Chris Schmidt's Journal

This has been an absolutely shitty week.

At lunch yesterday, I pulled out my 'brain' (a spiral notebook I carry with me pretty much everywhere) and wrote down a list of all of the things that had frustrated me that morning. I had to fill an entire page. (When I got back to the office, I ripped the page out of the notebook and tore it into tiny pieces. Sadly, it didn't have the effect I intended: I had hoped it would stop the bad things from coming, but it didn't work.)

An organization as large as the one I work in is completely unwieldy at solving problems. I really wish I could go back to an organization which was the size of MetaCarta; I think we'd be more effective at solving problems than the current organization is.

I did actually achieve something -- a new form of collecting data that we iterated on twice within our team, which I expect will help us create a better product. However, us succeeding in the goal we've been given is something that, more and more, I see as being a weird approach for the company to take at all, and I don't understand why anyone thinks it is valuable.

In short: Meh.

Today, as part of a blog post I was writing, I reviewed some historical emails that I'd written back in 2005 and 2006.

I also reviewed some of my journal entries from 2003 as part of my journal post yesterday.

As a result of this, I have realized a couple things:

1. 2003 me? Yeah, I don't like that guy. He was whiny, and he couldn't spell, and he wasn't really very eloquent at all.
2. 2006 me? He's a pretty cool guy. In fact, he sounds a lot like 2012 me.

In the beginning of 2005, I was still a bit nervous in my online communications; I still felt like I had something to prove, and would act out as a result. I sounded like an ass, and I was rarely as eloquent as I am these days. (A standout snippet: "I'm assuming that your post was made with tongue in cheek, but I think it's a ridiculous statement and decided to do what all good people on the internet do: blow it out of proportion in a rant on a mailing list that few will ever care about. (I think I'm supposed to call you Hitler now or something. Godwin told me that once.)" Unfortuantely, the comment is attached to a post which is massively inappropriate epeen stroking, which makes it seem less awesome than it might otherwise be.)

By June of 2006, I had essentially become the person I am today in online communications. Getting together the OpenLayers 1.0 release informed a lot of this -- it was a hard-won fight, but we made it, and in the process, I learned a lot about communicating with a team that was spread over 3 continents -- something that is drastically more difficult than communicating and working together in person. Though I'm still far behind the curve for distance communication, I learned what I know in my email based collaborations in early 2006.

Overall, it's interesting to really go back, re-read history, and pick the point where I feel like I grew up -- and realize that it's about the time I really moved into helping manage my first Open Source project.

During the summer of 2003, I spent the latter half of the summer traveling, meeting, and staying exclusively with people I had previously only met on the internet.

This included a cross-country trip -- Chicago -> Seattle -> New Hampshire -> Chicago, though the last leg was with my family -- with two people who I had never met in person before. It included staying in the home of people in Seattle who I had never met in person before, and while there, spending time with a half dozen other people who I'd never met in person before.

It included spending a week with the woman who is now my wife -- who I had met briefly (a half day) in person before, but had previously only known online, and her two kids. It included meeting another person who became a good friend for a long time while in New Hampshire. It also included meeting other people in the Boston area who I have since stayed friends with.

People who I met on this trip, include, but are not limited to:
asciident, supersat, xb95, janinedog, ursamajor, ratkrycek, tenshisama, solcita, jpallan, chemicallace (and others who either no longer have LiveJournals or I am otherwise forgetting).

Any of you who've known me for the past decade already know this -- after all, I wrote about my experiences in this very journal while it was happening. But for those of you who might have got to know me later: now you know something new. I have Driven across the country, twice, with people I didn't know before we did so, and spent 3 weeks staying with people who I had only previously met online.

I posted a comment on a Dreamwidth entry where I mentioned a bit of Why I think use of LJ has changed. (In reality, it's not specific to LJ: I think it applies more to every social interaction that we have.) In short:

"I know that for me personally, the thing is that I value my privacy more now than I did a decade ago. I'm wantonly open with most of my life -- but I've become mature enough and sure enough in my thoughts that I no longer want to open every thought I have up to another 150 people to tell me what's wrong with it or second guess me; I no longer want to engage in the active debate about what I'm doing with my life."

(Note that I don't think that all people used LJ in the same way I did, so don't take this as an indictment if you still use LJ :) It's just an observation that the tone of conversation that I took here changed as I got older.)

In the past, my blog was tech stuff; my journal was personal/private stuff. These days, I don't share the personal/private stuff publicly.

I still read LiveJournal -- other people use it to share some details of what they're doing, regular updates on life, etc., and I still enjoy the things I read here. But these days, I don't really know what I'd post. I could post life updates, but I'm really not sure how much people care (or even if people still bother to read this); in the past, I cared about archiving things for historical reasons in this journal, but I've changed that approach because:

1. Who the hell is ever going to read it?
2. I document a lot more via pictures these days instead.

So I guess, the question is, dear readers: Is there a part of my life you wish you could keep more up to date with? Given my LJ's status as a log of my life for the past decade -- what status do you wish you could know more about? (More likely: people are just happy with the status quo.)

Yesterday, I bought myself an Android-based tablet.

