The Chinese did it. So did a private company. Yeah, I know, we’ve all been paying more attention to the current financial melt-down than to watching rockets race through the heavens, but this is awesome news!
Space is officially starting to open to everyone, not just superpower governments. As more entities build their own space programs from scratch, we (potential consumers of space what-not) get more options; more choices. And hopefully, sometime soon, expanded itineraries.
We started geocaching today, and man, it was a blast! We went to three caches right around Ashland, “looking for treasure.” And we found some, too! We put Elliot in the pack and gave the GPS to Alden with instructions to “follow the arrow.”
Two of the three caches we found were “take something, leave something” caches, so we left a “treasure rock” (a niece piece of white, veined quartz) at the first cache, moved a *tiny* camera from Canada to the second cache, and have a coin from Central America that needs a good home (and might find one tomorrow on our way to a dinner party). The third cache we found was a “micro-cache” – just a film canister with a log of people who’ve found it hidden inside.
So far, geocaching seems like a great way to get outside, play a little with geek toys, and involve our whole family. I’m sure I’ll be posting updates as we get further in.
PS: Apparently, our friends Jonus and Sarah went for their first geocaching adventure today, too, and also had a blast. I can only assume that means our families will be tromping through the woods together in the future. w00t!
I went back to my Bujikan Budo Taijustsu class for the first time in more than 18 months on Wednesday night, and it was fabulous. I’ve been out for so long because of two injuries (one from class, one not), and inertia.
In some ways, I feel like a total beginner again: I’m fat, weak, and inflexible. My combat endurance can probably be measured by a double handful of seconds with a couple fingers left over. In other ways, it’s like I never left: The Sanshin No Kata flowed like always, and I was picking up a tiny bit of my uke’s intentions during waza.
In short, it was a sweet homecoming. But now, the work truly begins. In my time off, I internalized a little something: This is my journey, and I’m driving the bus. That’s cool, because I get to choose my course, but I’m also the mechanic, the porter, and the gas boy, at the very least. So while I get to pick my scenery, I also have to do the work.
This evening, during show and tell, The Boy looked up at me with his new Speedracer car firmly in hand, and said, “Daddy, I want to drive like a rockstar!” A second later, the car was tumbling over the cliff endge of the couch and smashing into the floor.
I just checked on a site that I built — for free — for some friends who have a little non-profit organization they run. I redesigned their site from the ground up, I battled Yahoo! for six weeks to get their domain name released, I put the whole shootin’ match into a nice little CMS, and I hosted it for more than half a year, all for free, because they’re good people doing a good thing.
Except when they turn around try to screw me.
When I went to the site, I noticed that they had some other developer rebuild (again) their site. This hack person totally ripped off my design, put the site back in tables, and put his (?) name on it. At least it’s on his server. I’d like to send him (and CC my friends) a nasty-gram explaining in great detail what bad form it is to steal my work. I’d like to send my friends a slightly-less-nasty-gram asking them WTF?
I think I’m pissed off because I put a hell of a lot of time into this project, and to have this kind of outcome feels like I’ve totally failed. It feels like I’ve failed as a developer by making a site my clients (friends) weren’t happy with, and it feels like I failed as a friend by (apparently) screwing up what could have been a nice gift for them. I think the worst part is that they didn’t even bother to email or call me and say something like, “Gosh, aj, we really appreciate what you tried to do for us, but we’ve decided to go in a different direction. Thanks for all your work.” Even, “Man, aj, you suck! Go get a real job,” would have been better that the whole lot of nothing they gave me.
Now that I’m back home, I figured I’d do a brief roundup of the NAGW conference, both for my own edification, and (supposing that Google will potentially work its connection magic in the fullness of time) potentially to help make future conferences better.
First, the good:
I had some totally awesome pre-conference sessions. The rapid prototyping session led by Marc Drummond was super-helpful and crammed with good ideas (even if I couldn’t remember his damn name for the first couple hours!). Bill Brown’s presentation on the Holier Grail was exactly how I like my technical sessions: hard-core, fast-paced, and full of useful information while leaving my brain feeling like deep-friend mush. Thanks and kudos to both of you!
