Notacon rocked (again)
Once again, Notacon completely rocked. bleakenigma and tygerdsebat did an awesome job of holding things together and making things work. I even managed to stay sober enough to remember everything on Saturday night this year.

Friday when brum and I arrived, we were just in time for the Linux HA talk. I was very impressed with that one, as well as the Asterisk one and Theime talk on creativity. I can't leave out amishone's photography talk either, since that was great as well. I went to bed pretty early that night, since we got up pretty early to drive from West Michigan.

Richard Forno's talk on Saturday was, like last year, thought-provoking. After that was round two of the photography stuff, which turned out to be quite a bit more in-depth than the first segment, which was perfect for me. Then, Drew Curtis' FARK talk was really interesting. I can't believe people can get by just by running a popular website. Well, that and organizing an occasional news hoax. Also, apparently someone out there has a picture of me helping Drew Curtis with his laptop. Leave the link in a comment if it's you. My girlfriend loves fark more than anyone in the world. The third installation of the photography stuff wasn't as interesting as the other two, although I did learn an awful lot about printing on cakes. Following that, I had dinner and a couple beers, and headed up to the NYC party like last year. After talking to tons of interesting people and stopping down to check out the midnight mixer rave, security ended the room 522 party at about 3:30am. I ended the night with a complete memory and no marker on my face. Rock on.

The next morning, I unfortunately missed Todd MacDermid's talk, but did manage to make it to amishone's amateur radio one. Then, while fighting the temptation to fall asleep, I got to learn a little more about the Slashpackage system I messed briefly around with after hearing about it last year. Then, RootDruid's talk reminded me of things I haven't messed with in a while and should really get back into.

In Froggy's closing ceremony, it was sad to hear about how much money he lost on pulling this great event together again. I don't think I'd be able to stay positive and cheerful in that situation. Hopefully he'll get a few more sponsors next year to help handle that burden.

Overall, it was an awesome time. There were quite a few times that I was torn between two different talks, but I guess there's only so much one can do in a weekend. Starting earlier on Friday helped a lot. I am disappointed that I missed Myself's "Anything but Ethernet" competition. I'll surely be there again next year, hopefully with a few more people along. I really enjoyed talking to the people I met there this year, and hope to see them next year as well.