JEDIJF

Sunday, June 24, 2007

LoCo - PACS - PacsLinux - All Coming Together

Wow. I have been busy. Posting flyers to help the NJ Ubuntu LoCo with their upcoming INSTALLFEST, Saturday June 30 at the Cherry Hill Library.

http://nj.ubuntu-us.org/node/5

Flyers are posted, but still need to post more this week, hopefully will get to Rutgers - Camden, and some locations in Marlton and Haddonfield.

Trying to get a speaker for the PACS meeting September 15, 2007. Working with the new and former president has been very productive so far. Ronn Homer, son of one of my talk radio heroes, Evil Irv Homer, is the PACS president for the upcoming year. Ronn is dedicated and wants to promote and try to revitalize the organization which has lost some membership recently.

Thanks to Joe Terranova, Kevin, Lyz, Alex, and the whole PacsLinux gang, and the recent presentation, PACS is very interested in working with the Ubuntu-Pennsylvania LoCo on a full-time basis. Hopefully, in the Monday night IRC chat, PacsLinux will approve David Harding as a potential speaker for the Software Freedom Day event, Saturday September 15, 2007.

Ronn has given me the go ahead to book the speaker for the PACS event for SFD, but since I brought it up to the group first, I think a consensus is the right way to go. Someone else may have found a speaker also.

I have been a voyeur of David's stuff for awhile now. I enjoy the CHLUG mailing list immensely. Dave is very active in the mailing list and CHLUG, and the recaps of their meetings and presentations are great. I just wish that they weren't so late on Friday night. I am actually content with the recaps after the fact. I really don't have a choice, actually I do have a choice, but I don't want a divorce, so I will continue to be a voyeur.

And to add to all of this, The Ubuntu Community Council finally set a date for their next meeting. I had been waiting for this date to support Joe Terranova, who added himself to the agenda for membership.

+1 Terranova

And now the Ubuntu-Pennsylvania LoCo is up for approval on the same date.

Tuesday June 26 at 9:00 am til about 11:00 am is going to be insane.

That's what I have been doing, and looks like I will continue to do.

1) NJ installfest (Last week to promote)

2) PACS Software Freedom Day -
a) Speaker
b) Promotion (More Flyers)
c) Mailing Lists - ntr - malt - have to tap kev as a resource

3) Pacs Linux Software Freedom Day - Demos

4) Offensive Security 101 - Great Course

5) Malt + CVG Project(s) - thank god, a two week reprieve for construction.

Gotta go, I am already behind in my projects.



Thursday, June 7, 2007

Welcome All New Ubunteros!

Welcome to the Ubuntu Community to all of the people who allowed us to install Ubuntu on their computers.

    Please take the time to review all the resources available here :
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PennsylvaniaTeam/Resources
    We need your support. If you feel this have been beneficial to you :

    1) Join the LoCo
    2) Get Involved
    3) Tell friends and family about Ubuntu and the community.

A big thanks to everyone at NTR for all their help and for allowing us to use their establishment for this event.

A big thanks to all the volunteers who came out and freely gave their time to make this event a success.

Thank you to all of the LoCo members who could not attend, but whose work leading up to the event made it possible to achieve the results we achieved.

More...


  • Sunday, June 3, 2007

    Amazing Installfest

    First of all, I would like to thank NTR. Without Stan and the whole crew at NTR the installfest would not have been the great success that it was. Thanks Stan, Chuck, James, Marcel, and the thrift store lady.

    It's 7:30 am the Yoda Van is loaded and ready to go. Time to go to Wawa and Dunkin' Donuts and grab the cream cheese and coffee. Fire up irc chat - bam - Lyz must have been waiting for someone to arise - Lyz explains that she would not be able to attend. Bummer. Totally understand. All the preparation that Lyz performed was vital to the success of the event, it is truly a shame that she could not attend. I hope that all the blogs, mailing list, forum entries, and hopefully photos, give her and everyone who could not attend a glimpse of what they missed.

    Grab Randy (aka Teddy D Bear) and Teddy and head down Broad st. Alex and Gabby arrive, followed by Stan and Kevin. Its ON.

    James, one of the NTR employees that I had met on a previous visit arrives. He's excited. After 120 hours of work all NTR employees get a computer. When I had met James, he had just purchased a Red Hat Administration guide because of previous talks with Kevin, and looked forward to attending the installfest to watch. Well today Stan would be giving James his computer; a g4 Power Mac. He was truly excited.

    Stan opens up the workshop and the preparation begins; the only thing that we really had to do was setup the greeting table (great job Gabby and Alex) and verify that all the tables had a working network connection. Everything was perfect - 10 tables setup. It seems that as soon as we were setup, people started to arrive.

    (Please forgive me with the names, I remember faces and computers and setups, and there was a point in the day when; bam; there were people everywhere coming from all directions. As I try to recreate the goings on, I apologize if I miss you, your computer, or the setup)

    Owen was the first arrival I remember. He heard about us via PACS and came on down. He didn't bring his computer. No problem, he lives in NE Philly and thankfully had enough time to go home, get the box and return.

    Musa arrives with his uncle. Musa has two laptops, his and his fathers. I begin to work with Musa, as kevin takes his uncle. His uncle has a legacy laptop (very similar to an Acernote that I had) and kevin goes to work with a puppy install. This was a tricky install, no cd, pop the hard drive, put it in a desktop with a 2.5 to 3.5 converter and install os. Pop out and put the hard drive back in the laptop and pray. Sometimes it just doesn't work, but the uncle was cool with it and checked out the NTR laptops and was going to get one of those as soon as possible.

    Rich G shows up with his linux box that has a sound problem and Randy gets to work on that.

