BSDCan Gifts

This was my last year as BSDCan chair. The committee worked hard make the con happen. That’s not to my credit, though I am slightly proud of myself in selecting as potential members “people likely to complete tasks” and persuading them to volunteer. I am notably proud of arranging matters so that Kristof Provost felt compelled to scream my name in rage during the closing auction. I’d link to the video, but the sound of everyone else laughing drowns him out. KP is no Bob Beck.

But this post isn’t about that.

Two people gave me gifts. Gifts that I had no idea existed.

From Patrick McEvoy, assistant con chair, video lead, and next year’s con chair: a Laserblast alien figurine. If you’ve read the book, this closely resembles Bert.

Tiny? Yes. Silly? Absolutely? Surprisingly motivational? Yep! I’ve added Bert to my Inspirational Triptych, to remind myself that anything goes. (For the youthful, the others are Rosebud the basselope, Bullwinkle’s Fearless Leader, and the Big Man himself, Cthulhu.) I have no idea where my ideas come from, but these are my literary moral compass. I guess it’s a quadtych now?

The second gift was presented a little more publicly, at the very end of the closing session (video). Warner Losh commissioned my portrait from Frank Pryor. Warner didn’t merely hand him a photo of me to work from. Pryor went through my publicly available media and assembled a complete inventory of my public persona. $ git commit murder

Beaver Tails? What do Beaver Tails have to do with anything? There’s a photo from a BSDCan maybe ten, eleven years ago where about twenty of us converged on the Ottawa Beaver Tail hut for deep-fried sweet bread covered in Nutella or peanut butter and chocolate or cinnamon sugar or any other decadence you can imagine. (It’s basically an Instant Diabetes Kit, and it’s fantastic.)

Warner liked the look so much, he even made me a one-of-a-kind T-shirt.

In keeping with BSDCan tradition of course, immediately after this unique T-shirt was presented to me, they proceeded to auction off three more just like it.

I am left with one question, though. You see, right when I was starting to write $ git commit murder Warner joked that he wished someone would write fanfiction about him. That gave me a name, although I changed it slightly to maintain plausible deniability for when in case the real Warner gets killed at a Unix con. (If you’ve ever met Warner, you’d understand this is a legitimate risk.) I am wondering how he knew about the tombstone, though? I mean, mine has an ending date on it, but still, it’s a stunningly good guess.