Point(less?)-form Updates

I've felt the motivation to post something here. I really have. But I've been over-employed and then under-employed, both of which serve to kill a man's best intentions.

Quick updates:

• Baby's cookin' just fine. 36 weeks in. Projected due date is 40 weeks, so really, it could happen any time and be an okay pregnancy.
• The "boy-name" is still Finnegan Tate. The "girl-name", which I was happy to keep as Molly Bea is now up in the air.
  
• I'm working for a company called EbOWorld. I'm filling a contract they have for some Ruby on Rails application development. So far, so good. I'm liking Rails a lot.
• Met the guy who does www.runningmap.com today. He's an Edmonton guy and a good guy. If you're using www.mapmyrun.com (Guth, I'm looking at you), knock it off and go to www.runningmap.com. Seriously. Do it.
• Hopped on the bike to get to work a couple of times this week. Not this morning. I was going to, but fates collided and I was up early enough to go downtown and play hockey at the YMCA. My legs were tired and sore, but the real damage was to my left shin. I'm sorry, lefty. I'll consider wearing pads from now on.
• Big fire at the Rapid Apartment complex. For those of you Leducies, yes, that's where "George's" used to be. An institution is razed to the ground one late spring evening. Totally shocking to me.
• I now have a facebook username. You can reach me at facebook.com/hadaad I don't understand the significance, but if it's anything like all the other facebook things that have come along, I'm sure that I'll wonder how I ever did without it very soon.
• I'm thinking about a story written completely within the correspondence between two people who never actually meet. I'm sure it's been done before, but the idea has piqued my interest. The idea that you can probe people's motivations, their relationship, without ever being able to come out and say it. And talk about unreliable narrator... Everything's below the surface. Dunno, I have to get better at letter-writing, if I'm going to pursue this.
  

2008 in Review - Part One

It is tradition for me to take New Year's Eve to reflect on the past year. This year, it didn't happen. That's why you are seeing this at the beginning of February. To that end, in the spirit of getting on with things, here is the first part of my 2008 review.

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2008 in Review

2008, on the surface, looks a bit like 2006, only flipped on its head. I moved on from a company to start something new.. 2006 saw me depart from Halliburton three months into the year. 2008 saw me leave Intuit three months before the end of the year. A couple of months before 2006 started, we had a baby. A couple of months after 2008, we will have another baby.

A pretty superficial comparison, I know. We didn't move in 2008 or do a lot of other things either but it seemed like a good place to start. This is, too:

January:

2008 came in much like any other year. It was cold. We've spent as much time in this house as we did in the condo and it has become apparent to me that when we moved, it was a significant trade-off of insulation for square footage. I have never faced more fully the heat of the summer or the winter chill.

Despite a scare with Intuit and our fickle budget the previous July, I was flush with employment. The company went as far as to help my productivity by providing a laptop for me to work at home.

February:

Then they took away any need for me to work overtime by canceling our project. This was the beginning of the end at Intuit.

On the way to Beaver Camp, we were rear-ended. Not hard enough to hurt anyone. Not hard enough, even, to break the eggs in the trunk. Hard enough to bust up the bumper, though. A bust-up that wouldn't be repaired until the end of summer.

March:

Being cast adrift from my project at Intuit was, at first, a little liberating. The prospect of a new project was daunting but who knew? Maybe the project I moved to would be able to catch some of the lightning in a bottle that BCM (the newly-ended project) had. However, I always thing it's best to cover my bases, so I had my first job interview as an employee of Intuit.

April: Time really didn't breeze by as quickly as it seems as I'm writing this. Time actually dragged right out. I jumped around to a couple of project ideas during this time: a webmail thing; an RSS thing; my eventual landing spot, Customer Central; even a small stint on the project that replaced BCM: Quicken Online. None of them really stuck and minds were changed until I found Customer Central. I knew some others who had also landed there, however briefly and it seemed as good a place as any.

May:

Nick returned to soccer and I helped out as the head coach again. This year worked out to be a bit better as I had an assistant coach and, let's face it, more than enough time on my hands. I also started playing soccer again, though I can't remember the specific month when I started, so it makes sense for me to put in in there with Nick's. This is also the month that the rest of the family went to Chicago and I went... to Chicago. I went to study Java and Kim and the kids went to visit with the Andersons who abandoned us to the frozen wastelands went south in search of new opportunities in the wake of Kyle's graduation.

Kim has told me of her experiences in Chicago. Driving, sight-seeing, scrapbooking, laughing, driving...

My experience was nothing like that. Twelve hours per day over six days, I sat in a stuffy classroom and listened to a Philadelphia guy talking about all the pleasant features, details and pitfalls of the Java programming language and all the tricky, nasty, evil things that would be on the test to try and trip me up. Professionally, the trip was a success, despite only seeing Kim for a couple of hours after the test. This, even though we tried to get together for lunch one day.

June:

As far as I've been able to pull out of the hole in my brain, nothing major happened in June. Life had settled into a fairly predictable routing. Soccer for Nick and I, running for Kim, continued insanity for Lilly. Work started to mean less and less as I struggled to find any motivation at all. I should have walked away then and there and I likely would have if it weren't for the bonus in August. Hindsight being what it is, I should have left anyway. Happiness and job satisfaction are worth more than 10% of my annual salary.

July:

I spent a significant amount of July on vacation. The four of us and Kim's family – her parents and her brother's family – went to Salmon Arm, B.C. For a camping vacation. I have learned to fear summer vacations. The year previous, I came back from Vancouver to discover that my job was in jeopardy. This year, when I returned from vacation, DING, you guessed it. My job was in jeopardy. Intuit laid off 575 people in July, including my friend Marius. This was the middle of the end for my time at Intuit.

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That's it for now. Next up, August through December. Big changes ABOUND.

Stay tuned,

Liam

Guitar

So, lately, I've been practicing on the guitar that Kim so lovingly gave me for Christmas. It's an Aria acoustic guitar, six strings, frets all over the place, some turny knobs at the top that tune the guitar, and some other technical stuff like a nut, a neck and some other things.

Lately, I've decided that I want to learn how to actually play this thing. I mean, it looks pretty good propped up against the bookshelf in the office, but that really doesn't do anything for the sound.

So, I had to overcome a hurdle. One of the frets sounded just like the fret beside it on the high "E" string. I looked the problem up on the internet (thank you, Al Gore!) and apparently, it's called dead fret. I googled those very words (thank you Larry Page) and one possible reason is that the fret became separated from the neck and could be put back in place with some taps from a plastic headed hammer. The flashlight is plastic, so I smacked it against the fret a little and it worked.

Next came finding resources to learn how to play guitar. I googled "Guitar Lessons for the Absolute Beginner" and came to http://zentao.com/guitar which has ... you guessed it. Guitar lessons for the absolute beginner.

So now I'm getting more familiar with the notes on the fretboard, scales (major and minor, for now), chords (which are way harder than scales, at least at this point) and picking and strumming techniques.

So far, I can play "Mary had a little lamb", "Twinkle Twinkle" and I'm scratching my way through "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

It's a bit of an obsession with me right now and it's nice to actually be able to tell that I'm making progress.

Beaver Camp

So, I thought I was going to write about the rest of my Chicagoland trip here but since it’s basically all technical in nature, I figured I would leave it for Intuitive Techniques if I ever get back to updating that site.

Anyway, we went to Beaver Camp last weekend, the culmination of the Beavering year. (And also my last official act as a Beaver leader. Next year I get to hold the reins of the Cub Pack as Akela.)

We stayed at Camp Maskepatoon, just off of Pigeon Lake. Actually on the shores of Pigeon Lake.

Hm… highlights…

- Hawkeye dropping the sister of one of our Beavers into the lake and then running like a coward. (We’ve got video evidence)

- Lily and Kim’s boat ride

- The birth of the BubbleStar Galactica (pictures to follow at some point) and The Holder – Nick’s boat

- A campfire where nothing went very right but nothing went terribly wrong

- Capture the flag with the most cheating per game (CPG) that I have ever seen.

- Soccer where Granny shone and I kicked a ball at a 12 year old harder than I should have.

- Archery that left a bruise on my forearm. At least it didn’t stay all raised and bumpy.

- Pouring from a big pot, out of a ladel. (Give a couple seconds after your first dip. It lets the grounds settle a little)

- Puerto Rico – an exciting game where the Liam plantation outlasted the Rob and John plantations to secure the victory.

- Chopping wood

Lowlights…

- Scraping congealed fat off of the hood fan with first a chef’s knife and then a metal egg-flipper

- Cleaning toilets and mopping the bathroom, wearing soggy socks

All in all, it was another great camp. Here’s looking forward to Cubs next year!

Chicago, Chicago, that Toddlin’ Town [Part One]

I am fortunate enough to work for a company that not only encourages its employees to get training, but hounds them into it. Also, they feel it is important for their developers to be certified in what they do. To the point of hounding them about it.

So I decided to combine the two, taking Java Boot Camp training in Chicagoland.

Saturday, I dropped my wife and children off at the airport, early early. I had big plans for the day, such as making the house uninhabitable for a week (like, so nothing would spoil, rot or stink when we all got home). Most of these I accomplished, but I also got to play tennis with Atti for the first time in six years, visit my family and have Rob over for some intense Mario Kart action!

Then I completed my cleaning duties and finished packing. I had time for a shower and some last-minute preparations before it was off to the airport.

I arrived at the airport two hours before my flight because of some problems checking in online. I am a paranoid traveler and I wanted to be there to be able to circumvent any potential problems with the ticket well in advance.

