Woo-hoo. Once again I am on a plane, this time on a US Airways flight to San Diego for the LISA conference. I’m trying to get rid of my US Air frequent flier miles, since I don’t think they’ll be around much longer, and since the company really doesn’t have money to spend on conferences, it makes sense to use them.

The “woo-hoo” is due to the fact that I have a window seat and the middle seat is empty. The flight from Raleigh to Charlotte was packed, so packed I had to stick both “Marvin”, our portable computer that we use at shows, as well as my laptop bag under the seat in front of me.

So I have room, laptop power and a bunch of episodes of “My Name is Earl”. What more could a man want?

Hrm. Let’s see. What has happened in the last couple of weeks? Well, the fillies finally made it home. Danika seemed to take the move in stride, but Abbey was really skittish at first. Skittish as in she wouldn’t let people near her. Andrea has been working her magic on both of them and now Abbey is much easier to handle. They both don’t lead very well (they tend to stop for no apparent reason) but at least now it only takes a little bit of prodding to get them to go (Abbey sometimes needs a “butt rope” – you run the lead rope around her back legs).

Winter has come to the farm. The last time I mowed I came across a green snake.

This was a banner year for snakes as far as variety is concerned. After years of just seeing black snakes, this year we also saw a Dekay snake, corn snake, copperhead and now the green snake.

I went to Chicago in October where I caught a bad cold. This was just in time for the arrival of five house guests in town for the OpenNMS Developer’s Conference. I was also too sick to attend a panel in Chapel Hill featuring Google, Red Hat, Microsoft and OpenNMS. You probably haven’t heard of the first three, but trust me, they’re pretty big companies compared to us (but then again so is Bubba’s Paving and Towing). David Hustace, my business partner, went instead of me and I am told he did quite well.

Last week it was back to Chicago. I got home early Saturday morning, slept the best I have in weeks, and then got up and started decorating for Xmas. I have a lot of lights this year, but nothing like this guy.

This week I’m in sunny San Diego for the LISA show, and then this weekend I’m off to Kevin Silke’s house for a Drinking Man’s Bridge Club. I teach an OpenNMS course on Monday and then head back home on the red-eye.

Sunday will find me heading for England once again, this time for a week long engagement in Birmingham. Andrea and I talked about having her out the week after just to spend the holidays in the UK, but we couldn’t get it to work out (not to mention the new ponies require a lot of extra care at the moment).

But I’m back home on Christmas Eve. I’ll miss my semi-annual Sir Pizza lunch with my buddy Ty, but at least I should get to see him on Christmas day.

I’ll post this when I get to the hotel, and I hope post more a bit later in the week.