Typical Timing

Just when I was about to hit the Hotsos submission deadline (or rather, it was about to hit me), I managed to catch a cold from my other half, so I've been laid up in bed for the past couple of days. It hasn't been too bad actually - thank goodness for laptop computers and wireless

I'm just about finished but, as I'm writing this at 3:54 am while waiting for a test to complete, it should be obvious that I'm not quite there yet (and also that the illness has screwed up my sleep patterns). Nearly there, but not quite. It's been a lot of work because of the volume of testing; hitting problems and starting all over again; configuring different servers and tools and so on, but it's been an interesting learning experience.

I've given up trying to judge the result because I end up disappointed every time but then someone tells me that they enjoyed a presentation, or something in an article helped them and I realise I might not be the best judge.

Unusually, at this stage I'm not going to put the paper on the web and I haven't asked anyone to review it for a couple of reasons

1) I still want to think it over myself for a week or two. I might need to hit the Hotsos submission deadline, but I can choose when to make it more widely available.

2) I'm hoping that Hotsos is the type of event where I might get criticism and feedback anyway. I certainly see what I've done as a work in progress and something to discuss with others, rather than a blinding piece of inspiration or conclusive proof of anything much!

I expect to stick it on the web soon, though.

I'm really looking forward to the conference, regardless of how the presentation is received. It'll be the first time that I've been able to hear a number of presenters who I've respected for a long time.

It turns out that I'll be doing a couple of presentations now. I knew that there were a couple of gaps in the agenda so I suggested I could do my previous PX presentation. Although it's 18 months old or so and I've already presented it at UKOUG and a couple of SIG meetings, I've never presented it in the US so I don't think most attendees will have seen it. It also fits in quite well with the new presentation, which was born out of some of the questions that were bothering me after writing the first paper.

Anyway, it'll be a relief when the paper's submitted and I can look forward to the presentation and three days of learning!