[GRLUG] Summary of today's Subway/Bigby's social thing.

[Michael Mol]

Hung out from 2PM to 6PM.

Description of environment:

* Plenty of outlets and seating everywhere.  I'd brought along an
extension cord with multiple outlets, just in case.
* Big TV, not too loud, showing basketball games. (Some underdog team
won 54-52, IIRC)
* Sub of the day on Saturdays happens to be roast beef. Tasty deal.
Subway refills are apparently free.  This particular Subway is also a
bit different from the Corporate-owned stores; they tend to keep
specials running longer than the corporate ones, keep things and
ingredients around when Corporate pulls it, and are more flexible with
their ingredients. (You can get footlong flatbread subs there, for
example.)
* There's a Bigby's there, if you like caffeine denser and more
expensive than Coke.
* Free wifi. Unencrypted, no auth gateway. 802.11b. I didn't do a
bandwidth test, but it didn't seem slow for hitting GMail a couple
times, and the latency was unnoticeable in SSH.
* Parking is good.

Jeff DeFouw was the only other LUGger to come by, but we didn't really
recognize each other until about 5:30. I got about a minute and a half
into showing him Kismet before my laptop forced itself into
hibernation.  We then chatted about some history of Linux
distributions and versions, a bit about programming languages, a bit
about distribution release schedules as it relates to running a
server, and then I noticed it was 6:15PM and I had to get going.

Even if it was brief, that last 45 minutes made the rest of the time
worth it.  I definitely want to do this again, and would like to see
it be a regular informal thing if possible.

I'd also be open to a more centralized meeting location, if that works
for people.  Thoughts on prerequisites for a meeting place:

* Should have food, but not mind loitering.
* Should have wifi (free or not; I suspect that wouldn't matter too much)
* Should be located near the intersection of a freeway and a notable
road; if someone's going to drive distance to get there, it may as
well be at a comfortable clip.
* Should be at least somewhat comfortable to sit down for a few hours.

The Subway/Bigby's has just about everything but the
right-off-the-freeway bit. The Wilson exit of 168 is nearby and
relevant, but the Chicago Drive/Wilson junction is a pain, and there
are at least three traffic lights between that exit and the
restaurant, making navigation potentially tricky.

Considering there are GRLUG people from Holland to Lowell, Cedar
Springs to Byron Center, I suspect the prime places to meet would be
along 131 between (and including) the 96/131 junction and the M6/131
junction.

For synchronization sake, I'd recommend planning on next Saturday
being at the same place, while we settle on two weeks from now being
wherever we care to try things. (That ought to help avoid someone
missing a last-minute change-of-location. It's a fair drive for
folks.)

-- 
:wq