What are you doing on Saturday and Sunday April 25th and 26th?

If you are anywhere near Bellingham, Washington, USA you could stop in at the Bellingham Technical College for the 10th annversary of the LinuxFest Northwest 2009.

Many talks and activities are scheduled from things for newbies to highly technical. I was there many years ago, and I can tell you the people of the Pacific Northwest are very open and friendly. I look forward to this return visit.

I will be there, talking about how and why Linux and Free Software will reach world dominiation, and how there is virtually nothing that anyone can do about it other than enjoy the ride. Sure, it still takes "work" to make sure that free software meets the needs of everyone, and there will probably "always" be closed source proprietary software in small pockets, but the writing is on the wall....so enjoy it, Mr. Gates.

I will also be celebrating my 40th year in commercial computing, 32nd year using Unix, fifteenth year using Linux and helping to celebrate the 10th year of the LinuxFest (whippersnappers!). I am still trying to find out if my professor was right when he said in 1972: "Jon, you will never be able to make a living writing software." So far he has been wrong.

Along with talking about the past (real programmers measure computers in tons) I will be talking about my present and future projects, including my retirement project of "maddog's mansion and marina of math, music, micro-computing, micro-brewing, micro-winery, micro-distillery and bait shop".

I hope to see you there.