use Perl

I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season. Be safe.

For whatever reason, I decided to go back and check out Perl Monks. It's been quite some time since I was there. Also, I had gotten pretty burnt out on the "community" for a while (post YAPC hosting, then TPF Committee chairing, frankly sick of certain peoples attitudes, etc...). But, lately I've been getting back into the swing of things.

Anywho.. a long while ago I stopped visiting Perl Monks because of the trolls, horrible answers, and various annoyances. Plus, the fact that I swear the site is run off a laptop.. an old laptop.. which is underwater and connected with uninsulated cables.

So, last week I decided to visit. Of course, I forgot my password so I used the "send me my password" thing. An hour later, it arrived. I've now tried about 50 times to get to the Newest Nodes page, and NOT ONCE has it even began to load.

I'm not on dialup, have a zippy MacBook, and tried on Safari, Camino and FF. The site is still slow as a snail.

I'm really shocked at the lack of proposals for YAPC::NA::2006. I am also really shocked at the lack of them for '05. Years previous there were plenty to choose from!

So, what's up people? Why are you not putting in proposals, as opposed to years past? Is it the time you may have to put into it? Unsure you'd be able to pull it off? Not enough of a support system to help?

YAPC::NA::2003 proposals - 6+
YAPC::NA::2004 proposals - 6+
YAPC::NA::2005 proposals - 1 (Toronto... which was a good place anyways)
YAPC::NA::2006 proposals - 0 (as of now, which is past the original deadline)

YAPC isn't like OSCON where you can expect it to occur every year. If people don't get involved, it won't live on. It's not something you can sit on your duff and expect someone else will do it. You HAVE to participate and host the conference for it to happen. After all, that's what grass roots is all about. It's really a great experience to organize it, and a fabulous way to give back to the Perl community.

So what's up people? Why are you not proposing? What's changed in the past few years? What can we as a community do to change this? What can TPF do?

Let's make sure YAPC::NA doesn't die out. That would be a real shame. Plus, all of you wouldn't fit in my house as the "last resort venue" ;-)

The perl.com success stories are sort of old now. I'm looking for any articles/whitepapers/etc... out there which pertain to "We used to use X, switched to Perl and now life is good" or "We used Perl, switched to X and now life is bad". Not just stories on how Perl is great for whatever was done, but why Perl ended up being the best choice.

Anyone have any pointers to newsgroup articles, magazine articles, etc...? Bonus points if it is from a company, not just an individual. Extra Bonus points for anything written by a manager-type.

Today is my birthday. Since I have had to compete with that JC guy all my life, people usually forget. So, I need to remind them :-)

Day 1 was quite eventful. I worked, then went out to dinner with my family. If I were at the conference, I probably would have had more fun.

Here is what I have in my /etc/ppp/ip-up:

/sbin/route delete default ip.of.the.vpn
/sbin/route add default 192.168.1.1
/sbin/route add XXX.XXX.0.0 ip.of.the.vpn
/sbin/route add NN.NNN.0.0/16 ip.of.the.vpn


When I connect, this is fine. All my VPN traffic goes through the VPN, and uses all things VPN. And, when I connect to the rest of the world, it works fine. So, it's a split-tunnel.

And, my ip-down:

/sbin/route add XXX.XXX.0.0
/sbin/route delete NN.NNN.0.0/16
/sbin/route add default 192.168.1.1


When I disconnect by hand, this works fine. I could probably have nothing in this file, but do.

But, those random disconnects (and reconnect) seem to sometimes make my default gateway the ip.of.the.vpn. I don't notice until Adium suddenly disconnects, and I do a netstat to look at the routing table... then I have to run ip-up by hand.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I'm missing YAPC, and it sucks. As some of you know, my wife was rushed to the hospital on Sunday morning. She ended up undergoing major surgery that night having her appendix, a tennis ball sized ovarian cyst, and about a foot of her small intestine removed. She's still in the hospital, and probably will be until the end of the week.. if not more.

Wish I could see all my old and new friends at YAPC this year. But, maybe next year. If anyone wants to drive East for a few hours, let me know :-) I could use a distraction.

I won't be at OSCON either, since all my silent (read: in my head) please to ORA to pay my way have gone unanswered.

I'd like to make it this year. But, being (un|self)employed, the funds can't be taken for both travel expenses and the actual conference. Not sure what to do. I guess I could grovel to gnat for a pass and see if I can get the money to make the trip... but not sure that would work. Blah. This is one of the things that working for "The Man" was good for... but is also why YAPC exists. But, I'd like to do some Apache talks.. grah!