An audience of two

Friday September 29, 2006

Protesting 101
Driving home this evening I passed a group of demonstrators at the corner of Mowry and Fremont, protesting about immigration. Or at least I assume that's what they were doing. For all I know it could have been Improv Everywhere having a laugh.

I saw several US flags and a banner of some kind. There were placards on which the only words I could read were "Legal" and "Immigrant" plus another that was partly folded over and so all I read was "HONK IF YOU ... ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS".

From this I deduced that these people were passionately concerned with the issue of immigration. However it wasn't clear to me what their position was - whether they were for or against it.

It seems to me that if you're going to get a group of people out on the streets on a Friday evening to protest an issue, you really owe it to all of us to make some damn sense. Judging by all the Vote Frederick Maria Truong-Katzenovic For Senior Deputy District Undersupervisor posters it's election time, so presumably you want me to go out and vote for something. Or against it. Or maybe you want me to abstain. Frankly I've got no idea. And until I understand your position, I'm not honking.

As for voting - can't help you there. I don't get a vote. I'm an immigrant.

Permalink | | | | Comments [2]
Tags:

Another year, another conference ...
It's STS - sorry - CEC time again. Since 1998 I've been one of the team behind the scenes, ensuring that everything went OK, particularly the technical side. Whether it's replacing frame buffers and systems damaged by static in Denver or helping speakers recover their presentations that they'd left behind, there's always something to go wrong. Hopefully things will go smoothly and I'll get chance to attend some of the presentations. I may even get chance to blog a little.

This year feels very different. For one thing, it's the first year that Denise Webster hasn't been running the show; instead much of it has been outsourced to the company that handles Java One, so I'm expecting a big budget production. I hear talk of plasma screens instead of posterboards, which is a shame as every year I've taken one of the posterboards home and now have them all over my office. Do you think they'd miss a plasma screen?

It's also my first time in Moscone West; I haven't even set foot in it before. So if you see a fat bloke running around with a length of Ethernet cable and a stressed expression it's probably me. Stop me and say hi, once I've finished fixing whatever crisis has arisen.

cec2006 Permalink | | | | Comments [0]
Tags: