Begin Rant
Last night, I got a ticket from one of DC's finest, a Metropolitan Police Department officer on a bicycle in Eastern Market. This ticket was for obstructing a crosswalk. I was waiting for Jena to get a donut from Dunkin Donuts, and this sneaky guy rolled up on me and asked for my license and registration. The conversation went like so:
"Why do you need my license and registration?"
"Sir, are you familiar with DC's crosswalk law?"
"Yes, as far as it says I shouldn't be in a crosswalk. Sorry - I will move."
"No sir, don't move, just wait there."
"But what about the crosswalk? Are you seriously going to write me a ticket for sitting in a crosswalk for one minute?"
The policeman walks away, and comes back later with a ticket for a 'moving violation'. I told him "Thank you, the citizens of our city will sleep better knowing that this crosswalk is safe". Jena said something slightly less printable. This incident has raised numerous questions in my mind. Questions like:
"Why is it okay for police to park on the f**king sidewalk to eat at Dunkin Donuts thus obstructing pedestrian walkways (can't spell sideWALK without WALK), but it's not okay for me to be sitting in a running car, ready to move the car if I see someone?"
"Why isn't this a**hole looking for my stolen bike, or the damned crackhead who stole it?"
"Why was I issued a moving violation, when the entire premise of the violation was that I was sitting still?"
"Why couldn't he just ask me to move my car, instead of writing me a ticket?"
"Why do I want to live in a city that is so hellbent on making it hard to live in that city?"
My plan is to walk over to Eastern Market this weekend, to buy some flowers and some delicious foodstuffs from the market, then go take a picture of the sh**head cops parked on the sidewalk eating their donuts while they should be catching crackhead bike thieves (or perhaps even the serious criminals, of which there is no shortage in this city). I am going to mail in a copy of this picture with my dispute notification. I will still end up paying the ticket. Of this I am almost certain. At least they will have to, for a brief moment, acknowledge the ridiculousness of it all. People move to DC, bringing their tax dollars, and the government seems to be a bit greedy. That, and it's not even consistent. If you really want money, come ticket the churchgoers from MARYLAND, who flock to the church next to my house, parking illegally, double parking, etc. Honestly.
End Rant
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Hottest Latest Stuff (2/27/08 edition)
Well it's t-minus one day until it's time to move on to my new job. The transfer has been relatively painless thus far, and I have turned over pretty much all of my projects. Here's what I gather from my turnover process:
1) I didn't document enough
2) If I had documented enough, I would never have finished half the things I did.
3) Trying to condense two and a half years of hard and sometimes inspired work into two and half weeks of turnover is an impossible task.
So I will have to leave it as it is. Hopefully things will not completely fall apart when I go. I would have to think that they won't. People are never irreplaceable. Sometimes it takes longer than other times to replace someone, but whatever knowledge they take with them is probably going to be offset by the wealth of experience that the replacement can bring to the team.
Today's job market is completely different from the market of 20 years ago. Today, turnover is a reality. No matter how 'great' a job is, people leave it. People go elsewhere to do new things, different things, more interesting things, to meet new people, see new places. Back in the good old days, people would get a job, then work there until their gold watch and pension kicked in. People might switch once or twice, but certainly not every couple of years. Before the internet, it wasn't clear necessarily clear what jobs were even available, as the only way to post a position was by using the newspaper. Think about how many jobs were listed in the Washington Post "super jobs edition" that used to come out, and compare it to the number of jobs that are available on a quick search of Monster.com, Hotjobs.com, careerbuilder.com, or dice.com. Heck, even Craigslist has a ton of job postings. The flow of information, the ability to email resumes or store them online for searching - this has completely changed the nature of the game. I had an interview with a company recently, and they remarked that I had been at my current position for "a long time". Two and a half years doesn't seem like that long to me, and I said as much, to which the interviewer replied that 18 months was the average in my field.
Anyway, I guess I feel bad for leaving without "turning everything over", but not too bad, because if I had been able to turn everything over in two and a half weeks, it would mean that I sucked at my job all that time. Hopefully, if/when I leave the next job, I won't be able to turn everything over in two and a half weeks.
