[sf-lug] ride to and from CABAL tonight

[Rick Moen]

Quoting jim stockford (jim at well.com):

> wanna ride down and back?

A few things to note:

1.  I'm also quite glad to pick people up from the Menlo Park CalTrain
station (which otherwise is a generally pleasant but long 2 mile walk
away from Chez Moen).  

2.  Tradition dictates that I provide that famous Scandinavian specialty 
"garlic bread", plus I generally fire up the barbecue and cook
something.  (That would be pork, beef, or some cute furry woodland
creature or other.  Vegetarians of various stripes are also cheerfully
accomodated, though you may have to bring your own cookables.)  After
all, what use are the suburbs, if not for barbecue and plentiful free
parking?

Many people bring food in varying quantities; nobody is required or
expected.  There's always ample for everyone (especially if you're not
picky and don't mind adventures in dining).

I'm glad to ferry people back to CalTrain or BART (your choice of Colma
or Daly City station) at the end of the evening.  No need to keep one
eye on your watch; we want people to have a good time.

3.  People are welcome to come and go at any time from 4 pm to midnight. 
At midnight, we start making meaningful glances at the door and our
watches, yawning theatrically, and serving hot coffee, by way of broad
hints.

4.  Until now, this year, we've been mostly outdoors on the back porch
and backyard, though it's been getting chilly enough that once or twice
people moved indoors, early.  From the look of things (am posting this
from Moraga), today we've finally run out of luck, and will redeploy
somehow in my living room and dining room, etc.  We're relatively new 
to this, my old family house, and need to work things out as we did at
the old place a few blocks away.  So, what I'm saying is, expect a minor
amount of chaos, since we're new to this particular logistical problem.
(Ordinarily, the outdoor area would be extremely pleasant and spacious.)

Weather report says:  Generally clear in the evening, probably somewhere
around 50 degrees F.  In other words, you _might_ be happy among the
outdoor bunch, but only if you dress warmly.

5.  List of CDs/DVDs on-site to use:
http://linuxmafia.com/cabal/installfest/#distros .  There are a few I
haven't yet updated, e.g., I have some FC6 DVDs, a trial version of
Xandros, and probably some Ubuntu Edgy Eft stuff somewhere.

6.  There is wired and wireless networking with (slightly pokey)
Internet access.  E.g., you can reasonably get package updates and other
stuff, but would get frustrated waiting to download ISOs.  Sorry, we're
a bit far from the telco central office, so aDSL is a bit impaired.

You're welcome to borrow from our large collection of spare keyboards,
mice, ethernet cards, ethernet cables, etc.  -- but we recently got rid
of almost all our old monitors, leaving qty. one 17" LCD.  So, if you
need a monitor, you're better off bringing yours -- or you might have to
arm-wrestle over borrowing rights to mine.

No need to bring power strips.  We have enough of those that we could
dasiy-chain power to downtown Menlo Park.  House wiring is per the
technological state of the art, circa 1953, with quaint 2-prong outlets
predominating but thankfully with some exceptions, so we have to be
careful how much we plug in where.