January 2007
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Month January 2007

Blargh

Max is still sick, but happy in spirit, and I am tired of it! (Him being sick). I haven’t been able to go to Costco, my household routine is in disarray, and Brian and I are tired of staying inside. And I am sure as heck tired of getting up early in the morning, unnecessarily. Booooooo to it all.

I’m not sure if this is even real…

With friends like these…

Checking Out

I’m checking out of politics. I was trying to keep up with news and what’s been going on since the election, but I just don’t have the energy. We won in November, Bush is still an idiot (and President), Cheney is still Darth Vader (did you see the interview on CNN? need more proof?), and we’re still in a bad war with no end in sight. Me paying attention to the inaction and bickering isn’t going to change anything.
Why I’m blogging about this, I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to say it out loud so I could turn off all my politics feeds and not feel guilty about it (because I told you I was doing it). I’ll probably flip things back on when primary season starts up and when the presidential field calms down a bit. Until then, it’s nose to the grindstone with work, family and photography. That’s a lot less contentious than politics anyway, right?

I’m Steppin’ Out on Ya’

My pals over at dev.aol.com asked me during Mashup Camp to start a blog over on their site. I’ve wanted to start a geekier blog to do more long form posts on all things web, but just haven’t had the time or drive to really get it set up (you know, I can’t use default templates, it’s just not me). Well, here’s my chance, so I said yes (you know, I don’t think I’ve ever said no to Naveed – must ponder that one). I posted my first entry tonight. My goal is to post over there at least once a week – though two a week would be great. I’ve got way too much going on right now (product managing and writing a lot of the code for a new product, trying to write 1/3 of a book, taking more pictures, preparing for two sessions at SxSW, a couple other possible conferences, etc), but I think this is a good thing to support and to help out with. So, check it out if you want, and let me know what you think – suggestions for stuff you’d like me to write about would be greatly appreciated.

The Big 9!

Hey peeps! What’s up?
There is a new Veronica Mars on tonight. Woohoo! It’s counter programming to all of the lies and filth being shown on the other channels tonight. Check it out, 9pm EST on The CW!!
Also, it’s my anniversary people, let’s PAR-TAY!
Over the past 9 years, Kevin and I combined have experienced:
2 kids,
4 in-town moves,
2 dye-jobs,
4 broken bones,
1 super horrible hair cut,
buying 1 house,
4 operations,
1 cross-country move,
buying 4 cars,
1 helicopter ride,
6 wedding rings,
1 heart attack of a parent,
2 family weddings,
1 car crash,
1 BFF divorce,
1 trip in an ambulance,
3 tivos,
3 uncles that passed away,
4 prescriptions for anti-depressants,
2 family vacations,
7 trips overseas,
3 parents retiring,
12 business trips in the US,
6 trips to visit family,
1 big snowstorm,
and 4 sets of neighbors.
What have you experienced in the last 9 years?

Mashup Camp Three Recap

Mashup Camp 3 wrapped up a couple hours ago, and as far as I’m concerned, it was a gigantic success. I’ve had more fun at this “unconference” than at any conference since SxSW. Everyone was really into what they were doing, and there was a minimum of people there purely hawking their own stuff and not participating (which was my main problem with the last one in Mountain View). There were great sessions, and I was so geeked about everything, I ended up spending all of Tuesday building a mashup so I could share it at Speed Geeking. I ended up building a mashup of a feed reader and your buddy list that I unfortunately called Buddy Stalker, even though there’s very little “stalking” involved. It’s just a way to get a feed reader filled with things you’re likely to care about (the content your buddies create) without the initial setup cost of finding feeds, adding them, pruning them, etc. I ended up in the bunch of third place winners, which was great, when I consider that I did it in one day and that it was the first thing I’ve ever launched using Ruby on Rails.
I met some great people, and had some great discussions. Here are just some of my favorite people from this week: John Gerken from IBM, David Janes, the Herrens, Nate Ritter and Chris Radcliff from Eventful, Kaliya, Raj Bala, Frank (if you’re out there, I never got your last name… we’ll find you a Ruby Users Group in Little Rock, I promise) and Shimmy from Angelwish, just to name a few.
I think I ended up overdoing it a little… I ended up proposing and/or running four sessions, doing one presentation at Mashup University, and speed geeking for two days. My poor throat is shot – between talking too much and the cold dry air, it’s a raw mess. But, it was totally worth it. I got to talk about microformats, standards, the semantic web (both lower and uppercase), and in the last session, ruby on rails. It’s been a full week to say the least.
There are pictures to go look at, and lots and lots of stuff to think about and work on going forward. There are several more posts in me to discuss all the stuff we talked about this week, but they’ll have to wait. I need to pack and get some sleep.

Done!

The kids are fed, bathed, and in bed; the living room is clean; the dishes are done; and the trash has been taken out. I AM DONE! Goodnight!

Twitter

I don’t like Twitter.
Yea, I said it.
Whatchu gonna do ’bout it?

Hellooo, Mashers!

I gave my Microformats + DOM / AJAX = Mashup Nirvana today at Mashup University. I thought it went pretty well, but if you were there, I’d love to hear your feedback. You can either post your comment on this entry, or e-mail me at kevin at lawver.net. It’s been a few months since I’ve given a presentaton, and I feel like I’m out of practice, but I’d love to hear what you thought of the presentation.
If I do this one again, I’ll try to film it and put it up somewhere. Of the presentations I’ve given at conferences, this is one of my favorites (of couse, my all time favorite is How to Convince Your Company to Embrace Web Standards from SxSW last year). It’s fun for me because I get to talk about microformats, and I get to talk about what I think is useful and important – and where I think they’re headed.
I’m here the rest of the week, and will probable spend a good part of tomorrow working on a WIM mashup for Speed Geeking on Wednesday. I started it last night… and I got it started, but I got stuck at about 11:30 (go figure), and gave up. Today’s been eaten up with speaking, so I have tomorrow. If I get it working, I’ll put it up somewhere here so you can check it out.

Me=Dumb

Explain to me why I have no problem going to sleep at 7 pm sometimes when Kevin is home, but can’t force myself to go to bed before midnight when he isn’t?
ETA- My attempt at sleeping in this morning failed spectacularly. Booooo.