The first day of the conference proper started out with a great opening keynote by Joe Rotella addressing the need to keep my sites’ users foremost in my mind while building my shiny toys. He also strongly suggested (is demanded too strong a word, Joe?) getting actual input from actual users, then following the time-honored creative writing tradition of Killing Our Babies (see I.6). After that, I went to a session led in part by Bruce Blood about the future of government websites. After framing the conversation, Bruce and his co-hosts turned the discussion over to the room. After an hour of give-and-take, the consensus was pretty much this: We all know how and (potentially) when to deploy all the cool tools out there; the sticking point comes with the legal aspects (particularly moderating comments vs. First Amendment protections).
We finished off day two with a trip out for pizza at dinner, then beer around the fire ring back by the pool, during both of which the discussions and stories flowed freely. Very cool!
You’ve (probably) already ready about the Day Two Debacle (below), and I don’t really have anything to add but this: That’s the way the ball bounces sometimes; you just get unlucky with the choices you make. Oh well…
On day three, I decided to bail right after a breakfast session of geeking out with a new friend about custom ROMs for smart phones. The closing keynote was about “What we can expect with IE 8.” Considering I spent about 90 minutes the previous night fighting (and losing) with my computer to remove IE 8 and return to a working IE 7 configuration, I fell like I have a pretty good idea of what to expect. And I’m glad I did get out of town, too, or I might still be down there, doing the breast stroke.
The real sum, though is my answer to the key question: Will I try to go next year? Answer: Hell, yes. Especially because we’re supposed to meet in Galveston. During the peak of hurricane season.
Today was pretty much a total frickin’ waste at the NAGW convention. I actually got “shushed” (seriously) by an uptight woman at breakfast when I was in the middle of a conversation with someone else, I went to three sessions which featured:
“CuttingEdge.gov” presented by a CMS vendor who, in the first paragraph of his presentation, mentioned how his showcase site “has dropdown menus.” Pardon me while I pick my jaw off the ground…
“An Introduction to Adobe Flex” which featured the presenter giving us a blow-by-blow account of application development. As he did it on the screen. For an hour. Ugh.
And finally, just to make me wonder what planet the hotel elevator took me to today, there was the old lady from Texas who (sort of) gave a presentation about how to build a website for free because “I spent $39 on my site in the last three years.” Boy howdy, did you ever. My favorite quote from her presentation, though, was definitely, “My city ain’t gonna give me money to piss away on something just ’cause I don’t wanna do the work.” That would have been right before she regaled us about how she spent all this last summer picking up and dropping off some poor high school kid who volunteered to be her “intern.”
I had so frickin’ after that session that I went cross country, through some parking lots and through a stream of pissed-off Chicago rush-hour traffic to get me some Chipotle lovin’. And then I had a beer. And then I skipped the NAGW award banquet because, quite frankly, I don’t think I’d be good company tonight.
The part that really gets me, though, is that the previous two days were so damn good. I’ve had a really useful session on prototyping, a pretty damn hard-core four hours of css presented by a genuine guru, a really inspirational keynote address by Joe Rotella, and some awesome conversations about where government websites are headed and how they’re going to get there. I’ve been out for pizza and beer with some new friends, and had more beer around a (gas fed; for shame) fire ring.
Maybe those first two days just set the bar too high…
I’m in my hotel room in St. Charles, IL, working on upgrading an ecommerce cart for one of my clients tonight. The cool thing, though, is that I’m attending the annual conference of the National Association of Government Webmasters. It’s a great smallish, youngish organization that I’m proud to be part of.
And it’s fun to get to go on a road trip, too, even if my brain suffered a meltdown in a hell of a CSS session this afternoon, and I’m hittin’ it hard again tonight. It’s all good. Especially with a little Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in the fridge. Who knew Target was so well stocked? I just went for a belt…
