Ultranormal

  • It’s early, and we’re waiting

    It’s early, and we’re waiting to go get the kids’ pictures taken… So, here’s what happened yesterday:

    1. Woke up at 6:45. Got everyone showered and dressed in time for us to be met by Eve (an ArsDigita founder) to pick us up in the van @ 8:30.
    2. Went to MIT, which, once you get inside, looks a lot like the halls of the pentagon. It has old lumpy tile floors, high ceilings with exposed pipes and narrow hallways with cryptic numbering. It’s all very collegiate. We had bagels and muffins for breakfast, and then Philip showed up.
    3. Philip started the “Why” seminar, which was very informative and fascinating and gave both Heather and I fantastic new ideas for sites and things.
    4. Then, @ 11:30, CNN showed up to film the awards ceremony.
    5. Oh yeah, the awards ceremony. The judges all decided that picking any one winner would be wrong since all the sites showed stengths in such divergent areas that picking any one site as “the site people should build” would be silly. So they split the prize money six ways and declared everyone winners, which they all are.
    6. We ate lunch from the MIT student deli… yummy.
    7. Back to the seminar where we learned cool geeky things that I won’t bore you with.
    8. @ 5 after the seminar, Philip took us on a tour of the LCS (the Lab for Computer Science), which is the home to Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement, the W3C, where they come up with all the standards for web protocols, the AI Lab, where they’re trying to make human-like robots, and a cool lab where they’re making circuits out of e.coli bacteria.
    9. We then went to dinner @ Legal Seafood (Philip’s favorite restaurant) where we met the guy who wrote the Apache web server (won’t mean much to you guys, but to us geeks, he’s a big star), and the Microsoft liason for research at MIT (a really nice guy, even if he does work for Bill G.). He told lots of funny stories about Microsoft and their quirky ways. I then trumped him with the AOL circus.
    10. Now, we’re home… And I’m tired. I didn’t think it would be this exhausting, but they’re keeping us REALLY busy. We’re always going somewhere, being taught something, or shown something cool.
      This whole experience makes me miss school a little. I like this environment, and I think Heather does too. Everyone we’ve met, legend or not, has been very nice, open and willing to share with us what they’re working on, and answer our questions. I think my favorite person so far has been Kyle’s dad, who’s a genius and works at the Lincoln Lab, where they developed the inertial guidance system. He’s been around, taking the tours with us, and telling us how things work @ MIT, in Cambridge, and telling very interesting stories. He’s been great, and just a great old gentleman.
    11. I can’t tell you how amazing this trip is. Meeting Philip Greenspun, who I’ve admired from afar for years, and is probably the biggest reason I learned Tcl and AOLserver (so I didn’t sound stupid on the phone). He’s not the mean guy I remember him as. He’s kind, funny, and brilliant. He genuinely cares about these 6 kids that won the Prize. He keeps in touch with the past winners, two of which (one winner, one finalist) are both coming to MIT to work with him.

  • Good morning from lovely Cambridge!

    Good morning from lovely Cambridge! We’re waiting for the van to come get us and I decided to let y’all in on a little secret. Ok, I don’t know any secrets, but I really like it here. Everyone’s been really nice, hospitible and wow, dang smart. The people from ArsDigita have been swell. It’s great to see geeks who obviously have lives and interests outside of the internet and all are warm, complex and interesting people. I get so bored sometimes always talking about the internet, and it’s nice to see that I’m not alone. I do feel a little stupid, but not so much that I’m not participating. Also, the other finalists for the prize are very cool kids. I hope they take from this weekend some important lessons. I think they will. They all seem bright and a little nervous, but they’re fun to be around.

    Today is the big day… Heather will find out if she’s won. We’ll also get to go to Philip’s “Why” seminar, which should be a lot of fun. I’ll take copious notes and hopefully share something tonight or in the morning. Tomorrow is the big “How” seminar. I’ll post more later… toodles!

  • Here I am in Boston

    Here I am in Boston at the ArsDigita headquarters playing on a Sun Ray trying to rememeber all the urls in my bookmarks. The flight was fine. Boston has royally crappy traffic. I thought DC was bad, but getting out of the airport took FOREVER.

    The finalists, Kyle (the ArsDigita babysitter lady), and I went to the Whitehead Lab, which is where they map the Human Genome. It was an eye-opening experience. Why, you may ask? Because I got to see geeks of a different color! I realized again that there are geeks all over, and we all wear the same clothes and are as passionate about what we do. It’s pretty cool to see that “geek” translates to other industries.

    We’re waiting for the pizza… and I’m starving.

    Heather‘s downstairs talking to CNN about the whole boycot thing, and well, that’s pretty freaking impressive.

    Ok, off for now… Will post more when I have something to say.

  • So, I’m in Boston, but

    So, I’m in Boston, but I’m on a Solaris machine and Blogger hates Unix and Netscape. So, this’ll have to get short because I hate losing posts. More news when I move to the Powerbook.

  • Wow… this is so beautiful

    Wow… this is so beautiful (found @ openbrackets and by David Berman):

    When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
    Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
    Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
    A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.

