Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Bugs R Us

Saturday's bug invasion was followed yesterday with the appearance of similar but smaller bug carcasses scattered about the house. These new ones were about half the size of the ones I was squishing the other day. Haven't spotted any new bugs crawling around since Saturday though.

Will have to check the garage and around the outside of the house and see if there's anything going on.

Wonder if I should call the bug guy in to check things out.

Update: Bug guy confirmed that the bugs were Formosan termites that have been swarming recently. Said they sneak into houses, and then die because there are no good places inside houses to establish colonies. After checking out underneath the house, he said everything was good and that any other termites that get into the house will probably die too.

Doggie hotel

Seems like all the dogs coming here are staying longer than expected. Macho arrived this weekend, and thought he was going to be staying the week, but it turns out it'll be more like two weeks. There will be four dogs in the house for a little longer than planned. It won't be the first time there have been four dogs in the house though.

Definitely need to keep up with the vacuuming though. Just the carpet alone was a one Dyson job after one day. I expect that there will be much time spent at dog parks over the next couple of weeks.

Dragoncon 2010

It's on for Dragoncon 2010! Hotel reservation made (according to Rick anyway) and pass purchased. Looking forward to my second one. Should be a fun time!

Geeky finds

Thanks to @physicistlisa, I discovered the awesome coolness that is GeekSoap. I couldn't resist buying a few.

There's the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy soap at the top, the d20 soap on a rope and the d20 massage soap at the bottom.

Pretty cool stuff. Haven't used them yet; they're almost too cool to use! Plus you have to love the fact that her main website is The Pink Toque. That's such a great word, toque.

I followed @geeksoap to @GeekyLyndsay, who makes these cool dice bags, including this uber-cool caffeine dice bag. If I was still gaming and still had mounds of dice, I'd probably have to buy one of those too. I'll even overlook the fact that she's from Calgary because of the coolness of her dice bags.

An evening with Barenaked Ladies

This evening I got to see Barenaked Ladies in concert for the first time. Not sure how, but I've managed to go this long without seeing them live.

The show was a blast, and the Performing Arts Center was pretty much packed.

The concert opened with Serena Ryder, who I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I thought her acoustic guitar set was well done and very dynamic. Listening to her sing made me think of a combination of Melissa Etheridge and Alannah Myles (but not quite so country).

BNL definitely did not disappoint with the show today, with a mix from their new album (All in Good Time) and older songs. Even their theme song from Big Bang Theory made it into the set. It was different listening to them without Steven Page, but they were still awesome.

Now I just need The Tragically Hip to come to Charleston.

Missy the Ball Fiend

I've had Missy out at the dog park a couple of times now, and she is a huge ball fiend. She can barely sit still waiting for you to throw the ball and takes off like a rocket after it. She's a lot of fun to watch chasing after the ball.

She even brings it back to me, unlike some dogs I know (Nala and Simba, I'm looking at you...)

This makes it easy to tire her out. She also doesn't know when to stop and take a break. Now that it's getting hotter out, it's easy for her to run herself into heat exhaustion or worse, which is bad, especially being a black dog and smaller than the others, who do have the sense to stop when they get too hot. That means rationing the ball throwing and making her take breaks, even though she looks like she doesn't want to.

Politicking

The thought occurred to me today.

US politics isn't about politicians representing their people.

It's about politicians trying to convince the people that his/her beliefs are their beliefs.

Photowalking

The 2010 edition of the Worldwide Photowalk is coming up soon (July 24) to a location near you. Helping to organize last year's photo walk was a lot of fun. This year there will be two photowalks happening in the Charleston area.

The Charleston photowalk is meeting downtown at the Powder Magazine in the morning and is being lead by Adam Barret.

Later on in the afternoon, I'll be leading the North Charleston photo walk starting at the North Charleston Riverfront Park and then wandering through the old Navy base.

Feel free to join one or both photowalks!

Idiot tolerance

Leonard: How is it my fault?
Penny: You have destroyed my ability to tolerate idiots! Now come with me!
Leonard: Where are we going?
Penny: We're going to have sex!
Leonard: Wha, I mean, ok
Sheldon: What's going on?
Penny: Put on your noise cancelling headphones, 'cuz it's gonna get loud!
Sheldon: Oh not this again!

Big Bang Theory

Another Southeast Linuxfest over

Judging from the response from most people, this year's Southeast Linuxfest was another hugely successful event. There was a snafu with getting decent Internet access to the meeting (big AT&T fail), but it seemed like most people put up with the hotel internet, worked around it with cell phone tethering or cell phone wifi, or just lived without it for a couple of days. Overall things went off without too many major incidents and there was a lot of positive feedback from the attendees. Things seemed a little chaotic at times but it was all good.

Not sure about the exact attendance numbers yet, but there were almost 540 people that registered online. It definitely felt like there were more people here than there were at SELF 2009. I wouldn't be surprised to hear final attendance numbers close to 700.

Learned a lot of new things to look into at DrupalCamp. Excited about learning how to do more with Drupal. Problem will be finding the time to play with it.

Managed to score a bunch of geeky t-shirts this year. Came back from SELF with 9 more t-shirts than I left with. A couple of them I bought, while the rest were freebies from various exhibitors.

Even managed to go out and do some photowalking with Michael DeHaan of Puppet Labs and Ian Weller. We hit a shut down Krispy Kreme and got some interesting photos there using the neon red glow from the DOUGHNUT sign that was still lit up. Then we spent some time taking photos at an interesting fountain. Had a good time.

Also came back with around 2.6GB worth of photos, including a few videos from Dual Core's performance Saturday night. After making a first pass to weed through the obvious rejects, there are close to 550 photos still to go through.

By late Sunday, most of the volunteers and organizers were pretty wiped out.

Looking forward to helping create another successful SELF for 2011.

Worldwide Photo Walk North Charleston

Morning web

Back door guardian

Close-up of the spider guarding the back door