The FreeBSD Diary

USENIX ATC 2004 in Boston will be my fourth conference of the year. The first was OSW. The second was Linux World Expo in New York. The third was BSDCan 2004. This will be a mostly-recreational conference for me. I was on the program committee for OSW and did most of the work for BSDCan and saw very little of either conference. At LWE, I was working on getting support for BSDCan. Therefore, USENIX will be mostly fun. However, I will be doing some work while there. Of course, I'll be telling people about BSDCan 2005, and gathering material for an upcoming ONLamp article.

In keeping with my recent tradition of driving to conferences, I'll be heading down to Boston on Sunday in my trusty Subaru Legacy stationwagon. I have a choice of two routes:

1. via Highway 416, 401, through Syracuse, Albany, and onto Boston (map)
2. via 417 to Montral, and south through Montpelier and Concord to Boston (map)

I'm tempted by the Syracuse route as it avoids Montreal. I've spoken with relatives who have been to Boston several times this past year and have always encountered constructions and traffic jams.

I'll be staying with Joe Abley while I'm at USENIX. I'm lucky enough to have a place to stay! Joe leaves the conference on Wednesday, so I'm looking for a place to stay on Wednesday, Thursday, and perhaps Friday nights.

USENIX have been helpful by providing me with a Media pass to the conference. With such help, I would be unable to attend such a conference. I simply can not afford it.

I do have a laptop. I have a brand new (well, almost brand new) IBM Think Pad T41. I bought it about 10 days ago. And 5 days ago, the disk died. We think. I'm waiting for installation media to arrive. I think it almost arrived today. Purolator left a message. I could have picked it up after 18:30 tonight. But that was not possible. I was at a soccer game instead. I'll visit tomorrow and find out what has arrived for me. Hopefully, I can get thinks running by the time I leave.

While at USENIX, I'll be participating in the FreeBSD Developer Summit. I'm not sure what we'll be doing, but I do know the following people will be there.

• Scott Long
• Robert Watson
• Doug Barton
• Brooks Davis
• Warner Losh
• Justin Gibbs
• Nate Lawson
• David O'brien
• Doug Rabson
• Mark Santcroos
• Peter Wemm
• Eric Anholt
• Garance Drosehn
• Alan Cox
• Michael Lucas
• John Baldwin
• Alexander Kabaev
• Dan Langille
• Bosko Milekic
• Murray Stokely

That list may grow.

Of those names, I know I have already met Robert Watson, Michael Lucas, Bosko Milekic, and Murray Stokely. I may have met Warner Losh. And I think I've met one of David O'Brien and John Baldwin, but I'm not sure which. That will be cleared up next week. I'm looking forward to this. Hopefully my laptop will be ready.

I wish to thank those that have donated towards the laptop. I do appreciate it. It means a great deal to me. Thank you.

See you at USENIX.