By the way, I am really excited to get somewhere new. My current position has been all about breaking down and finding old stuff that wasn't good, and not so much about coming up with new stuff, so it will be refreshing. My creativity will hopefully be cultivated a little more actively. Plus, it's sports! So much more fun than e-learning. And theoretically it will help me in my quest to start a software company. We can dream...
What else is happening? Well the save-the-dates are on the way around the country. Jena put in a lot of time and effort to make them, and I helped a little bit, (but mostly messed up), and they look amazing. I hope people actually look at them and don't just throw them away. We also booked the church and had our first meeting with the priest, so that's exciting. That was the LAST BIG THING that we had been stressing about. Next up, things that are way more fun and exciting, like registries, and honeymoon planning. Awesome!
Now added to the list of books I am reading is Made To Stick, by Dan and Chip Heath. So far so good, although they seem to think that The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell was a really good book. I tend to be a little less enthusiastic about it than they are, but they are published authors, and I am just, well, a guy who reads books, so I will have to defer to their judgement. Making good progress on Midnight In Sicily, which has rebounded despite an incredibly murky writing style, to be a really fascinating read about the mafias reach in Sicily and mainland Italy post WWII.
1) I didn't document enough
2) If I had documented enough, I would never have finished half the things I did.
3) Trying to condense two and a half years of hard and sometimes inspired work into two and half weeks of turnover is an impossible task.
So I will have to leave it as it is. Hopefully things will not completely fall apart when I go. I would have to think that they won't. People are never irreplaceable. Sometimes it takes longer than other times to replace someone, but whatever knowledge they take with them is probably going to be offset by the wealth of experience that the replacement can bring to the team.
Today's job market is completely different from the market of 20 years ago. Today, turnover is a reality. No matter how 'great' a job is, people leave it. People go elsewhere to do new things, different things, more interesting things, to meet new people, see new places. Back in the good old days, people would get a job, then work there until their gold watch and pension kicked in. People might switch once or twice, but certainly not every couple of years. Before the internet, it wasn't clear necessarily clear what jobs were even available, as the only way to post a position was by using the newspaper. Think about how many jobs were listed in the Washington Post "super jobs edition" that used to come out, and compare it to the number of jobs that are available on a quick search of Monster.com, Hotjobs.com, careerbuilder.com, or dice.com. Heck, even Craigslist has a ton of job postings. The flow of information, the ability to email resumes or store them online for searching - this has completely changed the nature of the game. I had an interview with a company recently, and they remarked that I had been at my current position for "a long time". Two and a half years doesn't seem like that long to me, and I said as much, to which the interviewer replied that 18 months was the average in my field.
Anyway, I guess I feel bad for leaving without "turning everything over", but not too bad, because if I had been able to turn everything over in two and a half weeks, it would mean that I sucked at my job all that time. Hopefully, if/when I leave the next job, I won't be able to turn everything over in two and a half weeks.
By the way, I am really excited to get somewhere new. My current position has been all about breaking down and finding old stuff that wasn't good, and not so much about coming up with new stuff, so it will be refreshing. My creativity will hopefully be cultivated a little more actively. Plus, it's sports! So much more fun than e-learning. And theoretically it will help me in my quest to start a software company. We can dream...
What else is happening? Well the save-the-dates are on the way around the country. Jena put in a lot of time and effort to make them, and I helped a little bit, (but mostly messed up), and they look amazing. I hope people actually look at them and don't just throw them away. We also booked the church and had our first meeting with the priest, so that's exciting. That was the LAST BIG THING that we had been stressing about. Next up, things that are way more fun and exciting, like registries, and honeymoon planning. Awesome!
Now added to the list of books I am reading is Made To Stick, by Dan and Chip Heath. So far so good, although they seem to think that The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell was a really good book. I tend to be a little less enthusiastic about it than they are, but they are published authors, and I am just, well, a guy who reads books, so I will have to defer to their judgement. Making good progress on Midnight In Sicily, which has rebounded despite an incredibly murky writing style, to be a really fascinating read about the mafias reach in Sicily and mainland Italy post WWII.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Social InterWeb 2.0
DISCLAIMER: This stuff seems really cool and profound to me, but I may be talking about things that are pretty inane and problems that have already been solved, so forgive me if this post is really stupid.
