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Ubuntu Maryland Summer 08

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Lots of things are on the agenda for the Ubuntu Maryland team this summer and into the fall.

The first up will be our field trip to the NSA Crypto Museum & GnuPG keysigning on August 2nd and the events leading up to that. It starts with the July 9th meeting of the Columbia Area Linux Users group. There will be a presentation on the basic usage of GnuPG. This is a program used for encrypting your personal files and email. Following the main presentation I will be giving a short talk on how the keysigning event will work and what you will need to bring with you. The following week on July 17th the Ubuntu Maryland LoCo team meeting will be open to the CALug members and anyone else to bring their laptops and/or questions about GnuPG for a hands on help session. Then it will be the field trip itself about two weeks later!

Next up will be working with Celeste Lyn Paul on doing a usability study around Kubuntu. Currently she is working up the details of what will be tested. The job of the LoCo will be to coerce bring family and/or friends in to sit down and be observed. We have a target date of July 19th for this but are still awaiting confirmation of the space to run this at.

August 9th will lead us to our participation on the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam. We will be meeting up at 9am at the Loyola College Center for Community Informatics in Columbia, MD. To take full advantage of the day people will need to bring their laptops (or PCs if you want to go to that trouble). More details of the day will be coming on the wiki.

Then finally on the agenda is Software Freedom Day on September 20th. This is still a while off but we are in beginning talks about what will be happening. The idea right now is to have at least two rooms going. The first will be for demo machines and general social gathering. A place to hang out and talk and enjoy the day with friends. The other will be presentations on various aspects of Software freedom. From the ideals to the implementations in various software projects.

So things are going to be a bit busy with the team over the next few months. This is a good thing!

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Ubuntu Maryland Install Fest Update

Saturday, March 15, 2008

It was pointed out to me recently by Celeste that no one had done a write up on our recent install fest. The reason for that I think was the low turnout of those wanting to get Ubuntu installed on their systems. Kind of a downer.

It’s always tough to spend time and energy getting an event like this together then have a small turnout. The time spent developing fliers. Taking those to shops and libraries in the area with gas prices being what they are and the time it take to ask for space to put them up. Finding sites to post the information on wondering if anyone will read and act on it. Then the day comes and you get up bright and early. Pack the car with the gear and make the trek in. An hour to set up and then over the next six hours you have three people show up.

For some it would lead to the question of ‘Why bother?’

Then I get an email from one of the gentlemen* who dropped in. It was simple and read:

Enjoyed the event. I had Ubuntu put onto a flash drive, and I can boot from it (given a computer new enough to boot from usb flash – I am learning alot about that). Thanks, and looking forward to the next event.

That got me thinking. We had three people come in to have Ubuntu installed on their systems. The first was a home user who had come across our website. He wanted to see what Linux could do for one of his old PCs. Then we had [The Other] Chuck from the local LUG. Recently he’s become interested in giving back to the community through his knowledge of computers. He took time to collect up some older hardware and spend a few hours of his Saturday installing Ubuntu on them. He’s going to take those five machines and either give them to a charity that can use them or sell them inexpensively and donate the profits to (I think it will be) Hackers for Charities. Then we have the gentleman who came in and had a flash drive Ubuntuized. Now he can try this wonderful system out and show it to friends easily.

I think at the end of the day all the volunteers can say we had a great time. We got to hang out and chat with friends. Discuss various technologies and geek out a bit. All of us with common interests. Marco Figueiredo dropped in with his daughter to discuss some of what our host, Loyola College Center for Community Informatics, was doing and researching. All great stuff to hear and start to conceptualize what can be done with free software to help people.

So even though we didn’t do a whole lot of installing we did quite a bit. Two new Ubuntu users, one person who we’ve helped with a charity project, learned a little about what’s being done with Free Software to help people around the world learn and enhance their lives and we had a good time together. I’m looking forward to seeing what we do next time!

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Things Are Happening

Thursday, February 28, 2008

It’s been a busy few weeks.

I guess the best place to start is with Inara. Our little shnoodle is now happily walking on a leash. Peg got her a little back pack to wear while out for walks. We put in treats and a little weight so she can feel it there. And as she’s cleaned up after the plastic bag goes in the backpack. Since she’s been using that she’s excited to go for a walk. She walks as tall as she can with her little frame. Her tail is up and she’s active and curious on the walks. It’s great to see.