I've been considering this purchase for a long time. Tablets are one of those things that I have always been wary of, because I'm not as much of a media user as a tablet really targets, I think. However, after a recent flight to Berlin, I realized that I have at least one solid use case for a tablet, in the form of a media player on flights. With that in mind, I quickly moved onto others: showing photos I'd taken to family members, an easy way to get computerized video to the TV, etc.

In addition, it would be a chance to explore Android. I've played with a lot of other mobile platforms over the past 18 months, but not Android -- and although it's not quite a phone, the Android tablet experience is still an Android experience.

I've been biding my time for a while, while the marketplace kind of leveled out. Handily, my coworkers have done my research for me: over the past 3 months, 3 other people in the office have bought the same Tablet, so I joined the crowd yesterday, and bought an Acer Iconia Tab.

So far, I love it.

Using it makes me feel like I'm in Star Trek, or Minority Report. *whoosh* goes the desktop! *Whoosh* Slicing some fruit!

The application support is obviously much broader than WP7 or Symbian's; more quick toys, more real tools, more access to third party services that make using the thing easier. The OS really feels clean and relatively solid -- I've used Android on phones before, but not a recent version, and the tablet experience feels so much 'cleaner' than any of the phones I've used. In the browser, things like OpenLayers support dragging, pinch-zooming, drawing in the browser, which is awesome. (I should really see if I can dig up whether/when that is happening or not happening in the 2.x series... or maybe 4.x will just fix it for everyone.) The browser really feels nice and relatively solid. The desktop, and widgets, are both nifty and useful.

The Acer was what I picked because it was essentially the same as the Xoom and Galaxy Tab 10.1 in functionality, form factor, etc. -- but it was $100 less. I still need to explore sleeve/case for it to protect it from my stupidity, but for now: I have a new shiny toy, and it is Nifty.

No.

I met my wife via the internet. I have my current job via the internet. I establish and maintain the majority of my social connections over the internet, as well as professional ones.

If it were not for the internet, and its influence on my life, there is no way that I would be the person I am today. Without the internet, my identity would be completely different from what it is now.

There is no way that any amount of money is something that I would trade for my life and identity, and without the internet, I would not be able to continue being who I am.

After finishing a weeks worth of spelling words in record time, taking Julie to the park. @ Dana Park, 74 Magazine Street, Cambridge, USA http://ovi.me/LDNAP

Happy New Year!

Snow

It's January in Boston, which means snow and cold at our lovely home. With 12" of snow falling on Wednesday, we had a fun time digging ourselves out, but out we dug. Of course, digging the sidewalk out is just one part of the process: Digging the car out of the street is an entirely different process. Some areas of Boston have some pretty strong feelings about parking spaces, but Cambridgeport tends to be a bit more relaxed; I will admit that after a large SUV did a terrible job cleaning a space, then took *my* clean spot, I was pretty upset, but I didn't do any tire slashing.

In addition to the snow, we also had a water heater break on Tuesday; came into the basement to find scalding hot water flowing out. Got ahold of the landlord, and she was able to get someone to come out and fix it that night -- a great relief to me! Having someone come out during the blizzard as I thought I would have to was going to be a nightmare, so it was good to have that issue resolved, at least.

Julie

On Wednesday, Julie and I trudged our way over to the eye doctor for her second post-op for her eye surgery in October; Doctor reports she is doing great, with perfect alignment. It was very weird being out: We were the only people out anywhere. Take the busiest road in your town, and imagine that at 11am on a weekday, there are only four cars on it -- and they're all snow plows. The whole area just shut down, and it was a rare sight to see.

Julianne continues to do great in school, having taken strongly to her studies this year and catching up (and exceeding) many of her classmates in many subjects. Though she still has trouble in math -- some days she can multiply 17 * 4 in the blink of an eye, and some days she can't tell you 2+1 without counting on her fingers -- she's generally gotten to a pretty consistent level of study, and is meeting expectations in all subjects in class.

With that being the case, we have applied to Cambridge Friends School for her for next year: because of a number of social pressures in her school, we're very worried about what will happen in the end of this year and next year with regard to her success. We're thankful for her great teacher this year, but think that she might be better in a different environment if we can manage it; one that is better able to cater to her needs. So we're keeping our fingers crossed on that front.

Alicia

After 3 months of heavy duty school searching, Alicia's turned in her high school application: In the end, she's decided to only apply to Winsor, an all-girls school nearby in Boston. (None of the other schools felt like they fit to her.) As a backup plan, we plan to go the homeschooling route. Since Alicia is well beyond the level of most kids her age in almost all subjects in this area, we think that is the best way to approach learning for her if she doesn't get into her school of choice.

Alicia is also looking into options locally to continue her German education; after taking a weekly at the Goethe Institut in Boston last year, we're looking into what the next step is in that realm.

Jess

After much travails with Alicia, Jess is finishing up school application work -- including taking care of the arduous financial support applications. (College apps have nothing on private schools for paperwork, I tell you.) In addition to recovering some of her sanity after visiting 17 schools in 2 months, she's also preparing to go back to Wellesley in the fall.

Kristan

Kristan continues to be a lifesaver around the house. I'm thoroughly convinced that having enough adults to outnumber the kids is a hugely important part of daily life in a modern world. Also, it means that I don't eat mac and cheese every night. Which, if you ask the kids, they will tell you is an absolute godsend as well. :)

Travel

For Christmas this year, we were all able to travel out to Illinois, thanks in large part to the generosity of my parents in putting us up for almost a week. The girls were so excited to see some of their cousins (and meet new ones!), and all in all, I think we had a very enjoyable time spent.

In February, I'll be visiting Lausanne, Switzerland (again) to participate in an OpenLayers code sprint, and most likely visiting our Berlin Nokia office on the way back, and meeting some of the lovely people I've been working with while I've been in our somewhat-remote seeming Boston office. (Nokia's major offices are almost all in overseas; the US is somewhat of an afterthought.)

Me

I'm looking into getting into rock climbing this year: I went out to the local gym last weekend with a friend, and enjoyed it a lot. I've been a couple times, and it's enjoyable, but without a strong commitment, it gets a bit pricy. If I got 3-4 times, I've more than paid for a set of gear at rental prices. Nokia also offers a reasonable health benefit that would cover about half of an annual membership, but it's still a lot of money even after that, so it may have to wait a bit before I make the plunge.

Overall, working for Nokia has been going great, and I'm having a ton of fun working with the same great group of people that I've always worked with -- even if it can be a bit stressful to see all the directions we need to push in to stay on top!

That's all for now. All the best to you and yours.

So, another month has gone by.

On Wednesday, Jessica had two root canals. She's still in pain. It kinda sucks.

Alicia is actively interviewing for and deciding on schools for next year. It's exciting, to some extent, though it turns into a lot of fights between Alicia and Jess. I think they are starting to come to the point where they can agree on at least some things though, which is nice.

I'm currently working on a couple projects -- one contracting, one 'for free' -- that I'm not putting in nearly enough time on. Every time I take a couple weeks off of having two jobs, I realize that I really have to work two jobs to keep food on the table. It really makes me wish that I didn't live in an apartment I can't afford.

I've started playing a bit with foursquare. Before I can progress further, I need to get to the point where I have it on a device that can access a cell network. The idea of having a 'competition' around travel seems like the kind of silly thing that might actually encourage me to get out more. Maybe.

There's a couple big things happening around Camberville to day -- HONK! in Somerville leading directly into Octoberfest in Harvard Square. I won't go to either of them, because I'm too nervous about how far behind I am on things -- even though I know full well that sitting here, I'm likely to do stuff like play Lego Star Wars, and not make much more progress on the things I should be working on.

Right now, I'm feeling stressed and nervous. Mostly about money, to be honest. Which would be better if I had gotten in my expense report for Barcelona on time, but of course I didn't. And apparently I can't fill out the expense report over the VPN, so I can't even do that this weekend, it'll have to wait until I get into the office. In reality, when I actually think about it, I think 90% of my stress is just based on money. If I had a buffer in the bank of 1.5 month's rent or so, I think today would be a relatively good day. Since I don't, I just can't do anything other than sit here and stress.

What a pain.

Sigh, went to bed at 9:30, woke up at 1. Still awake. Apparently going to bed before 11 or so just doesn't work.

I had a long week this week. When I finally got to the end of it:

1. Catching up on my friends list required me to go back a page. This hasn't happened in months or longer; Google Reader and my Friends page pretty much always the first two things I open when I open my browser. This means that I hadn't really had time to do the things I do most often for 3 days.

2. My Google reader was equally old, holding approximately 10 times the number of things it usually does when I get around to reading it.

On the other hand, the results of this week were that:

* I installed, and started using, every pirate's favorite statistical package (R).
* I put together a highly informative, 45 minute Powerpoint presentation (integrating content from our entire team at work)
* I was able to successfully answer questions from Boss's Boss's Boss during the presentation.

Overall, everything worked out well, but I have worked my ass off for the past 3 days, and I am Damn Tired.

Of course, now I have to spend the weekend on other things that will tire me out more. But at least I should be able to stop to use the computer for enjoyment at some point in the 18 hour days.

Because pot lobbyists consistently fail to actually get anything done. It's hard to get riled up when you're too busy toking up and looking for your next munchie fix.

Whereas if you take away a cigarette smoker's nicotine for a day, they will go totally apeshit, and that can be turned into productive creative commentary. (See Also: Fight Club.)

I hate the fact that if I fall asleep earlier in the evening -- any time before midnight, really -- and wake up subsequently, I can't get back to sleep, regardless of how short that period of sleep is.

Tonight, I came home from work tired. I passed out from ~6 to ~9 -- 3ish hours -- and woke up.

Since then, I have spent hours reading, lying in bed staring at the wall, and otherwise doing essentially nothing, but no feeling of sleepiness or tiredness seems to exist.

It doesn't matter if I'm in a warm room, cool room, or other. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. Once I've slept 2-3 hours, my body is done -- until about 8am, when I'd actually want to, you know, start my day.

The same thing happened on our recent trip to upstate NY; we got started late, and were driving late, so I drove from 6pm - 11pm, then took a two hour nap. Took back over driving at 1am, got there at 2am... and didn't fall back asleep until 8:30AM.

Clearly, I'm fucking up my body clock by taking naps/sleeping at odd hours, but ... what can I do to fix it? When I'm in a state where I'm wide awake and don't want to be, what can I do to encourage sleep?

Testing out the new lj client on my n900. If you see this, it probably worked.

"I need mom to stop at the store and bring me a snack."
"What do you want?"
"I don't care, I'll eat anything."
"Okay, how about you just grab some of the cookies from the shelf?"
"Anything but those, those are gross."
"Okay, you've got to tell us *what* you want, I can't randomly guess if you're just going to say it's gross."
"I don't know what I want!"
"How about pop tarts?"
"As a snack?"
"Sure."
"On second thought, I'll just have nothing."

Child, I'm not asking you anything difficult here, I'm just telling you I *can't read your mind*.

(Then again, this is a lesson that the two adult women in my life haven't learned either; why I thought the 12 year old would have learned it is beyond me.)

As of today, MetaCarta has been acquired by Nokia, and I am now an employee of Nokia working on local search in the Ovi services.

WoohoO!

(Now you know why I had a Nokia pen. :))

I turned 26 yesterday. I got new shoes, an iPod touch, and went to a geeky party. Today, I went to a rock climbing lesson at metrorock. The weather is great, and I couldn't think of anything that I could have right now that would make me happier... Other than beter health for Jess.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Christmas is done. We opened the presents from my parents yesterday, so that they could see them; everyone reasonably happy with what they got. (Both girls got Snuggies, which I have already started stealing; although the 'blanket with sleeves' idea is a bit silly, it's definitely useful for things like reading, etc.)

I'm going to have people over for New Years Eve, I think. Rather, I'm going to have food and booze and some games on New Years Eve, and am hoping people will arrive, since I have no particular blackmail to hold over anyone's head. I sent out facebooky invites to people who I thought would be interested. If you want one, and didn't get one, let me know. My guess is that there will not be many people here. (I have an invite to at least one other party, but I know that leaving the house on NYE just never seems to work out.)

It's a grey, grey day outside. My parents are still around, but I'm short of things to do with them; I'm not used to having visiting family around. We're doing dinner tonight, but I don't know what else makes sense to do on an icky day, especially an icky Sunday. Suggestions welcome, though I don't know that many people will be reading this soon enough to matter. :)

Merry Christmas, everyone.

My Christmas gift for the day is to wake up to a clean house. Granted, it was one I gave myself -- with a ton of work over the past few days, and the sore muscles to prove it -- but waking up to find the dining room and living room clean... really clean... cleaner than they've probably been since we moved in, is a nice treat.

Kitchen + bathrooms tonight, and my parents arrive tomorrow, to see our house in Boston for the first time.

Recently added to the list of "mistakes I will probably never make again":

Putting gasoline in a diesel car.

(Yes, I really am an idiot sometimes.)

This weekend, Jess, myself, and the girls all played various roles in the pulling off of a wedding ceremony for ursamajor and hyounpark.

We arrived to CA late night on Thursday. Our flight was mostly uneventful, though I will admit that I figured arriving at 11pm West Coast time, there was a chance that Julianne would... maybe sleep at some point in the flight. No such luck, unfortunately, and I had a babbling 8 year old for the entirety of our 6 hour flight. ("Exciting!")

We stayed overnight in Burlingame, got a late start despite our time bonus, and headed down to Monterey, having realized we forgot only 5 or 6 crucially important items in our hometown.

The drive south was ... long. We took 101 down (the route down 1 is pretty, but there's no argument that it's shorter). (Jess says to mention 'we were in the fires'. I don't know how much of this I understand, as I was just driving, but there were firefighters on the side of the road at one point.) Near 101+156, we went about 2 miles in 35 minutes. It was awesome. The girls persevered -- largely with the help of things like Daria and Futurama, thank god for laptops.

We made it, checked in at Asilomar, and (Jess points out: "Quickly learned they didn't have internet! Wild deer scampering the grounds, but no internet!" I rebut that any deer that I can walk 3 feet from and not have them run away are not 'wild'.) got ready for the rehearsal dinner at Fandango. (What happens if you want to go to Fandango, then to a movie? Do you buy your tickets from Fandango, or is that optional?)

Anyway, rehearsal dinner went well, we ate, established a timeline for meeting up the next day, (Jess: "Pawned our children off on other people", as they sat with the other family with kids at the dinner.) and headed out to crash.

Next day, Jess and I run last minute errands while the kids play with the other family's kids again, including picking up the medications I forgot. (Total idiot tax: $83.) We make it back, gather up the things for prep, and make our way to the bridesmaids and bride.

Everyone gets ready, the photographers show up (the way you can tell a professional? She has a camera lens LONGER THAN MY ARM.), pictures are taken, and everyone does a quick run through of the ceremony. I gather up the bags of all the bridesmaids (I'm toting them around while they ride in a limo), all 8 of them, and cart them and the two girls out to the car. (Jess: "I would like to comment that the problem with picking bridesmaids and groomsmen is that you chose people who are your friends, rather than their drill sergeant mentality.")

We arrive at the park (myself and the two girls), and see another wedding party standing in the place where the ceremony is to be, (the rocks there are where the wedding was held, with chairs on the lawn side and looking towards the ocean), in addition to another bride and groom having photos down closer to the beach. Both move on, but after 10 minutes with no sign of the limo, I get a bit panicky, and try to make phone calls, unsuccessfully. Thankfully, at this point, someone arrives to start setting up chairs, and I confirm I'm in the right place.

20 minutes later, at 2:10, the limo carrying the wedding party does finally arrive, and they being having photos taken with the ocean as background. (Jess explained later that they were being posed to 'act like mountain goats' climbing over the rocks out there.) After about 35 minutes, they finally let them go. During that time, I ran around and helped the mother of the bride organize flowers, set up programs, and introduced and dragged in people who were straggling in at that point. (The groomsmen never took up ushering duties. The side effect of an outdoor, relatively informal, wedding, perhaps.)

Anyway, we let people stream in until 3:15, including Hyoun's father, who had flown back to Korea on a family emergency just 72 hours before, and was then back in SF just in time for the wedding. The wedding went off well, and was pretty. I passed out maps to everyone on how to get to the reception (continuing my role as "groomsman at large" -- all the more effective because I didn't have any photography requirements) and gathered up the leftovers and the girls and we made our way to the reception.

We made our way to the reception, everyone talked for a while, some dresses were ripped, but Jess helped repair them. Our two girls and the two girls of the other family continued to get along well, we sat down, ate some food, etc.

Hyoun and Lynne sang the opening song of the evening, and then she and her dad got the first dance, and then we all came out and boogied.

I did my normal thing, but also spent a lot of time dancing with Julie, trying to get Alicia to dance with me (failed), dancing with Jess, and the other bridesmaids. (My favorite of the other bridesmaids was Jane, for the record.)

Given the wedding participants, it shouldn't be a surprise that Karaoke was offered. Julianne, always loving to be the center of attention, was ecstatic about the idea. She picked Katy Perry and I went "Crap", knowing that if she went up there on her own, she'd get about two words out. So I went up with her, and sang a Katy Perry song. (Hot N Cold.) Note to self: Don't do Karaoke of songs that you don't know.

Anyway, that went okay, and more dancing happened, and Ali and Jane went up and did some other song together, and I met some LJ people (azurelunatic was the only one I actually remember the username for) and hung out and then we went home and it was late and we passed out.

Overnight, Jess tripped on a suitcase that had been left open and smacked the desk with the side of her face going down, so I did a 6am CVS run to pick up bruise pain reduction devices. We were meant to go to the Aquarium in Monterey as well, but with her feeling poorly, not having eaten, etc. it didn't end up working out. We got McDonalds, and headed up CA-1 to San Francisco.

A few notes: When Mapping from Monterey to SF, Google will give you a route it labels "CA-1". In reality, this is *not* the Route 1 route you want to take, as it takes you from Monterey to Santa Cruz on CA-1 -- a pretty dumpy part of the route -- but not past Santa Cruz to SF. Luckily, I'm no stickler for directions (Hooray for decent sense of direction) so I said 'screw it', and we took route 1 all the way up.

I love it. If I lived here, knowing what I do now, I don't think I'd be able to stay in SF at all during warm months. Windsailers, hang gliders, parasailers, all along the gorgeous coast, with ocean views the whole way... I'd be spending my weekly paycheck on gas just to drive up and down that road, it's so pretty.

Julie and I loved it the whole way. Ali was bored by it, Jess was scared by it, and both slept most of the trip, but I had an absolutely lovely time.

We're now staying at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Fisherman's Wharf (which is also super-awesome), and leaving on Tuesday morning.

So, that was my weekend.

How about yours?

I want to wish my lovely wife Jessica a very happy birthday today, and hope that she lives to be as old as the clever little hobbit who shares this birthdate with her.

Happy Birthday, Jessica, and I look forward to sharing your eleventy-first birthday with you.

I really love working at MetaCarta. In the end, we do cool shit, I have a great boss, I have a flexible schedule, I work with smart people, and I have an office with walls, a door, and a window that I can look out and see bright blue sky. How could I really complain about that?

I now have a new 13" Macbook Pro, with 4GB of RAM.

It is quite shiny.

(Still wish that I could get a laptop like my original powerbook. Alas.)

Currently, I am:

• Having trouble concentrating at work, though I have significant bursts of productivity about once a week while flailing the other 4-5 days of work.


• Am not eating, or sleeping, enough.


• Feel very worn out.

Too many things to balance. Too many people to try to make happy. Too many bills to pay.

Life is hard. Get a Helmet.

Good Morning Vietna... Intern... People who are reading this! Though it's probably not morning by you anyway, so I don't know why I even said that.

I'm high energy today. This is probably in part as a result of the fact that:

• The kids are with Jess's mom this week. This means that I'm spending less energy on the kids. I miss them, but there's no way that I can do anything other than admit they can be exhausting.
• Jess has been up and about for the past 24 hours. We drove to the pet store yesterday. We watched a movie together last night. I haven't had this much time hanging out with her in a long time.
• I'm listening to high energy music. I like doing that.
• I have a new office at work. It's smaller than the old one, but new things always give me a bit more energy anyway. It's like a clean slate! Well, except we're keeping the old whiteboards, but the idea is there.
• It's sunny. We haven't had much sunny weather around here lately, and having it is nice. Of course, as a side effect, it's wicked hot today, and if I wasn't in the office, it would probably be cursing the 'nice' weather, but it's nice and cool in the office, and the sun is shining.