Well, it's almost here. In a little over a week, I will be fully immersed in the social web. As someone who isn't probably the hippest dude when it comes to the new Internet, I have some boning up to do on how people use the web, what makes a site both 'cool' and (more importantly in my humble opinion) 'useful'. I see (younger) people today who route almost all their interaction through some form of social web component. I usually think in terms of just emailing my buddy, or *gasp*, calling them to see what they are up to next weekend. For that matter, my buddy was someone who I had known for a while, or at the very least, had actually met. Now there is whole dynamic whereby you can have 'friends' who you have no interaction with outside of 'poking' or posts on a wall, or a comment in a myspace page. This is all weird, but this is what I need to start to grasp.
See, I am the guy who doesn't answer his cell phone half the time that it rings. It's a tool of my convenience, not a direct line to me wherever I may be. I have IM, but I don't have a big friend list. I have a myspace page, but it has the same 51 friends that it had after about 2 wks of having the page. I have a facebook page that I put up to do development, and something like 9 people found it and did friend requests. I have one post on my 'wall' (thanks Zahra!).
I do participate in the social web - I provide recommendations, feedback, and ratings about things that I have done, places I have visited, books I have read, music I have listened to. I get recommendations for things to buy from others who participate. I think it's fascinating to examine the science of the social web - to understand how social networks actually work. I have been thumbing through Programming Collective Intelligence, by Toby Segaran, which gives a primer on the algorithms behind so many of the Web 2.0 sites. Fascinating to think about how the people are connected, and how someone can take these connections and find a way to monetize them. Things like the Small World Phenomenon are pretty incredible. I wonder (and I am sure this happens a lot more than I know), but I wonder if there is some sort of mathematical formula you can use to see:
a) How much is a given profile worth? (social networking potential)
b) How can you say what features have more social reach (how many degrees of connection do they span and how quickly)
c) How vital is a given member to a group (structural cohesion)
Are companies like facebook and myspace already utilizing these kinds of models to apply value to their users? Is this possible? Does it work? Such cool stuff.
As someone who comes from a business background, and who is interested in sociology, I think that my new job will provide me with an avenue to explore the intersection of technology, marketing, sociology, and sales. It makes what is an exciting move that much more fascinating to me, and I can't wait to dive in headfirst. I'll be letting you know how it goes, and hopefully writing a lot more about this as I start to figure more of it out.
Well, it's almost here. In a little over a week, I will be fully immersed in the social web. As someone who isn't probably the hippest dude when it comes to the new Internet, I have some boning up to do on how people use the web, what makes a site both 'cool' and (more importantly in my humble opinion) 'useful'. I see (younger) people today who route almost all their interaction through some form of social web component. I usually think in terms of just emailing my buddy, or *gasp*, calling them to see what they are up to next weekend. For that matter, my buddy was someone who I had known for a while, or at the very least, had actually met. Now there is whole dynamic whereby you can have 'friends' who you have no interaction with outside of 'poking' or posts on a wall, or a comment in a myspace page. This is all weird, but this is what I need to start to grasp.
See, I am the guy who doesn't answer his cell phone half the time that it rings. It's a tool of my convenience, not a direct line to me wherever I may be. I have IM, but I don't have a big friend list. I have a myspace page, but it has the same 51 friends that it had after about 2 wks of having the page. I have a facebook page that I put up to do development, and something like 9 people found it and did friend requests. I have one post on my 'wall' (thanks Zahra!).
I do participate in the social web - I provide recommendations, feedback, and ratings about things that I have done, places I have visited, books I have read, music I have listened to. I get recommendations for things to buy from others who participate. I think it's fascinating to examine the science of the social web - to understand how social networks actually work. I have been thumbing through Programming Collective Intelligence, by Toby Segaran, which gives a primer on the algorithms behind so many of the Web 2.0 sites. Fascinating to think about how the people are connected, and how someone can take these connections and find a way to monetize them. Things like the Small World Phenomenon are pretty incredible. I wonder (and I am sure this happens a lot more than I know), but I wonder if there is some sort of mathematical formula you can use to see:
a) How much is a given profile worth? (social networking potential)
b) How can you say what features have more social reach (how many degrees of connection do they span and how quickly)
c) How vital is a given member to a group (structural cohesion)
Are companies like facebook and myspace already utilizing these kinds of models to apply value to their users? Is this possible? Does it work? Such cool stuff.
