Last year, I organized a phpBB users meetup for the first time coinciding with the O’Reilly Open Source Convention, called OSCONvasion 2009, thanks to the fact that OSCON was in San Jose. It wasn’t a huge meetup, but it was a great experience to get to meet with a number of the colleagues whom I’ve worked with over the internet, and it was a lot of fun. And we resolved that we wanted to plan this again for 2010, and maybe even see if the phpBB project could sponsor a booth.

Well, this year, OSCON moved back up to Portland, Oregon. So, unperturbed, we made plans last January to follow it up to Portland, and will be having yet another OSCONvasion 2010 meetup this week. Plus, the phpBB teams are also going to hosting their own booth there yet again.

Of course, in order to get to Portland, there is one added variable appearing on my radar that I didn’t have to worry about last year: travel. However, I’m actually really looking forward to this one, because for the first time, I’m not going to be flying out of state; I’m going to be taking the train! Specifically the Amtrak Coast Starlight, on a 19-hour ride to Portland from San Jose. (I’m departing from San Jose because of this pesky thing called the San Francisco Bay that gets in the way of trains on the peninsula. It’s actually kinda cool, because I can joke that I’m running the “Olympic Relay” from last year’s OSCONvasion to this year’s!)

When I depart on Monday evening, I’ll first be taking Caltrain to get to San Jose, departing San Mateo at 6:57 PM and arriving at San Jose at 7:32 PM, comfortably early. My Amtrak train will then depart at 8:39 PM, and arrive in Portland on Tuesday at 3:40 PM.

While in Portland, I’m actually staying with a friend, Lorelle VanFossen, whom I’ve gotten to know well at past WordCamp San Francisco events and who lives in the Portland area. After the long bout of travel, I’ll meet up with her at the train station, and won’t have anything else planned to do on Tuesday.

Of course, the awesome thing about OSCON is all the amazing stuff available for free (mostly on Wednesday & Thursday). Not only is there an amazing Expo Hall with some of the best in the open source software ecosphere, but also a number of free sessions, attendee-organized Birds of a Feather sessions, and lots more. In between bouts of volunteering at the phpBB booth, I’m also going to be roaming around the expo hall interviewing folks at the booths for special episodes of phpBB Weekly (hopefully involving video).

The OSCONvasion 2010 festivities take place on Thursday, with a schedule quite similar to last year. Once again, I will be moderating a special phpBB “Berties of a Feather” session as the main attraction for OSCONvasion. (It’s really a Birds of a Feather session, but we like to rename it after Bertie, our mascot.) A number of presentations are on-deck for our hour-long session, which we are planning to once again stream live via phpBB Weekly (hopefully with live video, or at least live audio). After the BoF, we’ll have an open group dinner at the nearby Burgerville restaurant.

Finally, on Friday, we’re going to meet at the Convention Center and then go for a group visit to the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, which should be a fun experience. (Last year, we went to the San Jose Tech Museum on kind of an impromptu decision, so I thought, why not plan for the same kind of idea this year?) After the OMSI and lunch, I’ll be heading back over to Portland Union Station to catch my return Coast Starlight train, departing at 2:25 PM and arriving in San Jose at 9:55 AM on Saturday. From there I’ll take Caltrain back up the peninsula, completing my four-and-a-half day trip.

This year’s OSCONvasion doesn’t quite look like it will be as big as last year, or maybe it will be about the same. These smaller meetups really are hit-or-miss, especially given that we’re doing it as part of a larger convention, where really anyone could come along and join us. But one thing that I learned last year is that size doesn’t matter. What matters is the experience, and getting to interact face-to-face with colleagues whom you’ve previously only gotten to interact with through a computer screen. It’s a unique and special opportunity, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Oh, and the nineteen hour train rides. I’ve always loved trains, but have never ridden on one for more than two-and-a-half hours before. That should be an interesting experience, and may very well cause me to spit out a number of follow-up blog posts.

So with that, it’s T minus 43 hours until my “All Aboard,” so keep following me on Twitter as I start my trek up along the West Coast! Maybe I’ll see you there.

As I just (mostly) finished packing for this trip, I actually found doing so a bit interesting. Coming from my home in the Bay Area here to DC back in August was a major expedition, pretty much equivalent to moving house. (Hence why I gave it the codename “Operation Uproot.”) But packing to head back home is really more like packing to go on a vacation. I’m only taking one suitcase plus a carry-on, as opposed to last August when I had two bags, a carry-on, and a huge package shipped ahead of time. Since I’m not changing dorms next semester, a lot of my stuff is staying here, since home will already have most of the amenities I need (not to mention free food).

I’m sure this seems like “well, duh” to most of my readers, but it feels very bizarre to me, noting that I haven’t taken long vacations to visit family anytime before in my life. (Well, once in 1995, but I have no memories of that.) It’s also weird how I’m packing for my return home the way that I would normally pack for leaving from home. But, I digress.

Today (Tuesday) is going to be a long 14-hour travel day. About eight hours from now (yes, I know, I need to go to sleep), I’ll be hopping on the AU shuttle over to the Tenleytown-AU Metro stop that I know so well. From there, I’ll be on the Red line to Fort Totten (yes, the infamous Fort Totten where that big crash happened last June; but I’ve ridden through there many times now, so no worries), and transfer to the Green line to Greenbelt, Maryland, getting there at 11:07. (The Green line goes to Greenbelt, and I’ve always wondered if that was a coincidence or not.) From there I hop on an express Metrobus to Baltimore/Washington Airport, getting there at 11:48.

I will be flying on Southwest Airlines flight 3930, departing Baltimore at 1:40 PM EST, and arriving in Oakland at 6:25 PM PST. Yep, it’s almost an eight-hour flight, thanks to the fact that it stops in–of all places–Albuquerque, New Mexico at 4:15 PM MST. Random, but oh well. From OAK, I then will have about an hour and a half of time where I will be taking BART over to Millbrae, where my folks will pick me up. Yeah, I get to ride Metro and BART on the same day–cool!

I get to enjoy a 23-day vacation at home, and will be flying back out on January 8th. That schedule will be an insane one, as I’m going to have to try to catch a 6:50 AM flight out of Oakland. Might not be able to take BART for that one. That’s Southwest flight 517, and it arrives at Chicago Midway (a much more sensible place) at 1:00 PM CST, where I make a connection to Southwest flight 2745 departing at 1:35 PM CST and arriving at Baltimore at 4:20 PM EST. The trip back to the AU campus is the exact opposite of today’s itinerary.

So there’s my travel plans; head on over to your flight trackers if you’re so interested.

Editor’s Note: This post was written while I was on the airplane about 8 hours ago. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t post it then. I am now at AU, posting this from my dorm.

Well, I guess that I was going to post this yesterday, but yesterday turned out to be quite a hectic day that it didn’t work out. Instead, I’m actually writing this blog post on the plane. Guess it works out, since I do need something to occupy myself for the next few hours, right?

Fortunately, yesterday didn’t turn out to be a big all-packing all-day day. Maybe that would have reduced the evening stress a bit, but it did provide the opportunity for a nice chance to go around San Mateo one last time. My parents and I took our harp-flute-cello trio to the park one last time, and despite it being a little bit windy, we actually had a bit of an audience this time.

Unfortunately, yesterday wound up being the big room-cleaning that I had procrastinated on during the summer. In some ways, that might have been a good thing, because when you’re about to move away for four months, the pack-rat tendency is significantly mitigated. Essentially for all of the stuff that I’ve accumulated and has been sitting around making a mess in my room all these years for no reason, it can either come with me, get kept somewhere at home, passed along to my family, or get recycled. Because the first two have significant space limitations, you can bet that I doubled the size of our paper recycling pile yesterday. So now the room is nice and clean which is good since my brother has it to himself now. The downside: DUST! So yesterday and today I’ve got a bit of hay fever, though the plane ride has been helping to improve it a bit.

But let me abruptly jump back about ten days to the first part of Operation Uproot (my packing project). For obvious reasons, moving house requires the shipment of a LOT of stuff. The cheapest method of getting stuff there would be to check it into multiple suitcases, since Virgin America just charges a flat rate of $15 per bag, up to 10 bags, up to 70 pounds for the first bag and 50 pounds for the rest. Here’s the downside: no way can I manage that many suitcases! Especially when I’m going to be taking them on a bus and the Metro once I land. So then what?

Well, the solution in that case is to ship the stuff there. Hence why as early as last week, we ended up having to do like a “test run” of packing stuff in the suitcase and thus figuring out what goes in the suitcase, what goes in my carry-on, and what get shipped. The box ended up getting shipped out by USPS Parcel Post last Friday, and so hopefully the box will have arrived by the time I get there (or else it better arrive on Monday). Interestingly enough, we had a bit of fun dealing with the fact that a 24x24x18.5 or higher box costs over $100 to ship with Parcel Post, but a 24x24x18 box only costs $25-$35 to ship. Go figure.

So what wound up in there? In short: bulky stuff. There’s a new mattress pad, sheet set, pillow, pillowcase, multiple towels, a beautiful T-shirt quilt that my mom made for me, a portable laundry hamper/bag, a pair of thongs (to use as bath slippers), and half of my pairs of jeans (the other half I kept to wear this past week). It looks like a short list, but that pretty much filled a 24x24x18 box.

Of course, the amount of stuff that had to get squished into my suitcase grew quite a bit yesterday from what it was last week; I actually ended up stuffing one of my State PTA bags with some other supplies and made it my second checked bag. My suitcase weighed in at 66.4 pounds, plus that PTA bag which is around 10 pounds and my carry-on bag which is around 12 (the latter two are guesstimations). There’s not much particularly out-of-the-ordinary that’s coming with me, though there are a few keepsakes. For example, although I was able to spend some time going through about four years worth of PTa materials that I’ve collected, most of which got recycled or passed along to my mom (who may find folks who will find them useful), I did keep a couple of items for myself, which will be nice to have if I get involved with the DCPTA at all. My Easy button came along for the ride (just so that I can push it once I’ve moved in), as well as a few books that I’ve been meaning to read. All my tech is here: MacBook and charger (and my iKlear screen cleaner that I ought to use more often), cell phone and charger, noise-canceling headphones (which, for the record, really don’t cancel out very much airplane noise, though it’s better than nothing), the works. We were somehow able to squeeze in my cribbage board as well (yay).

I guess I never realized how much packing is like an art-form, but man my parents are so good at it that I might not want to unpack any of it.

Well, at this point in writing this, we’re passing over Pueblo, CO, with about 2400 miles to go. So I guess it’s about time to wind up this blog post and start working on editing some audio that I brought along. (I just can’t be persuaded to blow off $12.95 just so I can have internet access on a five-hour flight.) Stay tuned for plenty more posts on The Smorgasbord as I start getting settled in at AU…

Still, can you believe it? Or rather, can I believe it? In only 40 hours, I will be on a plane en route to Washington-Dulles Airport, and from there, to my new intermittent home for the next 4 years (and continuously for the next 4 months): American University. Well, here’s my actual itinerary anyway (Skoker, if you’re reading this, I want your juicy trademark airplane/flight details!):

I’ll be on Virgin America Flight 78, which departs SFO at 9:25 AM and arrives at IAD at 5:35 PM, or a 5 hour direct flight +3 hours timezone difference. Not bad, eh? Guess it’s a good thing my parents booked that when it was cheap, about 4 months ago (even if I wasn’t psychologically ready for that thought at the time).
Now because I’m a public transit addict, I ain’t taking no shuttle or taxi service! (Not unless the flight has a multi-hour delay, knock on wood.) Of course I’m getting there with the Washington Metro! I’ve even got my SmarTrip Card already with $25 of value on it. From Dulles, I’ll be taking Metrobus 5A to the Rosslyn Metrorail station. From there, I just have to take the Orange or Blue line to Metro Center station and transfer to the Red Line up to the Tenleytown-AU station. An AU shuttle bus connects between there to my dorm where I will then check in. At the earliest, it will be about 7:30 PM at this point, so yeah, Saturday will essentially be a full day spent traveling.

So then what? Well, Sunday’s just wide open, so I guess that will be a day for me to get settled. The interesting part is that our meal plans don’t kick in until dinner on Sunday evening, so I’m pretty much going to have to be “eating out,” so to speak, over the weekend. We’ll see how that goes.

The real fun starts on Monday next week, which is “Welcome Week” at AU. Actually, it’ll be only freshmen on campus until Wednesday, when returning students are permitted to move back in. On Monday morning, I actually have to do a “make-up” New Student Orientation, since I wasn’t able to fly out to DC anytime this past summer to take part in that. That’ll probably take up most of the morning, and may include getting forms completed and stuff like that.
Beginning Monday afternoon, and continuing through to Thursday, is the actual Welcome Week program that I’m involved with, the Freshman Service Experience. The details I’ve gotten on this are still a bit scarce, but my understanding is that the program puts us in a number of community service organizations within Washington, DC and gives us a chance to get involved with those groups, which sounds intriguing. Unfortunately, they have yet to post their list of sites for this year, though they do have info about the evening programming.

