When I started a business around OpenNMS, everyone who had real jobs would say “Oh, it must be so nice working for yourself since you can take a vacation whenever you want”. Unfortunately for me, our support model business plan didn’t allow for me to just disappear whenever I wanted to, and for the first few years the best I could manage was an occasional three day weekend, where I would stop from time to time on the workday to check mail.

Now that the company has grown, I find I am able to take a decent vacation at least once if not twice a year. This allows me to get away from the business, get away from the farm and spend a little time getting my brain regrooved from the long weeks this project requires of me.

This year we went out to Oregon to spend a week fishing with friends. If I didn’t live in God’s Own Earth I would probably live in Oregon (somewhere down around Eugene). We camped and went fishing for steelhead, bass, trout and tuna.

The latter required getting up at some ungodly hour, getting on a boat, and spending over two hours to get 40 miles out to the tuna. Over the next six we caught 37 fish – nearly 1000 pounds. It’s an exciting and somewhat bloody form of entertainment.

My friend TJ with two of our fish

Unfortunately, I found out that the sea, a small boat and me don’t exactly mix so I spent most of that time in the wheelhouse hoping someone would shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Once back on land I perked up almost immediately and was able to clean the boat while the other folks worked on cleaning the fish. I brought along some wasabi and soy sauce and had some sashimi – that made it all worth it as it was so good (although my fishing buddies were certain I would see that sashimi again).

So let me apologize if I haven’t been responsive to e-mails over the last week. I don’t like “vacation” notification e-mails so I never use them. My first priority it to get through the backlog of nearly 250 messages, so if you are expecting a reply, please be patient.