Dists may come and Dists may go, as long source does flow.
Each hacker lad, just like his dad, he loves the flowing code.
Come along come along me Jolly great geeks, there's iceless
rootbeer in the jar.
We'll plough the binary ocean with a Jolly Rollin' .tar
I'll tell a tale of Sir Perrin, scourge of Georgia,
I'll tell a tale of King Mario with his army of nuns,
I'll tell a tale of King Aaron, the Jolly Rollin' .tar
I'll tell of Bob who drove forty miles (Or was it more?)
I'll tell of Phill, the traveling programmer
Of mention there needs to be Leonard, Don, Jim,
Craig, Sean, Jack, and Jonathon as well.
And all that are forgot.
On the dark and pleasant evening of March 28th, in Saint Peter's burg,
a number of vagrant Linux geeks assembled at the Library in a most unusual way.
Our story begins when Chad and myself arrive at a little after 6:00 PM.
Chad had offered me a ride as I was to bring a computer tower and a
monitor to give a non-presenation on.
Open arriving at the library, we noted the meeting room we usually
inhabit was open. We enter, but see that not even Aaron is there.
Sure I find this strange, so I ask Chad to follow me to the front desk,
where we ask the Librarian if SLUG has the room registered.
The Librarian looks gravely at us, and says no. It is not listed, says she.
Oh dear. We will have to re-register. And both rooms are taken tonight.
There's new policies.
We decided to wait until Aaron arrives to sort things out, since it's his job.
Aaron, along with some other SLUG people, arrive. I say:
"Hey, Aaron, guess what! We don't have a meeting room."
Aaron goes to talk a different librarian at the front desk. This one
is younger, and has treated us politely in the past.
Now, Chad, Don, Phill, myself, and perhaps some others followed
Aaron to the desk to listen in.
This librarian tells us they have a new manager, and we can longer
reserve rooms six months in advance, only six weeks.
I believe it was now that I ask for the manager's name.
I think at this point Chad said "So it's the new manager's policy
to throw out all previous room reservations."
Or something like that.
Now, I didn't hear anything, there was a lot of voices, I'm not sure
if the lady responded. I ask again, "What's his name?"
Oh bother. She says "It's a woman".
Now, lads and lasses, I'm not sexist. The chromosonal makeup of people
doesn't actually determine how I act towards them, or make me think
any less or more of a person. If anything I tend to be less rude
around female humans...
That said, I replied with "Right. This would be easier in Latin."
"What's [insert pronoun here]'s name?"
She says: "Sir, you're being very rude to me."
At this point Chad outbursts: "Nobody is being rude here.
If anyone is being rude, it's me."
I replied with something to the note of "Ma'am, I didn't mean to be
rude. I'm curious." and continued by saying "Yeah, Chad's rude. He's
rude to everyone. Even his friends." (jokingly)
It is weird, with all the other people there talking at the lady,
she picks me to attack.
Right. So the SLUG meeting took place in the lobby of the library,
at first. As people we arrived, we sat them down in the chairs right
outside our normal meeting room. We got about 10 people, I'd say.
The meeting room was taken by a Chess club, you see.
And when the chess people arrived, one of their guys invited us to
join them, since the room is very large and tehy were using just one
small part of it. I'm not sure why, but Aaron and the chessmeister go
to confirm this with the librarian.
This is the older librarian, the one Chad and I spoke to first.
She says we made the other librarian "very upset".
But, of course, there is no problem if the chess people want to share
with us, which of course they do -- they offered.
Right. So we got into the room at about 7:17 or so, right on time.
I was able to give my boring non-presenation of the sarge installer,
and some people were actually interesting. There were Shatner jokes,
and other bits of BS.
It was a great meeting, all in all.
Afterwards, Mario, Bob, Leonard, Chad, and I went to the Denny's and ate
well, and had a few good laughs at the library's expense.
The food-server at Denny's was quite kind, especially considering the
way she ignored all of Chad and Mario's talk about hookers and other
distasteful items.
In closing, I would like to mention I wrote a polite letter to the
manager of the library, and to the Librarian I unintentionally
insulted, as I think a formal-type apology is in order, even if it
wasn't my fault. It should clear any misunderstandings. And if not,
then hey, I have the moral highground. :)
If anyone would like to read it, it is here:
http://dylan.hardison.net/letter.pdf
I do think we might want to seek alternate places to hold the meetings.
Aaron I believe is thinking about Panera's.
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