CozyNet Blog

Journal (2026-11-09) - Texas Linux Fest and Austin

Publish Date: 2026-11-09

I made it back home late in the evening after attending Texas Linux Fest in Austin. I was in Austin two nights for the event, which all went well. Most of the keynotes seemed focused around chat bots this time though, which granted, seems to be the direction of the tech world these days. It's not my cup of tea, but some of it was interesting. Last years event was all about containers.

I mostly went to meet with people and to knock out a goal on my jobs "performance goals" sheet in "learning and development," so that I won't have to read a boring assigned corporate word-salad book about "productivity" and "outcomes."

Over the years of going to these, I've noticed less and less attendees though while most of the regulars continue to return.

While I was there, I setup an old iPhone from my job that was cycled out for perhaps the first time. It has no cell service and only connects to wireless, but it has a newfound use as a GPS with Omaps. I didn't know you could do that with a phone, believing it absolutely required cellular service in order to function, but not for Omaps! Considering how I was getting around before by printing off or writing down directions, this is quite nice. I'll still continue with my printing and writing of directions just in case the phone fails me, but I intend to keep this around. As for other features, like messaging and what-not, I couldn't care less, but I was tinkering around with Nextcloud and KDE Connect on the iPhone. They were alright, but I'd rather just stick to my laptop for any real work. The touch screen is not an ideal interface and frustrates me to no end.

Thanks for reading my blog!

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