Having lived in Louisiana my whole life, I never got a chance to see real snow until this summer at the Firefox Summit in Canada. That’s why it was so unexpected for my routine 6-7 hour trip from Baton Rouge to San Jose to turn into a 20 hour ordeal because of snow delays in Houston.
I can’t bear to type out all of the details, but I was supposed to arrive in San Jose at 8:12pm on Wednesday and instead arrived in San Francisco at 6:30am on Thursday, after which I immediately had to attend Add-on-Con without sleeping.
A breakdown of the trip:
- Hours waiting in airport: 6.5
- Hours waiting in airplane on ground: 6.5
- Hours actually flying: 4.75
- Hours of sleep on the plane: 2
And to top it off, the same snow that made my trip miserable on Wednesday brought fun and joy to everyone back home in Baton Rouge.
This week I’m in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada for the Mozilla Firefox Summit – a gathering of 300-400 of the contributors to Firefox 3. Whistler is outside of Vancouver and the trip is about 3 hours on the Sea to Sky Highway, a winding mountain road with beautiful sites and lots of construction in preparation for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler.
Last night around 11:00pm there was a rockslide on this road that left boulders the size of houses that will have to be cleared by dynamite and will take days. The only other way out of Whistler, besides helicopter and floatplane, is a 6-8 hour trip the other way around the mountain. I leave at 11pm Friday night, so not sure what the plan is for getting 400 people out yet.
Having lots of fun and will post a more detailed update on that later.
Friday, Mark Finkle and I participated in the Carolina Open Source Initiative’s Software Freedom Day celebration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was able to change flights late Wednesday night to avoid some potential problems getting there.
The event had a lot of traffic of people coming in and out throughout the day (especially when there was free pizza). The event leaders did a great job of promoting the event in the newspaper, signs, and word of mouth. Everyone we met seemed to already know about and love Firefox, but our main purpose in being there was getting more people involved in the community.
Mark and I were treated to a stormy surprise when leaving UNC and heading to the airport that resulted in me having wet pets for several hours and owning a UNC umbrella that I will never be able to use again (at least not in Baton Rouge… or Louisiana).
I haven’t blogged in awhile, so I’ll try to recap the things that have happened since mid-July that I remember.
On Saturday, July 21, most of the interns took a trip to San Francisco to tour Alcatraz Island, followed by dinner in Chinatown. Pictures.
July 24 – 27 I was in Portland, Oregon for the annual O’Reilly Open Source Convention, where Mozilla was a sponsor and had a very large presence. Anywhere I went, people would start talking to me about how much they love Firefox. I had a great time meeting so many people.
The Friday that I got back, a few of us went mini-golfing (it turns out “putt putt” is not used around here). Then that Sunday, we took a trip to San Francisco and walked along Haight Street and explored Buena Vista Park to the top. We then passed through Golden Gate Park to Union Square. After that, we stopped by Coit Tower, Aquarium of the Bay, and Pier 39 before heading home. Andrew got some pictures of the sights and us.
There’s a lot planned for this week – Tuesday is the intern BBQ; Wednesday is the going away party for several of the interns (which I will unfortunately miss due to previous plans to see Avenue Q that night); Thursday is the San Francisco Giants game that we’ll be attending; and it seems like there’s something on Friday and Saturday that I can’t remember.
Last week at work was a big one for me, but I’ll talk about that in my next post soon.
The last few days I’ve been in Tokyo, Japan to take part in the Firefox Developer Conference today, along with Mike Shaver, Mark Finkle, and Dan Mills from the US and Canada. I gave a presentation on Mozilla Add-ons and the add-on submission process and then answered questions about the Future of AMO with the most appreciated assistance of shaver. If you’re interested, my presentation is available here.
Photos and video from the trip so far are up. I’ll be heading home tomorrow evening.
I’d like to give a huge thanks to the folks from Mozilla Japan who did an amazing job of organizing the event today with over 160 people attending and still managed to help us get around the city the last few days. I had a wonderful time and learned a lot about the Firefox and add-on community in this part of the world.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that there was someone that looks exactly like me roaming around today and that any pictures you see are probably of him, not me.
