[sf-lug] Status of SF-LUG / Linux meeting(s) @ Noisebridge? & SF-LUG web site (mis?)information thereof

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Todd Hawley (celticdm at gmail.com):

[me drifting a bit off topic below, which I'll have to keep an eye on]

> I know the area and if memory serves me correctly, it's certainly NOT
> a bad area (unincorporated Menlo Park is still Menlo Park after all)
> but certainly a rather LONG drive to and from SF. Not to mention
> trying to find parking.

Almost directly uphill from the Dutch Goose, if that helps (uphill one
block and one block logical-'north').  

A funny bit of perspective.  Menlo Park used to be just a town of
ordinary working class people.  My dad was a Pan Am co-pilot when I was
a kid at that same address, and it was a neighbourhood with families and
nobody thought of it as toney, because it just wasn't.  In 1966, Pan Am
transferred Dad (and thus the rest of us in the immediate family) to
Hong Kong, as a result of which (omitting further history), I was away
from the Menlo Park house for 40 years, moving back in, in 2006.

I only slowly realised that a quiet change had occurred over 40 years.
The neighbours weren't plumbers and junior architects any more.  They
were international businessmen, stock brokers, and lawyers.  And far,
far, far fewer families.  

This wasn't really driven home to me until, one hot early-summer day as
I was double-digging a vegetable bed, stripped to my waist, someone
passing by on the sidewalk said she really appreciated the way I do my
own landscaping and yard work.

I said something nice out of habit, but was thinking 'Whut?'  {boggle}
Wait, who doesn't do his/her own lawnmoving, raking leaves, deadheading
flowers, trimming hedges, replacing dead plants, and all that?  Doesn't
_everyone_?  I mean, what's the alternative, just let the place look
terrible?

But then I played back what I'd been seeing ever since 2006 in the
theatre of my mind, and I realised that every front yard except mine had
a similar look, and that absolutely -everyone- with the sole exception
of me _hired out_ to a gardening service.  Friggin' weird.  Startling.
And it somehow hadn't occurred to me that I was out of step, because, in
my mind, if you own a house in the suburbs and it needs yard work,
_obviously_ it has to be taken care of by you or others in your
household, because that's The Way Things Are Always Done.  One doesn't
have maids and nannies and gardeners and au-pairs because one is
American and non-disabled and reasonably competent -- yet, I'm
surrounded by households who... do otherwise and think 'of course we do
this; who does anything else?'  Weird.  A bit unsettling.

So, anyway, look for the one stolidly middle-class household whose
gardening is perfectly OK but has a little bit of character, unlike all
the others.  That's my house.  The one and only.

Another garden-story bit of anecdata:  On at least two occasions, I'd be
out there doing work with a shovel or pruning tools, sometimes stripped
to the wait if it's hot, and my mother-in-law Cheryl, who lives at my
house with me and my wife, would be out near me, keeping me company --
and someone would stop on the sidewalk and take up a conversation about
the garden... with Cheryl.  

But wait, there's more:  Since the front and side gardens, like the rest
of my 1/3 acre, are almost entirely my work in design and
implementation, I would tend to respond to the visitor's comments
directed towards Cheryl, under the assumption that he/she would want
real answers and informed comments from the homeowner who does
everything -- but then the visitor would look startled and confused.  It
turned out, the visitor in both times this happened was confused that
the guy with the shovel spoke (because obviously anyone with a shovel
must be the bottom of the totem pole guy from the gardening service0,
and _particularly_ surprised that I spoke English, and with occasional
three- and four-syllable words, too.  Eventually it would dawn on the
visitor that the shovel guy was the _property owner_, even though in the
visitor's universe all homeowners hire out everything, like we're all
Saudi Arabian princes who're too damned lazy to _do_ things.

Good for lulz, once I figured out what was happening.  From that point
on, I was tempted to always meet yet also subvert the visitor's
expectation, by pretending to speak no English at all -- only Norsk. ;-> 
'Jeg forstår ikke.  Snakker du norsk?' (I don't understand.  Do you speak
Norwegian?)


[CCSF LUG goes 'pfft!':]

> Oy! That must have been and still is incredibly frustrating! <sigh>

Stuff happens.  The pres. of CCSF LUG, I'm sure had her own problems,
and she knew of no special reason to listen to my advice.  So, that
happened.  I didn't feel _entitled_ to be listened to, so it was less
frustrating-as-such than 'Oh well, sorry to see it go.'

Maybe I should have been clutching a clipboard.  People with clipboards
have automatic authority, don't they?  ;->


[Noisebridge:]

> One thing I do remember about the space. On one of the walls in the
> men's restroom was an absolutely brilliant explanation (complete with
> diagrams) of the proper angle to whizz into the toilet. Clearly
> someone there got very annoyed with folk missing the toilet while
> attempting to pee. Sadly, it was taken down sometime later.

Gotta love the geek mentality, eh?  All problems can be solved with
sufficient documentation.  The transcendant optimism of this world-view
is almost inspiring, even at the same time as it being completely
delusional.