Opinions expressed here belong to your're mom

A Long Journey

This Blogpost Is Different Than The Others

Most of the blogposts on my website have been technical writeups. This post is not a technical writeup, it is more of a travelogue interspersed with self-reflection. Between 4/26/24 and 5/13/24, I travelled across the US and back, from one coast to the other. Summing up the miles (7662), I travelled nearly 1/3 the circumference of the Earth. These miles were driven in a 2022 Toyota Prius by

OpenPilot did the vast majority of the driving, with one of us manually taking over for only the trickiest driving through construction and inner-cities. It really is a wonderful piece of software.

I am writing this post in part for posteriety and in part to force myself to fully flesh out some of the related ideas that are bouncing around in my head.

What Would DRIVE Me To Do That?

The reason that I went on such a voyage is because I had speaking engagements at two different conferences, each just a week apart. On April 28th I spoke at LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, WA. On May 5th I spoke at LibrePlanet in Boston, MA. These two conferences are on opposite ends of the continent. The two presentations that I was giving had a plethora of differences:

Most people would not have done what I did. Most people would have flown from one venue to the other. Most people would not have signed up to speak at two conferences so close. Most people would have used the same talk and slide deck for both conferences. What lead me to do this?

I drove because I didn't want to fly. This desire is lead by a few different factors:

I signed up for conferences so close together mostly on accident. I had originally submitted a talk for LFNW 2023. My talk was accepted, but the conference was unfortunately cancelled last-minute. To get my free-software conference "fix", I proceeded to submit a different talk for for LibrePlanet 2024, which was accepted. When LFNW 2024 was announced, I was invited to re-submit my presentation, but that was after I had been accepted for LibrePlanet. I didn't check the dates carefully enough and only noticed just how close they were when the conferences were drawing near.

I submitted different talks for the two conferences because the conferences had different CFPs and my submission for LFNW wasn't appropriate for LP. LibrePlanet is a Software Freedom conference, with the primary focus being on the politics and culture surrounding the base philosophy. LinuxFest is a Linux confernece, with the primary focus being on any tangential subject. LFNW focuses more heavily on technical matters than does LP. Additionally, I wanted to have a greater variety of talks so that my Trophy Case would look more impressive. I used my LFNW presentation to talk about the work that I get paid for on a daily basis and I used my LP presentation to talk about some of the work that I've done here on this blog.

Bellingham

Every time that there has been a LFNW, it has been in Bellingham, WA at Bellingham Technical College. Bellingham is a wondeful little city and every time that I go there I am struck by how nice it is. I would like someday to take a prolonged vacation in Bellingham so that I can fully immerse myself in the area. When LFNW 2023 was scheduled for the Fall of 2023 and my talk was accepted there, I did book an AirBNB for the a whole week, but with the change in conference date and obligations, I wasn't able to spend as long as I would like in the city. Nevertheless, I did still have a good time.

After checking in to our hotel, we made our way down to the Fairhaven district of Bellingham. Fairhaven was one of the original 1903 settlements that consolidated together into the city of Bellingham, and it is a very noticably separate district. It feels like a separate small town, a short drive away from the main downtown Bellingham. Today it is mostly a tourist destination, and the streets of Fiarhaven are littered with quaint shops and eateries.

I got a cone of ice cream in Fairhaven at a location called ACME Valley Ice Cream. The ice cream here was unique when compared to any other ice cream that I have had throughout my life. It was chewy. They advertise it as "full strength ice cream" and claim not to inject any air during the manufacturing process. It was a real treat and will sit apart from all other ice cream in my memory going forward.

Fairhaven is also home to Village Books, a bookstore spanning 3 floors and including a cafe. It is also attached to a restaurant. Aside from these details, there is not much that sets this bookstore apart from most other bookstores in the world. They have a large piece of blown-glass art hanging up in a gigantic window and the normal assortment of gifts and trinkets that you are likely to find in stores that ostensibly specialize in books. I have been to this bookstore on previous trips to Bellingham and my family has taken to calling it the "Harry Potter Book Store" due to its winding staircases.

Other locations unrelated to LFNW that I went in Bellingham were:

All of the other activities that I did in Bellingham were directly related to LFNW.

LFNW

LFNW always starts off with a game night on the Friday night just before the Fest begins on Saturday (on 'Fore-Fest Friday). This game night definitely did not disappoint, the organizers did the most elaborate and involved game night that I have ever seen at LFNW. In the past, a swarm of open-source nerds have gathered in a large room with free pizza and stacks of board games to engage in cut-throat rounds of Ticket To Ride and Settlers of Catan. This year, however, the game night party spanned three locations.