No problem. I checked in and waited, half-sleeping, half-reading and half looking out the window to see if I could see Cliff loading my plane. (“That’s right, monkey, get to work!” I would have shouted if I’d seen him, even though I know he wouldn’t have been able to hear me. I believe he still would have known I was yelling at him.) Finally, I hear my flight number called out for a different ramp. What the…? I grabbed my bags and sprinted down the hall, staggering to a halt, muttering apologies that I thought it was a different ramp and they said that it was no big deal that it happens all the time. Well, they dealt with it better than I did.

The flight consisted of me turning pages in The Bonehunters, a quick nap and watching The Golden Compass, which lasted just until we landed in Toronto. I did not know where to go, but I got oriented fairly quickly and made my way to the international flights area. Three minutes too late.

I was held back from the flight because there was not enough time to get from one place to the other and so, I was put on a second flight. I was in line to get my boarding pass when that flight was canceled. So, they were saying that the next flight would be at 7:00 the next morning. Inconceivable! However, waited in line until my turn to book whatever flight awaited me.

The guy at the front looked about two steps away from a vein popping in his head and I commiserated with him about the stress of being the only guy in line. He laughed. I feel we bonded. And it was all a mistake. I was apparently booked on a different plane that would leave in an hour and a half. All good things! So I thanked my new best friend and went off to turn some more pages while I waited for my plane to board.

The bad: About a half-hour after I sat down to wait for the plane, I looked up and noticed that the takeoff time was different than it had been. Departure was delayed by another two hours. Ah well, there was time to get a burger, and continue on my quest to polish off Steven Erikson’s sixth literary behemoth. (Really, that sucker is 1200 pages!)

The good: Apparently I did bond with that check-in clerk type guy. I was bumped up to first class where the seats are extra wide (my bum thanks that check-in clerk – but not in the way you’re all thinking), the drinks come in glass tumblers and the televisions apparently have no sound. I was going to watch Chuck but there was, as I said, no sound, so I turned, once more to The Bonehunters.

I have no idea what time the flight touched down – it was something like seven o’clock or something in Chicago time, which would have been 6 our time. I wandered over to where taxis are and waited in a line about 25 people long. It would have been distressing if there hadn’t been in the neighbourhood of thirty or forty cabs waiting. The driver drove me, though he grumbled about leaving the airport area and lost revenue for awhile. Then when we finally reached the hotel (after a couple of wrong turns and a phone call to the hotel itself) he informed me that the credit card machine was broken. Marvelous.

So, we found a Mac’s that had ATM and I paid him, grumbling to myself about his incompetence while, I’m sure, he was still grumbling about being so far away from O’Hare. Whatever. You drove, I paid. Can we just get over it now? And so, I checked into my hotel around 8:30.

So, the first day of my travel, I left my house at 5:00 am on no sleep and arrived at the hotel at 8:30 local time. And I turned down a direct flight to Chicago because I would have had to get up too early. I cost myself probably six hours or more in travel time.

That’s all for now. Later, I’ll tell about the actual training itself.

Reason for Excitement

Q: How can you tell it's spring?
A: It's playoff time and the Leafs are out.

yes, it's an old joke. And not especially true, in the non-hockey sense.

Snow has kicked the door open and stomped all over our welcome mat again.

Do I care? Not really.

Aside from concerns about the soccer season (I'm playing and coaching this year), and not being able to bike to work, I have good reason for my spirits to be uplifted this week.

Tomorrow night, the Calgary Flames get another kick at the cat (erm... shark). They avoided elimination with a dogged effort against the Sharks last night. I was happy to see them come out like that, especially since they got their asses driven through the ice in game 5. Hopefully, they'll have the same jump tomorrow as they did yesterday.

This weekend, the NFL holds its annual entry draft - also known as the most exciting event of the NFL offseason. This is where the transformation of the league takes place. It's an incredibly addictive time for someone who can do absolutely nothing about the outcome (aside from whining and complaining, which seems to happen a lot).

Finally, this week I turn 32. I'm not a superstitious guy, normally, but 32 is an awesome number. I feel good things coming this year (not that any year in the past 5 has beeen anything but spectacular).

32 things to be excited about at 32:
1. My favourite football team posted its first non-losing season in its existence, despite once again, leading the league in players on the IR.
2. Going to Chicago next month for training.
3. Going camping in the mountains in June.
4. Lillian's third birthday.
5. Nicholas's eighth birthday.
6. My fourth wedding anniversary.
7. Spring! (When it finally comes)
8. I will finish the rough draft of my first novel.
9. I will finish edits to my first novel.
10. I will send my first novel out to publishers.
11. Work is looking up.
12. Kim's half-marathon (knock on wood)
13. Annual bonus in August.
14. I'm going to buy the rest of Sandy Foster's discography.
15. Heroes.
16. Battlestar Galactica.
17. A Dance With Dragons. (I hope he gets back on track)
18. No more Sword of Truth to disappoint me.
19. Finishing The Stand.
20. The prospect of starting another novel.
21. It's almost riding season (even though I've ridden probably a half-dozen days already)
22. Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is released on my birthday.
23. Backyard landscaping.
24. Houston Texans 2008 regular season.
25. Nick starting Cubs.
26. Guitar Hero!
27. Real guitar!
28. Christmas.
29. Actually getting to play outdoor soccer (in a league)
30. All the books I will read this year.
31. All of the stories I will write this year.
32. My family.