Mm. Terrible music that makes me happy. Maybe I'll even go do some work now.

Augh, the Blog Echo Chamber is so annoying. "Here's a slightly interesting demo put together in 20 minutes by Some Guy... let's repost it ACROSS THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY!"

(Similarly, Retweets of Retweets of Retweets of Retweets are annoying. Just don't.)

No, those 10 lines of code are really *not* that interesting. Look! A Map! Oh hooray, who gives a crap.

Also, I want a copy of the internet in my server room so that I can do cool things with it. Someone work on that for me, would you?

On a more life-related note, Kristan sort of moved in this weekend, and Mick is visiting for a week before heading off to start his PhD in Chicago. So our house is slightly more crowded than usual.

I recently passed my second anniversary with Jess. It sadly passed quite uneventfully; lack of $$ ruled out grand gestures, and lack of energy ruled out more vigorous searching for things to do on the cheap.

WTB One Money Tree, Cheap.

I lied, there is one other thing on my mind. This morning, on my way to dropping off the kids, I heard that the UN is planning to 'punish' North Korea for their recent nuclear tests and so on. On hearing this, all I could really think of was the Onion video: "Ambassador Stages Coup at UN, Issues List of Non-Binding Resolutions".

There's always the chance that Mtambi might abandon his post... if he finds a more powerful position like being the mayor of a small town, or being the coach of a little league team.

Looking at the actual state of affairs, this doesn't seem too far from the truth:

Now, council members are preparing to draw up yet another resolution, but divisions in the council could prevent swift action. ... As the US, China, Russia have equal veto power in the council, agreement on the details of a resolution, such as whether or not to include more sanctions, could take some time.

What is the UN good for again? I've lost track...

You know, I'm not one to generally complain about the weather. And certainly I can recognize the benefits of the rain for keeping the pollen down, which is making my allergy problem of yesterday significantly less important. I love a good thunderstorm, and blizzards too.

No matter how much I try though, I can't like when it's pissing down rain, and cold. Warm and pissing down rain is fine, but 50 degrees and spitting rain in May just sucks.

I thought the *April* showers were supposed to bring the May flowers? (And what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims!)

High levels of weather variability are also somewhat suck.

That's my thoughts for the day. (Yeah, I'm pretty braindead.)

(The response, from GargantuanCoho? "Zombies attack! They're attacking from everywhere! You only get one weapon! What do you chose?" I think the right answer to that is "The Automatic Shotgun", right? Unless there's a holy-water spray bottle, in which case I might have to go that route.)

Please FOAD.

Something that made me laugh this morning:

From Wikipedia, through pne:

There once was an X from place B,
That satisfied predicate P,
    He or she did thing A,
    In an adjective way,
Resulting in circumstance C.

What made you laugh this morning? Or cry? Or simply smile?

I realized this morning, upon entering Target, that I can't remember the last time I was inside one. I *think* it might have been around July of 2006 (I can't math. Not 2007, brain, 2006.); at the time, I was helping Schuyler pick out a trash can to replace the broken one in his apartment. (It's possible I have been in one more recently, but I certainly can't remember buying anything in one since then...)

It's weird to me how I still have this mentality that I'm not allowed to buy anything in stores. Grocery stores, department stores, etc. Granted, part of this is due to low free cash funds, but a lot of it is also the fact that I just still live in a mindset where all purchases are controlled by my parents.

(Also, whoa, my music thingy is all last.fm-ified. That's weird.)

I want to ride a roller coaster.

I haven't been writing much recently, but the primary reason for that is that most of the time when I think about writing things, I realize that my life as a whole is pretty stable. I take the girls to school, I go to work, I come home, I chill out, I get on the computer for a couple hours, and I go to sleep.

I suppose that there's a lot of other stuff going on that is important and I just don't really think to write about. My birthday party last weekend was pretty cool, and I didn't talk about that at all, for example. But on the whole, my life simply isn't changing as much as it used to, which is why you don't see me writing much anymore.

I did pick up World of Warcraft about a month ago. I'm still not sure if it's going to be an utterly life-destroying time suck like I know it can be. It's very pretty, and it's a nice way to spend a little bit of time when my brain is dead, but I've seen it mess up a lot of stuff for people due to its addictive nature. I've encouraged a *lot* of people I know not to play, for exactly this reason.

I think that a lot of this is the fact that most of my friends are, to some level or another, geeks. I tend to find that the same qualities that make someone a geek tend to lead to very obsessive behaviors. The problem with World of Warcraft is that obsessing over doing *everything* is very unhealthy because everything is ... well, huge. The physical size of WoW may be something along the size of Delaware -- but its' Delaware as if every subdivision had 10-20 tasks you had to do, some of them repeating daily, some of them taking an hour on their own. Some of the more 'completion'-oriented tasks require you to do literally thousands of quests -- where each quest ranges from a minute to an hour, with probably 10-15 being the 'norm'. 500 hours of playtime to do that, which is a hell of a lot. When you add in the fact that there are different play types for both different character classes -- a priest and a warrior are going to play very different games -- and the 'good'/'evil' sides ('Alliance' vs. 'Horde') there is a *lot* of time you can invest and not feel 'done'.

As a mapping geek, the "How big is the world" comments are actually somewhat interesting as well -- some of the comments go into "What determines how big a world is?" I can say that I definitely find that WoW *feels* big, regardless of how big it is -- and a blog comment suggests that this is similar to how traveling through Europe can seem much larger than traveling through North America despite absolute sizes, because there is more *stuff* in Europe. The concept that the physical size of something is far less important than the actual amount of stuff as far as a mental model of stuff is kinda cool.

Anyway, this probably isn't news to anyone, but I'm still trying to work out whether WoW will be absolutely terrible for me. I'd like to think the answer is no, but having watched it screw up so many other people's lives, I don't know if I can believe that.

Hey! I'm 25 now.

Strangely, my birthday this year isn't that big of a deal; I actually forgot about it entirely until a week ago. This is strange since I've always been such a big birthday person in the past.

But anyway. Happy Birthday to me, hooray. 25 is a big round number. I like it.

So, Julie is hanging around, and Jess mentions that Google "Fixed itself" from its "The whole internet is malware" problem. Julie asks what was wrong, and Jess explains that Google thought that the whole internet was broken.

Julie's response is "Oh, I see, Google got confused. Silly Google. It's just like me!" After a moment, she clarified "Except, I'm not a search engine."

We've rearranged our living room temporarily as a side effect of finishing painting it, and I'm really liking the end result that I have for seating right now. I have a really cushy spot on the futon, with a nice visibility out of both windows, and I'm right now all curled up with blankets and pillows.

The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, and I'd love to just sit here and never move again.

Edit: Augh! Unexpected solar reflection in my eyes! heeeellllp!

For folks in Boston, the OpenStreetMap project is having a Mapping Party, hosted in Somerville, MA on February 14th and 15th.

From the OpenStreetMap website: "OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you. OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth." In Boston, it includes roads, buildings, and more: you can see the map for an example.

If you're interested in learning more about OpenStreetMap, and getting involved in helping to keep a free map of the world available, starting with your neighborhood, join us at the Bloc 11 Cafe in Somerville on Feb 14th and 15th. More information is available on the OpenStreetMap Boston wiki page.

It sounds like LJ laid some people off yesterday. (Hey, it happens to the best companies. Really.)

I expect that -- like when it was bought by Sup, and during most of the changes in the long-while since 6A bought it -- I will see absolutely no difference in any aspect of using the site.

That said, I'm sure that some really good people got laid off, and I'm sorry for that: the 'no severance part of it is really especially terrible. My best wishes to all involved. If I can help anyone in getting a hookup in the Boston area, let me know... though I expect that I don't have anyone who friends me and was laid off, or is even that close anymore. (Things fall apart; the center can not hold -- though I'm not quite sure if the blood-dimmed tide is loosed.)

I like living near Boston/NY. I buy things that ship from there, and end up getting delivered overnight, despite only paying for (or not paying for) ground shipping. In this case, it's a new 50mm f/1.8 Lens (this), and a 430 EX II flash (this one).

Welcome to 2009, everyone.

A lot of people are expecting different things from 2009, but I don't think I am really. Life isn't really sufficiently in flux that I expect the year over year delta to be large this year; 2008 had a lot of suck, and some good times, and I expect 2009 will be about the same.

I'm trying to decide what I should do about my photography: One problem I'm having with it at the moment is that I may actually be approaching a point where what I can do with my current tools is running a bit low, but I don't have a lot of cash on hand to buy better tools. I suppose the answer to that is to find more cash, but I feel like that's a never ending pit of futility, to be honest. Saving money for myself just isn't something that I can do.

I'm going to be speaking on GeoDjango, the GIS extension to GeoDjango, on Thursday, at the Django User's Group meeting at Betahouse, in Cambridge. More info forthcoming at the meetup page.

Things I want to do in the next couple months:

• Decide something about photography. Either make the investment in better equipment, or stop feeling bad about not taking good pictures.
• Go Skiing
• Look into rock climbing, and figure out if it's worth the cost.

I'm not doing any real resolutions this year; I don't usually end up keeping them anyway. My internal resolutions are the same as always: Make your life, and the lives of those around you, as happy as you can.

I hope everyone has a lovely New Year's celebation, and a Happy 2009.

So, I'm crazy today. And when I say that, I mean utterly twitchy can't concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds completely convinced the world is about to come crashing down about my ears crazy. It's quite terrible, to be honest, but since there's not much to be done about it, I just try to cope.

Anyway, since I couldn't concentrate on anything I was supposed to be concentrating on, I put work down and hacked on something. That something ended up being a tool to sync photos from flickr to facebook -- which I'd attempted at one point before, but abandoned when I convinced myself there must be a better way to do it.

Well, in the end, I convinced myself there really *wasn't* a better way to do it, and I just needed to go ahead and take the leap. So I did. I learned SQLAlchemy (which I find somewhat ugh compared to Django's ORM, but hey, such is life), and put together a script that would sync the Flickr metadata locally. Then I put together another set of functions to sync it all back up to Facebook, and wrote a map of tags from flickr to Facebook user IDs.

