LinuxChix Los Angeles

Yeah, really fun meeting today, although the hot, hot, hot part of the four seasons of LA seems to have started early.

Philippes is made of awesome, although it was hideously crowded. For good reason: it’s a landmark, and like Stater Bros. Supermarket used to say, it’s their meat that made them famous. Even though Cole’s PE Buffet fights with them over who did the French Dip sandwich first, nobody argues about the fact that the French Dip is a Los Angeles original.

We got a big table at one of the party rooms upstairs, although we had to share it with two other “families.” We had two new arrivals, Jan who stuck around for a while, and Heidi who got called away on an unexpected business run….that’s what Sharon meant by “gone too soon.”

There’s WiFi here, but alas, no three pronged outlets. We had a huge fan in our room but it was still very very hot. We talked little bitty lappies — I had my ThinkPad 240, a forerunner to the Netbooks of 7 years later, and our newcomer Jan brought her Eee.

I also brought my MacBook in case the WiFi was a lie (no lie, it’s there and it’s very, very capable) and Chad and I had to set up an ad-hoc access point with his Sprint 3G USB plugin. No need, but I took it out for a while after showing off the 240.

Steve, Jill’s SO, also regaled us with tales about the world’s coolest job: designing toys for Mattel. I have become a bit of a doll enthusiast as of late…I wasn’t really one as a little girl, but contact with an element of Anime fandom has gotten me interested. I found out that two Barbies I recently hacked were ones Steve had done some work on during development. If any are interested I think I will blog about it soon some other place.

Anyway, awesome meet, good times, Linux awesomeness. What do y’all think about our next meet happening in Torrance, at Mitsuwa Marketplace’s food court? I don’t think they have WiFi but they have awesome Japanese food for cheap and some great cheap Italian and American food for those who don’t like Japanese food. Chad and I can set up an ad-hoc access point for our bandwidth needs.