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Brian Bilbrey October 12, 2014

Capclave Wrap

Capclave 2014 is a wrap. I was not involved. I was just an attendee who had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time. It's not nearly as much work to attend as to be celebrated, though... At the Capclave 2014 GoH Signing Table last night Genevieve Valentine, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Holly Black. These folks (along with many others) worked hard at this literary Science Fiction and Fantasy convention. I commented to Paolo last night that clearly, being Guest of Honor at a con is a lot harder than previously assumed. I wondered aloud if it was much like a goose being the…

Brian Bilbrey November 9, 2013

Six Days of LISA '13

Howdy. My name's Brian, and I'm a tired SysAdmin... So, six days of tutorials and talks at the USENIX LISA '13 conference are done. And it was good. My behind is, however, glad to be shut of those hotel conference chairs. Sunday, 3 November Sunday's full day tutorial was called Securing Linux Servers, and was taught by Rik Farrow, a talented bloke who does security for a living, and is Editor of the USENIX ;login: magazine on the side. We covered the goals of running systems (access to properly executing services) and the attacks that accessibility (physical, network) enable. As always,…

Brian Bilbrey October 14, 2012

Capclave 2012 #FTW

I had an AWESOME time at Capclave 2012! I got to spend quality time with a number of superb authors, experts, and fans. Among the former were John Scalzi, the Author GoH - as a "Guest" he sure had to work his butt off, but since we all benefit from his work, I'll not whinge on about it. I got him to sign The God Engines (his "cheerful one"), and I had him inscribe Redshirts to Marcia. Thanks, John! I also stumbled across Edward Lerner, Alan Smale, Allen Wold, Jean Marie Ward, Neil Clarke, and many more brilliant, articulate, wonderful…

Brian Bilbrey June 3, 2012

Married in Atlanta

We travelled to Atlanta for a wedding this weekend. Our friend Jennifer married her beau Kris in an evening ceremony on Saturday, and everyone had a great time. We're really happy for both of them! Our flight down was good - we got out of town before the storms hit late Friday afternoon, forcing a ground stop on all the DC area airports. We had the excellent company of a Marine officer who was just home from an eight month deployment to Afghanistan, managing health-care financial teams doing knowledge transfer to their Afghani counterparts, as well as investigating and keeping…

Brian Bilbrey September 27, 2011

No guilt at all

Last night was fun - in between the chores we got to visit with Marcia's friend and former manager Judy, who was in town for a Peace Corps event. Out to supper at Mi Hacienda, then the girls had a nice chat while I finished up the trash and did some school work. We were up at 0530, and Marcia ran Judy down to the train while I confused the dog by walking her early on a working day. What I'm not feeling guilty about is schooling some of my fellow students in the Social Gerontology course. At least one…