Conference Wrap-up, Canada Day, Working on a National Holiday

Posted on Mon 02 July 2007 by alex in general

I've really enjoyed my first OLS. I felt a little isolated at first as I didn't know anyone there but I've met and talked geek with a lot of people. The technical contents have been pretty good which has given me lots of good material to take back to work. The only thing I'm missing is the ability to be more directly involved in the technical development. We use Linux day-to-day at work but we don't get that involved in the kernel side of things. I would like to get more of a chance to do that if I could.

The after party was at the Black Thorn Cafe which is a nice pub in the market area of the city. The bar was free all night and they had a large selection of local and imported beers to work my way though. Apparently the geeks have a reputation for drinking the place dry but they didn't succeed this time. I headed back to the hotel rather merry having done a lot of geek chatting over beer. More people recognised the company which was good. I even discussed the options for reviving my User-space DMA patch although finding a use for it outside the platform is was originally written for may be tricky.

Canada Day was fun. I was a little hazy on my initial wanderings as I was searching for food and caffeine having slept right though the hotel breakfast slot. Once that had been dealt with I ambled from busker to street performer while enjoying the pedestrianised city centre. I then joined Fliss' friend Brika (who's wedding I'm attending next weekend) and some other friends of theirs for the day. We went to Jessica's in the evening and watched the Canada Day fireworks from a balcony that had a magnificent view of downtown Ottawa. I eventually returned to the hotel and watched Doctor Who which has somehow miraculously managed to download itself despite the hotels rather unstable wireless connection.

Today is a public holiday in Canada but this is my last day of work before I start my holiday (I've gotten Tuesday off in lieu of working Saturday). I decamped from the hotel to a nice coffee place called Bridgehead. Having to get a new ticket for the wireless every hour is a little annoying but I don't need to be on the VPN now everyone back home has left work. Hopefully I'll get a good chunk of coding out of the way :-)