This blog post is just to list links and tips on getting home to Finland.

First leg: getting to anywhere in Europe

Being stuck in San Fransisco, my first problem has been to get just anywhere closer to home. Taking a boat from America to Europe takes from 6-15 days and is not significantly cheaper than flying. So the best bet is just to fly to Europe.

A friend just emailed some suggestions what to do while stuck in SF:

20+ campfires on Ocean Beach
-------------------------------------------------
A fun thing to do any Friday or Saturday night after about 8pm until
after midnight is go to Ocean Beach where hundreds of people make 20+
campfires (folks are friendly -- just walk up and introduce yourself
and join some group's campfire or walk between many -- bring some beer
or snacks to share if you want to).  This beach is at the intersection
of Great Highway and Fulton street, San Francisco

If you are a MySQL conference attendee who cannot get back home to Europe, you can find other fellow MySQLrs at this page on MySQL forge. Please use it as a central hub to organize gettogethers like dinners. Or why not take the opportunity for a hackathon?

As for myself, my BA flight is canceled and there is no way to even rebook (160 minute waiting line to call BA). I will have my travel agent rebook the flight on Monday European business hours. Until then, I'm stuck indefinitely in California.

I've been to (only?) 2 previous MySQL conferences. I never spoken before, I actually tried to avoid it plus I didn't feel I had any hardcore topics worthy of presenting. Last year all MySQL Sales Engineers were told to submit a talk, so I submitted one that I knew would not be accepted ("no vaporware rule"), and it wasn't. Hey, I obeyed our boss more than my collagues who didn't submit anything! I did feel that for me it was a more useful way to spend time with my customers who were at the conference, and just network.

Google Summer of Code is now open for student applications and people (like Ronald Bradford) are noticing that MySQL is not participating this year. (Drizzle otoh is a mentoring organization.)

Last year Morgan Tocker published a graph of all MySQL forks when preparing course material on the topic. I've been preparing some material for Monty's keynote at the O'Reilly MySQL conference, and briefly touch the same topic so I have pictures too:

Last week I finally uploaded to Drupal.org the Vineyard theme - ie the theme I created and use for openlife.cc. Releasing the theme as open source is something I always planned of doing, but never really got round to it. I'm especially proud of the fact the theme looks different than most Drupal themes I've seen, so I hope others can use this as a basis for creating nice sites.

Well, for Matt Asay, I should start by congratulating you for the new job and nice title! (Also, we learn some intelligence from Matt's blog: apparently Canonical is already close to the size of MySQL AB at the time of the Sun acquisition.)

Usually we are told to "ignore the trolls" and all that. The blogosphere unfortunately seems to be full of commentators who like to have share their opinion - even while they are entirely clueless. Sometimes, like the comments on Slashdot, it is ok and considered part of the entertainment. Sometimes it is harmless, because nobody reads that blog. And sometimes, it is just unacceptable: