After the release of Xenial Xerus, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, on 21 April, there was much anticipation of the AZLOCO Release Party which took place on Saturday 14 May. Invitations to attend were sent via the Team mailing list, announcements were made at the weekly Sunday Team meetings, and postings were placed on the Team web site. There were 15 attendees.
Well, the party was a rousing success. Our gracious hosts Mr and Mrs Mack (wmack on IRC) were kind and well prepared. Walter did the honors at the grill cooking the hamburgers and hot dogs. There was a great spread of various potato salads, macaroni salads, edamame, onions, tomatoes with all the necessary condiments. The team from SV provided a kick-ass chili which was honored well — no leftovers. However, there was some profound discussion on the viability of that chili. Opinions ran from too thin to too thick to too spicy to not spicy enough. Needless to say everyone seemed to have a different opinion. There were many desserts, chocolate cake, ginger cookies, waffle thins, and coffee. There was more food there than could be consumed at two parties had it not been for the presence of several of our well known Team members who enjoy eating as much as they do Free and Open Source Software. After the meal, several members were provided with a tour of the outside garden and identified all cacti growing there.
Whenever more than two Team members gather anywhere, the conversation will eventually move to Linux and FOSS related topics and that certainly happened here (with moderate success). One of our Team members is starting a new job with Canonical in London, UK next month. He was provided with a contact there (whose name has been withdrawn to protect privacy) should he require any assistance settling in. There were times of heavy technical discussion on Systemd, writing iso’s to usb sticks, and plans for the future. The discussion seemed to dwell on Rex’s inability to create a bootable USB flash drive even after trying Unetbootin, Start-up disk Creator, Rufus, and mkusb. That of course casts serious doubts on his ability to do other things. The possible use of Landscape for our servers was also discussed.
Not to be outdone, wives and friends of Team members decided to move to a different room for their own discussion (in German and English) with the hostess and friends. Their conversation moved from shipping socks from Greece 30+ years ago, to bargain $3 waffle irons with patterns and grandkids occasional in-ability to distinguish between Kraft mac & cheese and the generic.
A commemorative picture was taken as proof that certain individuals were present to prevent them from denying that fact in the future. Before the party broke up there was a brief rehash of the “How to skin a rabbit” presentation/discussion that was initially bought up at the Tempe Ubuntu Hour.
