I've been pondering that question for a few days/weeks now. There doesn't seem to be an easy answer. I can't point to one event or any bad experience but somewhere along the way it just stopped being fun.

I can clearly recall the day I wrote my first real program. Highschool computer fundamentals class; i.e. Basic programming, Mr. Bacon (probably no relation to Jono) was our teacher and my teammates were Amy Pollak and some guy who I can't recall. We had procrastinated on the assignment for weeks and we had all of 50 minutes to turn in our project. They both turned to me and said, "Help." I sat down at the Apple IIe and 48 minutes later I had created a program that drew a rainbow-colored sun that then dropped into the blue horizon line of the ocean. Magic.

The pixels were huge too. Big lego-sized blocks of color to form the sun and ocean. I used a loop to make the sun drop and then disappear below the horizon. We got an A! And I learned two very important lessons that day; 1.) That I could make computers do things for me and 2.) That I could procrastinate weeks of work into a few short minutes if I really concentrated. The second lesson being the bane of the way I continue to work today. Give me a deadline and I'll meet it even though it may look like I'm doing nothing in the interim.

And then I finished all my HS classes early and so they let me take some college courses while still a Senior. The best thing about the whole arrangement was that my college classes were on Tues & Thurs. but I didn't tell my HS that and so on MWF I had three hours off in the middle of the day to go to my Grandma's and have a free lunch and take a nap or write my English papers which were due when I got back.

The classes were Fortran and Pascal. And yes, I'm "that" old. I did well in the classes and found them interesting even I thought I wasn't doing as well as I really was. I got A's and graduated with honors from HS and then went off to college to study. . . Theology. Don't ask, it was an interesting time. But computers kept their hold me and I took extra classes to learn more about them and even considered Comp Sci for my Master's studies but something happened along the way.

I found a more interesting challenge. I ended up majoring in Education with a concentration in Instructional Technology; I find the best way to use technology to teach people things. That along with the whole science of how people learn things I just found fascinating and still do to a certain extent. But alas my journey into the world of Open Source has me wondering why I'm no longer a coder. I figure if I can answer that question we'd have the key to why there are so few women in F/OSS.

And the only answer I have is that somewhere along the way it stopped being fun/challenging/interesting. I think once I found out I could make computers do things for me, the challenge of following the rules of programming to make it happen disappeared. There were enough other folks doing the coding but to me at least, the real challenge was in adoption policy and user training. A visit to any school will tell you that it's not the technology but the policy that is holding us back But then again, that may be my bias of a Political Science degree and too many technology committees who insist kids have to use Windows "because that's what we use at work," or even better, "We'll get sued if we use Open Source software."

So "Good on ya" to all the coders of the world. I'll keep using your programs and I'll keep fighting the good fight to get your work into the hands of the world.

Lug Radio USA - be there! I will. I just confirmed my flight and try as I might just couldn't fit in a side trip to Vegas. (woe is me) But alas the event is looking to be a great time. Now I really should get my talk straightened up, eh? When I was commuting, I practiced on the way home but the talk always ended up being way too long. So now I need to get it together, gather up the giveaway toys and get serious about putting on a good show for the masses.

It's strange, b/c I'm really a rather shy person but for some reason talking about Open Source and especially Ubuntu have made me really enjoy public speaking. Perhaps one of the big changes is that talking for myself and not having to represent some company or other entity who's paid my way to such conferences. That's freedom.

The topic this time around will be "Finding Your Voice in the Open Source Community." The past few months I've become interested in how new contributors find their way into the various groups. It seems every group is always asking for help and new folks are always looking for mentors but I think the path into being a contributor is more difficult than most think.

Hope you can make it out!

or as final as any living document gets. I just finished proofing chapters 5, 7 & 8. Eesh, too much like real work but I'm glad I was able to lend a hand. Like all Ubuntu projects, we could use your help with the Training Team. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Training for more info. The next meeting is scheduled for 3 April 1600 UTC.

Looking forward we'd like to get more folks involved, work closer with the Doc Team and I'm pretty sure there is also a match with the Classroom Project. Perhaps now that I'm working from home (yeah, my home even) I'll have some time to devote to some of this fun. That or I need to schedule a Vegas trip soon. . .

Argh. I had a conversation last night with someone in the education sector. I mentioned that I was now using Moodle and they made the comment that "We can't deploy open source in the elementary schools because it's not secure. We'd get sued." I was too shocked to even reply. Now this was coming from a colleague and not just your average education person and I've been championing open source technologies to them for over a year including the security benefits but geez, was that frustrating.

So we're back to FUD in education, where we need emerging, collaborative technologies the most. Speaking in schools is great b/c the kids just get it, the Administrators not so much.

. . . and a little child shall lead them. . . (I hope).

Forgot to post over here - I'm going but won't arrive in Boston until Wednesday afternoon. I tried to listen into some of the voip sessions this morning with not much luck so far. I'm still troubleshooting this error message: "The NetworkManager applet cannot locate some required resources. It cannot continue." No luck in various support places; irc, forums, etc. I'm going to try a reinstall in a bit - argh.

Here's how you can Participate via voip or listen to the icecast.

