News from NEAR-fest October 2007, Deerfield

[Bill Ricker]

> Neither of us is a Ham,

I am. [1]

> Did anyone else attend?

I was there Friday afternoon/evening, sporting a golf-umbrella from my
long-gone start-up. Saturday, I was at First Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo
InstallFest. [2]


> There were several food vendors as well: the apple crisp smelled
> heavenly from quite a distance.

It was the same Pat's Crisp as at prior fairgrounds. Mahvellous as
always.  (Another may have been open.) The Lobster Roll stand was
quite passable too. Nice variety of food available.


The guy with big white car-port pavillion selling tower-computers
including one dual-processor (2x 933?) server asked if that
white-haired Linux guy was here. I said No, maddog was at the new
Canadian Linux Festival. But Mark KE1L (also of both BLU + Boston.PM)
and I gave him some of the Ubuntu advice he needed. He had sporadic
EDGE service on his laptop's card and was trying to configure
something.

In general, a much higher ratio of old radios to old computers for
sale than recent years, but at least one component vendor - barely
enough computers for-sale for me to wish I'd brought Linux CDs &
InstallFest fliers.  But one of my "finds" was non-ham computer
accessory, a 35mm slide/film scanner, almost-new-in-box. If it isn't
SANE compliant, it has Mac s/w, and I have a Mac mini too, so worth
the gamble. And everybody can use rechargeable batteries and LED
flashlights!

[1] http://www.qrz.com/detail/n1vux http://ema.arrl.org/fd/
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MassachusettsTeam/Events/InstallFests/2007-10-13

-- 
Bill
n1vux at arrl.net bill.n1vux at gmail.com