John and Gloria and I got waffles this morning. They were good. From there, we started our trip: down to the Philly airport, over to O’Hare, cross town to IIT. This was all pretty standard, with a few ups and downs. As the three of us (John, Dieter, and I) struggled to decide what kind of CTA pass to buy, and how to buy it, a few random tourists on their way out of Chicago stopped and asked us if we wanted their remaining day’s worth of tourist pass. There were three of them, and we said yes. That saved us about $15 and a good bit of time. On the way to our train, I found a phone change return full of quarters. (Yes, I compulsively check them for change, I admit it.)

My MacBook came with iWork, and thus Keynote, installed on it. It was a demo version, so when I bought the full version, I just downloaded a serial number. (I wouldn’t have minded getting a copy of the manuals, but the help has been good enough, so far.)

Tomorrow begins my trip to YAPC::NA::2006. I’m really looking forward to this year’s YAPC. The talks look exceptionally interesting, and I’m going to be giving on myself. I’ve been spending a lot of time poking at it and poking at the code I’m presenting (Sub::Exporter), deciding what things I feel like trying to show off.

Are you listening, Apple? The Airport needs DHCP reservations.

I’m often amused by the fact that my catch phrase at work seems to be, “You know what else I hate?” I don’t think of myself as a big complainer, but I guess I do more than my fair share of it around the office, although I think it’s mostly non-work-related complaining. I mumble under my breath about the latest episode of Lost, or the way that T-Mobile organizes their automated phone menus, or the fact that Bugzilla is completely insane. (Okay, that last one is work-related.)

Every time I see a package variable used for configuration, I wince and shake my fist. Despite this, I have a number of modules that use globally-defined plugins. Some of these are usually not a big deal, because the modules are almost always going to be used in programs with one object of the class. Module::Starter and Mail::Audit fall into this group. (I don’t really think this is a good excuse, but it’s a reasonable explanation.)

I actually did have some bad dreams a few days ago, but I can’t remember what made them so bad. I remember being told that I needed a haircut, but that’s about it – and I doubt that was especially traumautic.

Sometime during the past year I got a few things working on my Mac that really made my life simpler: offlineimap, mutt, and postfix. offlineimap is a Python program for syncing an IMAP store to a set of Maildirs. It works bidirectionally and its installer is simple and just works. (Configuration was a little weird, but even that is very simple.) mutt is my MUA of choice, and its installation is even simpler.

This weekend, a few of the friends I’ve made through work came to Bethlehem to see whether the ice cream joints that I’d raved about were really all that. I’ll say more about that later; the short version is: of course they were. While they were here, I pointed out the route I take to get to the bus and answered some questions about how long it took me to get to and from the office. Usually, it’s a twenty or thirty minute walk to the bus, then a two hour bus ride, then a five minute walk. Those numbers can fluctuate a little, but not much. Someone asked why I’d want to cope with such a big commute, and I explained that my new job was better. This led to the question, “Well, how much better?”

I recently bought a used Nokia 6620. For the most part, it’s been a decent phone. I can use it to make calls, get online, and play Frozen Bubble. It’s had a few quirks, though, which seem to affect my battery life. Also, I can’t reassign all of the buttons on it. I think these problems are caused by my ancient firmware. In fact, I know some of them are: John as a newer version of the firmware and can reprogram a number of the buttons that I can’t.