USENIX aftermath
Another year, another USENIX, though this time without jet lag or TSA grief or any of that. There’s something to be said for that, though I think it would have been easier to deal with the stack of books I wound up with after the game show if I’d had a hotel room to dump them in and a suitcase to pack them in.
This year’s schedule was odd. Instead of the old 2/3 or 3/3 tutorial/technical split of days, they had 6 days of tutorials and 5 days of technical sessions that overlapped, and you could register for a mix of them.
I’m not sure how I feel about the new scheme yet; they did use the extra time to put together one-day mini-tracks for things like Extreme Linux and the like, and each day had a mini-keynote (all of which I liked, and which were worth slogging over to Copley even in rush-hour T conditions) instead of One Big Keynote. However, it seemed like there was less going on at any given time (fewer conflicts, but fewer options if you weren’t interested in either main track) and as Camilla mentions the vendor displays have been really sparse lately, so my old trick of “hmm, that session looks like a good time to collect vendor giveaways” no longer works.
(When the entire set of book publishers is smaller than the O’Reilly booth used to be, and the rest of the vendor display is less than a dozen tables spread around the perimeter of a portion of the exhibit hall that used to be packed full….)
I decided to bug out early on the last day; I was short on sleep and figured I wouldn’t be likely to have much attention span for the last couple of sessions. I grabbed a quick lunch, did some browsing through the Upper Newbury Music Trifecta (CD Spins, Newbury Comics, Virgin Megastore), and then hopped on the T. I figured I’d swing by CambridgeSide to see if Best Buy had a CD I wanted cheaper than either Newbury or Virgin, then head to the office to clear out the backlogged email so I wouldn’t feel quite as guilty about it over the weekend, and gave me a chance to scope out the shuttle bus between Gov’t Center and Lechmere as well.
As the train pulled in to Park Street, a woman with two young children got up to get off through the rear door (by the unused driving cab). The train stopped, the door started to open, and one of the kids fell down the stairs, managing to catch his head between the leaves of the accordion door as it was opening. The kid was screaming, the mother was freaking out, and another bystander and I were jumping to push the door aside and free the kid’s head. Scary enough to give me a jolt of adrenalin I wasn’t expecting.
After that, helping a gaggle of teenagers find the shuttle buses at Gov’t Center was fairly anticlimactic. The bus ride was reasonable, the stops (particularly “North Station”) are not necessarily really close to the T stations, and they didn’t seem to really care whether you had taken a transfer or not. I’m glad I don’t have to ride that segment daily, though.
A quick buzz through the mall, picked up some CDs at Best Buy, then to work, and on home once the email was at least shoveled out somewhat.
It feels like it’s been a long week that flew by. Very odd feeling.
