It's sunny here, It's spring. But is this why I feel this way? Is it spring, or is it her?
Archive for March, 2008
It's almost done for me. Euruko08 was fantastic! I took a plane on Friday and was kind of lucky. Since the plane was apparently overbooked, there was already someone in my seat, so I had to sit somewhere else. The nice stewardess told me to sit in the front of the plane, where normally the people sit who get the special treatment. Because of this, I also had some extra services like a newspaper and great food. The flight only took 90 minutes and was comfortable. After customs and luggage claim, I took the bus and metro to my hostel. The hostel was pretty basic, but ok.
After strolling around the city center a bit, I took a tram to the opening party. On the way, I crossed one of Pragues many bridges and because of the great view over the river and the light (sun was just going down, which gave spectacular lighting), I stopped after the bridge, walked back and took some great pictures (I'll upload them later on). Afterwards I went on to the party.
Here, there were some people already and very quickly I started some conversations. In the end there were around a hundred people. I talked to so many people from so many different countries; awesome. After the party, I took a taxi to the city center with Thomas and Niklas (from Germany) and Alex from Greece. We had some food (midnight snack) and then I went back to the hostel.
Next day, I went to the conference and spent all day listening to talks, talking to people and so on. I had lunch with Thomas and Niklas and after the conference, we had dinner together at a nice pizza place. After that, party again. There were more people than the day before and again I had lots of conversations. After the party, I took a taxi back to the hostel again.
The following morning, I got up and walked to the conference, alongside the river. Beautiful view! The conference again had nice talks and we had lunch together. The conference ended with 2.5 hours of lightning talks, where I was speaking last. The talk went alright. When the conference was really over, I met Marek, a dutch guy with whom I worked with a couple of years ago, but hadn't seen him since. Together with him, some colleagues, Niklas and Alex, we went to a Mexican bar/restaurant to drink and eat. Here we talked a lot and even tried out some cool code Alex came up with. When the bar was closing we left. I walked back to my hostel through the city center. Prague is such a beautiful city, especially by night!
This morning, I woke up at 8:30 am, had breakfast and checked out of my hostel. Then I roamed the streets, looking at shops and so on. Now I'm in a small restaurant and will leave in a couple of minutes. I'll be doing the tourist thing a bit more and will go to the airport around 3 pm to get my flight back home at 5 pm.
All in all, the weekend was absolutely fantastic! I feel great, met so many nice and interesting people. The only thing is that my voice is absolute crap now, because of all the talking and liters of beer I drank, but that will be fine.. Anyway, I'll be at Euruko 09 next year! Definitely!
As written before, I'm currently in Prague for the Euruko 2008 Ruby congress. Yesterday evening, the congress was officially opened with a party at a very nice club. There I spoke with a lot of people, from all over Europe. I had expected that most talks would be about Ruby or Rails, but actually, this didn't happen. What I found very interesting is that most conversations I had (and overheard) were about spoken languages. Apparently, geeks have a fascination for spoken languages. I, myself sucked very badly at French and German in high school (as I did in multiple subjects), but this was mainly because of a lack of interest in learning in general. Since I started programming, I really developed an interest in languages in general; comparing languages and structures within a language. Maybe because of this, I looked for a real challenge and started to learn Russian somewhere last year.
The nice thing to notice is that it's not just me who's really fond of languages in general. I really wouldn't have guessed to find so many people with the same thing at a programming language congress.
Friday, I'll be flying to Prague for the EURUKO 2008 Ruby conference and will be doing a 10 minute "lightning talk" about Capistrano and Webistrano (stuff for deploying (Rails) applications in bigger environments).
Today, I booked my ticket to NYC! I'll fly from Amsterdam on the 11th of July and will be back in the Netherlands the 4th of August. Planning so far is to spend the first week in New York City, visit some friends and just hang around. At the end of this week, I'll be spending my time at the HOPE conference. After that, I still have 2 weeks left and I don't quite know what I'll do then. I'll probably travel to some cities in the eastern part of the US, like Boston and Chicago.
Anyway, I'm really looking forward to this!! Whoooo!!
On monday, I got new rims installed on my car. Now it looks much more classy than it did before. Also, the original springs were installed, which lifted the care about 4 centimeters. We also found out that the rims and tires that came with the car were too small. They were 2 or 3 centimeters smaller in diameter than original BMW stuff. So, in total, I guess the car was lifted some 6 centimeters, which is great for all the speed bumps here in the neighborhood. Anyway, thanks to Jay's Carconnect for helping me out!
And here are the before and after pictures:
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Before |
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After |
I just preregistered for "Hackers On Planet Earth 2008″!!! As usual, HOPE will be held at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City (yes, NYC I'll be back!) July 18-20 2008.
Next thing is booking a flight..
Today, I'm at home, sweating out a fever that struck me 2 days ago. I was lying in bed when the doorbell rang. I quickly got dressed and went downstairs. An older man was at the door. He seemed angry. Without introducing himself he told me that if he saw my cat in his yard again, he would kill him. Totally flabbergasted (my mind going into wtf-mode), I asked him to explain. He told me that he has "very expensive" pigeons and that my cat was constantly in his yard looking at them. He told me that he didn't want my cat near his animals and that I should keep my cats inside. I told him that this was not an option and that I considered his statement a threat. I also told him that if my cat would kill a pigeon, I would pay for it, but he kept on telling me that he would kill my cat if he would see it again. This totally pissed me off. After 10 minutes of discussion, he left, still in anger.
Since I didn't know what my rights were, I called the police and they were very helpful. It turns out that this guys is responsible for securing his animals and if he wants to have a cat-free yard, he should take precautionary measures, but he's not allowed to do anything to my cats. The strange thing is that I never ever met the guy before. He lives somewhere on my block, but I don't know where exactly he lives. The police asked me to find out where he lives and try to talk to him and convey the message about him securing his animals. Cats are allowed to walk wherever they want.
I'll try to find out where he lives somewhere next week and try to talk to him, but I have the feeling that this story will have a sequel.
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