HR Geeks

It seems that some of us will be attending Shmoocon in DC this year. So, if anyone happens to show up at the meeting, drop a comment or write a post to let us attending Shmoocon know whats up!

Also, this upcoming meeting will mark the 7th anniversary of HR 2600, as February 2003 was the first gathering.

-Matt (enferex)

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Happy new year… sure, it’s not based on a true lunar calendar, but ah, it’s periodic. Anyways, new year, and another meeting. Despite the mall closing early (6:00), Jody and myself did show up, thus upholding the existence of this edition of As The Nerds Tur (yes, I just applied verbage to Alan Turing’s last name and concept of Turing Machine). We chatted about stuff and then moved the meeting, temporarily, to B&N where we could browse some magazines, kill time, and hang.

FOSS for all!

-Matt (enferex)

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As in the past, we converged upon a table, or two, within the food court of the mall. As I arrived the meeting was already rocking, in attendance was Sunpuke, Jody, Tele, Remad, Dave, and myself. (Order derived from where I was sitting and iterating in a clockwise fashion). Fun meeting, as we did become like a pack of nomads in search of collaboration and variety, we decided to move the meeting to Kelly’s (also in the mall), which is open late, and allowed people with a penchant for the distilled beverage to imbibe. The meeting continued until midnight, and then disbanded.

Overall, the meeting was great, and I think the moving from the food-court was a great decision, and just goes to show that pseudo-random variety can enhance the social efforts of a group, as was seen by this possibly being the longest running HR-2600 episode. So… a buttload, yes, is a unit of measure. But, is there a platinum SI unit for this?

-Matt (enferex)

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I’ve added 2 new users groups to the side bar:

• Hampton Roads Solid Works User Group (run by Jason McCrory)
• 757 Objective C / Cocoa-heads (run by Ken Collins)

Be sure to give them a look, and go to the meetings if they’re in your area of interest!

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Zoiks Shaggy! Nice turn-out out tonight, rather, last night. But time… can I impose some kind of restriction on a dimension I have seemingly little control over. Time is a human definition of some, pretty abstract, thing. So the order of sitting, while it does mutate during the course of the meeting, was at one time:
Tele, Remad, Paul’s girl, Paul, RD, Sunpuke, and myself.

And what was the topic of choice……… sensitive dependence on initial conditions (a definition of Chaos Theory). In other words, we had no planned topics, but we found enough order to communicate as a group. Also, the Bat Phone is no more, a Blackberry was dissected, pill-containers can hold lots of Torx, and corn own3s us.

-Matt (enferex)

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Prime number off attendees. Of course, all meetings start like that, 1, 2, 3, ….. 5. 5 attendees ahhh hah hah (Count from Sesame Street). Those attendees being Remad, Tele, Wallybert, MarkG, and myself. It was a good meeting, with little if any cross-talk. Some discussion on previous Shmoos and HOPEs, along with some mention of this upcoming years Shmoo and HOPE. No need to elaborate any further, but did any one-catch what those illuminated jelly-looking things were at the Last HOPE?

-Matt (enferex)

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The local Hampton Roads Ruby/Cocoa Users Groups / Ken Collins is throwing an event friends, and it looks like it’s going to be good!

“On November 5th, 2009 Hampton Roads’ premier learning and network event for software developers, interactive agencies, and technology entrepreneurs will be held at Grow Interactive, Norfolk.”

Speakers:

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
by Andy Hunt
Author & Co-Founder Pragmatic Bookshelf

The Joy of Ruby
Clinton R. Nixon
Development Director at Viget Labs

iPhone Development: Touching Cocoa
Jamie Pinkham
Software Engineer at Mobelux

Sounds like a great event. It’s free, seating limited to 50. RSVP today!!

More information at www.757studio.org

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If you’re local to the 757 (Southside would probably be best, but it’s up to you), shoot me an email if you’re interested in helping out a local group of high school kids in building their FIRST robot for competition. Work begins in January, for competition later in the spring.

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From their home page, “The next Richmond Code Camp will be held at the J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College campus on Parham Road on Saturday, October 3rd 2009. It’s totally free. No gimmicks. No sales pitches. Enjoy breakfast and lunch at no charge while you mingle with your peers in a state of the art learning facility and enjoy over 40 awesome sessions covering a wide range of database, software and portal development topics.”

Looks interesting and isn’t far. I was told there are presentations there not specific to Microsoft Windows environment. Would be good to hear a report from someone that attends!

Official site: http://richmondcodecamp.org/
(Uses Microsoft site for event registration)

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Things lined up right, and I was headed to DC for a data center visit for work so I made the most of my trip. I had lunch with Curt, a DC local I know from the diving forum (who also has computer skills) and then broke for the DC 2600. They start later, due to the traffic. I visited the old mall, and it looks so much smaller now that we have MacArthur center.

Having heard that the prior meeting had 17 or so, I looked forward to it. At first there was 2 folks, and then it turns out 4 others were in a different part of the restaurant. Everyone moved outside, and a few others joined. Overall it was pretty cool, but attendance was low due to the holiday. I told them I’d return in the future and perhaps bring more locals. Their meeting moved from the Pentagon City Fashion Center mall to a food place (similar to our HRGeeks meetings really). There seemed to be confusion on the location as the magazine just updated the info.

I’ll drop in again, but next trip it’s back to Raleigh unless I’m in DC already.

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