As someone who comes from a business background, and who is interested in sociology, I think that my new job will provide me with an avenue to explore the intersection of technology, marketing, sociology, and sales. It makes what is an exciting move that much more fascinating to me, and I can't wait to dive in headfirst. I'll be letting you know how it goes, and hopefully writing a lot more about this as I start to figure more of it out.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Sail On...
Well, it's finally come. I am moving on from Blackboard. It might seem like a crazy move, considering I just got promoted, and have a team under me, and a high profile position doing some pretty cool work, but it's true. I am sailing on. For reasons that I don't really need to discuss, I am just ready to go. I have learned a lot, and grown my skill set and confidence level enough that I am ready to move.
I am headed to a startup called Sportsvite. It's a social networking site (yes another social networking site), but one that actually serves a purpose - to connect recreational athletes with leagues, games, and each other. I will be part of a small team doing all kinds of Java web application development. I am extremely excited to get going, and I already have a lot of ideas about how to make the product even cooler than it already is. I think there is a lot of potential there, and it will be refreshing to get into a smaller more dynamic place where process and 'best practices' don't overrule common sense and client needs.
So the turnover at Blackboard will pretty much envelop the remainder of the month. Hopefully once March comes around, things will start settling down as I get into the new job. In other news, I went skiing this weekend. I did pretty well for my third time out, despite the rough conditions. Slopes alternated between closed, slushy, and icy. Not ideal, but still a lot of fun, and always great to get away. While there, I managed to knock through The Second Horseman by Kyle Mills. It was good like all his books. Nothing earth-shattering. Now, I have moved on to a few books. I am still working on Music and the Brain, which is really fascinating, but not light reading by any stretch. I am also tackling 'The Career Programmer', by Christopher Duncan, about how to work as a programmer and not go crazy. I have to say that after finishing part one of three on the train this week, I can't say I have experienced much of what the author describes. He comes off as so cynical that it's hard to take anything he says seriously, even though there is valuable wisdom sprinkled thoughout. I am also reading Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb, but it's off to such a slow start, it may not make the cut. I will provide an update in the next installment.
I am headed to a startup called Sportsvite. It's a social networking site (yes another social networking site), but one that actually serves a purpose - to connect recreational athletes with leagues, games, and each other. I will be part of a small team doing all kinds of Java web application development. I am extremely excited to get going, and I already have a lot of ideas about how to make the product even cooler than it already is. I think there is a lot of potential there, and it will be refreshing to get into a smaller more dynamic place where process and 'best practices' don't overrule common sense and client needs.
So the turnover at Blackboard will pretty much envelop the remainder of the month. Hopefully once March comes around, things will start settling down as I get into the new job. In other news, I went skiing this weekend. I did pretty well for my third time out, despite the rough conditions. Slopes alternated between closed, slushy, and icy. Not ideal, but still a lot of fun, and always great to get away. While there, I managed to knock through The Second Horseman by Kyle Mills. It was good like all his books. Nothing earth-shattering. Now, I have moved on to a few books. I am still working on Music and the Brain, which is really fascinating, but not light reading by any stretch. I am also tackling 'The Career Programmer', by Christopher Duncan, about how to work as a programmer and not go crazy. I have to say that after finishing part one of three on the train this week, I can't say I have experienced much of what the author describes. He comes off as so cynical that it's hard to take anything he says seriously, even though there is valuable wisdom sprinkled thoughout. I am also reading Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb, but it's off to such a slow start, it may not make the cut. I will provide an update in the next installment.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Latest Happenings
It's been a busy January - I can't believe it's almost over. I remember when I was in high school. It would be Tuesday, and my friends and I would be sitting in the basement, up to no good, thinking about how it will be SO LONG until Friday when the next big social happening was going to take place. Three days that seemed like an eternity. Now, I check my email and see that a message from a friend that I had determined I would respond to after I 'finish this one thing' is now so deep in my inbox, and the date on it has somehow changed to last week. I had an incredible time in high school, but if there was one thing I would want to get back from that time, it wouldn't be the freedom from responsibility, or the joy of doing everything for the first time, but the ability to bottle time - the ability to slow down the day and make it actually last 24 hours, or in some cases seemingly 36. Right now it seems like the day has dwindled down to about 13-14 hours at best. Ah well, all the more reason to truly savor the special moments. That's my rant about getting older.
