I had the week off from work. Gloria and I stayed at home, ignored Musikfest as much as possible, and relaxed. We saw a lot of movies, ate some good food, and avoided the downtown area.

I’m back to my normal life, which has created quantum superposition of emotions within me: I’m relieved to be off the hectic OSCON schedule, I’m very happy to be back home with Gloria, and I’m uninspired to be back at work trying to get things done with stone knives and bearskins.

I slept later today than I have all week. Well, I stayed in bed longer, anyway. Staying in bed when you could get up is a strange thing. Sometimes, you feel incredibly relaxed, and sometimes you just feel lazy and bored. Once I started to go from relaxed to lazy, I got up and headed down to the lobby, without time for my usual muffin-and-juice breakfast. I headed right to the keynotes, which were not very interesting. The first keynote was a presentation of some incredible software for relating and browsing geo-locational data. While the software was wild, the talk was tame, and I felt like it was too easy to get distracted by my laptop screen. Of course, I can’t entirely blame the speaker, but I guess he was mostly interested in showing off the technology, and not talk about the ramifications of the freedom of his data. In fact, I’m still not sure what parts were free and what (if any) were not.

The morning started with Freeman Dyson engaging in a “moderated discussion” with Tim O’Reilly and the audience. While Dyson was very charming and is cool, the talk was sort of uninteresting. This was followed by a guy from HP whom I completely ignored, basically because he was completely ignorable.

I really should have blogged yesterday yesterday. Instead, I fell asleep, and now I remember nothing.

Yesterday was all Damian, today was no Damian. Well, that’s not true. Damian gave a talk at the Tuesday Night Extravaganza, but it wasn’t so much a tutorial as a bit of entertainment. The tutorials I actually attended had good points and bad points. I will try to summarize them, below.

It’s about quarter after ten, here, and I’m really ready to fall asleep. Maybe it’s that I got up at 0530 local time, or maybe it’s that my body is still on Eastern time, where it’s now 0115, well past my bedtime. Either way, I’m really tired.

I’m laid over in Chicago. I got into the airport just under an hour ago, and the gate for my next flight was directly across from my point of entry. I looked for something to eat, and the shortest line was to Uno’s. I would have been willing to stand in line longer for something better, but everything seemed pretty fatty, so I ate my tiny pizza and did my best to enjoy it. I like Uno’s crusts, and I’ve never quite understood how to describe it. It’s not quite flaky, it’s sort of powdery. But that sounds awful, and it isn’t awful.

I’m in that annoying state where I’m ready to leave, but it just isn’t time to go yet. We’ll be heading out in about 45 minutes to go pick up a few last things from my office and then head to the PHL airport. “We” are John C and me. John came to town to hang out, drink some beers, and give me a lift to the airport. Awesome.

A few quick notes: