Je Hais Le Printemps

Well, that's it. All the goods things must end one day. Even the things that you couldn't believe to have an end.

I'm sad, but I do understand why and how the gang decided to finish at the end of the season 5. There are tons of reasons: being tired of it, trying to end the show before people arguing about it being less interesting as time passes by, etc.
I'm fine with that. What's sad is that it's like losing a friend or something. Someone you don't meet all the time, every day, but someone you care for. You had great times with him (or her), sometimes you had arguments, sometimes jokes that made you cry out of laughter. Now the friend is gone, and you don't want that to happen.

And you struggle with the 5 steps of mourning:

• Deny: Oh come on, Jono, tell us it's joke! Aq! stop that - it's not funny!
• Anger: Fuck off, guys. You bastards, You don't have the right to stop it!
• Bargaining: Maybe if we kidnap them we can force them to record more shows
• Depression: Now we won't have the opportunity to see the lovely Wolverhampton, what a waste! - ok, this one is a lie... - How will I meet mrben, neuro, Xalior, and all the others, now? - yeah better
• Acceptance: well... c'est la vie

But what moves me is that a tons of things happened in my life just because of these 4 guys speaking in a microphone every fortnight. Unordered:

• I cried out of laughter listening to the National Lottery Rant,
• I switched to Ubuntu Linux because of their 15 seconds review of Warty (I'd probably switch to Linux anyway, but they did probably fasten this process),
• I made my first trip abroad alone
• I made my first trip in the UK,
• I could go to the EUROOSCON in Amsterdam,
• I've met / seen talks of dozens of interesting people, some famous (Jeff Waugh, Mark Shuttleworth, Matthew Garett, Simon Willison, Scott James Remnant, Bastien Nocera, Jonathan Riddell, Gervase Merkham, Mirco Müller) some "unknown" (mrben, Xalior, neuro, schwuk, resiak, davee, Aquarion, pickle, Russ and Jen, Chairmanmeow and GingerDog, Essk, Cillian, Bryn_S, popey, Treenaks, Dave Morley, Daviey, tonytiger and Laura, and all the other bunch that makes the Lugradio Massive). There are some I may not meet again, some I had a nice chat and/or a beer with, some I can say they're my friends.
• I had so many nice advices, hints, tips, help and support while hanging on #lugradio on IRC, I can't count them.
• I massively improved my english (well, I've learned idiomatic phrases as well as more swear words),
• I massively improved my english accent,
• I drank my first (and last) sip of TVR,
• I made my first talk in English,
• I discovered that british can't make proper coffee, so that's probably the reason why they drink tea,

(and so much more)

The sum of these points led me to say loudly and I still thinks it's true: Lugradio is my LUG.

So, kudos to the whole Lugradio team: Steve, Matt, Ade, Chris, Adam, Stuart, Jonathan for these long years of happiness, fun and big mouth arguing about Free Software and Open Source.

What will happen now? There's a Freenode channel that just can't stop, there are forums that will probably slowly die. There are a bunch of people I'll be sad not to be able to visit every year, in the shittiest city in the UK (right after Cumbernauld).

Lugradio is still my LUG, will always be. The show may end, but the spirit and the people hanging around this show won't leave.