So see, it's not so bad being old. There's lots to look forward to!

Another Milestone (Millstone?)

So in October and November I wrote parts 1 and 2 of Dark Prophecy. I had ambitious plans to have those parts edited and ready for mass-consumption (read: literate victims) by the end of March.

Alas, I was daunted.

I have never edited writing before. I know how Stephen King does it and I think that I'll take his approach (hard-copy, blue pen, big brass cojones and a heart of ice). That, however has not happened yet. And thus, it is not the main point of this post.

Part 3 has been fully plotted. What that means is NOT that I am finished writing it. It also does not mean that it's just a matter of transcribing my notes, adding some comic relief and going on my merry way.

No, sir. What it means is that the major plot-points have been decided on. How the characters get where they're going, what they learn, the conflict, the dialogue, and yes, even the comic relief, are still sitting in the back of my head. I haven't written more than a page or two of part 3's actual story, all of which is likely to change now that I know what's going on. I wrote those bits with absolutely no eye on eventual goal, and more of a way to kick my ass back into the writing chair. Now, I know where I'm going and I can actually set the characters up, add some foreshadowing (because that's the kind of thing that good writers do, I hear) and type away to my heart's content.

In a piece of news that is either bad or good, depending on whether you actually care to read the book or whether you believe a writer must be unfailingly true to his story, I have discovered that this will actually be a four-part story. Don't worry, I'm not succumbing to story-bloat (which Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind and George R. R. Martin have been accused of). I have the end of the story in my heart. Surprisingly, the end is absolutely nothing like I had envisioned it, what, 14 years ago? Then again, maybe it's not so surprising. What occurs to an 18 year old as a closing (of a project that looked like it might take a couple months) should look completely different than the end of a decade and more of conception to a 32-year-old man. (That's right. I turn 32 this month. Live with it. I am.) So the set up contains what I thought was the end of the story back then, and the end has its own bit of climaxiness as well as a twist that I hope I can pull off as well as I imagine.

We'll see.


Well, I'll see. If I can't, you may never see this book. Heh.

On Writing by Stephen King

Okay. I am so far behind on the books that I’ve read over the last three years that I’m just going to try to finish the ones that I’ve read this year.

The first book I finished this year, surprise, surprise, is On Writing, by Stephen King. In it, he switches back and forth between a biography and his writing process. It’s pretty interesting for both parts. I like to think that someday I will be a wildly productive (if not commercially successful) writer and it’s nice to see that humble beginnings like King’s are not the death of creativity.

Throughout the book he stresses that in order to write, you have to actually, well, write. His style is a little fast and loose for me. I like a good plan in place before I dive head-first but who can argue with the success that King has had, following his own way?

One thing that surprised me was that there was no mention of the Dark Tower anywhere in this book. For something that has shaped King as a writer, that has been the biggest struggle of his professional career, you would think that there would be at least a footnote in this one about it.

The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis

I didn’t like this book the first time I read it. I wasn’t happy with the way that Narnia was ending up, I didn’t like that the good guys had their good work perverted by the bad guys and I didn’t like the fact that the world that I had invested so much time in had ended. It was a hard thing to read when I was 8 or 10 or whatever I was when I actually read it for the first time. (It was nice to actually pass my brother on the series, though – we had a race back then and I got stuck on The Horse and His Boy which catapulted my brother way ahead of me.)

This time, the same forboding hit me, though, since I knew what was coming, it was easier for me to make it through. The suffering, it seems, was not quite as drawn out as I remember it. I think the blush of youth and the innocence I had as a reader back then drew the experience out in my mind. (Kind of like my claustrophobia warping the underground sequences in The Silver Chair)

The book is very solid. As I said, it introduced very complex villains who were able to counter everything that the heroes were able to come up with the save the day. In the end, (in the Narnia the story starts in), the bad guys win. They make it to the end, and it’s only Aslan that brings the heroes through. It didn’t feel forced, though. It seems that in Lewis’s world, this is what dying is like. It’s going to Aslan’s country and living happily forever. The characters do that, there is a happy reunion, and they do live happily ever after.

