The Ubuntu Girl

Why I stopped programming. . .

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:08:57 GMT

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

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:45:42 GMT

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!

Ubuntu Desktop Course - almost final. . .

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:45:05 GMT

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. . .

more FUD in the education sector. . .

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:23:56 GMT

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).

UDS Boston

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:30:56 GMT

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/

should I stay or should I go?

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 01:42:08 GMT

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?

Ubuntu Open Week happening NOW

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:58:48 GMT

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!

Ubuntu Houston Loco Meeting Tonight and other misc.

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:41:44 GMT

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!

Unemployed!

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:20:11 GMT

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.

more bad Apple customer service. . .

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:35:05 GMT

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.

The Upgrade Path and Opportunities for FOSS

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 14:47:52 GMT

In the past few weeks both myself and a coworker upgraded to new laptops. Me a shiny new 15" MacBook Pro and her a shiny new red HP/Sony?? I forgot the brand but that's less important on the PC side of life, it's red, blood red. Anyways, we both had the same bad experiences on the windows side of our upgrades and we even had all the fully purchased licensed stuff too! most annoying.

Here's how it went for me:
Bought home new laptop, connected it to the old 12" PB via a firewire cable, booted up using the "Y" key on the old to make it a slave, let the apple "new machine" software auto detect and move EVERYTHING - yes even all my fully licensed MS Office products and Adobe stuff. In the past I had to keep the old machine around and occasionally boot it up b/c inevitably there was something that didn't get moved. This time I haven't even turned on the old machine since that night. Flawless - nice job apple.

Next I installed Parallels and my fully licensed version of XP and then attempted to install MS Office since the main tool I'm using for work these days in a PPT plug-in. Install failed, said it was on too many machines. I called the 800 activate by phone number and was connected to someone somewhere in India, I had to read back the cryptic code on the screen, then he gave me another 30 something long code back it finally worked. Most annoying. Then of course, the main tool I'm using would also not install. (Did I mention this all happened while on travel so I didn't actually get to work but had to wait until I got home to deal with it all.) Even though I followed all their instructions and removed the software from my old machine and their magic uninstall software reported back to the mothership that it had been taken off that machine, still no joy. Again, have to wait for daytime support hours, call the support line, explain the situation, and they 'release' something on their servers/my serial number and I can try again to reinstall software I own/purchased/have all the right serial numbers to. I now have a double boot Mac/Windows machine.

But that's not good enough. . . so I run Parallels install again and this time use the only Ubuntu CD for Mac I had around, 6.06 LTS (I was on the airplane at this point so no net access). It's smooth, clean, we have lift off!

At Ubuntu Live I knew they had Linux/XP machines and since I'd never done a presentation fully in Linux and Open Office I was a bit concerned. My original presentation was created on my old Mac with Office X then ported to Open Office with the new machine and then sent for review to a colleague with windows-only and finally came back to me to test on the presentation machine with Ubuntu and OO about two hours before my talk. Ah, technology, sometimes things just work and I was happy that all but two slides had some funky font issues at that point, I was happy it was readable and the clicker worked.

Oh and my coworker had the equally bad experience on the Windows side of things as she decided, well, was forced to upgrade to Vista on the new laptop. Did I mention her other laptop, a two year old Dell, died a horrible motherboard overheating death two days before she was to go on travel. We rescued her data from her drive but then getting everything reinstalled on her new machine was a licensing nightmare. Again, she had paid for everything, had the right serial numbers but since the other machine died there was no way to 'remove' the software off the old machine and let the MS and other software vendors mothership servers know that her old machine died. It took her about two weeks and lots of calls to India to get things reinstalled and working in a productive manner. And now she has to remember to save everything in non-upgraded MS mode so everyone else can open her documents.

