September 19th was the Atlanta Linux Fest, which had about 700+ people show up – don’t quote me though, there were a lot of different head-counts being tweeted that day. That number sounds great, but it’s nothing in comparison to the once great Atlanta Linux Showcase that was started by my LUG, Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts. With that selfless promotion out of the way, it looks like ALF has a great start to making the city of Atlanta a hot spot for FOSS conventions in the future.  It was a tiring day, but I think Nick and Josh from the Ubuntu Podcast will continue to run this event for years to come.  I’m not certain if there were other folks or organizations that started this, but Nick and Josh were certainly considered the poster children for it.

This was my first convention and because of my impulsiveness – I experienced the event in a slightly different way. As I registered for the event, I saw the option to “volunteer”.  I thought to myself, “What better way of jumping into this event.  See the front and back end of it all.”  With that said, I only attended one workshop (Running an Open Source Business, presented by Tarus Balog of OpenNMS) and their was an in-prompt-to entrepreneur meetup. Overall; I had fun. Next time, though, I will register as a regular-folk and attend as much workshops as possible. It was amazing seeing fellow geeks huddled in one area with a common goal of being themselves and talking about what we love – free and open source software.

My wife, @fossthreads [identica] [twitter], was a vendor at the event and just as luck would have it – the Fedora booth was right next to us! Sweet! I didn’t talk to them much though… I was too busy. Now don’t get me wrong, the STAFF of the event didn’t hold me at gun point telling me to “do this” and “do that.” I really did volunteer, sacrificing the experience of the workshops for the experience of helping to operate, hopefully, one of many-to-come Linux-related conventions. I was actually falling asleep in the workshop I did attend, but that’s only because I was very tired at that point in the day.

The Unsortable List

I was very excited when I reached the venue. I got my ALF t-shirt, badge, and asked them what they wanted me to do. They asked me to greet the folks and let them know there were four places at the front desk where they could sign in. Later on it was apparent that the IBM facility had a WiFi connection, but a lot of people didn’t know how to connect.  I asked someone about it and they said they have a list and folks that preregistered get their own username/password. I said, “Awesome! Can I have a list?” They gave me one and I walked around (for about 5 minutes) like a big shot!  Thank the maker – that no one asked me for any WiFi information.  As I looked through the list to get myself familiar with it, I realized that this particular spreadsheet was sorted by registration date! What!? I don’t even remember when I registered.  It was about 6 – 8 pages and after 2 minutes of searching, I couldn’t even find myself on the list.  Who printed that sheet!? It must have been a joke.

Micro-blogging

One of the most exciting aspects of the day was tweeting about it while I was dead in the middle of it.  When I noticed that folks were looking for coffee and they didn’t find any, I thought it would be helpful to use the #atllinux hash and spread the word. I ended up using that mechanism to confirm and inform folks various things going on during the event. It was very cool and I felt very connected with all these avatars!

My First Meetup

Nick Owen from WiKID tweeted about an open spot in the schedule and asked if folks wanted to do a quick meetup. Me, Christopher Johnson from if PEOPLE, Josh Sweeney from <ALT> Invest, Sanjay Parekh, Matt Smith, and Urvaksh Karkaria graciously strolled into the conversation and thus the meetup took place. Coincidently; this “first” convention procuded a lot of “firsts” for me: live tweeting, the convention itself, an entreprenur meetup, volunteering outside of a church event, and rubbing shoulders with vendors of an event.  So; again, event though I didn’t see all the workshops – I still had a great time.

I’m not certain where I am on the health train, traveling in Atlanta. My first week’s goal was to establish a walking routine. I actually snickered while I wrote it down, thinking, “This is easy, how can I mess this up.” As of date, I’m still not consistent with exercising. One would think it was easy, but I’ve proven to myself that I need to put more effort into it. I think since I’ve started I’ve walked 3 times and did Tae Bo 3 times. It’s been a couple of weeks so that’s not going to work.

Zombified

On another note, I got some high-blood pressure pills from my doctor. They do have one side effect, which is causing me to walk the earth among other zombies! This pill is making me more drowsy than I normally am, so I called my doctor (to my surprise I was actually able to talk to him) and he told me to stay off the pills for 3 days and see if my symptoms change. This is day two off the pills and I already don’t feel as drowsy.

