shaver

I’m at OLS, and I’m hung over. No surprise there, really. I mostly recall last night, including carrying Phil part of the way between the Manx and The Collection, and I think we had a pretty good time. It was really nice to have the gang all back together, and Tyla will arrive on the scene tonight to increase our levels of fun to previously unexpected levels.

The bus trip was uneventful, and featured precisely zero searching of my belongings. I wasn’t at all pleased with the driver of the 5pm bus, who answered my question about watching my bag while I ran and bought a ticket with “no, it’s 5, we’re leaving”. Then he hopped on the (not full) bus and drove off. I don’t think it was 5 yet, myself — and the schedule screen’s clock agreed with me — but even if it had been, I would still have been unimpressed. Ah well.

I signed the paperwork today, so I’m now a contractor for Cluster File Systems, Inc., where I’ll be helping develop Lustre. I haven’t done much filesystem work before, so that’ll be fun, but working with Phil again, and Peter for the first time, from the comfort of wherever Tyla and I decide to live, is the real draw. I can’t believe they pay me to do this stuff; a charmed life, indeed.

Phil’s talk is, so far, going well. He’s really quite a good speaker, and he knows an awful lot about Lustre, so nobody seems to mind that Peter couldn’t make it. (I mind, of course, because I haven’t seen Peter in a while, but I’ll get my Braam-fix soon enough.) I think Phil’s decision to leave all 3 hours’ worth of slides in place, and just talk to key ones over the hour, was a good one: it gives a good sense of the scale of the project, and the slides will be a good resource for keen audience members, once said slides make it to the web.

I’m using Jacob’s sweet, sweet Powerbook, because I left my laptop in the hotel room. It is a very nice piece of hardware. Light, pretty, huge screen. I sure do wish it had extra mouse buttons, though.

Speaking of hotels, I have only the nicest things to say about Arc. The rooms are great, the staff are exceptionally helpful, and the rates are quite reasonable, even in the depths of the Canada Day crunch. With no offense to the Westin intended, why am I just discovering this place now?