18:55 [homenode] -!- Kinnison [n=dsilvers@spoo.flarn.net] has left #canonical []

…if he was here right now?

I have now been home from the Mataró conference for just over a day. I had quite a whirlwind two weeks of hard work. I remain in awe of the people who do this sort of level of work for two weeks before the conference also. I really enjoyed myself both on a professional and a personal level. It is a wonderful thing to be friends with your colleagues; and to have so many interesting and dedicated people turning up simply to be part of what we are creating is a very heartening feeling.

I introduced a few more people to Mao and look forward to playing some more games with them at the next conference. Special hello shouts go out to Corey Burger who is doing some wonderful stuff with the Ubuntu documentation team and the quickguide which my father will find very useful; also shouts to the entire distro team and especially to the community builders. Lulu, we’ll miss you.

I spent yesterday vegging out in front of the telly; enjoying immensely our new DVD/CD player with it sounding even more lovely now than when we got it three weeks ago.

Donnie Darko is an exceedingly odd and wonderfully shot and scored film. The Butterfly Effect is also an odd film which benefits over Donnie Darko by having a somewhat easier to follow plotline but which doesn’t have quite the remarkably immersive acting and atmosphere. Both together provided a very entertaining afternoon/evening.

I’ll be off and incommunicado from tomorrow until a little after christmas as I spend time with Rob and his mother in a small cottage in Scotland.

…watching angels celebrating.

At 00:04 today I broke Pepperfish and had to make a trip to London to fix it. I’d like to thank the staff at telehouse for being incredibly friendly to a scowling geek who rolled up at 02:00 to (as it turned out) push a power-button on a 1U server and wait for it to come up properly.

I got home at 04:30 and slept poorly until 08:00 when I gave up and lay there until a bit past 09:00. I hate doing this because I have to jack-up on caffeine in order to drive home without being asleep and then I can’t sleep when i get home. Suckage.

…I’m insatiable.

I’m now two and half weeks into my new job and I felt I ought to let you all know how I’m doing. I’m pleased to say that the horrors I had been warned about wrt. working with friends have not been borne out. However the ones related to working from home are ringing a little true.

I need to learn to control my distraction level a little more so that I can work a more normally lengthed day and get everything done. I have been working until I have my work done rather than until a certain time; and I’m getting better at achieving my goals within a sensible timeframe. When I started I was doing 09:30 -> 23:30 on average. Now I seem to be doing about 09:30 -> 18:30 which is much better.

I’m very pleased that the interest-level and challenge-level present in my job are high. I also like the fact that I now have a boss I feel I can argue with (even if I tend to lose) which is a refreshing change. My concerns about my personal time and Debian are manifest however. It’s not that I don’t have time; for I could surely make the time; it’s that I don’t have the mental energy left by the time I’ve given my all to my work.

I’ve promised jvw that I’ll do my best to do some Debian stuff this weekend. I hope I can keep that promise. Also today I head to wales to help my parents install Ubuntu on their desktop. I’m very much looking forward to finally ousting Win2K from their house :-)

…there’s a thought now you decide

Today marks the first release of Ubuntu Linux. The Warty Warthog is the culmination of a lot of hard work by a very dedicated team which I feel proud to be associated with. I’d like to thank them all for the work they’ve put into producing a linux distribution which I am finally prepared to let me parents loose on. Expect an entry here in a few days to let you all know how it went.

In other news; WinXP sucks. That is all.

(Perhaps I should justify that. It manages to unceremoniously reboot the system when playing games)

… 9! I F E10 M L…

Chatting about life, food and music with new colleagues today was a nice way to slip into the life I am about to live. I’m in London this week trying to get into the Canonical work ethic.

Several people have been expressing concern that I will effectively be working with my friends and while I can’t see it being a direct problem for me (I’ve always been friends with my colleagues as it were) I am expecting the shift to be quite painful in the first few days.

My only hope is that the people I will be working with will work to make my transition as easy as it can be by humouring me as I try and move myself up about nine gears.

Well, not quite an era but today marks my last day working for MIPS as an ‘engineer’. Tomorrow I will do my second bout of unpaid work for Canonical Ltd and on Sunday I’m travelling to London ready to start on Monday for my first week as a Canonical contractor.

I won’t say I’m not scared because I am; but I know I’ll be working with some of the most dedicated and hard-working people I can think of. Also; maybe; just-maybe; I’ll finally get to be “under” keybuk :-)