The Ubuntu upgrade, once I got to the internet again, went flawless. I let it run in the background while working on other stuff through parallels. Have I mentioned that I love Parallels? I can now travel with one laptop, switch effortlessly btwn OSes and continue on my journey toward software freedom while still accessing my "old" proprietary stuff. Progress. . . but at a price. . .

So word to the F/OSS world make upgrading to a new machine as easy as upgrading on the same machine and you've overcome a HUGE hurdle.

Your tax dollars at work. . .

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:31:40 GMT

Matt Assay writes a nice article about a US government agency choosing a proprietary software package and ignoring any open source solutions. It's sad b/c it's true. United Space Alliance, a company I used to work for and a NASA contractor, made the same bad decision a few years ago too. I even heard managers say things like "well if it's free it can't be any good" and in another case refusing to send folks to the free/no cost training options of companies as opposed to same offerings where the cost were several hundreds of dollars, if not more given travel and time away.

It's frustrating when it's your tax dollars not at work and even moreso in the public school setting where kids are the target of bad decision-making. But don't get me started on that rant this morning. . . work to be done and the fish are calling for this afternoon post work.

Linux.com Article on UbuntuLive with a mention of the UW Project

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 15:40:32 GMT

http://www.linux.com/feature/118226

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier gives a nice summary of the just completed, first-ever Ubuntu Live Conference. He mentions my talk on the Ubuntu Women Project - so yeah!

I promise to post up slides in a few minutes.

Cheers to all who made it to the conference. The LinuxChix BOF was VERY interesting and enlightening too. Item three on my todo list is to post up notes from that session. Better get to it. . .

Ubuntu Live Conference was GREAT!

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:46:30 GMT

Much too short and way too many folks left un-talked to but alas a great success for the Ubuntu family. A more detailed report when I actually can get internet service that doesn't involve sitting on the floor of the spare bedroom using a very short wired connection - argh.

July Ubuntu Loco Team Meeting

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:46:20 GMT

When: Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Where: Panera Bread - I-45 South & Bay Area Blvd.
What: Lee will demo Zoneminder

More Info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HoustonTeam/Meetings

Hope to see you all there!

Ubuntu Live shameless plug

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 13:26:13 GMT

http://www.ubuntulive.com/pub/w/60/sessions.html or cut straight to my session at http://www.ubuntulive.com/cs/ubuntu/view/e_sess/13460

I've been waffling on even going to Ubuntu Live, given other RL busy-ness, but now I'm excited again. Seems my session is only 30 minutes long, so I can fake, er, talk intelligibly about anything for 22+ minutes then do the Q/A thing. Plus, I honestly think it's an important topic and thing to do, so yeah I'm psyched about pulling it all together and seeing tons of great folks again too. Like Billy Cina, the really awesome Training Programme Manager from Canonical. She is teh funny, smart and a former military person so don't mess with her.

My talk is right after one of Jono's many talks so that should give a good lead in audience and then I'll bribe everyone to stay with chocolate or other swag giveaway. Must admit it is kinda cool having my name as a speaker too - like I'm a grownup or something. Come to this weekend's UW IRC meeting, 1500 UTC, July 1, to hear an update and help me get my talk finished. Thanks!

so close. . .

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:59:23 GMT

I made a stop into the new Baybrook Apple Store to check out the iMacs and compare the MacBook vs. the Pro model. The apple dude there, Travis, was awesome. When he didn't know stuff he admitted it and went to find the answer rather than trying to bluff his way through it or worse, as has happened in other computer stores, the salesdude (and it's always dudes now that I think of it, I've never come across a female computer salesperson - interesting, but I digress) try to steer me away from things they know nothing about and make derogatory comments in regards to anything non-windoze. hate that.

Well anyways I should of just bought the 13" Black MacBook but side by side next to the Pro, the display on the Pro is just awesome and makes the 13" look fuzzy. $500 difference for the 15" awesome screen so I was torn. Maybe something in the back of my mind we reminding me that Mercury is still retrograde and a rash computer purchase was perhaps not the best strategy. But still, when I do buy, I'm buying from Travis b/c he was 'teh awesome.' Plus he knew enough about Parallels and when I mentioned running Ubuntu he held two thumbs up and said "awesome."

