When the invitation was sent to GIMP developers to attend this conference, I thought that Akkana was better suited to represent GIMP there. For so many many reasons. 1) she had been printed in a Linux magazine (about something she had done with GIMP) and 2) to the best of my knowledge, her life had remained unchanged since becoming involved with the project.
I am writing this more than two years after the fact, and post-dating with some commandline tools I have access to, just to be honest.
The state of disbelief that I was in then still exists today. The events which happened in 2003 -- had I been able to manage the shift at the store that I was managing, many of the problems that happened there would have been, well, better managed. Then, after inviting one friend to stay and see my life, everything that I had shown this friend disappeared or slammed their doors on me. The one friend that I hadn't mentioned turned into a selfish and creepy enemy right after coming in contact with this friend.
I did have in that time, a lovely (and first) trip across an ocean to GUADEC 2004 where I met people I had considered to be friends and delivered this book and toured a lovely country.
The disbelief in the situation persists, no matter how nice these untenable times can be at times. Broken promises, changing stories and an atmosphere of "how much shit can you take" that just will not cease. In the years since attending that conference, this has not changed -- and this was where my mind was when we took the drive to Oregon and arrived a day late.
I am as surprised now when simple and logical promises or "no problem" turns out to be a lie or a reasonable politeness that cannot be maintained. There was a discussion yesterday about how I had not changed. This one thing about me has not changed. If you cannot accomplish something, do not speak as it is simple when you promise you will. It was my fault that we were a day late. It was not my fault that I believed in the people who got me there a day late.
I have quite a few books. I own more books than I have read, that is for certain. I had books written by almost every author there (with the exception of Larry Wall and Paul Graham). It was my honor to be allowed to attend the book signing and dinner. I wrote the following text as a precursor to someone else's book signing and then realized it would be better here:
I attended O'Reilly's Open Source Convention in 2004, and had the honor of meeting Larry Wall, Randal Schwartz,Tom Christiansen and Paul Graham at a book signing. I hadn't brought the books I had already purchased that had been written by these authors with me and since becoming involved with computers, my access to money I can call my own had ceased (for considering purchasing new or different books to be signed. Later, at a dinner, I got to meet (and mispronounce the name of) Guido van Rossum and Mitchell Baker.
I wonder, actually, how an author feels to sign a well used (perhaps dog eared) version of their book. I understand that part of the point of a book signing is to sell books -- is it nice for the authors to be able to see that their books are being read and used as well?
Mitchell surprised me when she joined me for dinner. I gave her a photograph of an image that was on my web site at the time. She was really cool when she told me that the image (and the story behind it) was cool. Guido was very nice about signing the Python Pocket Reference that I had with me, even though he wasn't at this convention to sign books. Randall, at the signing, challenged me with the fact that he is a Photoshop user -- I bantered back saying "You are welcome for the improvements that occurred to Photoshop so that it could stay ahead of GIMP and he graciously signed the Python Pocket Reference as well. Mr. Wall got a $10,000 award from O'Reilly, GIMP got $500 from them and I got a sticker signed by him and one signed by Mr. Christiansen that I should be able to stick into my books when I once again have access to them (2.75 years later, I still cannot get to my stuff). Last at the signing was Paul Graham whose book I did not accept for free at the one GUADEC (GUADEC is where the people who use GTK+ widgets to make desktop applets with) that I attended. I really thought that I would be purchasing these things with my own money by now. And wouldn't you think that?