i'm just a travelling fool

i'm currently in mainz, germany which is a charming little city near frankfurt. the e.V. board is having an in-person meeting, and the progress we're making is very good. it's not the most fun work (to say the least) but critical. we currently have 7 pages line items for meeting minutes. we'll be cleaning them up and publishing them to communicate our progress.

most fearsome, perhaps, is the todo matrix we've generated. the working groups are just gonna love us. but i'm very pleased with how the board is working out: first a quarterly report (mad props to Allen Winter for that) which we've released to the e.V. membership and which we will be shortly also publishing more publicly, and now this meeting.

it hasn't been all work and no play, though. we went for some wine last night at a local restaurant, and then a pint afterwards at a pub that eva used to go to when she lived here previously. walking through the town in the evening revealed several historical roman structures and the general calm of the place. the people are also quite nice.

i flew here directly from the osdl desktop architect's meeting in portland. i nearly missed my flight, actually, due to having been kept company by some of the industry people the night before for a tour around portland's night time scene. this included flaming spanish coffees, a kareoke bar and an after hours eatery. upon arriving back home, i packed and then accidently fell asleep (instead of heading to the airport). i woke up 2 hours later with less than hour before my flight.

fortunately i had made friends with the night desk person the day before and she did a great job of getting me checked out and in a cab in short order. she even said she'd thought about phoning up to the room to ensure that i came down in time since i hadn't registered a wake up call. people who pay attention to their work like that deserve extra credit.

in any case, i got to the airport but realized i didn't have enough american cash on me to pay for the ride (and my bank card didn't work with their system =/ ) so i payed the last few dollars in euros. the cabby had never seen euros before and had to be convinced that: a) "euro" is a real currency, b) they were worth something and c) that they are actually work a bit more than the US currency. he took them in the end mostly because i didn't give him much choice to do otherwise.

i fly back home the day after tomorrow and i'm looking forward too it. portland and mainz have seen some very progressive days for me, but it's time to rest up and get back to coding again.

as for the results of the desktop architects meeting, we're prepping some combined communications which should see the light of day this week. some of the announcements ought to rock a few worlds out there =)