It started at a bar. Finding the LFNW section was a bit difficult due to the entire road being blocked out for a massive party, but once I found the LFNW section at the back of the bar, I had the opportunity to "talk shop" with some other attendees and reminisce about how nice it was to finally have such an event in person again. After the attendees were sufficiently drunk, the party moved a few blocks away to a barcade so that they could drink some more. This place was full of pinball machines, which was great because I love pinball (although my skill level does not match my enthusiasm level). After a few rounds of bouncing a steel ball around a cabinet, the party expanded next-door to a board and card game shop. In here there was the typical plethora of baord games to be played by anyone who could find a partner or team. Simultaneously there was a game of LFNW trivia in the style of Jeopardy being played by four teams. Each team had a button at their table to push when they knew the answer. These buttons were wired to the GPIO ports of a Raspberry Pi for the purposes of knowing who was first. The RPI was running some custom-written terminal-only software to figure out which team had pushed the button first, and it was plugged in to a large TV. The failures that you can imagine with this setup occured and provided some nice comic relief. I did not participate in this, however, and instead learned to play Stratego with my girlfriend while our table-neighbors played a Star Wars themed chess set where they had to decide which pieces filled which roles because none matched and there were no instructions.

The fest-proper began the next morning at BTC, as it always has.

This was the first full LFNW back in person since the pandemic. They had originally scheduled it for Fall of 2023 but had to cancel because the building that LFNW has historically used was closed for renovations. The organizers put on a mini-fest in Fall of 2023, but I did not attend because I had SeaGL obligations instead. During this proper LFNW 2024, the original building was still closed for renovations and so the main expo hall was instead hosted inside of the building that has previously been the cafeteria. The cafeteria is notably smaller than the old expo room, but this turned out to be fine, since there were far fewer vendors in the hall than there have historically been. I could definitely feel that this was the first full fest back, as many old portions of the conference were missing.

The signage was poor, which made finding the correct buildings and the location for the JB-provided lunch quite difficult without asking someone for help. It is good to drive community interaction, but a map or better signage would have saved quite a bit of confusion for myself and others. Thankfully, the LFNW audience is relatively high-trust and collaborative, and so once the knowledge was made available to one person on where everything was, it quickly became disseminated throughout the attendee population.

There were no badges this year. In previous years, LFNW has provided badges that have been extremely helpful, including a printed schedule and map as well as information about the different vendors. The badges have previously also helped to signify different people as attendees, vendors, speakers, or staff. Finally, the badges have been wondeful souveneirs that last well after the end of the conference. One year LFNW even had plantable badges which were made of recycled paper and had embedded within local wildflower seeds. The lack of badges was sad and I hope that they can return next year.

Attendance to this LFNW was lower than any previous LFNW that I have been to. This is of course understandable, it was the first full fest back in-person. People need to remember that conferences exist and are good fun things to go to. I hope that in the coming years, LFNW is able to repopulate back to its former glory and be a bustling center of software freedom in the PNW.

The vendors this year, as I mentioned before, were fewer than in previous years. Some old vendors who have been consistent across the years did still show up, notably Jupter Broadcasting, PostgreSQL, the FSF, and Candela Technologies. There was also a new vendor that I had never heard of before, Gadfly AI. Upon seeing the name, I was immediately skeptical that they would be worthwhile to engage with, since anyone who puts AI in their company name is likely trying to grift their customers. However, they were distributing some zines which advocated for giving Richard Stallman a voice. RMS has been discriminated against recently by neurotypicals who do not understand how to communicate with neurodivergent people. As a result, he has become an uncouth name to mention and an unpopular person to support. I hope to see more of Gadfly AI at future conferences and I wish them success and plenty in their grifts. I hope that they take all of the VC money that they can get their hands on and use it to further the goals of software freedom.

In addition to the Friday pre-presentation-party, LFNW has always held a party on Saturday evening. Sandwiching more conference-sanctioned drinking between the two days of the conference is a tradition that is well-received by the attendees. I went to the restaurant where I had a nice dinner with some strangers who I have seen from afar in previous years. It was a good time. Instead of following next door to the pub when the dinner venue closed, I went back to my hotel room to prepare for my talk.