    Dave from PACS shows up with a laptop and Alex goes to work.

    Ben shows up after the SAT's followed closely by Chris F. The troops have arrived. Another gentleman shows to help - don't know him at all but he was great.

    I am about to finish with Musa's install and he's on the cell phone telling his wife to bring down the desktop and call people and tell them to bring their boxes. WOW.

    Marcel, one of the NTR employees, comes in with a box. Young kid, very interested, so we start on his install. Smart kid, young and interested. He basically does his own install; Ubuntu is a little too overwhelming for his box, so I switch him to Xubu and he does his own. Install completes, and he spends the rest of the day theme-ing up his install, setting it up the way he wants, and helping me with installs. We created an Ubuntero!

    Joe T and Christina arrive and get busy helping.

    I see a bunch of people I recognize, the 2 mac brothers, and the beryl concrete driver with the disco HP from PACS. A lady from MALT ( I think) and Owen returns with a HUGE desktop (got enough room for expansion, Owen?)

    Musa's wife arrives with the desktop. She has a Mary Kay cosmetic business, so I get her setup and show her that Ubuntu has all the software that she needs to run, manage and promote her business. She calls her sister-in-law and another friend and tells them to get down here. Her nephew Christian is with her and I tell him that when his mother and friend arrive that he's going to do those installs. He's ready for the challenge! Nice family. Their daughter was there all day and was amazingly well behaved.

    Chuck from NTR gets a chance for him and Randy to start the external drive install and James comes in with his MAC.

    While James is patiently waiting for someone to get started on his Mac, Stan gives him a desktop and a laptop to install Ubuntu on. James successfully completes the desktop, but can't get the cd to read on the laptop. Good job James.

    There is a guy, I don't know him, who installed on his laptop, and then on a new drive on a desktop. All by himself, just wanted to do it at the installfest in case he had any problems. Good job that guy, way to go; glad we could be your security blanket.

    Terri, Wes, and the young man (Michael, I think; decaf coffee drinker) from Malt arrive and Kevin and Alex start to assist them.

    Now Joe Mac aka Joe Terranova, starts to perform the install on James' G4. During this time I see Kevin and Joe muttering something about Jobs and Woz, and their hardware platform. What year is it? What time is it. Sudo. Sudo who.
    PPC, not for the feint-hearted. Joe Mac summoned all the lessons from his previous Tang Soo Do training and eventually beat the Mac. Kamsahamnida!

    Christina goes from Ubu brown to Prince purple.

    Tom the construction guy from the northeast who saw Kevin's flyer that I posted on Cottman ave at the former Coffee Tree Rest shows up. I had been wondering who took the tabs off that flier, if they registered, etc. Everyday on the way to work I pass and watch that flier. Saw tabs missing, and actually got to meet the guy who grabbed a tab.

    Vinay and his wife, the linux wife, come down from Downingtown. He is instructed by his wife to have linux installed on the Dell laptop. (good woman)
    Ben immediately starts to attack the machine.

    Rich S, Pacslinux sig leader, shows up looking for help with one of his boxes, and Chuck from Ntr starts to help Rich.

    Now to the parking lot, to release a few of the attendees. The parking lot is crammed, Musa's family is back to pickup their pc's, and people have to leave.

    Tom the construction worker is being done by the guy that I still don't know, and Ben has to go to plans b,c,d,e on the dell. The Dell proved to be a problem, and Ben had to leave. Ben passed the Dell to me. Too late in the day to struggle with a problem PC, asked Vinay to bring the dell to PACS and I will finish what we started.

    Clean up and go.

    Big thanks to Stan's wife for letting him play with us so late, and I hope we didn't mess up your date night.

    What an event! I hope that if you could not attend, this little play by play, as I can remember it, helps you get a feeling for the day we had.

    Bad Week - Bad Sign

    The week leading up to the installfest couldn't be more screwed up!

    Monday HOLIDAY - Tuesday 2 days worth of work to get caught up on, actaully 3 days if you include Saturday's work. One of my key people on vacation all week. Tuesday follow up appt with hand surgeon. Thursday another employee off for jury duty. Friday have to take my wife to montco for a test all morning.
    Phillies game Friday night.

    And to make it even worse, my security blanket, the Yoda Van, started to act up.

    My 1995 Dodge conversion van - my mobile office - laptop -printer - copier - wireless internet (cingular aircard 860 w/ external antenna) and all the peripherals you could ever need - routers - cables - wireless cards - ethernet cards - usb wireless adapters - extension cords - basically a WORKSHOP on WHEELS was giving me grief.

    The transmission was slipping. Timing couldn't be worse. But in the end, the guys at A+ transmission (Keith) came through and got the tranny done in 2 days.

    A good sign - the Yoda Van will be ready for Saturday.

    I sell bread - never baked a loaf in my life. I have people that do that for me. Very good people. Well this time I needed them to come through for ME. I wanted to bring an Italian Ring Loaf modified into the Ubuntu logo. I went to the Master Baker, Ronald, and gave him the logo, and told him exactly what I wanted. Checked on the status of the bread on Thursday. Ronald said he couldn't do it. NOT ACCEPTABLE. This was for me. I basically told him that he HAD to get it done, and that I was counting on him. In the end, Ronald earned his title of Master Baker, and came through with an excellent bread rendition of the logo. Thanks Ron.

    Friday afternoon irc chat message, or was it the mailing list, can't remember - did any one print the disclaimers? Thankfully I was in the office - bang out 60 copies.

    Home from the phillies game (they suck) check the irc-forums-mailing list : Resource pages - Bang out 50 copies. That's it lights out. Installfest tomorrow.