I don’t know that this book needed to have Eustace. He kind of reached his full development in The Silver Chair but I guess they wanted to have the same connection to the Pevinsies that they had throughout the series. Jill was good but also not really all that fully there. It seemed that this was Tirian’s book from the beginning. He was developed, his motivations and character were explored. I would rather that he had either done more with Eustace and Jill or not had them until the end. I can see how they were necessary because of the link, and their story was very important to the endgame, so in that case, it would have been nice to see them developed a little more.

I remember my feelings at the end of the book, bitter at the loss of the series – there would be no more Aslan, no more Pevinsies, no more talking beasts. But sweet because it was a land where joy would never end. I like to think that this was a little bit of magic that Lewis put in there on purpose, because this, to me, is representative of a Christian death. The sadness that the company is parting but a happiness at an eternity in heaven.

I will definitely read this series again, probably when I think that Lily is ready to hear them in a couple of years.

FOR THE LION!

Liam

Onward Part 3!

That's Onward Part 3 with an exclamation, not Onward Part 3(factorial). I don't think there will be six parts but if there are, then I haven't thought that far nor have I decided to start writing on it.

That absurdity aside, yeah, I'm going to finish my book. I don't know how many words, how many pages or whatever it will take to get there but I've got some sketchy notes, I've got some good thoughts and most importantly, I've got the bug again.

I don't think I was burnt out by NaNo. That's the pace I want to be able to maintain. I think it's sustainable, at least over a little while, if I can a) overcome hardware failures, b) overcome my love of video games and c) keep it to a time when it doesn't affect my work or my family. Kim's scrapbooking table is right near the computer desk I used for the majority of NaNo, so it's not like I'll be completely ignoring my wife.

It's all there for me. Now I just need to pick up the pen (and put down the controller) and start writing again.

P. S. I Love You

No, not you!

Well, okay, maybe you but that's not what I mean.

For Kim's Birthday celebration, we took in a movie. When I say we took in a movie, I mean we went to a theater to see it. This is the first theater movie that Kim and I have seen together since Lily was born. (I've only been to one - the God-Awful Shoot-Em-Up "Shoot Em Up" with the God-Awful Clive Owen. I don't regret seeing Shoot Em Up. It was humourous. I just wish I hadn't spent fourteen bucks on it)

The movie we went to see was PS I Love You. The movie starred Hillary Swank, Harry Connick Jr. and most notably, Gerard Butler from 300. It was a romantic comedy, kinda. I'd say it was more of a romantic tragedy (tragedy being opposite of comedy, not suggesting anything about the quality of the movie).

It's weird, because a lot of things from this movie draw me back to the weekend when Kim was gone. First, it was the first movie I saw in the theater since then, second, it was the first movie with Gerard Butler that I've seen since then and finally it was the saddest movie I've seen since Bridge to Terebinthia which I also saw that weekend. (Yes, I watch movies when Kim goes away. That's about all I do. Well, that and not sleep)

Some parts of the movie left me wondering why they were there but for the most part, it was put together very well, it was well acted (especially Harry Connick Jr. who played a guy with a social disorder... Brain Cancer. NIIIIICE!) and the story was pretty good. I wouldn't rank it up there among the best movies ever but it was a good movie to take a date to. Especially if you're married to her. And she's celebrating her birthday. But only the 28th birthday. Or something.

Year in Review 2007 PART ONE

So it turns out that there's a conflict between cribbage and the keyboard so I got rid of cribbage. It's a fun game but it's hardly worth the fight. I can't exactly say that I know why this game or the program that allowed the palm to be accessed as an external drive would have caused these conflicts but that's hardly my problem. I guess it is my problem but I just couldn't be bothered by it right now.

Anyway, that rambling was meant to serve as preamble for my 2007 year in review, a review that will, by necessity, take place in hopefully satisfying chunks. We'll just have to wait and see how satisfying those chunks turn out to actually be. There are a lot of typos going on with this tiny, teeny keyboard but I'll try to clean that up and actually get something written. And I'll try later on to get those applications back on the palm and see if it's a memory thing or a conflict thing or a "The moon is in the third alignment with Venus and Uranus so the keyboard was out of metaphysical alignment with the fourteenth house of Sagittarius" type of thing.

Without further ado:

2007: A year in review

January

January was a month like any other. It was a month where I took the bus very often, I remember that much. A lot of tiptoeing around the fact that Kim had dietary issues, Nick had dietary issues and Lily had, well, you guessed it, dietary issues. All three of them cut out most things from their diet, and that was a serious period of adjustment, but it was absolutely necessary. Lily was getting rashes, Nick and Kim were getting stomach issues and everyone was all-around miserable. Aside from the adjustment to our lives with that inclusion, there did not seem to be much different there from December 2006. It would be nice if my tablet still worked so that I could consult my notes from December 2006 to see if I'm a lying sack of shit but I don't think I am anyway.