My LNFW Talk

My talk at LFNW was decent. I'm happy that I gave it, as I did a good job of presenting Modules to people who had never heard of it before. The recording of my talk should serve as good introductory material for future users and administrators of the software. There were some shortcomings with my presentation, though, which I am accutely aware of.

There were some issues with my talk that were caused by the organization of the conference. These are worth mentioning, but not to cast blame on the conference organizers. My goal here is not to say "you messed up my talk!". It was my talk and the shortcomings of it are my responsibility, the blame is entirely on me. My goal here is to record my experience and to hopefully help future presenters in setting their expectations when speaking at this conference or similar conferences.

Firstly, I seemed to have a shrinking timeslot. When I originally submitted the talk for LFNW 2023, I submitted it for a 45-minute timeslot. When I submitted the same talk for 2024, the only option was for a 35 minute timeslot. On the final published schedule, I was given 30 minutes. The time difference between when my talk started and when the following talk started was 2.5 hours. This lack of consistency confused me, and when I reached out to conference organizers for clarity, I received no reply. I had no idea how much time I should or could go for, so I was forced to attempt to reduce a talk that was originally 45 minutes down into 30. As a result of this, I spoke too fast and rushed through some of the content. I didn't feel that I had the time to give the talk that I had originally planned to give.

Secondly, my talk about a special piece of software that most people haven't heard of was scheduled at the same time as a talk by an esteemed security researcher about how he (and his team) found a large CVE in MySQL. This latter talk is obviously more interesting and most of the conference-goers wanted to see that talk instead. I can't fault the conference for scheduling us at the same time - that's just the way that the schedule worked out. As a result of this, however, my talk was poorly attended. This left me nervous throughout the presentation. This is actually a shortcoming of myself, however. I should have named the talk something a little more click-baity and I should have been fine with a such a small turnout. This is all in hindsight. Perhaps someday I will give the same talk with a snazzier name.

Thirdly, I feel that the room that my talk was in was quite difficult to find. It was on the second floor of a building with poor signage on the outside and no signage on the inside. The hallway that you had to walk down to get to the stairwell was completely unlit. I think that this may have convinced some people that they were in the wrong place. It was not a welcoming sight and even I was skeptical that I was in the right building, despite having scouted the location out on the day before:

hallway_of_death.jpg

The shortcomings of the conference were things that I could have adapted to if I had been better prepared. I should have provided my own signage to show people which direction my talk was in. I should have named the talk something more enticing. I should have been calmer in the face of the unknown timeslot and a low turnout. These shortcomings of the conference are things that I could have shored up if I had done better. In 10 years, the recording will survive, and it is not effected by any of these conference issues, only by how I reacted to them.

The feedback that I received from my friends and family who have watched the presentation has been universally positive. They say that I am being too critical of myself. I believe that they are viewing my performance through rose-colored glasses and that the only way that I can improve is to know what I have done wrong. This way, I can be more cognizant of not doing those things in the future. I want to address the issues that I brought to the presentation. They vastly outnumber the issues provided by the conference, and in the long run they are the only ones that matter. A recording of my talk can be found here. I have noticed these problems that came from me:

Driving From Bellingham to Boston

After LFNW was over, it was time to hit the road. I had a long way to go, and a short time to get there, needing to travel from Bellingham, WA to Boston, MA by car in just under 5 days. To make things a little more challenging, there were sights to see and people to break bread with along the way. Mostly though, it was a lot of driving on one road (Interstate 90) from one side of the nation to the other. I-90 is the longest interstate in the USA and I drove (or was driven) over the entire thing. In order to fully appreciate the journey, you should know about the sleeping arrangements.

Catching Z's

Hotels are expensive and run the risk of bed bugs. They have draconian check-in and check-out times and their continental breakfast is universally forgettable. Additionally, it takes a good amount of time to check in and out of a hotel. We were in a rush and did not want to deal with any of this. Fortunately, I own a 2022 Toyota Prius. This is one of the best vehicles for this trip if you are under 6 feet tall. This vehicle is compatible with OpenPilot, so it mostly drives itself, greatly reducing the fatigue load on the driver(s). Additionally, with the rear seats folded down and custom mattress pads made by myself and my girlfriend, it doubles as a rolling bed (this is where the 6 foot limit comes in) that uses less than a gallon of gas each night for climate control. Normally when people hear about this, their first response is "You're living in your car?!?!" and "You don't have to do that", but it is much nicer than most hotels. It may be helpful to think of it as a capsule hotel on wheels. This allowed us to make good time across the nation and saved a good amount of cash.

