selena knows everyone, and is incredibly popular, so we get invited to all the cool events too! I've met more people in the last two days than I can possibly count. Selena also has a beautiful house; and I'm currently sitting under a tree, next to a pond, with a fountain, fish, power, and wireless. I could happily make this my new office.

I've had a chance to catch up with Kate and Schwern, who caught me on the night I landed in PDX for gelato and conversation. Hanging with Kate and Schwern is like fractal socialising; I'll meet someone, discover we have common interests, they'll introduce me to someone else, and the process repeats. It was only at 2am when I was talking to Kate's house-mate's boyfriend about Magic: The Gathering that my body reminded me that I hadn't slept in a real bed for more than 48 hours, and that passing out in the middle of a conversation would probably be considered impolite.

Yesterday I went to the Portland Pirate Shop with the intention of picking up a puffy white shirt, and was informed that I had just missed Plunderathon, and that all the puffy shirts are gone, so I was doubly sad. Next year I'll need to make sure to arrive in PDX much earlier, so I can participate in costumed piratical goodness.

Picking what to do in the evening was hard. Portland seems to be the place where on a Thursday night one needs to choose between a mountain-biking festival, PostgreSQL user-group, Perl hackathon, and Ignite Portland. It's a great place to be a geek. ;)

In the evening I made it to Ignite, which I've decided that I have to speak at if I get the chance. The audience is relaxed, friendly, looking to be entertained, and all have beer. The talks were pretty good, too. I even met one person who recognised me from my work on the Perl 5.8.9 release notes.

Afterwards I made it to the tail end of the hackathon, drank David's beer at a pub that had a huge number of board-games, and retired back to Selena's with Schwern and Jacinta, where we talked late into the night about all sorts of Perl community ideas, including a cute little plan involving community achievement badges that I like to think of as "Perl Scouts". ;)

These are the last of my Arabian Adventure blogs, which means I'm now caught up with my blogging backlog in time for OSCON.

Saudi Arabian Adventures - Day 6
Today was my last day of teaching, and a challenging one. I had more variation in students backgrounds and skills for this class, which always makes teaching more interesting. Lots of practical examples seemed popular, so they were the main fare for the day. It's easy to show off Perl's strengths when working with text.

During my week in Saudi Arabia I've discovered a few interesting things. While Saudi Arabia as a country fares poorly with women's rights, it's clear that Aramco as a company (or this campus, at least) was very progressive.

Women aren't allowed to drive on public roads in Saudi Arabia. As one of my colleagues put it, "we're hoping that will change soon, but we've been hoping twenty years". However the Aramco campus isn't public, and so there's no problem with women driving inside. Likewise, Aramco recruits the brightest girls from high school. They go through an English language program, and are then sent overseas (usually America or Europe), to earn their degree. They're required to work for Aramco for an equal period to the time they spent studying overseas, although it appears most continue working well beyond that. It sounds like an almost identical scheme to what Australia has with some defence force scholarships.

On my class I had three women out of twenty-four students overall, which is on par for what we get for courses conducted inside Australia. I fear the gender imbalance in IT is a worldwide problem.