Posted by Scott Laird Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:21:00 GMT
I just arrived in Portland for OSCON. I’ll be wandering around most of the week, but if anyone really wants to flag me down, either send me mail at scott@sigkill.org, or drop by the Google booth either Wednesday or Thursday morning.
Posted by Scott Laird Fri, 21 Jul 2006 23:49:27 GMT
I’m headed for OSCON in Portland next week, along with about half of my blogroll. I’m heading down to Portland on Sunday via Amtrak’s afternoon run; if anyone else is taking the same train, feel free to stop by and say hi. I’ll be the guy in business class editing Ruby code with TextMate on a 17” PowerBook.
Monday and Tuesday are tutorial days at OSCON; I’m going to be sitting in on Amy’s Javascript tutorial on Monday morning, followed by tutorials on Linux drivers, Haskell, and web testing.
The rest of my schedule is still in flux. Here’s the bits that are nailed down:
Leave a comment if there are any talks that I really shouldn’t miss.
Posted by Scott Laird Wed, 17 May 2006 18:35:38 GMT
I’m signed up for two conferences this summer–Gnomedex in Seattle in late June, and OSCON in Portland in late July.
I’m looking forward to both conferences. I’ve never been to Gnomedex before, but I’ve been kicking myself for missing the past two years, and decided months ago that I wouldn’t miss this year’s conference. Besides, I owe Chris for buying me dinner last summer, so the least I can do is attend his conference.
OSCON is another conference that I’ve never quite managed to attend. I drove down for ”FOSCON” last year, when the Portland Ruby Group had most of the OSCON Ruby speakers give their talks for free. I had a really good time, but I couldn’t afford to take the week off and attend the real OSCON conference. Fortunately, Google is going to have a big presence there, so I get to spend a week at the conference in exchange for spending a bit of time pretending to be a recruiter. Feel free to ask me about working for Google :-).
I have one question for readers who have been to OSCON before–it is worth staying in the official conference hotel, the Doubletree in Lloyd Center? Unfortunately, the Doubletree isn’t actually all that close to the conference center, and I’d hate to spend a lot of time commuting back and forth between the hotel and the convention center. For FOSCON last year, I stayed at the Jupiter Hotel which was really cool. I’ve also stayed at the Red Lion a block or so from the convention center. The Jupiter and Red Lion are both closer to the conference, and the Jupiter is just cooler. The big thing about conferences is that the conference sessions themselves aren’t really all that important–everything interesting really happens in the hallways and afterhours during BoFs. So, does anything actually happen at the Hotel during OSCON, or is everything at the convention center?
Posted by Scott Laird Fri, 07 Oct 2005 23:46:11 GMT
I made it home from Portland on Wednesday, but lost another day trying to catch up with the work the piled up while I was away from home. All in all, I’m reasonably happy with Amtrak’s Seattle-to-Portland line (“Amtrak Cascades”)–they were 15 minutes late on the southbound leg and 45 minutes late on the northbound leg, but that’s not any worse then I’d expect if I was driving. It’s a bit more expensive then paying for gas, but I get 3 or 4 hours of my life back; all in all it seems like a fair deal. Their business-class seats even come with power outlets.
So, I’ll probably stick with the train the next time I need to head to Portland.
Posted by Scott Laird Tue, 04 Oct 2005 12:19:50 GMT
I’m going to be traveling to Portland today to meet with some potential clients. While I’m at it, I’m planning on dropping on on tonight’s PDX.rb meeting.
I’m going to be taking the train; it’s only slightly more expensive then paying for gas, and hopefully I’ll be able to get a few hours worth of work done while traveling. My wife has had really bad luck with Amtrak in the past, but hopefully their Seattle-to-Portand run will be more reliable then their longer-distance trains. It’ll be strange being in Portland without a car, though–I’m using to driving everywhere and then fighting with parking. We’ll see how this goes.
Posted by Scott Laird Tue, 02 Aug 2005 19:00:43 GMT
Work isn’t paying for OSCON this year, but one advantage of living in Seattle is that it’s close enough to Portland to be able to drive down for the day. So, I’m going to head down Wednesday afternoon for the Portland Ruby group’s FOSCON talks, and then hang around for a few hours Thursday morning before driving back for work.
It looks like several of the Ruby people with OSCON talks will be giving their talks for FOSCON as well, so it should be interesting. I suspect it’ll turn into a big Ruby BoF; that’s reason enough to drive down.
Posted by Scott Laird Mon, 13 Sep 2004 18:06:46 GMT
My in-laws offered to watch the children for the weekend, so Cynthia and I were able to spend Friday and Saturday nights in Portland. It was nice to have a break. We haven’t spent any time in Portland in almost two years, and we were surprised how much things have changed. The area around Powells has really been built up recently, with a bunch of upscale chain stores and restaurants, and (more importantly) lots of parking. Since Powells has always been cursed with a lack of parking (and a lack of space in general), the changes in the neighborhood definitely count as an improvement to me. Even if they *do* include a P.F. Changs.
We made it out of Powells this time for $100, possibly our cheapest trip ever. If you’ve been there, then you’ll know what I mean.
I’m currently reading a copy of Altered Carbon that I picked up at Powells. It’s going well so far, but I’m not convinced that it’ll make it through to the end.
Read more...