Right now, Inara is trying to figure out how to get to the jerky that’s sitting on the arm of the sofa. She either has to go over me or come around me on the floor and jump up next to me with little room to spare. She’s pawing on my forearm as try to type. I’m wondering if she’ll make a choice one way or the other, or give up altogether.

A couple weeks ago I went to ShmooCon for the first time. Of course it was on Valentine’s weekend that it was going on. Valentine’s day I spent there helping to get the lab set up. As many of these things go it was much activity getting things set to go, without much happening for technical and environmental reasons.

I came home and Peg and I exchanged gifts. I gave her a card and she gave me her purple M&Ms with a personal note on them. We then had dinner in and a nice evening together.

Then I spent the next three days at ShmooCon talking with people and sitting in on some great talks. I also found several talks that were less than inspiring. Overall it was a lot of fun even though it was a working event and I learned quite a bit. The lab guys were great to work with and very helpful. We got an impressive amount data from monitoring the network that’s being blogged about by Ron Gula.

A few of us in the CALug have gotten together to figure out a way to give back a bit. This has led us to meeting with J0hnny Long from Hackers for Charity. During our lunch the other day we flushed out a few ideas we had on how we can help with his project. Johnny mentioned that he was getting some computers donated from a company and he was going to turn them around and give them to a charity in Baltimore. This had me perk up and volunteer the Ubutnu Maryland Logo Team to do the install of Ubuntu on the machines for him. I figured we had the experience of doing install fests and the methodology down for that. We’ll see what happens with that once he gets more details on the donations.

Then Wednesday night the MD Ubuntu team had a meeting out in Frederick. A group of about 15 of us met at TGIFriday’s for dinner and talk. There were quite a few new faces and several from the Columbia area came out to support the effort. I was impressed with the turnout of the Frederick crew. There was a lot of interest in starting a team meeting out there. So we discussed a few things off the cuff and got some good ideas together. More details will be coming out in the next week or so.

Another topic there was IRC chats for the team. We decided to move it back to an 8pm start time and limit the chat ‘officially’ to an hour. With it being IRC, we can run over if needed. Up until now, we’ve been having the chat in the #ubuntu-us-md room on Freenode. It was suggested that we use #ubuntu-meeting to get a little higher profile for our IRC meetings. We’ll look into that now that we’re an official team.

So the next major event we have going with the MD team is the March 8th Ubuntu Install Fest in Columbia so come out and join us if you want help installing Ubuntu to your PC or laptop. We’ll also be doing GPG key signings for those interested in that.

Most importantly thanks to Peg for putting up with my extra circular activities and extra work time that I’ve put in that has kept me out of the house more lately than normal. I’m lucky to have you around!

Well it’s now late so I’ll post more another time. Inara has given up on the jerky. Maybe next time she’ll get it.

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Maryland Team Is Approved!

Thursday, February 21, 2008

On the eve of our first birthday, the Ubuntu Maryland Local Community Team has been approved! We are now officially recognized by the Ubuntu Project.

What does this mean? We are now able to get more marketing resources for the team from Canonical. We can now say that the greater community has seen the progress we’ve made and is encouraging us to continue.

So on Saturday March 8th we’ll be celebrating at our next Ubuntu install fest. It’ll be at the Loyola College Center for Community Informatics in Columbia, MD. We will be there performing installs of Ubuntu and discussing Free Software and computer stuff in general.

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Inara's First Birthday!

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Well yesterday we celebrated Inara’s first birthday! The really cool thing is that she’s now walking on a leash and enjoying it to some degree. We were able to walk with her on a leash up to Bark! and do a little shopping there. Peg got her a little biscuit cupcake to celebrate with.

Peg took a few videos with her phone. I haven’t worked out how to link them in my post here without messing up my entire blog page. I’ve just uploaded the videos to Youtube and now cannot get to the site. Inara checks out her cake then she gets her cake!

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Sinking Funds And Envelope Budgeting

Sunday, January 27, 2008

So this evening I was browsing around the web. I was searching out some blogs and sites about debt reduction. While I am committed to the Dave Ramsey plan at this time, I like to read alternatives just to make sure that I’m not missing some detail. Also I enjoy seeing the progress of others and get ideas to move my situation forward.

One of the core principles of getting out of debt is getting a handle on your money. This includes budgeting and sinking funds. A classic way to do these tasks is by using envelope budgeting for spending and saving. I maintain an ING account for my emergency fund and sinking funds. I don’t like to keep too many individual accounts going. I don’t want to transfer money from one to another and add that level of maintenance to the plan. After all, it’s so simply laid out why over complicate the thing? So I worked out a series of tags within MoneyDance to keep track of what portion of the account is what.