I’m normally tired at the end of the day and drop asleep around 21:30. Some times I go to sleep with the kids at 20:00, but while taking those pills last week, I was dozing off around 19:00. It affected my work, I noticed that I was being as productive. I think it was in the middle of the week that I associated it with my new high-blood-pressure-controlling/blood-thinning drug.

Eating

“Eating healthy is hard!” There I said it! The concept is easy, but putting it into action has proven to be more difficult than I expected. My whole life, I’ve eaten like a Jamaican – lots of startch, heavy on the meat, and “what the hell are vegetables doing here!?” So; my biggest challenge is eating the proper portions. The trick is with eating proportional meals, I have to have snacks in between and I’ve noticed that a lot of snack ideas are NOT appealing to me. How many times am I going to comsume assorted nuts!?  Oh well; I’m officially 240 lbs, so I need to get that weight down and the key, for me, is eating the proper proportions and exercising.  Time to get myself back on track.

What do I do while waiting at the airport?
While waiting for my significant wife -
To scoop me up from the trials of life,
Which is wrapped up in work and public commute -
On the system that so politely answers to “Marta.”
“Hey sweetie, can you take me here and then there
And basically anywhere I please.
I’ll ride you till midnight and do so with ease…”

What do I do while waiting at the airport?
Site seeing is what I see,
Of pure, unadulterated diversity, between you and me.
Some call it “people watching”, others compare it to stalking.
Seriously; if I’m not touching, nor gawking then watching is as polite as talking.
A conversation between my eyes and your movements,
between your written journey at THAT moment and the comma in my sentence.

I’m done rhyming and stretching my stiff-poetic ligaments.
My ride is here, so I must continue with my movements.

Background

I take the Atlanta public transportation system, known as MARTA, almost on a daily basis back and forth to work.  Luckily for me, I’m a “people watcher” so I find enjoyment out of simply watching people pass by.  Wondering where is life taking them today, what made them put on that extra shirt or coat, etc.  So; I start my day being dropped off at the Atlanta International airport (which doubles as the train station) and at the end of the day I’m back at the airport – waiting for my wife to pick me up.  I started out this poem on my Blackberry and finished it in WordPress.

Feedback

I’d really like to see if I can get some feedback from you.  Please leave a comment, it doesn’t matter how positive or negative it is.  Any feedback is better than none.  I hope you enjoyed the passage.  Thanks.

It’s interesting taking the transit, here in Atlanta, Georgia, US. Compared to the place I spent most of my life – South Florida. I can rely on the transit system here, which is called MARTA. It has some funny colors, but I’m guessing because there are a lot of homosexuals here – dunno. The bus and trains are scheduled to run with each other – so that you simply migrate from one vehicle to another, but the problem with that is… there are people operating these vehicles and most of the time they are not on “schedule”.

Taking the MARTA sure helps in saving some money. True; gas prices are going down, but when it was high – I only paid $13/wk to commute from home to work. My wife keeps our one car, to run errands and other things related to her graphic design business, Katina Ferguson. So; we’d fill up on gas one time during the week. So many folks complaining about how much they pay in gas; we would snicker to ourselves.

Pros and Cons for Business

One good thing is I can work my web development business, Digital Alias, while commuting. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get to work so, in the morning, or evening, I can get some things done. Compared to the days I had to drive to work – no good. I spent more time fighting traffic than getting any work done.

In regards to meetings, MARTA is not the way to go. You should have a car for that. Unless you live in the city or can quickly get to the train/bus station – I’d suggest you use a car. My wife and I ran into an issue with that; especially having one car. I wanted to go to some meetings, that were evening meetings. I can get to MARTA and get around to the meetings (thanks Google Maps for incorporating the transit systems in your application), but getting home was a problem. We live in the “country” part of Georgia, a little place called Fairburn. Funny thing is most native Georgians, don’t know where Fairburn is. Well; the bus would drop me off in downtown Fairburn, but I’d have to walk 45 minutes to get to my home. My wife couldn’t leave the kids, sleeping, to come pick me up – so meetings where I don’t have a ride home are meetings I can’t use MARTA for.

Not much to write about, actually. I’m on the south-bound train to Atlanta’s airport, to be picked up by my wife. I thought I’d jot down some of my thoughts about this money-saving system. I like it, just wished we lived in the city to be able to totally take advantage of it.