a meme from Dawn

Dawn Foster tagged me a while ago to tell 8 things that you may not know about me:

  1. I love to garden, but I tend to kill houseplants.
  2. My favorite wines tend to be from the Rhône region of France.
  3. I played the violin for 11 years and had a senior recital where I played a few Bach sonatas, Czardas (V. Monti), Praludium and Allegro (Fritz Kreisler), and a Mozart violin concerto. My hometown orchestra once played all of the Vivaldi Four Seasons, and I was the soloist for Spring.
  4. The smell of bananas makes me gag. I ate my first whole, raw banana in 15 years after my second leg in a the Hood to Coast race three years ago.
  5. I was vegetarian for about 13 years, the last four of which I practiced veganism. I am no longer vegetarian. I broke my veganism with a homemade hamburger.
  6. I’m an avid reader, and particularly enjoy science fiction (I know, what nerd doesn’t). I started reading Asimov as a pre-teen (Foundation series, I, Robot series) because it was around the house. I read Heinlein, Herbert, and Philip K. Dick as a teen. I’ve recently read from the Ender series (Orson Scott Card), and I’m always looking for suggestions.
  7. My cat’s name is Beda (really, it’s Беда) which is Russian for ‘trouble’. I am teased about this constantly. Typical responses when I say her name are ‘bidet’, ‘dog’, ‘belie’, ‘be-what?’, and most commonly: ‘that’s a name?’
  8. I have a BA, not a BS. I think I had to decide between taking some additional silly 100 or 200 level pre-reqs, or starting Russian. The choice was pretty easy.

Calagator, Ignite Portland, new PUGS site, geek2geek, SCALE — whew!

I’ve been filling my time with some community and open source work.

First, I’m working with Audrey and some other fabulous community members on Calagator, open-source calendar aggregation with teeth! Our next codesprint is coming up on February 2. Everyone is welcome!

Ignite Portland is coming up on February 5, aka Super Tuesday. We’re up to 400 RSVPs. I’m hoping for a rowdy, fun crowd.

The new PUGS site is coming along. I just got some patches to plug a wiki in there, and I got a pre-release of the PostgreSQL theme used by the Italian PostgreSQL site. Looking forward to digging in this evening.

Michael Schwern’s geek2geek has been a taking off. I wrote a guest post about the Pickup Artist. We’re riffing on the idea of social engineering, and the Pickup Artist focuses on manipulation and physical cues.

Finally, I’m leaving for SCALE on February 8th. Lots too do before then!

PostgreSQL User Group Liaison – that’s me!

Last week, I accepted the role of User Group Liaison for PostgreSQL in North America. Thanks, Joshua Drake, for nominating me. And thanks to everyone who commented on the thread. I was smiling for a couple days from the nice things that were said.

My first task is to upgrade the now elderly PUGS server – the site for our User Group blogs. Look for an updated site on Monday!

I will be attending SCALE on February 8-10. I’ll definitely be seeing talks from the Women in Open Source track, hanging out at the PostgreSQL Booth, and attending the LA PostgreSQL Users Group BoF session at 8pm, Saturday February 9 in the Laguardia room. See you there!

Update: I made the PostgreSQL Weekly News!

winter break is over!

Sadly, my winter vacation is over. I needed a couple weeks to recharge after a crazy year of wrapping up old stuff (finally done with the ERP project) and starting lots new things (Legion of Tech, PostgreSQL Conferences, my first cyclocross race!).

If you’re interested in more about me, you can check out my profile at Portland On Fire, a new project from Raven Zachary about Portland residents. Raven is planning to profile a new person every day this year. I’m January 6.

Also, don’t forget about PostgreSQL Conference East. Registration will open this week! The call for papers will be open until February 3, 2008. I’ve got my work cut out for me arranging all the details from here, but I’m looking forward to working with some great community members out in College Park, MD.

I’m giving a talk on January 17th, titled “10 new things you can use in PostgreSQL version 8.3”. Last week, I felt like PDXPUG was running itself — we’ve got the next six months of talks lined up already. I’ll be publishing our calendar over on the PDXPUG blog tomorrow.