[GLLUG] Thanks for Your Help

[Chick Tower]

Thanking Trevor made me realize I hadn't publicly thanked the other 
people who helped at Brazilian beef and the computer lounge.  So here's 
my list.

Stan, I tried to make sure she knew it at the con, but please make sure 
Susan knows how critical her help was and how much I appreciated it. 
She kept Brazilian beef from being a complete disaster.  She's still 
probably the only one in the area who knows how to tear and slice apart 
a whole top sirloin.  I had hoped to learn how myself this weekend, but 
other things kept interfering and I didn't even use a knife until it was 
time to serve people.  I still hope to learn, and I hope others do, too, 
so we don't lose the knowledge.

I'm glad Stan hauled the computer lounge equipment in his truck, and 
offered to let me use it to haul charcoal from a GFS near the hotel.

Clay, thank you for manning the grill those long hours.  I think you're 
one of the few in GLLUG who know how the meat should be grilled. 
Granted, it wasn't perfect this year, but proper light and thicker 
steaks would probably take care of that.  And thanks for using the 
promise of free beer to lure so many strangers to a party in my bedroom 
until the wee hours of the morning each night.

Thank you for volunteering for so many of those hard-to-fill hours in 
the computer lounge during the middle of the night, Ariel.  I'm sorry 
you didn't get any of the beef you garnered whuffies for.

Thanks, Rick, for covering so many of the holes that appeared in the 
computer lounge schedule.  And congratulations on winning Junkpile Wars 
single-handedly.  You da man!

Thank you to all of you who volunteered time in the computer lounge, and 
making sure stuff didn't walk off.  And for carrying out those 
all-important room counts.  (I decided to trim some snarky comments 
about that I had written here.)  It appears we had an average of roughly 
eight users in the lounge during the convention, if I correctly recall 
that the total of the room counts was 1,208.  Whether anyone will bother 
to figure out the maximum number at any one time, or other statistics 
useful for planning, is doubtful (OK, I couldn't resist a little 
sarcasm), especially because we'll probably never again see the 
spreadsheet used to record and add the numbers.  If anyone does or did 
retrieve /home/gllug/visitors.ods from the server, I would appreciate 
having a copy of it, just in case someone actually asks for the 
supporting data.

And thank you everyone who helped out during the cooking and serving of 
Brazilian beef.  Frank hadn't even planned on spending the night at the 
hotel, but he was there until midnight slicing the cooked meat into 
bite-sized chunks the whole time.  Andy spent hours salting meat and 
plating it for us, and he probably would have been out there from the 
start if he hadn't been serving in the computer lounge.  The wife of 
last year's Brazilian beef organizer had told me a few months ago that I 
would be surprised at how many people showed up to help, and she was 
right.  Most of them are not in GLLUG, weren't scheduled, and weren't 
even known by me before that night.  Eric S. Raymond (as he is so often 
referred to in the F/OSS news) and his wife, Cathy, were outside slicing 
beef with us for four hours at mid-day and were back again to help grill 
and serve it later for several more hours.  I'm sure someone with as 
many interests and as many demands on his time as he could have found 
many other things to do on Saturday.  For that matter, I guess you all 
could.

Again, thank you everyone.  Despite getting about five hours of sleep at 
the con, and seeing only one presentation, I had a good time, or so it 
seems afterwards.  I wouldn't want to have that much fun every weekend, 
however.
-- 

                                Chick