I was in Pittsburgh 10 years ago for a long weekend with my wife. DrupalCon brought me back this week.

I got into town Sunday around noon. I was originally excited to catch the Sunday afternoon game at PNC Park. However, the Pirates were scheduled as the 11:30 AM game this week, so I did not get to the game. Instead, I checked into the hotel, then had a fabulous taco lunch at Condado Tacos across the street from the hotel. In classic DrupalCon fashion, I ran into Drupal friends at the Airport and the taco place. That would be a recurring theme of the week, reconnecting with friends in the Drupal community.

Speaking of hotels, I stayed at The Westin, one of the official convention hotels. It was fine, your typical big city upscale hotel, but the shower. OMG the shower. It was like being under a perfectly warm waterfall. I don’t know if it was just the shower head, or they can afford to use up 85 gallons of water per shower, but it was glorious and getting out of the shower may be the toughest thing I did all week. (I assume it is the shower head). I’m now on a quest to find that shower head, because showering like that every day would be fabulous.

After lunch, I headed out to explore. I walked to Point State Park, which is on the point where the three rivers in Pittsburgh meet. On the way, I walked through the Pittsburgh Arts Festival, which was 3 city blocks of artists and food vendors. On the way back to the hotel, I heard live music from the arts festival, so I checked it out. The band sounded like they grew up listening to Green Day, but that is impossible, as nobody on the stage was old enough to have grown up listening to Green Day. Sunday night was the annual DrupalCon pub crawl, which is always a good time. We hit 4 pubs, but I was still in bed by 11. That would be a theme for the week. I was in bed before midnight every night. That is a first for me at DrupalCon.

The convention kicked off Monday morning. I spent most of my time on booth duty. Every year I plan to get to a bunch of sessions, and every year I end up watching them on YouTube later. Monday night was a team dinner with my coworkers followed by a couple of drinks with a friend. My coworkers were all Canadian, and we ate at a southern food place. None of them had ever had a hush puppy, or shrimp and grits. I fixed that. I was in bed by 11.

Tuesday and Wed were the usual convention stuff by day and industry parties by night. A common thing for me is that I come home from DrupalCon with only 2 or 3 meals to expense. There is a lot of free food at DrupalCon. A lot of free beer, too.

They changed the format this year and did the industry summits on Thursday instead of Monday. I do not like the change. The summits are the most interactive events of the convention. By Thursday, I was interactived out. I got that same sentiment from others I talked to on summit day. Also, for people new to the community, the small group stuff in the summits allows them to met people more naturally, and then have a few folks they know for the rest of the event. Doing it last means those new relationships don’t form, as everyone goes home immediately.

DrupalCon was about 1300 people this year, which is 300 more than last year but only ½ of pre COVID attendance. The vendor hall was maybe a third of pre COVID. I don't know if this is still a pandemic hangover, or if the convention world has changed for good. Also, there were no executives or decision maker level folks there. DrupalCon is not like a lot of trade shows where selling is the primary focus. It’s more of an add-on benefit for the vendor sponsors, as sponsoring there is more about giving back to the community and brand building, than it is about meeting a bunch of hot prospects. But still, this year seemed particularly sparse in that regard. Maybe it makes sense given the attendance. The only ones attending are the more hardcore community folks, who are overwhelmingly developers.

So that is a wrap on Drupal 2023 in Pittsburgh.

Cheers!

Cheers!

Cheers!

Finally, the last stage of the day. We started seated behind a table centered on the stage. Two barrels were placde in front of the table, with the unload gun on one and all magazines on the second. After retrieving the firearm and ammo, and moving between and opening in the wall, there was a target on either side to be engaged in the open. The shooter then moved either left or right along a wall of barrels. From both sides there were matching arrays of two steel poppers, and two paper targets to be engaged. This was the stage where my brain disengaged, and a lack of proper stage prep showed. The center array of targets needed a hard lean around each end of the wall to shoot one half of the pair. I totally forgot to shoot those center two targets! This meant 20 points down for the misses, plus the two PE's for not engaging the targets. That put a dark cast over the morning. Fortunately it was the last stage, and I didn't have that weighing on my mind for the entire match.

Cheers!

Cheers!

When it comes to buying cigars and bourbon, sometimes my impulse is greater than my common sense.

But is that really a bad thing? Enjoy the weekend.

Trip: 33
Nights: 105-107

We spent Memorial Day weekend at Grayson Highlands State Park, in SW Virginia. It was my 4th trip there. It was my wettest trip there, or anywhere, since we got the trailer. Grayson is one of my two favorite Virginia State Parks, First Landing is the other.

The trip there was uneventful. We knew the forecast was sketchy, but in the mountains anything can happen with the weather, so we went for it. Also, there are worse ways to spend a weekend than chilling in a camper without a cell signal.

Saturday turned out to be a nice day, breezy and cool, with the raining holding off until about 7 PM. We hiked out to see the ponies, then Michelle went back to the campsite and I continued down the Appalachian Trail to a shelter that I used as a turn around point. That afternoon we did another trail that put us at one of the highest points in the park.

I used that elevation to pick up 2 bars of T-Mobile service and watched a couple of YouTube videos on how to fix the permanent door ajar light on a 2011 Ford Edge. Then I executed the fix back at the campsite, thereby saving the battery in the vehicle. It had been an off and on issue for a while, and decided to go permanent while I was 20 miles from civilization.

Saturday night it started raining and it didn't stop until Monday. On Sunday, we only left the trailer for a bathroom run. We watched two movies (Enola Holmes 1 and 2, both highly recommended), a bunch of downloaded YouTube videos of a CDT thru hike, and we played a lot of Gin Rummy and Spades. The forced relaxation without the distraction of the Internet was kind of fun.

On Monday we broke camp in a light rain, and then near Roanoke on I-81 North I put the truck in park and sat there for 2+ hours while a multi-car and truck with multiple fatalities accident was cleared up. The accident was barely a mile in front of us. If we had left a few minutes earlier we might have been mixed up in it. If we had left 5 minutes later GPS might have routed us around the accident. Perfect timing! Once we got moving again the rest of the trip home was uneventful, until we got the pizza joint to pick up dinner, and I learned I had sent the order to the wrong location. When we finally made it home we learned the Internet had been out all weekend, and stayed out until Verizon got somebody out the next day.

I swear I don't believe in stuff like, "bad things happen in threes," except when I'm in the third bad thing to happen in a day.

In over 100 nights out in the camper, that is the first time we've had a day where we simply could not leave the camper all day, and also the first time we hit that bad of a traffic incident. So I really can't complain.

I've been enjoying reading the classic work Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Admittedly, my most vivid recollection of the Frankenstein tale is of the Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein. A comedic comedy that never gets old, the movie is not the classic story penned by Shelley.

On a recent evening, I grabbed a cigar from my humidor to enjoy while reading on the deck. Coincidently, I was drawn to one of the few remaining cigars I have from the 2021 Tatuaje Monster Mash Series release. The cigar I happened to grab was the vitola called Bride. The Tatuaje Bride is named in reference to the character from the 1935 film, Bride of Frankenstein, based on the character created by Shelley. What could be a better pairing?

The Monster Mash Bride is a 5 5/8 x 49 with a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper covering Nicaraguan binder and filler. The medium bodied smoke has enjoyable notes of coffee, cream, and hint of sweet fruit. 

Shelley's Frankenstein never finished his creation of the bride. But she lived on in the movies, and now provides inspiration for an enjoyable cigars.

Cheers!