NJ Lan Party - Games DO Rock!

Ok, so the NJ Ubuntu LoCo was having their Lan/BBQ party in two separate locations; Cherry Hill and Butler, New Jersey; connected by a server setup in Butler.

Having the opportunity to attend for a few hours, I headed over.

I had no intention of playing any games. Rather, I thought I could pursue some technical stuff while there.

My feeling had always been, computers are for computing and game consoles are for gaming. That's it. Done.

I had played games when I was younger, and was very obsessed. Hours spent with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Mario Bros. Even took my photo with the Endgame screen and sent to Nintendo Power magazine! (Still trying to find the photo to scan as proof)

Well, upon my arrival, Randy, Dave, and Joe were already there, and game playing was the only thing on their minds. What the heck, I'll give it a shot. Urban Terror. It was a BLAST. I sucked.

Then, things started to change. The Quigley clan arrived; Bryan and his two brothers. After a brief setup period, the air in the room thickened. Joe became non-responsive, as all his attention and focus was dedicated solely to his laptop. It was on!! The Quig clan was running, jumping, shooting, and sniping; Joe was murdering me from all angles and distances. I sucked worse. Even Harding, who I had only credited with the powers of bash, sed, and awk was fragging the hell out of me. Shit, I was getting killed by a Teddy Bear.

Then we started to play different games modes. The bomb game. I was on the blue team, find and defuse the bomb. At some point, we switched sides; I was so focused on killing RED people that I didn't realize I WAS A RED PERSON. Dossy I am truly sorry that I shot you, my teammate. Repeatedly. Then came the knife fight. Someone called knife fight for the next number of rounds; by the time I figured out how to choose the knife as my weapon, everybody was back to guns. That was like 6 rounds.

Somewhere in all that Lyz and Matt arrived; but honestly the gaming was going too fiercely at that point to really acknowledge their arrival. Plus time was flying, and I had a limited opportunity to play, as I had to get home to help care for my Maltese recovering from knee surgery. Four hours gone in no time.

On the ride home, I connected to the server from the van so I could spectate. As soon as I arrived home, I re-setup, got on irc and tried to entice others to join. Bstempi joined, Bts was still at work. They switched to Armegatron for a bit, so I had to download that and play that also.

Then I put on the headphones. DOH! I could hear footsteps and gunshots and other things that would help me play the game. It didn't. I still sucked. But now I know that sucking does have a sound associated with it! It sounds like bleeding to death.

FOSS - open source - open mind - have fun - I had a BLAST! Thanks everyone.

PA UBUNTU LoCo EVENT

Just a blank event sign to use at events.

GET THE SIGN !

Gutsy Release / Halloween Party

Zac you suck. Ok, my friend, and client, and owner of Drake Tavern, Zac blew it big time. I should have gone over it one more time with him on Sunday as I know that he is more concerned with the culinary side of things, than the organizational; but geeze. We have been planning this for a month. Him and I directly. I even stopped in Friday afternoon to re-confirm how it was going to go. Dinner at 6:00 for 27 people, followed by party and such at 7:00 pm.

My biggest failure was not making sure he knew to alert his staff, because as a virtual community, some people would not know who was involved in the event. Most of us know each other, but the goal is to get new people involved.

We missed at least two people, and they missed us. I hope there weren't anymore. I deeply apologize. I really wanted to meet the Ubuntero guys and they were the ones we missed. DOH! No excuses.

But, even with all that, as usual, when we get together, for whatever reason, it turns out to be a great event. And we did get new people!!

NJ was there in full support; Joe, Christina, Dave, Bryan and his guest. As always, glad
you crossed the Delaware. Plug was in full force with Lyz, Matthew, Brian, and Alex.
The rowdy young crowd (you guys aren't rowdy). Oh, and Stitch. PACS was there with Me and my wife, Randy and Teddy, Norm, Rodney, Rich G, Kevin, Jaime, Zoie and Ben. A new PACS member stopped by and picked up a Gutsy disk but couldn't stay. MALT was in the house!! That was sweet. Nate, who we met at the LoCo's MALT CVG classroom was at the event. (I think he's hooked). There were the Crowleys; Jack, Molly, and Molly's boyfriend; another awesome catch. And there was another couple who I still don't know, other than the guy had difficulty with the KDE desktop and upgrading. (Funny the stuff we remember) Larry and Marilyn came to support Ubuntu. Larry is an OS/2 user. He recently took the plunge into Ubuntu and has been attending the NTR Monday Classrooms. Larry great to have your experience with the team!

Alex advocated to a regular bar patron. We got Randy's Dell Ubuntu laptop all upgraded and good to go after issues with his Nvidia card after the upgrade (Hmm, zero xorg config). Blame automatix.

Next event: Note to self: Hang the BANNER. Give Lyz fiber optic cable.

Now to what everyone really wants to see; the photos.

August is now FULL of EVENTS

Wow. I am involved with some very active groups. PACS, PA LoCo, and the NJ LoCo.

At PACS we are actively promoting the Software Freedom Day coming up Saturday September 15th. This is an important event for an organization that is at a crossroads. When it was started, in 1976, PACS was the only game in town, and reigned supreme as the place to be if you were into computers in the Philadelphia area. But things that don't change; die. Everything is always in motion and failure to recognize and react is the downfall of many organizations, businesses and relationships.