  • 26 things about me

    26 things about me @ 26 (thanks to Jodi for the idea):

    1. I’ve been married to Jen since 1/23/98.
    2. I have a 20 month old son named Max who’s really really cute (and smart… really really smart).
    3. I work for AOL building search engines (now who else can say that?)
    4. I drive a ’97 Chevy Blazer with two stickers on the back, the Apple logo and a Linux sticker (since I couldn’t find a LinuxPPC or YellowDog sticker @ ThinkGeek).
    5. I think Linux is is fun. I think it’s the most fun I’ve had with an OS ever.
    6. I think MacOS 9 is stupid the more I have to use it. My PC crashed (video card fried) and I had to use my Powerbook to do actual work on for about 4 days. The more I used it, the more infuriated I got, hence, my love of Linux on the Mac.
    7. I think MacOS X sucks. I wish they’d finished it before they released it.
    8. I love HBO. I love Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dennis Miller Live and Oz, not in that order, and all for different reasons.
    9. I miss my friends in Tucson.
    10. I like Morphine (the band, hence the M instead of an m).
    11. I like Massive Attack.
    12. I realized yesterday that I’m an adult because I’m grumpy and teenagers seem young and stupid to me (not cool and intimidating like they used).
    13. I remember times I consider “the good old days” of Pac-Man, saturday morning cartoons, GI Joe, Star Wars toys and our Coleco Adam computer, where I wrote my first Basic program, a super crappy game a lot like Robotron only with one robot and one guy.
    14. This is number 14. When I was fourteen, I earned my Eagle Scout, which I keep forgetting I’ve earned. I haven’t been to a scout meeting since my brother Steve got his Eagle almost 5 years ago.
    15. I think I’m smart. But, as I get older I realize the world is much more complicated, evil, good and beautiful than I ever imagined.
    16. I used to be a Republican, because my parents were, but they scare the crap out of me. I was going to be a Democrat, but they’re just as scary, just for different reasons. So, I’m a political wanderer at the moment.
    17. I really wish John McCain did have a necklace with human ears on it that he wore for every press conference. This is an old Joke between Jon Morris and me from our days in PrimeHost. Wouldn’t it be funny if for every news conference, John McCain came out wearing his ear necklace and then anytime someone asked him a tough question he’d start yelling incoherently about the War and how he was a prisoner of war. Ok, maybe it’s not so funny… but we laughed and laughed at the time.
    18. I used to do a public access TV show in Tucson called Tech X. It was all about computers and getting away with stuff. I was Otto the HED and wore a blue sheet so I was this fat floating head. It was a lot of fun.
    19. I learned how to write Tcl and build web pages because I worked for PrimeHost, a crappy web hosting company that used to be owned by AOL.
    20. I’ve been online since February 1995.
    21. My AOL account has been active since May of 1995.
    22. I used Netscape 2.0.
    23. My dad was in the Air Force and we moved around a lot. I’ve moved 19 times in my 26 years on this planet.
    24. I hate moving. My least favorite move was from Fairfax, Virginia to Vicksburg, Mississippi in the middle of my junior year of high school. Because of that one, I am an embarrassed graduate of Vicksburg High School, class of ’93.
    25. I love Dr. Pepper. My affair with the good doctor began when I worked nights doing tech support and couldn’t stay awake. It also goes well with Tucson’s bargain Mexican food.
    26. And Number 26: I am really really bad when it comes to video games. I’m chum when it comes to Unreal Tournament or any other shooter. I suck at puzzle games. You’d think I’d be better at it, but I’m not.

  • I’m leaving my wife…

    I’m leaving my wife… Oh, had you there for a sec, didn’t I? I’m going to Boston on Thursday with my sister, who’s going to win a biiii-iiiiig prize. And if she doesn’t, well, that’s ok. It’ll be my first trip by myself since I’ve been married, and well, I’m not sure how I feel about that. Right now, I feel fine. Right now, I feel great. Jen went to visit her parents with Max over Easter (was it last year), and I was fine. She was a semi-wreck, but for other reasons.

    You’d think that I’ve been married long enough that this shouldn’t be a big deal. I hope it’s not. I hate big deals. I get enough big deals at work. I live for little deals. Taking out the trash, getting milk on the way home, deciding who to call for carryout. Those are my kinds of deals. Buying a house, conference calls with partners, money. Those are not my kinds of deals. I would like now to hand off all my big deals to other people to deal with, and I’ll just go to Boston.

  • Max’s Page is new and

    Max’s Page is new and improved with a super-cute pic from our trip to the beach, and pics from Christmas and early 2001. It’s amazing how much he’s grown in the past 6 months. I’ll try to get the beach pics up soon…

  • What a cool site. The

    What a cool site. The Bitmap fonts are very nice, and check out SixGun. Very cool, and for free no less. I love free stuff…

  • Because I don’t edit… I

    Because I don’t edit… I won’t replace the last post with this one. Has anyone come up with a geographic Blog Directory? I think it would be really cool to see local bloggers. Ok, maybe not REALLY cool, but it would be interesting. And then you could do a big map with dots on cities and the number of bloggers in that city. Yeah, good idea… too bad I don’t have time to do it. I COULD do it, really I could. I just don’t have a public place to host AOLserver, Postgres and RedHat. Maybe when I get DSL… I keep saying it, and some day, it’ll get out here in lovely Sterling. I just don’t know when.