Friday is the day that gets a little more interesting. For our summer reading, we’ve been assigned a book called True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society (Amazon link), which has been a very interesting book. We’re actually going to get to meet the author, Farhad Manjoo, on Friday. In the morning, Honors students (which includes me) will get to have breakfast with him, and in the afternoon, they’re doing a “Writer as Witness colloquium” where he will be speaking. In between those two things will be Opening Convocation, and I don’t really know what that will involve. We’ll get convocated, I guess. *shrug*

Then the weekend (August 22-23) is also fairly open, although the Honors program has a kick-off/barbecue on Saturday afternoon. And then on Monday, August 24th, classes begin. So, by popular demand (and I mean to the point where everyone asks me), here’s my schedule of classes for fall semester:

• World Politics — Mondays and Thursdays, 12:45-2:00 PM — 3.00 credits
• Western Legal Tradition — Tuesdays and Fridays, 11:20 AM-12:35 PM — 3.00 credits
• Honors 101 — Wednesdays, 3:35-5:20 PM — 0 credits
• Honors English I — Tuesdays and Fridays, 3:35-4:50 PM — 3.00 credits
• American Society — Mondays and Thursdays, 11:20 AM-12:35 PM — 3.00 credits
• Critical Approach to Cinema — Tuesdays and Fridays, 8:30-9:45 AM AND Thursdays, 8:10-10:40 PM — 3.00 credits

So now here come the barrage of questions which I’m going to try to predict and answer. (You get kinda good at this when it’s the one topic that every person in the world asks you for months on end.)

• That adds up to 15 credits! That’s quite a load. I’ll take your word for it. On average, this is six classes each twice a week. I’m used to six or seven classes five times a week, not to mention that just about all of my old commitments will have been left behind on another coast, giving me a clean slate. But we’ll see what will come out of that…
• Wow, those classes seem to be kind of Political Sciencey to me… Well, strike “Political Sciencey” and replace it with “General Edsy,” both words that I made up. I don’t have a declared major, and so these classes are all to fulfill AU’s complicated General Ed requirements, which I’ve already described. My AP scores have already placed me out of the math and history requirements, so here’s what’s left. Next semester will probably be the same story; guess I’ll just save the interesting stuff for sophomore year and beyond.
• What’s with the Honors 101 class? And zero credits? As a student in the Honors program, I get to participate in the fun stuff that that program puts on throughout the year. Like what? Oh, I could give you some examples, but I’m too lazy to dig through my e-mails from AU to give them to you. I’ll end up blogging a bit more about what that class is like in the near future. What I do know is the class is zero credits, but it also claims to have little outside work, no exams or quizzes, no textbooks, etc.
  The honors program DOES insist that I have a certain number of Honors-level classes and credits each semester. In addition to Honors English I, my Western Legal Tradition class is also in an Honors section.
• Man, that Critical Approach to Cinema class is certainly a time hog. Yep. And I don’t even like watching most movies, either. Well, you win some, you lose some.
• What, no music class? Guess not. I’ll probably see if there’s any way to keep up with music through an extracurricular group or something like that. Probably once I figure out if it’s possible to rent/borrow a cello from the school or a nearby store, or if that goal is fruitless and we’ll have to shell out the big bucks to ship my own cello back and forth.

There is one other exciting thing coming up. On Sunday, I saw in the Today@AU e-mail (essentially a periodic e-mail that comes out with announcements for students and faculty), that the AU Student Government was seeking applicants for the position of Parliamentarian. Wow, could my timing be any better? I’ve only been Parliamentarian of my local PTA Council for the past two years, and have been working with Robert’s Rules of Order the past three, and I’ve been planning to figure out a way that I could get involved with AUSG for a few months now. So I got my application typed up right then and there and submitted it.

Here’s the cool part: They guy who was receiving the applications e-mailed me back the next morning. While I won’t hear whether or not I get the position until next week, he said that there’s actually a local unit of the National Association of Parliamentarians that meets just down the street from AU. He’s also a member, and if I’d like to join (and I’ve been meaning to for a few months now), he could administer the examination that I need to pass in order to join! (It’s a 100 question multiple-choice exam, and I only need a 70% to pass.) So I’m going to get to take that exam on Tuesday the 25th! I can’t wait…

So that’s what my first week or two over on the East Coast will look like. Tomorrow I get to pack, clean room, and a bunch of other hectic last-minute stuff for my last day in the Bay Area until December. And tomorrow will come the next half of this blog post: the part where I get to share the incredibly stressful interesting experience I’ve had getting myself ready to mobilize. So stay tuned…