Okc JUG - Evening meetings = Nerdlings

The JUG meetings have really changed this year. Last summer, we started having lunch meetings and evening meetings. Over that last 3 months, the Evening meeting attendance has dropped to around 7 people. And the Lunch meetings have gone from around 15 to over 30. We had 41 people for our March lunch meeting - a new record. We've had to change rooms for the lunch meeting. The new room will hopefully be less crowded.

Because the evening meetings are now so small, we are changing their format starting in May. We will no longer ask the sponsor to provide food or drinks for the evening meeting. We have started to try and get people who are struggling with Java or are new to the language. Basically make it a Java for Newbies kind of meeting. We will have at least 2 people who really know java. We will start around 5:30 or 6:00 and have a short presentation over something simple and then open the meeting up to questions and even work one-on-one with people to help them learn. I doubt we will get much attendance at this meeting until September or October since a lot of newbies (or Nerdlings as I like to call them) are going to be high school or college students. Maybe we'll get some of the Cobol programmers that Hertz is about layoff

Trip to Lawrence

What a fun 5 hour drive it was to Lawrence Kansas! Nothing exciting, just a 5 hour drive. The Kansas turnpike got at least one thing right, the gas/food stops are in between the north and south bound lanes. Their turnpike radio station was helpful, it said the low temps would be around 45. At that point, Susan and I looked at each other and realized we didn't bring any kind of jacket or warm shirts. I spent a couple of hours Wednesday night finding Wal-mart and buying a couple of sweat shirts. They worked well on our tour of the campus.

Lawrence does have hills. One I drove on was very steep (made my ears pop). I had assumed the city was pretty flat.

There are tons of stores and restaurants.

My favorite bar I saw was the Phoggy Dogg. My favorite restaurant was Carlos O'Kelly's Mexican Restaurant. I've gotta get shirt from Carlos's when I go back in May for Susan's pre-enrollment.

Haskell seems like a great little university. It seemed like a small town, you get to know everyone. They also have several clubs/groups the kids can join. The first year, the counselors keep a pretty close eye on them and try to keep them on campus. We ate lunch at the cafeteria and it was pretty good. It was amazing to see all the license plates in the parking lot - California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and a few from Kansas.

What can you do to make my life better?

Here I am, sitting watching Futurama... wondering what I should write about... hmmm... not much. Alien is getting ready to start. This was one of the scariest movies I saw while growing up.

The main thing everyone should think is 'what can I do to make Bubba's life better?'

Have a great St. Hangovers Day Tuesday!