I was in New York for three full weeks, before, during and after DebConf 10 took place. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend talks or go hang out with folks as much as I would've wanted. Most of the time I was busy at the office with a new product launch we have been preparing for the last few months. However, I was able to come and say hi to a few people, attend the C&W party and talk with friends and ran into. I was, however, following all conversations on IRC so I was pretty informed of all of what was going on. Some random thoughts:

• Being surrounded by so many amazing Debian people made me realize how much I've been apart from the project. My involvement decreased pretty much since I moved to New York. But because of that, I'm now slowly retaking my activity, trying to work on actual things that I use on my daily work instead of just packaging tons of shit that nobody really cared about.
• DebConf is pretty awesome. After attending six out of the last seven Debian conferences, you get to establish a nice connection with people and they become your friends. This year, even if I only came a couple of nights, I made stronger friendships, and for that I'm thankful. It is only within Debian that this human part of bonding really takes place.
• I really regret missing a couple of events: First, the Day trip to Coney Island and the Cyclones game; and the group photo. Both because of work, yes.
• It was interesting to hear the thoughts from one of the Bosnian attendees about next year's DebConf there. I'm really sorry I can't recall his name, but it shocked a bit that he stated that they might try to find better speakers next year, because a lot of them "sucked a lot" here. All I can say is that, even though everybody's opinions are valid, this might come from an outsider, not used to Debian conferences. Where are you going to find better speakers? Us developers are the only speakers out there, good or bad, we are the ones making the conferences by and for.
• I like Zach's attitude as DPL, even when I introduced him to a very nice friend of mine that came to the party to hang out.

DebConf 10 rocked and I appreciate everybody's participation in it. See you in Banja Luka, next year!

This is how we roll at DebConf 10.

That chair protects our router

During DebConf9 I had the opportunity to work together with Señor Micah to try to bring Passenger back to shape and get it back to the NEW queue on Debian. We spent way too much time dealing with the build  for the pkg-ruby-extras build model than to the actual fixing and updating. At the end we came up with a very well updated and DFSG-compatible (in contrast to the one that Brightbox provides, which isn't bad either to be honest) package for the 2.2.4 version.

Our current main interest was trying to get the package into Debian by cleaning up the licensing issues on some of the included files and try to come up with improvements in the near future (such as using Passenger directly from Nginx, instead of the Apache-only module). The future is bright and it'll bring sunshine to all of us.

Given that the package is still on the queue and there's a hell lot of other packages to be processed, you can grab the package here and if it fulfills your expectations, make sure you offer me and/or Micah a beer next time you see us around.

After a random series of hazardous events, I'm finally at DebConf 9 in Cáceres, Spain. I'll post more updates later, right now I'm trying to put my sh*t together and find my way through around here for the next couple of weeks. Interested people can always follow my microblogging feed too.

Love, D.

Machu, what you posted recently made me recall how some local friends told me were treated upon check-in at Oaxtepec, where DebConf6 was happening. It was maybe four or five persons, including myself, treated with arrogance, indifference and rudeness when there were issues (or say, situations) with the rooms or something, by that Argentinian woman, who was the nice representative of the Orga team with the local venue.

UPDATE: Edited. Only posting bullshit now that I know about after madduck's reply.

• Personal stuff coming up; if you are not that kind of person, please skip
• I forgot to say on my previous post about YAPC::NA 2008 that while I was in Chicago, I had the really nice chance to meet Carlo Segre and Dirk Eddelbuettel and enjoy a couple of nice beers with them. Great guys!
• I'm probably not attending DebConf this year. It's just too expensive right now and since sponsorship appears to be not enough, chances for me are quite low now. The cheapest I can get from NYC is around $1050/1100, which might be cheap for some folks in Europe which paid the same amount in Euros, but not for me now.
• I'm not attending OSCON neither. I wanted to, I really did, but it'll have to be next year now, because…
• On that days, I'll be in Mexico City with Raquel renewing our visas. Almost one year already since we got here, time flies.
• Last Friday (Fourth of July), we were invited by Mike and Rachel O'Connor to a barbeque at their place in Brooklyn. Even though they are veggies, they had some meat sausages and burgers which were great (also the grilled corn!). We watched the fireworks from their roof, which I have to say, weren't as spectacular as I expected, but it was probably because we weren't very, very close to Manhattan or because a big building was blocking our view in front of us, or because of the rain. A bunch of their friends were also there. I enjoyed spending time with them and Mr. Micah Anderson and Sr. Abraham Estrada. By the way…
• There will be a Debian NYC BSP very soon now! Stay tuned! Represent!
• I've been playing more chess that it should be legal, as some of you may have already realized.
• I gave myself a present and bought a PSP. I now do alley-oops, slam dunks and all kind of dribbles on NBA Live 2008 on my morning commute
• And last; for my personal workstation, I'm trying now Ubuntu Hardy and I'm doing a personal project with Rails. I have to say that even though I had some encountered feelings about both of them, I've been having quite a nice surprise and experience with both.