Tonight I came across the It’s Your Money blog. There is a spreadsheet there for envelope budgeting. I’ve seen similar items before but nothing that was either free or worked the way that I wanted it to. This sheet is different and I think it will hit the spot. It does not tie in directly to my finance software which is a slight negative. Yet the way it works that will not hinder me.

The sheet allows for up to 25 ‘envelopes’ per account. You enter the names of the categories and fill in the total for that category. Then as you spend down the money you remove the funds from the appropriate category. The balance total remains consistent with what is in that particular account but you can see exactly what remains in each category within the master account.

The sheet can be duplicated within the same file to maintain different master accounts. So the spending money account can be on one tab and sinking fund account in another. So it’s just one more file to maintain and work in. I can’t wait to see how this works over the long haul.

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Ubuntu Install Fest March 8th

Sunday, January 27, 2008

We can now announce that our next Ubuntu Maryland Install Fest will be on March 8th and hosted by the Loyola College Center for Community Informatics in Columbia, MD. The event will run from 10-2:30.

More details will be following.

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$25K In Change Buys Truck

Sunday, January 6, 2008

So I came across an article the other day. A 71 year old man in Indiana paid for a new truck with cash. Not simply cash, but loose change gathered over the years. This as the the third vehicle he paid for with loose change in thirteen years.

Over at The Consumerist where I first found the story, many of the comments focus on the fact that by saving his coins he lost out on interest over the years. So what if he didn’t ‘maximize the potential of his funds’. It seems to me that the important bit in the article is the fact that he saved for this purchase with loose change. Not with any big plan of action. Not worrying about the couple of thousand dollars he would have made in interest over the years.

Just a little savings every day. A simple habit that pays off in the long run.

Think about this the next time you see a penny on the ground.

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2008 Stuff

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Another year arrives!

So this is the typical ‘what to do with the year’ letter. I’ve been giving this some thought and here’s what I’m thinking, in no particular order with the exception of the first item.

I want to continue to grow the fantastic relationship that I have with Peg. She and I are so great together that no matter what else happens, I want the year to end with us together and as strong or stronger (if possible) than we are now.

The next would be to continue the bonds with family and friends.

If nothing serious happens between now and the end of the year, I should be debt free. I’ve been following the Dave Ramsey plan for a little while now and am really seeing some great steady progress moving forward. Doing some light number crunching shows that at an aggressive pace I should have everything paid off by the end of December 2008. While that date is realistic and the target, my goal date is March 2009. After all, who has a perfect year?

On the Ubuntu advocacy front I have a few ideas. I want to have semi-regular dining out experiences. I think that our Gutsy release party went really well. I want to see us do four more presentations before the end of the year and a community service project of some sort. I have some thoughts on tutorials to do between regular team meetings. Install fests will continue this year with the first one being discussed now. We will hopefully be approved by the 1st anniversary in March. Hopefully we’ll be celebrating that milestone with a table at the Hamfest. I also hope to become an official member by summer. This fall holds some potential, but all of that is out of my hands so I’ll clam up on that for now.

I’m also excited to see what happens with Inara, our dog, over the next year. Already we’re seeing hints of progress after just two weeks. I hope that by the end of January we’ll have her walking on a leash. Maybe by late winter or early spring we’ll be taking in fosters again. This does depend on how well Inara progresses obviously.

Professionally  I haven’t set any concrete goals. I’ve gotten the rhythm of the job down now. Going forward is getting deeper and digging into details of the work that I need to focus on. Ways to improve the daily progress and results of what I do.

I want to read at least two books a month.  One to improve myself and one to enjoy.

Outside of that, I just want to have a nice enjoyable year.

Love to all my family and friends!

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Gone to the Dogs

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Well tonight we got word that we will be getting a dog, a ten month old puppy to be exact (sorry Mom she’ll be around a while 🙂 ). It’s a schnoodle, a combination of a schnauzer and a poodle. This is one of the puppies that came out of the recent Virginia puppy mill bust. Next Sunday we meet up with the adoption group to do the paperwork. Then on Tuesday we’ll be picking up Sailor, with her full name to be determined from Peg’s list. Peg is real excited at this point.

Once we welcome Sailor into the home and we’re all settled, we are intending to do the fostering again as time allows.

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