Ultranormal

  • One More: Music List

    Before I fade away, here’s a quick list of the albums you should go out and buy right now:

    • Kaiser Chiefs – Yours Truly, Angry Mob – Funny, bouncy and brilliant. You won’t be able to stop bopping along. The album gets better every time I listen to it.
    • The Shins – Wincing the Night Away – Beautiful and haunting, great melodies and sweet hooks.
    • Arcade Fire – Neon Bible – I can’t stop listening to this one. It’s eclectic and urgent, with so many layers, I can’t stop peeling them away. A great headphone album.
    • Constantines – Tournament of Hearts – Rough and rocking through the entire album, but Soon Enough has some of the most gorgeous and sad lyrics I’ve ever heard, and the music fits perfectly. Kind of country rock without the cheesy affected Southern accent and weak slide guitars. This stuff rocks.
    • Regina Spektor – Begin to Hope – I’m not usually into stuff that would be labeled “pop”, but Regina has such an amazing voice, I can’t help it. She genre hops a little, but her great voice and catchy lyrics follow through every song. Good stuff.\
      That’s it. I’m really going to bed now.

  • Web 2.0 Expo – Making Lemonade

    It’s been a wonderful (italics = sarcasm!) week so far. My second presentation at Web 2.0 Expo got moved to Wednesday at the last minute, and I won’t be here, so I’m not giving it. It’s a long and sad soap opera, and I’d rather not talk about it. But, instead of giving up entirely, I’ve decided to make some lemonade. Instead of doing the presentation (Microformats for Web Services and Portable Content) in a hallway at Web 2.Open, I think I’ll go to the Mashroom and see if I can get some help turning it into a Rails plugin. While I’ve launched a product on Rails, I’m no expert. I’ve been meaning to play with plugins, but haven’t had time (oddly enough, working on this presentation). I’ve zipped up the Rails app if you want to play with it. You’ll need to install the mofo and ruby-openid gems for it to work correctly (and you need a database for the profiles).\
    What does it do? The main demo takes OpenID and after you log in, it grabs the OpenID URL looking for an hcard and pre-populates your profile with some selected bits of info. It was pretty painless to throw together, and I’d love to turn it into a plugin to make it even more painless. I think this could be a great alternative to CardSpace and the OpenID 2.0 attribute exchange stuff that’s still in the works. With delegate links, you could have multiple hcard “personas” that all point to the same identity provider but contain different profile information. Wouldn’t that be cool?\
    In related news, I’m tired of conferences. I’d rather stay home, work and spend time with my family, who I feel is getting away from me. I’m missing too many of Brian’s little developments, the little things that kids learn on their ride from babies to little boys. He’s already a toddler and well on his way to kid-dom, and I don’t want to miss anything I don’t have to. Max gets smarter every day, and I want to be there to help answer questions.\
    Other than Mashup Camps, and XTech (only because I already agreed to do it), I’m done until SxSW next year. It’s a gigantic pain in the ass to travel, and conference organizers don’t make it any easier. You’d think they’d treat speakers better, but they don’t. Yes, it’s a privilege to speak, but it’s also a huge commitment – both in time and money. They move your presentations around (without warning, or checking to see if you’re available), the network never works, and no one will answer e-mails (oops, here I go, I’m dwelling on this conference again). I’m tired and I need a break.\
    So, if you’re going to Mashroom on Tuesday, come help.\
    Update: I ended up not doing the Mashroom because I wanted to meet John Allsopp and see his microformats presentation (which was fantastic, and mine would have been a great sequel to it). By the end of that, I was tired and didn’t feel like writing code so I went back to the AOL booth to help out.

  • Five Good Things

    • Extended Relief Midol, good for 12 hours. Kicks 8 hour Midol in the ass.
    • Kevin for taking care of me, Max for being creative, Brian for saying Max as “Batty”
    • I got to sleep in until 7:30 this morning- woot!
    • We changed my mom’s ticket for free.
    • The dental bill is the same as our tax refund. Yay!\
      What’s on your list?