Once I get there we'll also be having a Training BOF. And I'm hoping to help map out our next steps for the Ubuntu Community Training Team and brainstorm on community-based training offerings for next year. As usual there is lots of other interesting stuff happening - see the daily schedulea here: http://people.ubuntu.com/~scott/uds-boston-2007/

Story of my life, really. I'm debating with myself over going to next week's UDS in Boston. There are tons of great stuff happening and lots of great specs plus it's an LTS release so knowing what's going on at this level will no doubt help with our training plans. My problem is that I'm waiting to hear on some new job news so I may need to conserve financial resources a bit longer and the trip will not be cheap. ugh, decisions, decisions.

Also would love to be seeing lots of great folks who are scheduled to be there and most importantly would love some whiteboard time with Billy C to help map out the Community Training map for next year.

What to do? what to do? what to do?

Just a reminder that the ever entertaining and informative Ubuntu Open Week sessions are happening this week in #ubuntu-classroom with chat in #ubuntu-class-chat on freenode. Unfortunately I'll have to miss tomorrow's "Ask Mark" sessions but am looking forward to Billy Cina's Thursday morning session on Training at 15:00 UTC. Then Lyz will host the Ubuntu Women session on Saturday at 16:00 UTC.

Stop in if you get a chance!

The Ubuntu Houston Loco Team is having a Gutsy pre-release cheerleading session led by our own Lee Sharp tonight. The venue is Texadelphia way out at 6025 Westheimer in the big city. Not sure if I can make it as there is a kayak I need to retrieve first - don't ask, long story. There's also the topic of Gaming on the menu so get the word out to anyone in the area. See http://groups.google.com/group/ubuntu-houston-team for more info

Speaking of getting the word out, one of today's goals is to get my blog up and running over on the "real" Ubuntu Planet. Unfortunately this will first involved troubleshooting the wonderful "Network Manager cannot locate some necessary resources and cannot continue" error messages I keep getting on that machine - argh. Once that happens then I can start the long awaited call for the Ubuntu Texas Team! We have two really strong city teams; Houston and Dallas so there's been some opposition to adding a state team to the mix but it's a big state and it really bothers me to see that huge empty white space over Texas so I'm hoping we can get the state team organized and then approved on the basis of the existing city teams. (was that the longest sentence ever? quite possibly but I digress. . .)

After all that fun then there's the Ubuntu Community Training Team to work with! More details on that soon but see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Training for more info. We, -er, I'm hoping to work with folks from the Classroom Project, Doc Team and UW Project to get more folks involved in the upcoming training offerings.

And some sadness as things are looking doubtful for my attending the upcoming UDS. . .ugh, timing just couldn't be worse with finances and job stuff but we'll see what the fates bring.

Cheers all!

very happily and temporarily so! I've got a two week window (if it all works out) between projects that finds me temporarily unemployed. It's a nice feeling given the chaos of the past few weeks on the last project yet a bit unsettling as the paperwork for the next thing is not in place yet. I usually try not to leave/finish one project without knowing exactly when and where my next paycheck will be coming from.

Regardless, I'm going to spend some quality time at home fixing up the spare bedroom for guests, fishing and other assorted tasks. I'm sure there will be at least one trip in the offing but not sure on details yet. Oh and I'm about to start flying again! It's been almost two years since my last flight as a PIC (Pilot in Command) flight so I'm really looking forward to getting back into the friendly skies and resuming my pilot training. Just a hundred other or so other things to do before that though.

And I'll have some time for my various FOSS projects. Eesh, more hornet's nest seemed to have been kicked into activity so it should be an interesting few weeks. As always, I'm looking for the positive and seeing where we can make things better. I still need to post up some of the great questions I received from the audience after my Ubuntu Live talk and then from the LinuxChix BOF. But right now, the post office, errands and lunch are calling.

I spent more time than I'd like filling our online rebate forms for my latest purchases. At the every end there is a linked text phrase to print your submission form. Mine didn't work, for either rebate. I called the listed 800 customer service and reported an error on the webpage. Melissa, who received the call, was extremely unhelpful and was rather one of those folks who seemed put off by having to deal with a problem. I guess that part of the group never hears of problems from users. Her advice was to just wait and try as there was nothing she could do, nor did she indicate she was going to actually report a problem to anyone. She even said she didn't know who to report it to.

Now I guess I'm spoiled b/c being a web designer/developer and having tons of friends who are too and reporting bugs on the Ubuntu website usually gets some sort of response if not a "thanks." I guess I expected something more than "there's nothing I can do" simply b/c most web developers want to know if there is a problem on their site so they can get it fixed asap. Okay, fine, whatever, but I do ask to speak to a manager, who finally comes on the line and at least listened to the problem I was describing. She offered the standard pop-up blocker line and at least said she would report it; though she seemed clueless as to where to report a website problem as well. But I guess only when enough customers are inconvenienced and they get enough calls will someone actually look into any problems.

A few years ago I spent the good part of an entire afternoon going through the scripted Apple support line explaining that I had a new machine with a hard drive failure. Of course, the end user canNOT be trusted to diagnose that so before they would issue an RMA number I had to go through about 30 reboots, zap the PRAM, so the guy on the other end could hear it - I kid you not! and after all that, the jerk, er customer service rep says, "yeah, it sounds like your hard drive has failed." DUH, that's what I said four hours ago and I wouldn't have called you if I hadn't already gone through the advanced troubleshooting process in advance. Grrr. and they wonder why so many customer service call centers are being outsourced to foreign countries.

I'm starting to wonder why I continue to buy any Apple products at all anymore. . . here's hoping that good design continues to infest the open source world.