the night of 3 dinners

there are very few rational concerns being voiced about our plans to write a new set of guidelines, so that's a good sign.

today's BOF discussion regarding usability review and fixes processes was very good. we saw an alpha version of the new XML-based system on usability.org which looks extremeley promising. i can't wait to give it a go!

Mirko Boehm went home today, which is too bad. his presence will be missed, at least by me. he's a great guy... we went out for post-dinner drinks last night where he taught me some strange and largely useless German words, such as how to say "road rash" and "ass brake" (a skiing move, apparently?). we also taught the bartender how to make mudslides, which may be one of the best drinks in the world. if they take off here in Ludwigsburg in the next few months, let it be known that it was the crazy antics of Mirko and Aaron that made it so ;-)

usually i eat one or two meals a day. ask my office-mates about that. it's something of a running joke that i'm rarely seen eating. well, today was something of a shift in that regard: i ate no less than three dinners. well.... i ate one full sized meal and then two progressively smaller meals. i had a decent dinner of tomato soup (which has a lot more texture here than in Canada, i might add... mmmm...) and some pasta that they claimed was in a gorgonzola sauze (i'm not sure i believe them) with Tom Chance who is aKademy's official propaganda minister. er... Information Minister. yeah, that's it ;-)

on the way back i ran into a herd of KDE people and decided to go for dinner with them. they were looking for a good Italian place, so i took them to a place some of us had eaten at some days ago that was, unlike the place i had just eaten at, quite superb. so the visitor led the nationals around town. how odd. though i almost took a right instead of a left at the very end. open source directions? anyways... we ate in a downstairs room. the food and conversation was great, the ambience amazing: a curved ceiling room done all in brickwork. i like to think that it's a very old cellar that had been renovated with the least amount of changes possible to produce an authentic and historic place to eat. but then i'm also a romantic.. so...

on the way back from THAT dinner, i ran into Waldo Bastian and a KDE user who is attending the conference. he has now decided to join the documentation team! awesome! they were on their way to dinner at a Greek restaurant so ...... i joined them. ;-)

to be fair my last two "meals" consisted of a drink and a salad each, so... hardly a gorging. but way more than usual. now i have to type twice as much to burn my intake of calories ;-)