This coming Monday I’m flying off to Atlanta, Georgia for the week. Not keen on going as Atlanta is like descending into the armpit of summer. I’m hoping that the weather co-operates and I don’t melt. 
I’m flying down there for work, we’re beta launching a product for a customer (that’s based in Atlanta – go figure) and they (the customer) have requested a contingent of us from work be on site for the release. So it’s me and two others from the UK.
We’re down on Monday then flying back home on Friday evening – I’m hoping to be in bed by midnight (landing 22:05 – 30 minute taxi home, getting bags and immigration and such). A SysAdmin that works for our customer suggested Zuma sushi bar to me for sushi. I like sushi a lot and hope to stop in for some glorious sushi.
Last week, like many people, I upgraded my MacBook Pro from OS X 10.5 (Leopard) to 10.5.1. Upon system reboot I was not able to log into my user account because the OS was complaining that FileVault wasn’t working properly.
Panic begins…
I had no backups. In fact the day of the fault I was pondering buying an external disk for the express purpose of Time Vault. Great timing..
I tried all of the things outlined on all the websites but nothing worked. I was on holiday so I didn’t have access to my Leopard or Tiger CDs. In the end I had to resort to DiskWarrior to recover the data.
The process went like this:
- Borrow an external USB disk.
- Backup FileVault sparse image.
- Attach the FileVault sparse image
- dd the filesystem from the sparse image to the spare USB disk
- Boot from the DiskWarrior 4 CD and attempt to repair the USB disk (it failed)
- Attempt to repair the filesystem image on the USB disk (it worked!)
- Reboot to Leopard and mount the fixed filesystem image and copy the contents to my mac
- Realise I made a mistake by copying to my user directory; make a lisa2 account
- Copy the data to lisa2, delete lisa account, recreate lisa account, copy data back
- Log in to lisa account, find all my data and reoice
The moral of the story is: Don’t be the first to upgrade.
I made it to Berlin. The trip was mostly uneventful except the train from LHR to TXL was delayed. The information desk at the Berlin-Tegel airport directed me to the desk next to him (“How do I get to Friedrichstrasse?”) and that desk directed me outside to bus stand 2. The directions on O’Reilly’s website for the hotel said:
From Tegel Airport (10 km): Take the shuttle bus to Friedrichstrasse Station, located across the street from the hotel.
The stop I got off at, Friedrichstrasse, was not across the street. Doh! A kind German man directed me away from the hotel until we got to a street sign that indicated the hotel was in the other direction. He was nice and I found the hotel!
The hotel is nice but the internet connection in the rooms is madness! €10/day!
I met a Gentoo colleague for dinner (He’s also attending railsconf) to see a friendly face. I was paniccing earlier since I don’t speak German and was homesick and, and, and… I’m okay now. 
When I met him in the hotel lobby there was a group of congoers having a nice chat and they were still there when we got back past 23:00. We/I didn’t join in since I’m tired, I’ve had a long day travelling and I want to settle in for a good night’s sleep before the giant frenzy that’s coming.
Registration begins at 07:00 and the first tutorial session begins a 08:30. As I type this the time is currently 23:35 – I seem to still be on UK time as I’m not very sleepy. I’ll have a lay down and see if I fall asleep.
Just finished registering for RailsConf Europe this morning. Travel is booked. Officially I am going on behalf of my work, unofficially I’m going to fangirl next to Rails’s niftiest people.
More later!