  • Mouth and Nose

    I went back to the dentist for my crown but I only got the temporary one today. Booo. And they had to “cut some tissue away.” Ewwww.\
    Awww, Brian blew his nose by himself. How cute is that? And…. now he is wasting the entire box of kleenex duplicating the blow. I think the high-five I gave him might have been a bit too much positive reinforcement. Ha, he is handing me a tissue and demonstrating how to blow because he wants me to blow too. At least he is putting the used tissues in the trash.\
    Apparently Friday Night Lights is THE BEST THING EVER, but I haven’t seen it. (The episodes are available on NBC.com.) Anybody out there watching it?

  • My Boys

    My Boys

    Jen told you about the root canal, which means I’ve been home the last two days playing with the boys. We’ve had a lot of fun, and I’m exhausted. Here’s what we’ve done so far:

    • Played lots of Wii
    • Drawn pictures
    • Happy hour with folks from work yesterday
    • Went to see Meet the Robinsons (fantastic, recaptures the lost Disney spirit).
    • Went to work to pick up the Chumby someone was kind enough to send me.
    • Got cookies\
      Now, we’re going to take a break for a little while, and then I think maybe we’ll go out for pizza.\
      Jen’s doing OK. She’s locked in our bedroom with the other laptop, watching movies and TV DVDs hopped up on vicodin.

  • Tip Of the Day

    Cavity []{.disappointed .be .she’d .mom, .my .tell .don’t .shh,} + waiting until convenient time for an appointment = very expensive root canals. Doh!\
    If you need me, I’ll be hiding in my room. Call Kevin instead.

  • I cry FOUL!

    Max woke me up this morning, a Saturday, before 6:30 for breakfast.\
    Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!\
    Hmm, think my parents are up yet? I need to call them.

  • Cute Brian and other real life stuff

    Brian usually calls me Mommy, except for when he is looking for me or calling for me from the stairs, then it is “Mama” at the top of his voice, which is the cutest thing ever! (Holy run-on sentence, Batman!) I am going to try to get it on videotape this weekend.\
    I got my passport today. YAY! Paris is a go! We even got my mom’s ticket. Super duper YAY! I am so frakkin’ excited!\
    There is a group of bloggers on the Supernatural set. Damn, passed over again! I’m still loving the show though. Wheeee. How come you guys aren’t watching it too? It’s so awesome, with the music, and the boys, and the car. Totally badass.\
    My online world has gone crazy with death threats, two actual deaths, numerous fights, and three pet deaths. March has been a BIZARRE month.\
    Kevin comes home tomorrow! YAYAYAYAY!

  • Bloggers are Real People

    I just read Kathy Sierra’s post about the death threats she’s received and I’m shocked. I’ve been on the web a long time, and see some really horrible stuff, but what never ceases to amaze me is how cruel people can be.\
    For some reason when our interaction with someone is online and we’re reading text they’ve written or looking at pictures they’ve taken, we somehow think of them as less than a real person. They become their work, not the person behind the work – which is dangerous. It opens the door to this kind of thing.\
    I don’t even know that there’s a solution other than education and treating this stuff like the crime that it is. Threats are not protected speech. They are threats, and that’s against the law. Just because you think you’re anonymous doesn’t mean you are. Just because someone shares things online – words, photos, videos, etc – doesn’t mean they’re not a real person with real feelings.\
    For me, I try (and often fail) to think of what I write, especially in comments and e-mail, as something I’m saying to that person face to face. If I wouldn’t say it someone standing in front of me, I probably won’t post it online. It’s saved me a lot of embarrassment and problems over the years.\
    I’ve lived my life pretty much in public since I started this blog about seven years ago. I never quite understood why others didn’t until recently. After talking to several women over the past year, I think I’m starting to understand, and it makes me really sad. I don’t know what, if anything, I can do to fix things other than doing a better job of following my own rules.\
    Kathy, I think you’re awesome. Your blog is one of my absolute favorites, and you’re an inspiration to me and to my work (and ask the people I work with – I send out links to your posts all the time). Here’s hoping the idiots responsible are caught quickly and this ugliness is resolved so you can get back to doing what you love (assuming you love blogging and presenting).

  • Bad Friend #184

    A friend just posted this: My mom just called and my grandpa died.\
    And all I can think of is, “Man, he must have really not wanted to talk to your mom.” Inappropriate laughter is the best kind. I was laughing so hard I squirted pear bits all over the computer. Oh man.