But while asleep, the vehicle had to be parked somewhere. It had to be parked somewhere where nobody would care. I have form-fitted sunshades for every window and extremely dark cermaic tint, so nobody can see inside, but a glance at the windsheild (with the sunshade visible) and hearing the engine occasionally start to charge the hybrid battery is enough to inform attentive strangers as to what is going on. In some states, you are permitted by law to do this at their highway rest areas. Washington was one of these states, and on the Eastern edge of the state is where we slept the first night, since we had started driving in the mid-afternoon, just after LFNW ended. Some states, however, do not permit you do sleep in your car at rest areas, or they limit you to something like 3 hours. New York is one of these, but despite the legal code being present to prevent it, there was no signage and we found that the law was unenforced. There were many drivers of RVs, campers, and vans who were obviously car-camping. Many places online will recommend Walmart, sometimes mentioning that you should get permission from the store manager first. This is old out-dated advice. Based on my phone calls with various Walmarts, they no longer allow this. Love's truckstops, however, had no such issues with allowing overnight parking. Even in cases where there were signs saying "1hr maximum parking", the store attendants confirmed that it was not an issue. The Love's bathrooms were always clean and they even had showers, which were very welcome after a few days on the road.

Between rest areas and Love's, we always found a place to sleep and were never bothered by security guards or police. This allowed us to spend more time with the wheels rolling and less time getting into and out of hotels.

South Dakota

We made several stops on the way from WA to MA. Our first major stop was Mount Rushmore, where we saw the giant faces carved out of a mountain and learned a bit about how it was done. This is an awe inspiring monument and I highly recommend that anyone see if if they are able. We took many cheesy tourist pictures here, as we did everywhere we went, and then hit the road. After leaving the mountain, we blasted through the state of South Dakota at an extreme speed, blowing past Wall Drug, Prairie Dog Town, 1880 Town, the Minuteman Missile site, and other things that we would have liked to see. We had a mission. We wanted to get to the world's only Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, before they closed for the day. We arrived with about half an hour to explore the palace, but to our dismay we were blocked from entry. The palace was closed to tourism. They were holding their annual circus. I was crushed. Weeks of anticipation had lead up to this, I was so excited to see the palace, to go inside and to bask in the corniness of the place. The devastation of not being able to enter left a sour taste in my mouth as we drove away. We had ignored other locations to get to the palace, and it was all for nothing.

Leaving Mitchell, our next stop was in Souix Falls, SD for dinner. Unable to find anything that was open late and looked decent, we settled on a location with low hopes. We went to The Dive, a place that looked like a dive bar and called itself a dive bar. It was also right across the street from a college. In my experience of living and working near colleges, this signifies low quality and high cost. I am happy to say that The Dive proved me wrong on all counts. The burgers that we had there were reasonably priced and delicious. All of the sauces are made in-house and were unbeaten by any bottled sauce that I have ever had. Every aspect of the meal was done very well. This was a lovely little pick-me-up after the crushing let-down that was the closure of the Corn Palace.

Chicago

Our next stop was Chicago, IL. We had high hopes because there were several things in that city that we wanted to see. Not only were there normal tourist attractions, there were internet meme tourist attractions. The schedule wouldn't permit us to visit the American Football House in Urbana, but we could stop at the 100 Gecs Tree and the Chicago Rat Hole.

Security at the tree was tough. They didn't like that we were there and were yelling at us to leave while we were trying to find the exact tree. They were calling in backup (or maybe phoning in law enforcement) while I took my one picture. We sped away and weren't able to pose with the tree, failing to recreate the famous album cover.

100gecs.jpg

It was somewhat difficult to find the exact tree. Most places online just describe it as being a tree of this type at a particular office building. This office building is surrounded with trees of this type. The exact tree is located at 42°01'49.0"N 87°54'44.2"W.

On to the rat hole, we had the exact coordinates for it in Chicago and street-parked nearby. We walked in the direction of the mark on the map, but could not locate it. After making several passes over where it is supposed to be, I checked the Wikipedia page again:

The Chicago rat hole was a hole shaped like a rat...

and

On April 24, 2024, the Chicago Department of Transportation removed the sidewalk slab containing the hole...

