Since I was in the city, I attended the GLUG portion of the Software Freedom Day events in South Africa. Maybe things picked up in the afternoon, but the first few hours didn't see many people upstairs at the installfest. However, there were quite a few people on top of those who attended the SITA breakfast (which I wasn't invited to...) walking around the stands downstairs, getting or buying CDs and talking a storm. So far, no report-backs from the other events...
Most of the second day was of the more-of-the-same also-ran ilk. I think it's unfortunate that was the case - there was a lot more real-life things that could've been covered. Not in that ilk was Hilton Theunissen's well-presented talk about TSF's Tuxlabs and their volunteer program. While that was going on, five people watched the Tuxlabs server install.
I've added my Scalable Web Applications Using Open Source Software talk from the 2nd Open Source Software Africa conference. Hoping it's the last conference of the year - quite tired out, especially aimed at people who don't get it yet. But, if anyone's organising a developer-oriented conference in Africa, I'd be there in a flash...
Conferences have a way of tiring one out, and I was tired going in. Didn't take much by way of notes this time, but I can report what I thought were the best two talks of the day for me. In first place was Stafford Masie of Novell South Africa reinforcing that Linux is ready for the mainstream. Stafford's incredibly passionate and enthusiastic, and it really came through. Second place is to my first boss and someone I've worked with since then, Alan Levin of Radian, making a good argument about the ten ways Open Source builds society.
End of Era 7 (or so)
24 Aug
Today was my last day at Independent Online, my most enjoyable workplace ever. As I've mentioned before, it was really the opportunity to work on Jam Warehouse's Open Source KnowledgeTree project and to have time to work on other things that made me leave. So I'm quite sad. The staff (as per custom) sent around a card where everyone wrote their best wishes or something more personal. I was flattered that so many wrote about how much of an impact I'd made in the short time I was there.
The game
16 Aug
On Sunday, I played my first roleplaying game in about ten years, as part of a group that plays every week. Apparently, roleplaying is riding a bicycle, although I put quite a bit of effort into reintroduce myself to the rules beforehand. It's quite relaxing to take your mind off the real world for a bit (without a computer or TV screen shutting you off from people); I'll be continuing.
Family Friday
15 Aug
It's a bit ironic that it's to my parents' detriment that they live in the same city as me. They'd love to see me more often, but the thought of trekking up to where they live lessens the want to. My place is off-limits, of course, for now. If they were elsewhere, I'd visit them whenever I was in town. Now it's a roughly quarterly affair.
Shortly after getting a reply from the Service Monitoring Office of SARS about the lack of service I was getting enquiring about support for browsers except Internet Explorer on Windows, I got a mail from an Interfile (the people who run efiling) employee. Their CEO says I can't divulge anything in their email to me, which means I should just not say what they're doing about it and just leave the impression that they just don't care. Anyway, I won't do that.
While researching how Mutual and Federal refused to pay out a pension to a same-sex partner as per a deceased employee's wishes (since I recently discovered that Mutual and Federal underwrites some of my insurance policy), I noticed Behind the Mask, which purportedly covers lesbian and gay issues in Africa. They're running an interesting story entitled moffies (an Afrikaans term of endearment for gay males), covering why the ANC drove non-discrimination by sexuality into the South African constitution (apparently quite seriously opposed to by the then National Party, something I didn't know about).
Settled in
11 Aug
My computer has finally got a place to live in my new home, although I think I'll miss it not having one. Jeremy reclaimed the dining room table I'd been using, leaving me without a desk in my study. And it's not like it was worth buying and setting anything up before the carpets were cleaned (twice!). Already I can't imagine not having a separate study...