use Perl

• like testing in previous years, this year there is a large emphasis on perl as a craft - if you consider software development as your art then you will be a good developer, and when you are a good developer "you can't write maintainable PERL" arguments diminish.
• I am entirely convinced that unicode operators as language tokens is a bad idea. but I am but a peon in this brave new world.
• I need to see how Perl 6 expects to handle namespaces and how that relates to testing. I really, really like being able to temporarily override subroutines in my tests so I can make them fail. in fact, I am increasingly convinced that languages without that feature can never create code as robust as very well tested Perl. anyway, one thing I only half-heard in Damian's Perl 6 talk makes me think Perl 6 will not have that ability, which is unfortunate (if true).
• that I can use assbackwards legitimately in a technial talk has apparently lost its humor.
• while having friends that live all across the world is fantastic, only having a few hours of real conversation a year with these really extrodinary people is somewhat depressing.
• the wings in Buffalo are very, very good.

oh, and for the archives, this link saved me (additional) hours of frustration. so, if you have a thinkpad and are having problems getting X to play nice with a projector, check it out.