This is where the rat hole would have been if it had not been removed exactly 7 days prior to our arrival.

ratnthole.jpg

This was a bit of a disappointment, so we made our way over to something that will certainly not be removed or closed. We drove over to Millenium Park to see The Bean, known officially as Cloud Gate. This is a beautiful scultpure and provides amazing shots for photographers. My girlfriend was excited because she has always wanted to take fun photos with the bean. I was excited because I like beans. The bean was closed for construction on the plaza. We were again let down by closure of tourist locations. With one stop left in Chicago, we were almost ready to head out.

Our final destination in Chicago was Pequod's Pizza. This location is rated #1 in the US for Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, and it did not disappoint. Not only were we able to get a seat with no reservation, our pizza was made quickly and was delicious. The wait staff was helpful and kind in guiding us through what to request on/in the pizza. This was the highlight of Chicago, it was the only destination in the city that did not present significant problems.

Ohio

Leaving Chicago, the next destination was quite a distance away. We were headed for Cleveland, OH. I drove through the entire state of Indiana without stopping and found myself with an old friend. This friend, who I had not seen in many years, welcomed us to his area by showing us around. We visited the USS Cod, an old WWII submarine parked on the shore of Lake Erie in Ohio. This was a real treat. The submarine is beautifully preserved and the combination of literature and audio recordings inside are educational and entertaining. The men who operate the venue surrounding the Cod were friendly, helpful, and informative. They answered all of the questions that we had and were great conversation partners. They wished us happy trails as we went a block down the road to our next destination.

We wound up next at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I don't care much about the history of Rock and Roll, but this museum was a spectacular treat for my girlfriend. She adored the exhibits and activities and we spent a good while walking around and appreciating the artifacts. What I found most interesting was that many of the outfits in the museum, which seem so perfect and larger-than-life in music videos and on stage, are not spectacularly made. When you get a chance to see them up close, you can see the seams and the design decisions that are obviously there to make performing in them easier, but that make them look worse than the imagination and the movie magic lets on.

Our final stop in Ohio was the gas station from the YouTube channel Gas Station Encounters. I have been watching the videos of this channel for years, and to finally be in the very location that I have seen on-screen so many times was surreal. If you don't know what it is, it would seem like just a regular gas station. But having seen it so many times beforehand made it special. The man working behind the counter even took our picture together in front of their golden Play Button. This was a real treat. I have been in many gas stations and have been disappointed by their wares, but this Marathon Gas location had an astounding selection of items and none of them were expired.

Boston

After leaving Ohio, our next stop was Boston. We woke up on Friday morning with many miles still left to go and a hotel to check into in just a few hours. Our hotel was The Verb, located right next door to Fenway Park, and we got there on Friday evening. This hotel was recommended by the FSF for the conference, and it was one the only hotel near the venue that actually had vacancy when I went to book it. This hotel was like a miniature version of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with memorabilia everywhere and record players in each room. From the outside and the common areas, this hotel is great. Once inside the room, however, there were various things that did not work or were poorly designed. This wasn't so bad because we didn't spend much time in the hotel room except to sleep.

The night before the conference we did a little bit of driving around and sight-seeing, since we would not have much more of a chance later on. I got to experience being tail-gated while driving a reasonable speed through a 1-lane college alley with cars parked on either side in the dark on a Friday night with drunk college kids everywhere. After this trip, I understand why the drivers of this state are called "Massholes".

LibrePlanet

LibrePlanet started the next morning. LP had badges, and mine even identified me as a speaker. That was quite exciting. As far as attendance and vendors, LP was actually smaller than LFNW, which was surprising to me. I had expected it to be much larger. The conference was also organized a bit differently. There were two rooms for in-person talks, but if you wanted to watch anything from the third track, you had to tune in digitally. All the talks of the third track were presented remotely. This made it easier to pick which talks to attend, since at any moment there were only two in-person talks to go to. This conference had great signage and I never was lost or confused. In many ways, it was a better conference than LFNW.

LFNW did beat LP in festivities, however. I think that this may be due to a difference in drinking and party culture on the East vs West coast. The main activity from LP was a historic walk through Boston at the end of Saturday. This walk was lead by the FSF and took participants through many historic locations with significance from the revolutionary war and Boston's early history. During this walk, we were given trivia questions about the FSF with the promise of a prize for whoever got the most questions correct. Additionally, the FSF equipped some of the attendees with protest signs reading "FREE YOUR COMPUTER". I held one of these during the walk and it sparked some conversations about software freedom with strangers who were passing by on the street. I even managed to start a chant with a drunk man in the backseat of a cab.

