Raible Designs

My OSCON Aftermath

Last week, I had a great time at OSCON '08. However, I've been paying the toll ever since. For the 5 days prior to OSCON, I stayed up late working on my presentation. I was furiously trying to develop an application with Rails, Grails, Flex and GWT. In the ~30 hours I spent developing the application (Rich Resume), I was able to finish the Rails and Grails pieces, but didn't get much farther than "Hello World" with Flex and GWT.

Even though I had my kids the weekend before OSCON, I still managed to get 4 hours of sleep each night. The next couple nights were no better. On the day of my presentation, I started to feel sick. Luckily, it didn't affect my talk and it never really hit me until the next day. On Thursday, I woke up with swollen tonsils and the feeling of an oncoming cold. I attended the conference on Thursday and went to bed early to get lots of rest.

On Friday, things weren't improving, but they weren't getting any worse either. My family and I attended the Oregon Brewers Festival and had a great time. Yes, I actually survived taking my kids to a Beer Fest for several hours. That evening, we stayed the night at the Kennedy School and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Again, I went to bed early as the kids and I had a 7:30 AM flight the next morning.

On Saturday, I started to lose my voice and my cold was still bearing down on me like an avalanche. I drove up to Vail for a friend's wedding on Saturday night. Of course, I stayed up too late and drank too much, but I did have a heckuva a good time.

When I woke up Sunday, I was in bad shape. The hangover wasn't bad, it was the body aches (from the cold) and the fact that my right eye was draining and it hurt to open it. A friend had to drive me home because I couldn't put my contacts in. I went to bed when I got home (around 5) and didn't wake up until noon the next day (Monday). I called in sick yesterday and went to the ER in the afternoon (I couldn't find a doctor who'd have me). The doctor in the ER said it was Pink Eye and gave me some drops to make it better. I came home, took a nap and crashed for the night a couple hours later.

I called in sick again today. I woke up around 9 this morning, took a nap 10 minutes later and finally woke up around 1:30 this afternoon feeling halfway decent. The body aches aren't nearly as bad as they were and my eye is no longer draining.

The worst part of this whole thing is I lost my glasses a couple months ago so I've been living w/o good vision for 3 days. I can read things 12 inches from me, but watching TV doesn't work too well. Since I can't wear my contacts for 7 days, I hopped on my bike and rode to the nearest LensCrafters to get a new pair of glasses. Those are scheduled to be done in the next 5 minutes (I'm typing this at the Apple Store in Cherry Creek Mall) and I'll finally be able to see again.

Lessons Learned: Sleep is important, get lots of it. Don't get Pink Eye and a cold at the same time. If you wear contacts, make sure you have a backup pair of glasses for when you get Pink Eye.