Yodeya Con

[cellio]

Mi Yodeya (the Jewish Q&A site on Stack Exchange) will be five years old in a couple weeks, and the founder is hosting a celebration. Mi Yodeya is a worldwide community, so no matter where it's held only a small portion of users could come, but fortunately for me the founder now lives within driving distance of my house. (This is a recent-ish change.) Woot! I get to spend a shabbat with somebody I'm very interested in meeting and talking more with, and his family, and a dozen or two others. This'll be fun! And attendees are being encouraged to give short divrei torah (torah talks), so as soon as I finish preparing this week's, I'll need to give that some thought. First impressions, you know. :-)

On a side note, I'm glad Google Maps tells me which roads along a path are toll roads, and I'd be even happier if it told me the toll.

Comments

Re: "Con," no less!

[cellio]

Oh good; it occurred to me belatedly that you might not know what I meant by "Con". (Not "opposite of 'pro'"!) I think your name for the gathering works nicely, and you can always save "YodeyaCon" for larger future gatherings.

(To you it's a Shabbat meal; to me it's a chance to spend a whole Shabbat (plus some) with you. That sounds closer to a con to me. :-) )

Thanks for the toll information. For some reason I didn't get that from GMaps, though I may well have missed a click target or something. I'm all for taking the fastest and easiest route; wanting to know the toll is about having some approximation of correct change available, not about saving a dollar or two. (Well, the Turnpike toll is high enough that for that the toll-taker just gets to break a 20, but I mean for the smaller ones.) I don't make enough road trips to bother with EZPass, though someday I'll probably need to do it just to avoid inconvenience. (It used to be that there was one EZPass lane; these days it feels like there's one non-EZPass lane.)

I am really looking forward to this!

Re: "Con," no less!

[isaac moses (from livejournal.com)]

I listen to enough science fiction podcasts to be aware of "Con" culture, even though I've never participated. :)

And I am looking forward to your visit a great deal, as well.

For the road I referred to, you won't need cash. If you don't have an EZPass, they take a photo of your plate, get your contact info from your commonwealth's authorities, and bill you.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

I suppose it would be okay for GMaps to include toll information clearly labeled for single auto, no trailer, non-variable toll. More toll roads in my awareness are moving to variable tolls depending either on time of day (and day of week) or traffic load, and those would be nigh impossible to give a toll for up front.