It has been a fun month. First my friends Stephen (kimihia on Freenode IRC network) and Alan from New Zealand showed up. Myself and coworker Mike flew up to Las Vegas in the 210 to spend a day seeing the sites and then fly them back to San Diego to see the sights here and meet the rest of the #kernel-panic crowd. It’s always fun to see what’s new in Vegas.
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned #kernel-panic on my blog before. It is the IRC channel of the Kernel-Panic Linux User Group. I can be found there using the nick tessier. Stop by and say hi.
After flying back to San Diego Stephen and Alan saw the usual sites such as Sea World, San Diego Zoo, etc. Then christel of Freenode/Gentoo/FOSS fame arrived in town from the UK. I have known christel for many years and talk to her on IRC often. She covered quite a bit of what happened during the last couple of weeks on her blog. It happens that we all have interest in and experience with guns so we took a field trip to the local gun range. I try to make it out to the range every so often. I have a friend with an impressive gun collection which he makes available so we spent an evening blasting targets with various noisy calibers, 45 and 50 being favorites of mine but 223 will work also.
After flying back to San Diego Stephen and Alan saw the usual sites such as Sea World, San Diego Zoo, etc. and christel took care of a lot of business relating to the upcoming FOSSCON convention here in San Diego which she is organizing.
Everyone wanted to go check out TJ so I obliged them. TJ is a funny place. Where else can you get shaken down by cops like you were a common criminal, have a lap dance, drink tequila (none for me, thanks), and then have a nice seafood dinner all within the space of an hour? Here’s a pic of me getting searched by a TJ cop. Alan took this pic without flash so the cop didn’t notice. christel took a pic with flash and nearly got her camera confiscated. Something about drug dealers wanting to kill them. We happened to be visiting during the week that the TJ cops had their guns confiscated by the Federales so they were unarmed. Something about local cop guns being used in crimes. ¡Bienvenido a Tijuana, puto!
Too soon it was time to take Stephen and Alan back up to LAX for their flight back to New Zealand.
Myself, christel, a friend of christel’s who goes by SportChick on IRC, and linagee from IRC all piled into the 210 with our ski gear and flew up to Mammoth for a few days of skiing. Had a blast. Every time I go skiing the mountain seems less steep. Actually did some black diamond runs this time.
During an all-night geekfest at the local Dennny’s some folks were a bit incredulous that we could just jump into an airplane in the middle of the night and fly around San Diego without ever talking to ATC. So christel, SIGFPE from #sdcolleges, Nethaniel and his sister, and myself all met up at Montgomery Field around 10pm. It was a beautiful starlit night. No clouds and no wind. We went for a very nice night flight around San Diego in the 210 and never talked to ATC. Perfectly safe and legal too. Depart from Montgomery heading west climbing to 3,500 then hang a left at Mount Soledad, fly over Lindbergh, down the bay to the border, east at the border to Otay Mesa, north along Otay Lakes, Sweetwater lake, to El Cajon, then west to Lake Murray for a landing back over Montgomery. All this and only .7 on the hobbs. Around 30 minutes in the air for a complete tour of San Diego county.
Couldn’t ask for a better month.