The PA Ubuntu LoCo is having our BBQ, August 11th, at Norristown Farm Park. This will be nice, to get together with the people that we are normally online with.
What's even better is that we can hang out without having to 'do' an event. My previous meetings with Alex and Lyz were so short. We were in the same place for a long time, but the event(s) took precedence and didn't really allow any time for social interaction. The BBQ will change that, the whole event is about us being social. Cool.
The MALT CVG LTSP Project is finally taking off. Kevin has worked his ass off. Spent months lobbying, trash picking the server and setting it up. I have provided moral support and been a cheerleader. I am happy to see all of his hard work payoff and now the actual project can begin.

And finally, the NJ Ubuntu LoCo is having their BBQ on August 11th also. Due to my commitments in PA I won't be able to attend, but will provide items for their event also. I will miss not being able to attend. I have only met some of the people, other then Joe and Christina, one time, at their Installfest. They were passionate and fascinating. Hell, I've only met Joe and Christina twice, but they feel like family. Joe is a surrogate PA LoCo guy and Christina is a Christian Brothers' Girl with PA roots.

Just wasted an hour and a half trying to promote SFD at the Hatboro Auto Show. Made 900 business card size announcements and planned on handing them out to the crowd. Didn't really work. Actually, didn't work at all. Wish I would have flyered the town before the show and just let the flyers do the work. Didn't have time to do it. Lost an opportunity. Saw some nice cars though!

Gave out 10 announcements to Geek Boy Press, an artist with a shop (gallery) in Hatboro. Anime/Cartoon Type characters.

890 announcements and 60 flyers left to post. Emails to send out to all the local colleges, radio, tv and cable outlets. I will do a little promotion each day until Sept 15th. Slow and steady wins the race.

I do wish some people would help with promotion, get out to Mom and Pop computer stores, post flyers, send some emails. Thanks Randy, keep up the flyering!

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.

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.

PACS meeting SUCCESS

Wow! What a fabulous event. I was nervous and excited Friday night as I burnt more cd's. Do we need more ppc, are we going to have enough 7.04 386 live cd's; my mind was racing. The crowd is older, would they be open enough to even consider a different os? Is the G3 going to work as well out in public as it did in my living room. Have to get some sleep, the security sig (my favorite) starts at 8:00 am. HAVE to leave the house early enough to stop at WAWA for caffeine and nicotine. Woke up at 4:00 am, too early, get more sleep. Up again at 6:00; OK lets go. Oh no, the burn on my finger is getting worse; it may be infected; too bad, this is the event of a lifetime. Triple antibiotic cream, gauze, tape it up and start to load the Yoda Van. WAWA, caffeine; thank God (Yoda). Ok fire up Xchat, nobody is talking, maybe they're still sleeping. Pleia2 - writes - YEAH someone is awake. Lamalex awakes, yes the team is coming together. I arrive at PACS. It is 7:50 am, finish coffee, have a cigarette, grab some fliers, tape and scissors, let's go.
Nobody's here. Ok 4 people. WTF. Ok take this opportunity to get some fliers out. Finish with the security sig at 10:00 am. The security sig was very good today, good job Ben. Back to the van to get the G3.
Start the setup in the cafe. The G3 won't boot. WTF^2. Ok relax - set up the ubu iBook and the Toshiba with the faux Satanic Ubu. Reboot the G3, nothing. Check all connections, everything's plugged in; what gives. Reboot while screwing in monitor cable - ahh - the monitor tube - crackles on - G3 boots as it had the previous 2 times except this time the monitor was connected properly. DUH!.
People are around the table and interested! Start the sales pitch. Adrenaline, caffeine, nicotine, and an audience - ecstasy. Joe Terranova arrives with his girlfriend, loaded with pamphlets, cd's, tee-shirts (temporarily) and an Ubuntu BANNER. Sets up on another table. Lamalex arrives, followed closely by Lyz.
I've only met Alex once before and had never met Lyz, but through the Loco interaction it was as if I had known them for awhile. Virtual community is community.
I am very high voltage. I believe Kevin once identified it as spazzy. I am a salesman. I love human interaction, and to connect to people and grab their attention. I am very passionate about all of my endeavours. It's 5 of 12, almost time for the presentation. Kevin arrives; like a ninja, behind us calmly eating lunch. Kevin gets to play with the g3 during the presentation; I think he likes it.
Alex and Lyz setup a table right outside the presentation auditorium and wait to grab people as they leave the auditorium. The presentation's over and the crowd flows right to Alex and Lyz's table and start to DEVOUR the cd's -pamphlets- ubuntu women fliers (mostly men today, who knows). The demo table is next stop, where Kevin, Ben, Randy (pacs member),Rich (Pacs Linux Leader) and Norm (pacs member) help to show off the ubuntu family of products and register people for the installfest. WOW, what an EVENT!
I was talking to Chris, pacs board member, and long time pacs member, and he said HE "HAD NEVER SEEN A PRESENTATION CREATE SUCH A BUZZ".

Great job everyone. I feel part of something that is really special.