Speaking of which, good lord, I turned 30, yes, 30.
30.
So, I must say I have taken it well, but it's a big number. When you are young you set these goals for yourself and the 'due date', as it were, for all of them is "by the time I turn 30". Looking back, I really wasn't much of a forward thinker when I was setting all these goals. I would say that I was more concerned with scrounging change so I could buy a 12-pack than I was charting the course for my young adulthood. Despite my rudderless existence, I certainly had some ideas about what I would be doing, how much money I would be making, whether I would be married, how many kids I would have, the places I would have been, etc. I can say happily that despite my lack of real effort towards making these artificial goals a reality, I have come kind of close. When you look at it that way, you can't help but be proud of where you have gotten yourself.
I have a wonderful fiance who takes great care of me. She makes me a better person, and every day that I wake up with her is a wonderful day. I have a small family, but one that I have really started to reconnect with over the past few years, after regrettably allowing them to grow so far apart from me over the years. In addition to the family I was born with, I have a new family that I am marrying into. They have shown me so much love, and treated me like I belong, and in the months after my father passed away, their support was invaluable. I have sort of stumbled into a profession that I really enjoy, that I am pretty good at, and that allows me to live comfortably. I am living a far more healthy existence than I was a few years ago - I have shed pounds and become more active. I feel better waking up as a thirty year old than I ever did as a 20 year old, that's for sure. So I feel good. Things could be so much worse.
We had a party for my 30th. I don't usually celebrate my birthday in any organized fashion - it comes shortly after Christmas, and it's generally pretty anticlimactic. I figured turning 30 called for something. Most of my best friends who are in town made it, and we had a great time. Any excuse to get everyone together is welcome. I have been lucky to be blessed with such a great group of friends. Not many people can look around on their 30th birthday and smile knowing that many of the folks you are sharing the room with have known you almost half your life (or in some cases, more). New friends and old had a great time, especially me:
We drank lots of good beer, ate lots of yummy snacks, and I shotgunned a beer for the second time ever (not sure why). We even got this great group shot of all the old school fools pretending like they can still party:
I obviously couldn't have done it all myself - I had the best hostess with the mostest, and she threw me a great party that I won't forget. I think I'll keep her.
So that's what's new for now. I finished Wikinomics. Not bad, not great. I also finally finished my Herding Cats book. Today I started This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel Levitin. As an avid music-lover, and aspiring music player, I am fascinated by the relationship between the human mind and music. I am excited to see how it turns out.
Speaking of which, good lord, I turned 30, yes, 30.
30.
So, I must say I have taken it well, but it's a big number. When you are young you set these goals for yourself and the 'due date', as it were, for all of them is "by the time I turn 30". Looking back, I really wasn't much of a forward thinker when I was setting all these goals. I would say that I was more concerned with scrounging change so I could buy a 12-pack than I was charting the course for my young adulthood. Despite my rudderless existence, I certainly had some ideas about what I would be doing, how much money I would be making, whether I would be married, how many kids I would have, the places I would have been, etc. I can say happily that despite my lack of real effort towards making these artificial goals a reality, I have come kind of close. When you look at it that way, you can't help but be proud of where you have gotten yourself.
I have a wonderful fiance who takes great care of me. She makes me a better person, and every day that I wake up with her is a wonderful day. I have a small family, but one that I have really started to reconnect with over the past few years, after regrettably allowing them to grow so far apart from me over the years. In addition to the family I was born with, I have a new family that I am marrying into. They have shown me so much love, and treated me like I belong, and in the months after my father passed away, their support was invaluable. I have sort of stumbled into a profession that I really enjoy, that I am pretty good at, and that allows me to live comfortably. I am living a far more healthy existence than I was a few years ago - I have shed pounds and become more active. I feel better waking up as a thirty year old than I ever did as a 20 year old, that's for sure. So I feel good. Things could be so much worse.
We had a party for my 30th. I don't usually celebrate my birthday in any organized fashion - it comes shortly after Christmas, and it's generally pretty anticlimactic. I figured turning 30 called for something. Most of my best friends who are in town made it, and we had a great time. Any excuse to get everyone together is welcome. I have been lucky to be blessed with such a great group of friends. Not many people can look around on their 30th birthday and smile knowing that many of the folks you are sharing the room with have known you almost half your life (or in some cases, more). New friends and old had a great time, especially me:
We drank lots of good beer, ate lots of yummy snacks, and I shotgunned a beer for the second time ever (not sure why). We even got this great group shot of all the old school fools pretending like they can still party:
I obviously couldn't have done it all myself - I had the best hostess with the mostest, and she threw me a great party that I won't forget. I think I'll keep her.
So that's what's new for now. I finished Wikinomics. Not bad, not great. I also finally finished my Herding Cats book. Today I started This Is Your Brain On Music, by Daniel Levitin. As an avid music-lover, and aspiring music player, I am fascinated by the relationship between the human mind and music. I am excited to see how it turns out.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Fresh + Clean
Well, I finally got my new laptop. I think it's pretty incredible how far this technology has come along. I ended up getting a Toshiba, as the feature-to-price ratio seemed to be in line. I got the Core 2 Duo 5450, which is not ideal, but still WAY better than my single processing Pentium M that I have in my current laptop. It's pretty light (5.3 lbs), has a big (200GB) disk, and 2GB of RAM, which I haven't come close to taxing yet.
It's a relatively attractive machine, with a nice quiet keyboard, great bright video, and pretty decent speakers (not the Harman-Kardon speakers that the more pricey Toshibas come with), but I don't honestly use the laptop speakers very often. The complaints I saw in reviews centered around the touchpad, but I think it's really just fine. Maybe the one I have now sucks so bad that I am preconditioned to think that touchpads always suck.
I got subversion setup for my side venture this week. I used wush.net, which offers plans costing only $20/quarter. This gives you a web client, RSS feeds for changelist tracking, and a pretty decent amount of space and transfer bandwidth. So far it's been plenty fast, and they offer unlimited user access to a single repository, which is good enough for us.
This leads me to a "Wow technology is cool!" moment:
It's always amazing to me when you can sit on your couch on your laptop that costs half as much as the laptop you bought 2.5 years ago that sucks in comparison, programming in a free IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans that is full-featured and full of neat little tools that someone donated to the world out of pure nerdness. Finish your work for the night on the laptop that is not tethered by any cords, and commit your changes - then sit back as the changelist floats through the air to your router, where somehow those packets of data start their enchanted journey to an IP address that is mapped magically to the DNS name you specified. It gets there and checks itself in to this repository in god-knows-where using source control technology that is open source and freely available. You can then hop on the internet and see what you just did. Now we, as 'Web 2.0' users, do this every day, like this blog. I just take for granted that what I wrote before hitting "Publish Post" will show up exactly as it was when Iwrote it. That's a testament to the amazing intellectual creations over the past few decades - that you just know it'll get there, because all the incredible technology that is involved in that data getting from your fingertips to its destination is nothing to sneeze at. Fascinating.
Hmm, what else is there to talk about. Well I finished my Dick Francis rag, and now I am onto the next batch of books I just got from Amazon (they take A LOT of my money). First up is Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott. So far it's interesting in a "Tipping Point-like" well-done statement of the obvious. I will let you know when I get further into it if it's as good as people have told me it is.
It's a relatively attractive machine, with a nice quiet keyboard, great bright video, and pretty decent speakers (not the Harman-Kardon speakers that the more pricey Toshibas come with), but I don't honestly use the laptop speakers very often. The complaints I saw in reviews centered around the touchpad, but I think it's really just fine. Maybe the one I have now sucks so bad that I am preconditioned to think that touchpads always suck.I got subversion setup for my side venture this week. I used wush.net, which offers plans costing only $20/quarter. This gives you a web client, RSS feeds for changelist tracking, and a pretty decent amount of space and transfer bandwidth. So far it's been plenty fast, and they offer unlimited user access to a single repository, which is good enough for us.