During Saturday at the conference and during the walk thereafter, I am happy to say that I made a friend. An elderly blind man named Dave needed some help finding his way between sections of the conference, so my girlfriend and I lended him a hand. Or more appropriately, we lended him an arm. Dave's preferred method of guidance was to take someone's arm and follow them that way. This worked great, and he even joined us for the walk. It was very good that Dave joined us for the walk, too. As a local Bostonian, he was able to, without even seeing where we were, tell us all the history and significance of the points that we were passing on our journey. Without this, we would have seen various places but we would not have fully been able to appreciate them, as the FSF guide did not provide much educational information during the route.

When we got to our final destination on the walk, the historical Quincy Market, I popped off to the restroom. When I came back, all of the restaurants were closing and the FSF leadership had disappeared. Perhaps I missed something while I was peeing, but there were a few other attendees at the market who were just as confused as I was. This stung a bit, but I did manage to get a large quantity of Chinese food for $7 as the restaurant closed. Eventually everyone was kicked out by security and we rode the train back to the venue to drive back to the hotel. I am glad to have gone on this walk and to have made a friend, but I feel that the execution on the FSF's part could have been better. I hope that they continue the tradition in coming years with improvements. This walk has the potential to become a lovely experience to tourists and non-locals.

Getting back from the walk very late, we had just enough time to eat and fall asleep before waking up the next morning halfway through the opening keynote. We made our way to the second day of LP, but I didn't see many talks that day because I was busy preparing for my own presentation.

I saw some wondeful people at LP. I can't write about anyone without mentioning Richard Stallman, who hardly needs introduction. This was my first time meeting him in person, and he is just as pedantic and rude as the Internet makes him out to be. A lot of criticism against him comes from neurotypicals who are unaware of how to interact with neurodivergent people. I got to ask him a question during his Q&A and I even got him to sign a book for me. This will always be a cherished memory. I also saw someone who looked extremely similar to Frederick Brennan, but I wasn't 100% certain that it was him and I thought it would be impolite to ask, although he does now live with family on the East Coast, so it could well have been. I also saw Ian Kelling, the FSF sysadmin. He is originally from the West Coast and we have met before. It was wonderful and surprising to see his friendly face again, this far away from home.

My LP Talk

My talk at LibrePlanet was leagues better than my talk at LinuxFest. The issues with the venue from LFNW were not present at LP. The FSF provided laptops to do presentations on, which removed any room for issues with presenter equipment. I wasn't scheduled at the same time as a blockbuster, and they even put me in the big room on the massive stage, the same stage that the keynotes were given from. My only regret with the location is not specific to my talk. The elevator in the building where I was speaking was out, which made it impossible for some people (RMS, Hotwheels, and another person in a wheel chair at least).

I also improved on many of my mistakes from LFNW. I rehearsed twice as many times for my LP presentation as I did for my LFNW presentation. The title was more enticing. The subject matter was more interesting. I spoke slower and more clearly. I knew my slides like the back of my hand. However, I made some new mistakes. 35 minutes into my talk, I misread the time and thought that I was going over. I had a 45 minute talk and had planned to use the whole 45 minutes. Thinking that I was 45 minutes in to the presentation when I was actually 35 minutes into the presentation, I assumed that I must have been going to slow and sped up to compensate. As a result, I missed out on making a few points and saying a few things. Nevertheless, the presentation ended well (and on schedule) to applause from the crowd. My other mistake was with my hands. Instead of waving them around meaninglessly, I spent most of the talk fidgeting with my badge lanyard. I'm not sure which hand choice is worse, but the optimal hand choice will always be to use them to illustrate points.

Unfortuantely, immediately after my talk, the room monitor came up to tell me that there had been an issue with the recording. A 3 minute segment in the middle had been lost due to a disk error. This was fine, he said, as I was to go to the other room of the conference and re-record that segment. The three clips could be spliced together seamlessly in post-production. However, when I made it to the other room, I learned the sad truth. Only the last 15 minutes of my talk (incl questions) had been recorded. The whole front portion of my presentation was lost to time. This was devastating, but thankfully my girlfriend and my good friend in the audience were each independently recording the presentation. We shuffled these files around and eventually got everything turned over to the FSF. Hopefully they will be able to splice together something workable from all the segments.

