[San-Diego-pm] Meeting Recap

[Chris Grau]

=head1 NAME

SanDiego::Meeting::Social - social gathering of the San Diego Perl
Mongers

=head1 DATE

Thursday, 17 July 2008, 19:00 - 21:00

=head1 LOCATION

Panera Bread, Mira Mesa, Calif., USA

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This is a simple meeting recap, conveniently written in pod so everyone
can read it in whatever format they prefer.  If you lack an appropriate
formatter, well, you can always write one.  As an added bonus, if you're
using a decent MUA *cough*Mutt*cough*, a formatter is only a few
keystrokes away:

    macro pager ,pd "<pipe-message>pod2text<enter>"

=head1 ATTENDEES

In order of appearance.

=over

=item *

Bob

=item *

George

Arrived early, but once again also had to leave early to pick up his son
from a calculus class.

=item *

Chris

=item *

Anna

A first time Monger.  She is currently taking a Perl class at Coleman
College.  She found out about our meetings on our web site, and wanted
to come by and hang out.

=item *

John

Brought his two sons, but it's difficult to discern their level of Perl
interest.

=item *

Brad

Another first time Monger at the meeting, however he has recently
started hanging out with us in the IRC channel (#SanDiego.pm on
Freenode).  He is a systems administrator at UCSD, currently learning
Perl on his own.  His previous experience has been with shell scripting,
so he's broadening his horizons and filling his tool box.

=item *

Brian

=back

Attendance at the July meeting was lower than normal.  Perhaps even Perl
Mongers relax during the summer months.  However, the failure of the
mailing list server to promptly deliver a meeting reminder may also have
something to do with it.

=head1 TOPICS

There wasn't a lot of Perl talk at the July meeting.  Everyone seemed
pretty well spent.  The meeting was a pleasant social gathering between
familiar Mongers and new.

=head2 Gainful Employment

Bob is finally gainfully employed.  The folks at Chumby will now benefit
from his programming skills.  What will he be programming in?  Ruby!
Hey, at least it's not Python.  Perhaps Bob will start attending the
meetings of the local Ruby Brigade[1].

Chris would like to hire a couple of minions to do his evil Perl-related
bidding.  Finding someone who both knows Perl and is willing to obey him
is proving difficult.

=head2 There's More Than One Way to Do Your Homework

Anna spent the majority of the meeting working on one of her Perl class
assignments.  It took us back to the days when programs were simple and
not so over-engineered.  She, like any good student, had questions,
which we were happy to answer.  We look forward to her presence on the
list and possibly the IRC channel.

=head2 When Web 2.0 Goes Bad

It was noted by Brad that, apparently, Wikipedia will begin moderating -
that is "checking over" - articles.  Gone are the days when any high
school drop out could exercise their misinformed right of free speech
against people they've probably never heard of[2].

=head2 Those Perl Guys are Just a Bunch of Hackers

Chris wrote a 20 line Perl script to fool some Very Expensive Software
into accepting invalid data.  Concerns about the DMCA were raised, but
no copy protection was circumvented in the exercise - just a bug.

=head2 There's a Perl in My Windows

Brian spent part of the meeting rebuilding his Camelbox[3] project.

=head2 Shameless Plug

Chris will be attending OSCON 2008 the week of 21 July through 25 July.
He will attempt to blog[4] about anything interesting (or not so
interesting) that happens while there.  Feel free to recommend any
sessions[5] he should attend.

=head1 NEXT MEETING

Thursday, 21 August 2008, 19:00 - 21:00.

Panera Bread, Mira Mesa, Calif., USA.

=head1 REFERENCES

=over

=item 1

L<http://sdruby.com/>

=item 2

L<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Rehnquist&oldid=22543142>

=item 3

L<http://code.google.com/p/camelbox/>

=item 4

L<http://sirhc.us/>

=item 5

L<http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/grid>

=back

=cut
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/san-diego-pm/attachments/20080718/7c2ccc2a/attachment.bin>