This leads me to a "Wow technology is cool!" moment:
It's always amazing to me when you can sit on your couch on your laptop that costs half as much as the laptop you bought 2.5 years ago that sucks in comparison, programming in a free IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans that is full-featured and full of neat little tools that someone donated to the world out of pure nerdness. Finish your work for the night on the laptop that is not tethered by any cords, and commit your changes - then sit back as the changelist floats through the air to your router, where somehow those packets of data start their enchanted journey to an IP address that is mapped magically to the DNS name you specified. It gets there and checks itself in to this repository in god-knows-where using source control technology that is open source and freely available. You can then hop on the internet and see what you just did. Now we, as 'Web 2.0' users, do this every day, like this blog. I just take for granted that what I wrote before hitting "Publish Post" will show up exactly as it was when Iwrote it. That's a testament to the amazing intellectual creations over the past few decades - that you just know it'll get there, because all the incredible technology that is involved in that data getting from your fingertips to its destination is nothing to sneeze at. Fascinating.
Hmm, what else is there to talk about. Well I finished my Dick Francis rag, and now I am onto the next batch of books I just got from Amazon (they take A LOT of my money). First up is Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott. So far it's interesting in a "Tipping Point-like" well-done statement of the obvious. I will let you know when I get further into it if it's as good as people have told me it is.
Friday, January 11, 2008
What's New, 2008!
Well, since I last wrote, it became 2008! I went to Denver, where I did some sightseeing, and a whole lot of snow shoveling. It was great to finally get out to Colorado. My mom, myself, my Aunt Mary, Uncle Al, cousin Stacey, and her husband Tony spent a lovely White (10 in) Christmas together. Sadly, it was too cold and windy to get any skiing in, but we still had a good time and it was good for my Mom to be around family. Before we left, Jena and I had Christmas with my mom in Arlington. We got a lot of great gifts (not least of which was a bunch of stuff to get us ready for our Italian honeymoon), and had a great dinner. Once I returned, it was finally time to have our Christmas. We exchanged gifts, figured out we both went WAY over our predetermined spending limits for each other, and had a great night.
I have always loved Christmas. It's a great time to think about how you can really make the people around you smile. My dad always loved Christmas, and I think it really rubbed off on me. Watching him every year as he started the shopping ritual, and kept on buying little stuff here and there, right up until the stores closed on Dec. 24th. Then coming down in the morning, seeing all those presents, some of them from Santa, some from the Elves, and some from Rudolph himself (my dad took great license signing the to/from cards). The stockings filled to the brim with gimmick gifts, bizarre stuff, odd foods, and the like. The smell of breakfast and coffee. I hope to be the kind of dad and husband who makes Christmas great for his family like it was for me every year.
We got an awesome Christmas tree this year. It rivaled the awesomeness of the tree from last year. We are lucky because the guy who sells trees at Eastern Market has reasonably priced, fresh trees, and he's a really nice, friendly and helpful fellow. I will continue to buy trees from him as long as we're here and he keeps coming to the Market. The tree was still completely alive when I finally took it out last Saturday.
What else is going on. Geez, I have read a lot of books...I finished Manhunt - great book, I really enjoyed it, and it's no often I read a history book where I don't know the ending - definitely an added bonus. I also knocked out a couple of Pelecanos books, and DC Noir, a collection of Noir short stories that take place throughout DC, edited by Mr. Pelecanos himself. I also finished Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain on the airplane on the way back. I am now reading a book by an old fave of mine, Dick Francis, who writes mysteries that center around racehorses, and a book by David Baldacci, The Winner, which I must say hasn't been the page turner that the others I have read were. Can't win em all. I am also most of the way through the programmer management book Herding Cats, which is reasonably educational.
Jena and I settled on a band for the wedding, which is exciting. Radiant is their name, and they survived the grueling selection process that included four booking agencies, a few trips to some odd places to watch bands play weddings and holiday parties, and quite a few hilarious sample DVDs. I am excited, as I think they will keep things fun, and they seem to be good singers and musicians. In a perfect world, I would have just packed my Nano full of old favorites from my music collection, but I have to admit that having a band just adds some cool factor to a wedding.