February

2007 saw the return of a Liam-post-graduation tradition of the likely-to-fail 50-book goal. Once again, I struggled to get even half-way there but I have to admit that it has become more about the struggle, the documenting of the books I have read than it is about actually making it to 50 books. I also tried to do a daily meditation - a way of getting my head straight before I started my day. I don't think it was such a bad idea but I have to admit that I should not have made them publicly consumable (if that's what I mean).

March

In March, I sat in line one cold morning to wait for the passport office to open. I waited for probably in the neighbourhood of four and a half hours to get in. I was the first one in line. The Life of Pi and my Tablet PC got me through the wait. It was really nice to walk out of there and see the disgustingly long line waiting to get into the office. I like to think that they had to wait just as long as I did. But they got to spend the majority of their wait, if not the entire thing, inside, where only the last hour or so of my wait was inside. Still, I got to go home and those suckers were stuck in line. SEE YA, SUCKERS! Bet you wish you were me, now.

April

I got older. I got crazy for spring. I got a new bike and started biking to work. I love my bike. I miss having a rigid framed bike but this one is better than any bike I've ever ridden. I'll take it, I'll ride it into the ground and I will appreciate the gift that it was. April was also the end of my second year as a Beaver Leader. I wasn't nearly as burned-out as I had been the year before. Maybe I was more used to leading, and more able to deal with it but I am pretty sure that it was mostly just a good group of Beavers. We moved into Soccer season and I was the head coach.

May

JavaOne, Beaver Camp, Soccer and biking. These were the things that dominated my May. I remember JavaOne being a cornucopia of sessions, eating, watching TV, not sleeping and then not sleeping some more. I really do sleep best at home.

June

I'm not really sure what happened in (to?) June. I know I was working quite a bit and I spent a lot of time with soccer and biking and I'm pretty sure that I might have spent a little bit of time with my family too but the specifics elude me. I think I was spending too much time on Facebook at that point.

I am a winner!

See?
Can't see that? Try this one:
50000 words. Actually I made it to like 50036. Still, I did it. In one month.

In that same month, I also:

Had a computer die on me.
Reformatted another computer.
Released a version of our online banking software, which involved all kinds of big effort.
Traveled with Kim to Calgary.
Parented, actively, mind you.
Fought distraction after distraction.
Used, as my main writing computer, a laptop that's around ten years old, has no internet connection and can only transfer files using my iPod.

All in all, I'm pretty proud of myself.

The Failed Facebook Experiment - or - I was gone, but now I'm back.

I will admit it: I've spent too much time on Facebook. But I've had it. I wasn't getting any social networking done, just browsing people's profiles to see what was new with them.

My one attempt at social networking fell on its face, leaving me with my desire to play hockey intact and ashes in my mouth regarding Facebook.

Still, I persevered, I put in my time, but I kept getting added by people I barely knew and others who I didn't really like. I didn't mind it when Facebook was a dozen or so friends who were still relevant in my life but it ballooned out of control so I would log in, look at some groups, look at some people and log out. I wasn't contributing, I wasn't creating, I was just wasting time.

Instead, I'm going to waste time here, putting posts up on my blog like I should have been doing all along.

After all, I've read 16 books this year and I think I'm shy 14 write-ups. I just hope I can remember what happened in what book.