If you have recordings of any talks from this most recent LibrePlanet, please send them to the FSF so that they can make the recordings available. I still have my slides and at least 1 full recording of the talk. Although the audio is poor, I believe that I can make something workable out of this recording if the FSF is unable to. I await their published version or additional word from them.

Homecoming

Leaving Boston, we did not travel straight home. Instead, we went North a ways to spend time with some old friends who were living in New England. They prepared for us delicious fresh lobster, let us hang out with their pets, and showed us around the area. We ate good food and saw beautiful sights. I got to see an absolutely massive library and eat something called "breakfast pizza", a genre of Italian food that I didn't previously know existed. Saying our goodbyes, we set off to return home via a slightly different route than we took to get there.

Niagara Falls

Our first stop on the way back was Niagara Falls. These falls are a specacular thing to see. Photos and videos don't do it justice. To truly experience it for yourself you have to stand there. We didn't get on a boat to get close to the falls due to time constraints, but we did get to go down to the Cave of the Winds and touch a neighboring waterfall. One thing that did strike me while standing there was that the best view of America's greatest waterfall is actually from the Canadian side of the river. I feel that there is some poignant metaphor here and I hope to be able to tease it out eventually.

In the town of Niagara Falls, we stopped at what looked like a run-down submarine sandwich shop, but the sandwiches were anything but run-down. Viola's Submarine Shop does amazing sandwiches quickly for an affordable price. If you are in the area, look past the exterior and pop in for a sub. It is well worth it. The sandwiches are made fresh and the filling is grilled right in front of you. The people behind the counter are friendly, although they are Italian and so it may be difficult to tell at first.

Columbus, OH

Columbus, OH was our next interim destination. We went to meet up with one of my girlfriend's old friends who had moved to the area. We went around the city a bit and got some ramen for dinner, then we found our way to a book store with 32 rooms. Libraries and book stores, as you maybe can tell, have a certain draw to me and my girlfriend. We walked around this one for a couple of hours, looking at books and catching up with an old friend. I even bought a couple of books, which is rare for me. Usually I just take pictures of books to download later on libgen.

That night, before going to bed, we went to the Field of Corn in Dublin. There were multiple purposes for this stop:

The next day we were still in Columbus and we were not going to let such an opportunity go to waste. I had never been to a Waffle House before, and had always wanted to go. Since there was one quite nearby where we had slept that night, we went for breakfast. The fame of the chain did not leave me disappointed. I wasn't expecting the best waffle that I had ever had in my life, but I was quite surprised by how good the food was, given that it is a 24/7 fast diner chain known for being run-down. After the Waffle House, we went to Columbus's historic North Market. This was a bit of a disappointment. It was just overpriced food vendors and one shop that sold AliExpress-sourced stickers and postcards. If you are in Columbus, the North Market is very skip-able, you won't be missing out on much.

Next, we went to the Wright Brothers Memorial in nearby Dayton. This placed us on top of a hill overlooking some historic locations in the development of flight. Although the location of the first flight was far away in Kitty Hawk, this location included a beautiful park and wonderful views. The building for the Interpretive Center, however, was unfortunately closed for the season. Departing this memorial, we made our way to our last stop in Ohio, the Honda Heritage Center. This was a real treat, since they are only open for 5 hours on Thursdays, and we just happened to be in the area during those 5 hours on a Thursday. I'm more of a Toyota fanboy myself, but I can certainly appreciate the engineering and cultural impact that Honda has had. They make cool cars and motorcycles and it is hard to live a life in the USA that has not been effected by Honda in one way or another. The Heritage Center was magnificent. The old vehicles preserved as museum pieces were all in immaculate condition and there were not glass walls preventing me from taking good pictures of them.

Columbus, IN

After Columbus, OH, we travelled to Columbus, IN. Or as I have recently started calling it, Columbus 2.0. Columbus 2.0 is a small town in the middle of nowhere in Indiana and it has some of the most beautiful architecture in the country. There are other places with nicely designed buildings, but they are not as densely nice. They are also much more populated than Columbus 2.0. Columbus, IN is where the headquarters of Cummins is. This the same Cummins that builds the high-reliability high-power motors that go into a great many trucks. The founder of Cummins is from Columbus, IN, and liked architecture so much that to this day the company still sponsors new architecture developments in the city. The man who designed the public library in this small town also designed The Louvre. We walked the streets of the city on a self-guided tour via their app for a couple of hours and appreciated a great many historic and beautiful buildings.