We finally received a message from the ubuntu list admins telling us that our request for "ubuntu-us-tx-houston" was turned down b/c "they don't do city lists" and we should use the ubuntu-tx list and yet there is a Dallas and Chicago and other city lists plus there is NO ubuntu-tx list or organization. Thanks for being on top of things, mate.

LJ Book and LinuxChix

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:23:12 GMT

http://www.ljbook.com is a great service that creates a pdf out of all your LJ entries. Great way to back things up. If you're worried bout security be sure to temporarily change your password; you know the drill.

Also, linuxchix lists are going absolutely nutz! Makes me sad to see all the internal problems/politics but such is life in a volunteer organization. Lots of lessons to be learned for the Ubuntu Women project. Ugh, I so have to get my Ubuntu Live presentation started/finished. I have an excuse as I've been sick. Ack, had a great idea on the topic earlier tonight and now I forgot it! must write these things down.

women in space. . .

Tue, 15 May 2007 02:08:54 GMT

Every now and then something surprises you. I have never heard of the Mercury 13, FLATS program. When I was at NASA there was some talk of using all female crews for future long duration missions, such as Mars, but we all know who makes those decisions and it's often not on ability but politics. Rather, it is almost always on politics. . . but let's not go there.

I've been trying to work in the time to start flying lessons again. I'm hoping to take a weekend ground school in a few weeks and then get a current flight physical so I can take to the skies again. I really, REALLY miss flying. Not being a passenger, I do that often enough, but being behind the controls of the plane is a feeling like no other.

I constantly toy with the idea of becoming a professional pilot or at least getting an Instructor's rating so I can pay for this needy habit of mine but alas there are so many things I "wanna do when I grow up" I'll need to live to 200 to get half of it all in. Small steps, just keep taking small steps. . .

I miss schools. . .

Thu, 10 May 2007 15:21:58 GMT

I realized yesterday that I really miss being involved in schools. The kids are so eager, so willing to learn and yet. . . many are so totally bored out of their minds by the environment. The classroom I was in was in a portable building which have become the staple in the US where overcrowding in the schools and no budget has forced districts to lease or buy these "temporary" buildings to house more students. Did I mention that there is also a law that says you can only have X number kids in each classroom or per teacher but as usual there was no additional funding to meet that mandate - grrr. Politics and schools don't mix well. And on that topic believe me I could rant. If you ever want to really hurt your brain attend a local school board meeting, especially when the topic of technology is on the agenda.

Anyways, yesterday, seeing all those kids and eagerness made me nostalgic for the days when we were training teachers and researching kewl things to use in educational environments. Maybe I can find a job back in that sector again. . . or maybe I can just apply my head to the nearest brick wall and repeat several times. The problem is in the policy makers not the schools. No wonder we are losing so many good educators to the corporate sector. Salaries are two to three times more than any education/academic institution can match. But maybe there is some middle ground somewhere?

Kusasa is an innnovative project funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation that is building a new curriculum for maths. It sounds kewl. I want to be optimistic; nay, I need to be optimistic.

Career Day

Wed, 09 May 2007 23:44:52 GMT

I did a slew of "Career Day" talks to four groups of about 30+ eighth graders this morning. It was pretty interesting, dare I say fun day. A former coworker of mine from NASA is now an Assistant Principal over at Space Center Intermediate Elementary so she called me to help fill in some final speaker slots. And guess what, several of the kids had heard of Ubuntu and Open Source Software! How totally kewl is that? One boy said his brother ran Xubuntu - schweet!

I did the standard, stay in school and you can do whatever you want plus I explained to them that I can work anywhere in the world as long as I have my laptop and an internet connection. Many of them were rather keen to work from home or even better spend half the day in their pjs. Can't say I blame them. ;-) I also tried to challenge them to come up with unusual or strange job that maybe no one else had ever heard like fish wrangler or a gaffer in movie production. I also got them to talk alot about educational technology and ways to use things like ipods, PSPs, and other video games for learning. They told me, "You need to talk to our principal!" I told them that was part of my plan but also the School Board and anyone and everyone else who would listen about using technology for good instead of evil in learning. I explained about policy and how the real challenge is getting many adults to change their views on technology.

Well anyways, before I get on that rant. Even these kids have it great compared to kids in many parts of the world. Space Center sits right across from NASA's Johnson Space Center (duh) and has some really neat stuff happening and nice computer labs. . . but of course, an all microsoft shop. I really hope to make it to the next Ubuntu Education Summit slated for October in Boston and maybe we can make connections for some Texas schools. But like I said, the challenge is not the kids but the policy makers.

(note to self: you really need to start spending some time on that FOSS presentation for School Boards you've been thinking about)

oh and the best part of the day was overhearing two girls walking out of the room and one girl said to the other, "She was much better than the last speaker. I had fun." "Me too," responded her friend. Pretty high praise from an 8th grader. ;-)

Ubuntu Open Week Session

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 00:05:23 GMT

This afternoon I led a very well received (imho) session about the Ubuntu-Women Project. The format took a bit of getting used to, as the presenter "talks" (types in irc) on one channel and then discussion and questions go on in another channel. For the presenter, you really can't keep up with the discussion/question channel so you have to rely on Ops help to filter the questions and post them into the presentation channel. A big Thank You goes out to PriceChild for doing this so well during my session.

I very much hope that there is a log of the chat channel as some of the early discussion there is Exactly why we still the Ubuntu Women Project. Several comments of the ilk of "there are women here? wtf?" which will serve as good examples of 'how not to act' in IRC channels. Lots of great questions from the gathered masses and several thought provoking comments as well.

The question of "how to encourage women in IT/FOSS/Ubuntu" was raised but I'm not so sure that is the right question, or that that question gets to some of the issues. I'll be tossing more of those questions/issues out here for comment as well as to our mailing list soon. (As soon as my dotMac account will let me post again to *.ubuntu.com mailing lists - argh)

For now I invite you to attend our next U-W Project Open Week session which will be held on Thursday, 26 April at 1500 UTC. I'll be live from some free wifi spot in Las Vegas - Vegas Baby, woohoo! Immediately following the session will be our second meeting with Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager, in #ubuntu-women, to continue our discussion of issues facing women in the community.

So bring your questions/comments and happy thoughts to all the Ubuntu Open Week Sessions. See the wiki for the complete schedule and links to session logs: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek

Ubuntu Houston Team Meeting

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 03:18:59 GMT

IMG_9629
Originally uploaded by ryoo.

Woohoo! We had over 25 folks show up for this month's meeting. Next month we're planning a hardware testing day at Directron. And there's a Bar Camp in June so lots of activities on the Houston Open Source scene.

Houston Loco Team Meeting 18 April

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:44:38 GMT

The Houston Ubuntu Linux Users Group will be having our monthly meeting this Wednesday 18 April 2007 at Freebirds World Burrito at 3745 Greenbriar. We'll start at 7 - 7:30 PM with food and introductions then have our general topics from 7:30 on. More information on the Houston Team can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HoustonTeam

one small step. . .

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:27:33 GMT

Spent some time this afternoon playing with the sony vaio desktop and various ubuntu feisty betas - still no joy. I was able to get 7.04 beta alt installed and mostly configured but when I rebooted it gets stuck past bootup and everything just stalls to a blank screen. It's gotta be that second video card that is killing something b/c both monitors go black for awhile and then the second comes up and says "Out of Range" then everything just goes black and nothing on either monitor. Ugh, not a good sign but still more progress than before.