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JavaOne part three

5/10/2007 6:12 PM Mountain
Monday was an interesting day. We met sometime around 8:30 and went to Mountain View, bickering about radio stations, fighting over which way to take, and generally getting along peacably. After eating, “stopping for coffee” a couple of times, and the drive, rife with traffic and slowness, we arrived at the Mountain View office sometime around 10:00 am. Upon arrival, we all connected our computers to the work network and, to our horror, realized that we had an 8:00 am skip-level meeting with Spencer. Only two hours late. I guess it would have been a good idea to connect to work before going to bed the night before.
I read my emails, sent some emails and had a meeting on Struts2 before it was off to the all-hands meeting where we got another unbridled dose of optimism, good-feeling and an idea of what to expect in our lists of things to do in the coming months.
Honestly, I was pretty positive about the all-hands meeting. My boss's boss's boss, Paul Rosenfeld is a pretty straight shooter and comes across as having very little tolerance for BS. I don't agree with his opinions on everything but at least I'm confident that he does.
After the all-hands, we headed out to San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. I wasn't very enthusiastic about that – I'd tried to talk Marius and Wenpan into abstaining since we'd already been through there but peer pressure guided us all to the decision to follow the crowd. Honestly, I was pretty impressed. The guy had exactly the same spiel as the girl had had a couple of months before but his in-between commentary was a lot better than the girl's.
After that, it was a kind of dinner I've never had before. They brought dishes out – fish, beef, chicken, veggie, but they just kept coming. It was pretty nice and I was impressed by what they offered for the most part but I was surprised to find that at the end of the evening, I was still pretty hungry. There was a lot of good conversation to be had. I moved around, trying not to miss any of it. I talked with Grace, a UE designer and I was pretty impressed with what she had to say. I'll go into that later.
After dinner, Marius, Gustavo, Evelyn, David and I went out to an Irish pub. It was loud during the Golden State Warriors game then people filed out and David Cassidy's evil doppelganger showed up and wowed people with his hair and his guitar. Unfortunately, his guitaring sucked and his voice was worse. I could recognize most of the songs he was playing but only through keen observation. After that, we went back to the hotel and I pressed the up button a couple of times before going to bed.
JavaOne was like I expected it to be – only way louder and with waaaaay more people. The first opening session was likely six to eight thousand people sitting and listening to a guy talk about taking Java open-sourced. Maybe I'm not seeing all of the benefits that this provides but I didn't get really jazzed about it.
I'll go into the details of the sessions in my technical blog at http://intuittech.blogspot.com for those of you who care. It's mostly about Java language and web programming but who knows? Maybe there'll be something in there for you to care about.
Probably not, though.
San Francisco has been, in turns, sunny and hot enough to melt a man, cloudy and windy, cloudy and calm, on the brink of rain (without ever actually raining to back it up) and sunny with wind. The San Diegans have been bitterly cold but I have been in a t-shirt and shorts the entire time. I guess it all comes down to what you're used to.
The food has been fantastic. I've been spoiled with the generosity of our manager. Steak, rack-of-lamb, any number of amazing meals that I've eaten happily.
The only one that I didn't enjoy was the pizza.
I like pizza. I like pizza probably more than any man has a natural right to like pizza. However, this one had Shiitake mushrooms which I THOUGHT I liked, but they were disgusting on the pizza. And it also had sauteed onions that covered the top of the pizza like some unnameable slime. I suffered through. I'm such a freaking trooper.
Mostly, I end up struggling to find a wireless signal and I struggle to keep my laptop charged. Disabling the wireless speeds up the charging but I'm fighting a losing battle. I managed to get my Palm charged and synced up thanks to Derek Deter who works for the people we bought and are integrating with. So now I'm taking my in-session notes with the palm and if I can get together with Derek again before the end of the conference, I'll put them on the PC. If not, I'll hope the battery doesn't die on the Palm before I can get the notes off of there. Maybe it's worth it to type them up on the tablet by reading them off the palm. Don't worry about me, though, I'll figure it out.
Last night, Gustavo and I went with Abraham, another Intuit employee, to a party hosted by Terra Cotta, a company that does some kind of caching solution or something. I didn't really understand. I just know that they claim to be 8-10 times faster than JBoss cache. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds like when the skinny doper at the golf course told me he power-bombed some guy through a pool table. My bullshit monitor kind of peaked at that moment and I knew it was time for me to leave.
I don't know how many more of these updates I'll do before I get on the plane tomorrow afternoon but I'll get another one up when I get home. A sort of conclusion to the festivities.
Until next I blog,
Liam

JavaOne trip Part Two

JavaOne SF Trip Part 2 – 5/9/2007 11:49AM
The date and time above might be a little misleading. I'm seated in my session and waiting for it to start so I thought I'd keep working on the updates.
So, I explained the “Uncle Marius” thing by mentioning what happened at the hotel but we didn't get to the hotel until pretty late Sunday night.
We got out of the airport area around 10:00AM here, and we were going to be going sailing at around 11:00. So, we had lots of time to get to the marina. Which turned out to be a good thing, since I took several wrong turns, and had a very vague idea of where the marina was.
We stopped at Peet's coffee, which would become a theme of sorts for all of our wrong turns. “oh, it's okay, Eric, we don't need your GPS for the drive home. We're going to stop for coffee on the way back to the hotel.”
So, we made it to the marina and I won't go into the entirety of the seven-plus hours spent on the water but I will say some.
It was sunny, sunny, sunny. I sun-blocked everything that showed but I still burned my elbow-pits. They're coming around now but they were pretty red for awhile there.
The helm doesn't move. I discovered this, to my pain, by experimenting with my nose. I thought I had missed a spot with the sunscreen, since there was a very tender spot, but using my scientist-powers I deduced that sunburns turn red and the spot on my nose was definitely brown. Just – like – a – bruise.
I am a tacking-genius. Okay, so it's not so hard to tack. You just have to turn 90 degrees. But Tom, whose boat it was, said that I got sailing right away. I think that's the highest praise I've ever gotten from him.
Seven hours on a boat in the hot sun can tend to make you stink. The bath at the hotel when sailing and eating and getting Eric back to his car were FINALLY taken care of seemed to be better than any shower I've ever had before or wil ever have again.
And of course, for those of you who don't know, Kim and I chose two and a half years ago not to keep cable. It's nice but it wastes so much time and the absolute crap that is out there, we can get for free. I only mention this because the hotel room has cable – ESPN, all the networks (couldn't find Fox), Comedy and soe others. There are a lot of buttons on the TV remote. Buttons where you can rent movies, buttons where you can turn on the GameCube, buttons for channel changing, volume control and some other crap. The only button that has any meaning in my life anymore is the up-channel button. I pressed that button over and over and over again, going around the horn over and over again.
Now, if I were to do this kind of thing at home, around the horn is four, maybe five channels and I'm done. The same things are on, the same commercial is usually on if I don't catch anything interesting, I get bored and turn off the TV.
The hotel has in excess of 40 channels. This means the usual around the horn takes 9-10 times longer than at home. Coupled with the fact that there are three ESPN feeds, there's always something catching my attention for a couple of minutes. That means that by the time I get around the horn all the way, there's always something new and interesting on a given channel than there was the last time I flipped by it. Unless there's a movie on, then forget about it. Random movies are my special crack and I will sit and watch that until there's a commercial, which just slows the flipping down even more.
I say this because I made the mistake of turning on the television when I got to my hotel room, thinking it would be once, twice around the horn and then straight to bed.
I stayed on that sucker until 1:30 in the morning. Stupid me. Around the horn is a professional's game. You don't go cold into American cable thinking you can spend less than two hours idle time. Being tired made it worse.
That's it for this update. It's long enough.

