Portland walkabout

None of the tutorials at OSCON interested me this afternoon, so after a brief look at OSCAMP (interesting, but no topics that pulled me into a circle), I took a walk across Steel Bridge into downtown Portland. The walk was great. I walked along Park Street, which is a double street with a long aisle of green, shaded in beautiful tall elm trees. Such quiet walks are a great antidote to the hubbub and crazy energy of technical conferences. Whenever I go to Trondheim, Norway for work, I make sure I get out of the office and walk around. I remember those walks fondly, they still bring a certain stillness to my mind (well, except for the ones at night with the sleet pouring into my face and soaking my jeans – those I still remember too, but not really fondly).

I must not be a “real” hacker, and I'm sure I'm losing out on “networking” opportunities, because to be honest I much prefer these quiet walks around town to bar crawls and late-night drunken parties. Although I wonder how much networking you can get done when your companion's eyes are glazed over and they're stumbling over their words as they spew out tirades about open source licenses and corporate backing and why Java is such a stupid language.

Right now I'm at a little local coffee shop at SW Broadway and Washington enjoying an iced latte. It's a great little coffee shop, with funny bits of art (including a painting with the word “fuuuck” delicately painted in pastel colors – sorry, no camera). The guy serving my coffee has a shirt saying “still fighting corporate coffee.” There's a Peet's just down the street, and in Berkeley Peet's is David fighting the Starbuck's Goliath -- we Berkeleyans have a certain passionate loyalty to Peet's. But compared to this place Peet's is definitely corporate coffee, so in the spirit of supporting the local merchant here I am.

Feeling very “think globally act locally” I smiled happily as this homey little place charged me $1.50 for my latte, and I commented to the guy how great it was to only pay $1.50 for a latte, in the Bay Area it costs $2.50 to $3.00. The woman making my drink stopped and asked the guy “what did you charge him for?” It turns out he had charged me for an Americano and I had to shell out another dollar. I should've kept my mouth shut.

Tomorrow things get crazy busy; I'll be spending lots of time at the Sun booth, and also at the Apache booth, as well as attending sessions and giving my own session. I'm glad to have this little break. Although while I'm down here I need to find a USB stick to give my demo. My own USB stick is part of my way cool Swiss Army knife. Since I can't carry that in my pocket on the plane, I had placed my USB stick in my suitcase pouch. Then realizing my suitcase was a tad too small I switched suitcases but neglected to pull out my pocket knife. Another blow from airport security. I'm glad this war on terror will be over soon....