Columbus, IN is also home to a soda fountain museum. Soda fountains have fallen out of favor in modern America, but they were once a large part of public life. Being able to see so many soda fountain machines and read a bit about their history was fantastic and brought a smile to my face. I do wish that artisinal soda would become a bigger deal in America again. The PNW focus on microbrews leaves me (sober) out of the loop at many parties and events.

Columbus 2.0 also brought me a small surprise. A friendly man on the sidewalk, going in the opposite direction of us, handed me his business card, told me that he does stereo photogrophy, and then walked away. On the back of his business card was this YouTube link. I implore you, if you are reading this blog post, to open up the linked video and watch it from start to finish. This man is an absolute genius, although his presentation is a little bland. Previously responsible for making sure that nuclear bombs don't blow up on accident, he is now responsible for making sure that Cummins engines don't blow up on accident.

With beautiful architecture, interesting museums, and eccentric geniuses, Columbus 2.0 has much to offer. I wish that we could have spent more time there, but the schedule did not allow for it. We had to be off to our next destination, the largest truck stop in the world.

Iowa 80

Iowa 80, on Interstate 80 in Iowa, is the world's largest truckstop. It is home to a dentist, a chiropractor, a hairdresser, all of the trucking accessories that a big-rig driver could dream of, a music store, and every kind of trinket and doodad that you have ever seen at a gas station in your life and wondered "why would someone buy this?". It is truly an amazing feat of American consumerism mixed with our tendency to build massive infrastructure in the middle of nowhere.

Much more interesting than this truckstop, however, is the Iowa 80 trucking museum right next door. This is a museum that offers free entry and sports an aircraft hanger full of vintage and beautifully-restored trucks. In this building you can get the entire history of trucking from the humble beginnings of local deliveries to the modern day as the defacto primary method for moving goods over long distances. You will see the journey that consolidated many different historical trucking companies under shared umbrellas and you will get to see some beautiful pieces of artwork in the form of truck bodies. This place is a sight to behold and well worth a stop if you are passing through.

South Dakota, round 2

We got cockblocked by South Dakota the first time, but it would not happen again. Passing through the second time on the same road, but travelling in the other direction, we hit all the spots that we wanted to hit the first time. First off, we went to the Corn Palace and there was not a circus going on, so we got to stop in and appreicate the detailed history of corn palaces and the beautiful murals made entirely of corn. This lived up to the hype for sure. Up next was the Minuteman Missile Silo. While we didn't get to see any actual missiles, there was much educational material on nuclear armaments going from their inception to the present day. An important historic site for our nation, this was a cool stop. Leaving the missile site we went 0.5 miles down the road to a little place called Badlands Ranch Store, where we got up close and personal with prairie dogs and took many photographs. We did not touch them, however, because I had been informed that they carry the black death. I have now been informed that they don't actually do that and that touching them would have been fine.

Our last stop in South Dakota was the famous Wall Drug. If you are ever considering going, skip it. This is a tourist trap to end all tourist traps. There is nothing interesting there. The food is all bad and the entire joint is one big overpriced gift shop with dilapidated plastic attractions.

While we didn't stop for the natural ancient caves or the 1880 Town because we were in a bit of a rush to get home, these weren't huge draws for us in the first place.

Closing Thoughts

After leaving Wall Drug, we didn't stop except to sleep and eat until we made it all the way back home. I was getting homesick towards the end of the trip and it was with a sigh of relief that I finally got back to my own bed. I think that this duration of trip is the limit for what I can comfortably do in my car, and in the future if I ever present at LP I will seek to fly.

I am approaching a time of great changes in my life. At work, my IT director is retiring and we are replacing him. I hope that the new director will be just as wonderful to work for as my current one, but only time will tell for sure. It is possible that I will be on the job hunt sooner rather than later.

The reality that I have grown accustomed to over the last 3 years is being shaken. On Monday I have a very important appointment, and if it goes poorly then I may as well be dead. If it goes well, then we are so back. If this is my last post on this blog, thanks for tuning in. Put this on the Internet Archive or something before the VPS expires.

If I make it to the other side of springtime, I have much that I want to do. There are many seeds knocking around in my brain, waiting to grow in to new conference talks, new blogposts, new software projects, and new opportunities.

This page is being served digitally. For a physical copy, print it off

Dancing Baby Seal Of Approval Webserver Callout My Text Editor Bash Scripting 4 Lyfe yarg Blog RSS Feed