JavaOne trip -- Part One

Being part one of a series of posts about Liam's trip to San Francisco for the JavaOne conference, 2007.


San Francisco Update: 5/9/2007 11:21 AM
After Beaver Camp, Nick and I drove back to Edmonton, getting home around 11PM. I helped Kim finish packing me up for this trip, ordered a cab for 5:00 and headed to bed around 1:30 AM.
I woke, shaking my head to the pounding on the door from the cab driver. I rushed downstairs and told the guy I would be right out. Gathering things together, I dressed and shot out the door. Kim also threw some muffins and a banana into my bag.
The US customs guy was actually pretty friendly. The first time that's ever happened for me. I shot through security with Kevin Hu in tow and we sat by the gate to wait for the flight and the rest of the team.
Gustavo showed up first, and Wenpan and Marius didn't make it until the plane was pretty much full. Apparently, security got crazy after we went through. Gustavo got finger-printed and he got a free cuddle from one of the scanner-people.
The flight was fairly unremarkable. I read my book – Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, while I listened to Sandy Foster on my MP3 player. I dozed off for awhile but it's hard to get comfortable in those miniscule seats.
Renting the car was an adventure, since my credit card was declined. I'm still not sure if it's because I'm in the States without them knowing or because of the credit limit but “Uncle Marius” stepped up and used his credit card and we were on our way sailing.
--I have a session in a couple of minutes on Java Persistence but I'll continue the update later on.
*Uncle Marius is what I called Marius after he helped out with the rental car and then did the same thing for my hotel room, Kevin's hotel room and Gustavo's hotel room.
Catch you after the session – if I have time for that, lunch and blogging.

My new bike

Friday, Kim and I went shopping for my new bike. We spent some time at the Sherwood Park mall. I'm sure it has a name beyond "Sherwood Park mall" but I don't know what it is.

We spent some time waiting for a bike to be assembled but time was bleeding away and we ended up missing out on the one shop Kim wanted us to hit.

Fortunately, there was another shop that was open for another fifteen minutes. We sped across town (actually, it was just down the road) to "Bikes and Boards" where we talked for nearly 40 minutes with the owner. In the end, I decided that JAMIS would be the next brand of bike I'd own. The guy had a two-year-old bike that a 60-year-old lady owned and that she rode a total of 12 kilometres.

I'll admit, the 60-year-old comment almost turned me off of this bike for good. I mean, who wants a bike a 60-year-old would choose? But then I decided that the way this bike fit me, the way it felt riding down the road, and the good feeling I got from this guy (when he said he'd take care of the bike if anything happened to it) decided me. I'm going to redefine this bike, from a hardly-ridden old lady's bike to a bike that a 30-year-old angry man would be proud to ride. (I just have to figure out how to get the ribbons out of the handlebars and the basket off the front. I'm keeping the clonkers on the spokes, though)

Seriously, here's what the bike basically looks like. (It's a product shot from JAMIS's site. I'll get an actual picture of it at some point)

I knew it put it somewhere!

And here it is.

I had meant to put an Anno-versary post on In The Now but it knew better and snuck onto my technical blog.

Stupid performancing, mucking with my posts. Thinking (or knowing) it knows better than I do.

And quit mucking with my formatting. YOU MAKE NO SENSE!

On the Horizon

I've decided that I'm going to try doing a daily meditation on here. Just a little space to think about something, write about something and hopefully clear my head.

We'll see how it goes.

I found a daily meditations site: here

They might be cheesy, they might be insightful. They might be real frickin' obvious. But it's something that I have wanted to try for awhile, so I figure I'll give it a shot.

Lemme know what you think.

Until more later on

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