2009-08-21 HAR – final
by Vasil KolevAnd something to finish the HAR2009 topic, not to forget it…
It was fun, however you look at it. It was smaller than WTH (and I really hope that the next one will be with at least 5000 people) and definitely the level of lectures seemed weaker (especially after some really tragic ones), but in the end it was worthy attending to see the people, to play with some fun stuff, to polish my knowledge on such networks (and on isc-dhcpd). Also I found out how bad an idea was to rent the terrain a piece at a time and not to have a good enough schedule, as we needed to change ours a few times and we got some overloads we could’ve lived without …
And as it’s the easiest, a list of things that happened:
We celebrated there Niels’ and Arien’s birthdays;
I passed a bit over my recommended dosage of alcohol and didn’t have a hangover (even though I went through a bottle of wine one of the nights almost without realizing it);
I had a very interesting conversation with Will on the topic of IXes that we need to finish some day;
A few times we really felt we should’ve brought Delian;
Turned out that we’ve pulled about 7km of fiber and stuff like that, details are available in the NOC team presentation;
I also felt that I should’ve taken my tarambuka with me (although not taking it might have saved my life);
Chervarium’s snoring was probably heard by all (even one of the mornings he was sounding like a mythical creature);
The lights in the camp were incredible, there are a lot of pictures;
We had the most fun co-location in this world, three racks in a small wooden house with two air conditioners, one big fan at the back to suck the hot air to the outside and a door, made of nylon and planks, to separate the hot and cold parts;
I was finally convinced that the phone people are one of the worst when it comes to pulling cables;
We found a note in one of the switch cabins that the lock was openable in 5 seconds. How to explain to these people that it’s mostly there to stop people from accidentally peeing on the switches;
Most of the communication with the people was at the infodesk, next time we’ll see if we can get some functions back, as it got somewhat boring;
We actually made the network so well that we felt bored for a few days, having nothing to do;
The recordings you can get here or on some of the official mirrors.
Tags: har2009