March 28, 2006

There were 4 posts published on March 28, 2006 (this is page 1 of 1).

Australian Time Zone Follies

As I blogged about earlier, the Commonwealth Games were recently held in Melbourne. Unfortunately, the Games were scheduled right when Australia was due to switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. Anticipating the trouble this would cause for athletes and spectators, some asshats in Australian government decided to delay the switch to Standard Time by a week. As you can imagine, this ill-conceived decision has caused no shortage of confusion. Sure, there was no trouble getting people to the Games, but now no one really knows what time it is.

I got bitten by this yesterday morning. My hotel phone is a combination phone/clock radio. I asked the hotel staff to fix the phone as there was a short in the line which caused static. The maintenance guy dutifully came by and fixed things, namely by completely replacing the clock/phone. The only problem is that he set the time to be an hour earlier than it was (at least, what I think it was. Who knows?). Thus, I awoke an hour later than expected and was an hour late getting to the trade show.

I updated the clock to match the time posted on an Australian government website and raced out to the show. I was grumbling about the clock thing all day until I woke this morning. Though my clock said 6 AM, the radio announcer kept saying 5 AM.

Houston, we have a problem. (Houston, by the way, is currently observing CST.)

Great! Either the announcer or the clock is wrong. My laptop’s time is still in EST, so that’s no help. I turned on the TV to see what the Australian TV networks were saying. Sure enough, they said it was 6 AM, too. The radio guy was wrong.

I decided to cut the hotel maintenance guy some slack. In this crazy environment no one can possibly agree on the time!

All this trouble doesn’t even begin to address the problems with all of our modern society’s computers, several of which were stuck in one time or another. Microsoft released a patch to tell Windows servers to follow the new delayed switch rule, but the big drawback is the need to remove the patch before next year. How much you want to bet that at least fifty percent of computer owners forget to do that?

Perhaps this is a reminder from the Universe that Time is not real. Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I may be late for breakfast now.

Or not.

Linuxworld

Today was another working day for me: my first day at Linuxworld Australia. It’s the first time that Linuxworld has done a show in Australia, and it shows. There are about forty exhibitors here, tops. It makes the 1999 Linux Expo show in Raleigh seem huge by comparision. That’s not an easy thing.

Even so, there were more exhibitors walking around than attendees. I could probably count on one hand how many decent leads we had today. When I would see someone walking up, often it would be people who had visited before. It was really, really slow. Not the kind of thing I would’ve expected from Linuxworld.

The vendor across the aisle brought in his sixteen month old daughter for a visit. I couldn’t look at her without thinking of my wonderful family back home. Instantly I became homesick. Sure I’m having fun but boy do I miss my family!

I was a keynote speaker here, which is a first for me. The organizers fit me into the last slot for the day. I spent some time working on my presentation and was ready to go when the time rolled around. At 4:45 I took the stage. While my laptop was being set up for the projector, I took a step towards a table and stepped into space instead. The old show business saying “break a leg” almost applied to me. I wasn’t hurt, so I took it as a good omen.

The show misplaced my bio, so I didn’t get properly introduced. The regular emcee was nowhere to be found so Brian, another show organizer of about retirement age, was there instead. The guy ahead of me took longer than his time so I began early. By the time I was ready to go, I looked out on rows of empty seats. Five people were in my audience.

Bummer.

I sighed, smiled, and jumped into things anyway.

My talk was short but sweet. I made the most of my twenty minutes, putting in some observations about geeks with talk of product features. I burned through fourteen slides, most of which were just there to dress up the blank screen behind me as I initially didn’t plan for any slides. I’d initially planned to show the demo site next but the lack of audience and the late hour made me end things first.

I got some applause. Then the meager audience dispersed and I was alone with Brian.

“No worries, mate,” Brian said to me. “We’ll get you a spot tomorrow or the next day. People often cancel.”

I smiled and wandered back to the booth, pleased with my presentation but depressed at the audience. The guys in the booth told me “nice job,” but it was little comfort.

Eventually I cheered up. The size of the audience was completely out of my control. You’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt, and I did the best I could with what I had. Perhaps I’ll get a better timeslot should another chance arise.

We all went upstairs to enjoy drinks and h’or deurves while Linuxworld presented their “best of show” awards to vendors. Gehan, Clinton, and I spent most of our time on the patio, where they smoked cigarettes and I took in the skyline.

Brian saw me wandering around looking for a beer. “No worries, mate,” he said again. “I’ll take care of ya.” Later I looked up from taking pictures of the city to see Brian making his way through the crowd, looking for me. Each hand held a beer, which he shoved into my hands.

“I told ya I’d take care of ya,” he said with a wink. I thanked him and grinned all the way back to the patio. That was just what I needed.

Gehan and Clinton didn’t feel like going out, so we then went our separate ways. I took the tram back to the hotel, where I spent two hours fighting the broken Internet service there. Finally throwing in the towel, I packed up my laptop (called a “notebook” here) and headed over to an Internet cafe owned by the marketing partner of my company. Now I’ve got a comfy couch to write on and a high-speed connection from which to upload pictures. Check out the gallery for the Linuxworld pictures.

The ubiquitous Jon “Maddog” Hall was there, as he usually is for each and every Linux trade show. I got my picture taken with him, just for fun.

In another interesting coincidence, a gentleman walked up to me at the party and introduced himself. His name was Mark Turner. Remember how I kept meeting Marks and the last trade show I attended? Now its the last name, too. I took a picture of the other Mark Turner and enjoyed chatting with him. You can’t help but like Mark Turners.

Tomorrow should be better at the show. I suppose people are beginning to notice, as I’m told over 2,000 online registrations were received today to attend the show. Hopefully there will be some good leads there. Just a couple of sales can make it all worthwhile.

Now its off to bed. Check in again in the morning, mate. Good on ya. Fair dinkum. Cheers, etc…