Geez, what else - the primary season is in full swing, and Hillary has already been beaten out of the race and won New Hampshire in the same 24 hours. The press is really something to behold during the election year. I for one can't wait til the contenders emerge and we can get the election done. I am not sure who I am for, but I do know who I am against, and that's a good start (please no Hucklebee theocracy for this guy). My resolutions this year include learning enough Italian not to be a complete buffoon when we travel there, and to keep learning guitar, and to get married without screwing it up!
In my nerd life, I have been doing a bunch of scripting language exploration, diving into Scala, Groovy, and Ruby. I must say that Scala doesn't seem to quite be 'there', but it is really nice. Ruby and RoR are fantastic, but I have to admit a predisposition to Groovy, as it runs in a JVM and can be mixed and matched with Java code.
So that pretty well sums up what's been happening from this guy for the past month. I turn (gulp) 30 in one week, so next weekend promises a bunch of fun and festivities (and annoying jokes). Enough rambling for now...
I have always loved Christmas. It's a great time to think about how you can really make the people around you smile. My dad always loved Christmas, and I think it really rubbed off on me. Watching him every year as he started the shopping ritual, and kept on buying little stuff here and there, right up until the stores closed on Dec. 24th. Then coming down in the morning, seeing all those presents, some of them from Santa, some from the Elves, and some from Rudolph himself (my dad took great license signing the to/from cards). The stockings filled to the brim with gimmick gifts, bizarre stuff, odd foods, and the like. The smell of breakfast and coffee. I hope to be the kind of dad and husband who makes Christmas great for his family like it was for me every year.
We got an awesome Christmas tree this year. It rivaled the awesomeness of the tree from last year. We are lucky because the guy who sells trees at Eastern Market has reasonably priced, fresh trees, and he's a really nice, friendly and helpful fellow. I will continue to buy trees from him as long as we're here and he keeps coming to the Market. The tree was still completely alive when I finally took it out last Saturday.
What else is going on. Geez, I have read a lot of books...I finished Manhunt - great book, I really enjoyed it, and it's no often I read a history book where I don't know the ending - definitely an added bonus. I also knocked out a couple of Pelecanos books, and DC Noir, a collection of Noir short stories that take place throughout DC, edited by Mr. Pelecanos himself. I also finished Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain on the airplane on the way back. I am now reading a book by an old fave of mine, Dick Francis, who writes mysteries that center around racehorses, and a book by David Baldacci, The Winner, which I must say hasn't been the page turner that the others I have read were. Can't win em all. I am also most of the way through the programmer management book Herding Cats, which is reasonably educational.
Jena and I settled on a band for the wedding, which is exciting. Radiant is their name, and they survived the grueling selection process that included four booking agencies, a few trips to some odd places to watch bands play weddings and holiday parties, and quite a few hilarious sample DVDs. I am excited, as I think they will keep things fun, and they seem to be good singers and musicians. In a perfect world, I would have just packed my Nano full of old favorites from my music collection, but I have to admit that having a band just adds some cool factor to a wedding.
Geez, what else - the primary season is in full swing, and Hillary has already been beaten out of the race and won New Hampshire in the same 24 hours. The press is really something to behold during the election year. I for one can't wait til the contenders emerge and we can get the election done. I am not sure who I am for, but I do know who I am against, and that's a good start (please no Hucklebee theocracy for this guy). My resolutions this year include learning enough Italian not to be a complete buffoon when we travel there, and to keep learning guitar, and to get married without screwing it up!
In my nerd life, I have been doing a bunch of scripting language exploration, diving into Scala, Groovy, and Ruby. I must say that Scala doesn't seem to quite be 'there', but it is really nice. Ruby and RoR are fantastic, but I have to admit a predisposition to Groovy, as it runs in a JVM and can be mixed and matched with Java code.
So that pretty well sums up what's been happening from this guy for the past month. I turn (gulp) 30 in one week, so next weekend promises a bunch of fun and festivities (and annoying jokes). Enough rambling for now...
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