Well, that was an interesting couple of days. Unfortunately my birthday came right after and I didn’t feel like writing anything for the duration. Now though? Why not! In the end, I think my presentation, NVRam for Fun and Profit went over okay. Not a ton of people showed up, but I did get ambushed afterwards with questions after I got off the stage. Why those people didn’t ask while I was in Presentation Mode, I can’t quite understand.

The Samsung Galaxy S II is currently the top selling phone in the world. And it’s not a popularity thing, the device is genuinely exceptional. Reviews across the web have effectively hailed it as, “… the best smartphone, period.” What’s notable about this, is that various US carrier shenanigans have guaranteed we get it dead last, right after India and Mexico. And Verizon? Won’t be carrying it at all. Of course, rumors suggest Verizon may be getting the semi-upgraded version of the GSII, dubbed the Droid Prime, with a faster processor, higher density screen, and a few other tweaks.

I’ve been reading Reddit’s nosleep section for kicks, and wanted to contribute. So I threw together a quick story based loosely on some childhood memories. The scariest stories are the ones partially based on truth, right? Can someone be haunted by a house? I’m a little freaked out, here… When I was six or seven, we moved into a house near the railroad tracks. My brother and I shared a room on the second floor, and it was our parents’ plan to renovate the second, larger room to be a big game room for us.

Technology has come a long way, hasn’t it? Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, we could never afford braces while I was growing up. As a consequence, my mouth contains unspeakable horrors, a jumbled mess of crooked trolls, crowding haphazardly around a fresh carcass. I’m not kidding. While my smile won’t crack any mirrors, I have the overbite of a horse and the canines of a timber wolf. And like an unbalanced chair, my wobbly bite has ushered in periods of intense jaw cramps over the last few years.

A few months ago, Greg Smith of PostgreSQL fame suggested I submit a proposal to the new Postgres Open conference here in Chicago. Some of us residents of the Midwest have long waited for a PostgreSQL-related conference of our very own, and now the glorious day has finally arrived. I was asked to submit proposals to other conferences, but the travel involved quickly put me off; now I can be lazy and still help spread The Word.