Other than one small Facebook functionality which was poorly understood by me -- album sizes are limited to 60 pictures, wtf is up with that -- and one minor bug -- when 'chris' and 'crschmidt' were both listed as tags, a person got tagged twice... and the Facebook UI copes with that not at all well -- I was able to write a script in a single day which synced all my photos over, and which I'll be able to run periodically to keep things up to date from here forward.

The end result is that:
0. All of my public flickr photos are now also shared on Facebook.
1. I have 129 pictures of me listed on my profile, including 25 of me with Jess
2. I probably spammed the shit out of a ton of people, since they got listed as being in photos I was 'uploading'. "Oops"?

Unfortunately, unlike usual, this project hasn't been cathartic; I haven't been able to sleep, it's now 3am, and I have no idea what i'm going to do tomorrow.

Sigh. I want a new brain. But at least the current one is accomplishing *something*, even if it's not at all related to what it should be doing. How I wish taht i could get paid just to hack on whatever my brain feels like doing...

Merry Christmas, everybody.

With the girls gone, Jess and I exchanged gifts last night. Nothing particularly extravagant, just a couple dvds and a book for her, and similar for me, though she also got me a Goillapod, which should be nice.

We're sans kids for the next couple days (til Sunday), so it's just a nice relaxing day; I think I'm going to count Friday as a vacation day and make it a 4 day weekend. I've been working at home the past week anyway, but not feeling the need to get any work done does make a difference.

I'm still in bed, and I think I plan on staying a prone position for a while longer.

I wonder if this is something htat people without kids get to do sometimes... just lie in bed and rest? Weird...

So, we made about 3x as much food as we needed for the 6 of us eating dinner.

And when I say 'we', I mean, mostly, 'me': I worked on prep from 9pm -> 1am and cooked from 9am -> 3:30pm.

We ended up with something like 6 quarts of mashed potatoes due to a screwup of mine.

All in all, it was a lot of good frickin food -- Jess buying groceries and picking the recipes worked quite well -- but I've chopped more in the past 24 hours than I have in the past 3 years combined. 8 onions, 10 apples, 2 bags of potatoes, rosemary, thyme, chives, oregano, parsley... and not once did I slice my finger!

This is the first time I've ever had 4 pots on the stove, two pans in the oven, and two thing already done and waiting to be served. (Potatoes, Green beans + shallots, cranberry + orange relish, two pans of stuffing, cornbread and turkey, respectively.) I felt like a cooking machine.

Menu:

• Turkey, rubbed with herb (parsley, rosemary, sage & thyme) butter and roasted.
• Apple and sage bread stuffing with chestnuts.
• Cranberry-orange relish.
• Garlic mashed potatoes with chives and parmesan cheese.
• Green beans with shallots and almonds.
• Cornbread. (from a TJ's box)

I made everything there except for the actual cooking of the herb butter, which Jess did while I was making the cornbread. (I did all the turkey rubbing as well... mmm, rubbing down naked turkey skin with slippery substances...)

Turkey cooked about 1.5 hours quicker than we expected, but ended up *really* tasty -- thank goodness for thermometers, since it did *not* look browned at all when we pulled it out, but the thermometer told the real story of it being at ~160. (I think the thing got slightly warmer than it should have been, but cooking in a roasting pan kept in the moisture and made it really tasty.)

This is the first time I've ever cooked a big meal like this, and I'm pretty pleased with how everything came out.

Finally finished uploading my photos from Japan. See them on Flickr.

Why yes, Virginia, there is a 3am.

Been on a shitty sleep schedule since I got back from Japan, falling asleep around 9 and waking up at ass-o-clock. In theory, I should just go back to sleep, but since Jess tends to be up and typing at 3am, it is somewhat hard to do so.

After a couple weeks hard work, shortly before I left for Japan, I finally got the new MetaCarta Developers Site up and running. It's not perfect yet, but pages like this one about OnDemand make my heart sing, since they actually document shit that in the past, people would have come to me for documentation of.

I'm still uploading pictures from my trip to Japan, but only have one more day to get through. In general, for trips to foreign countries, I'm a bit too unselective about what I upload, but I figure that since I'm not going to be returning, having a full set of the things I care about uploaded is nice.

I am a dull person.

I'm currently in Tokyo airport, flying home in about an hour. I leave Tokyo at 11:15, and arrive in Chicago at 7:50AM. I then leave Chicago at 9:26 and arrive in Logan at 12:44PM.

Japan has been an amazing trip. I've eaten octopus and squid, had a bunch of sushi, ridden the Shinkanzen train, seen a collection of 200+ goth-costumed Japanese chicks crowding a live band, been to Osaka Castle, seen a Giant Buddha statue in Nara, presented to > 80 different people about OpenLayers and its history, present, and future, given two workshops to ~ 10 people on how to get started with OpenLayers, and more.

Maybe I'll write a real trip report at some point, but if *a* picture is worth a thousand words, then I think 452 pictures is worth a bit more. (And I still have 500 to sort through! I probably should cull a few of those though, since they're not all up to my usual standards.)

Looking forward to getting home.

In Osaka now. Tokyo was great, Japan in general has been great, but at the moment I'm really just tired and looking forward to coming home.

Touring Tokyo today -- leaving in about 20 minutes.

Currently 11 episodes into Dead Like Me. Glad that I grabbed it before I left.

Uploaded pictures from the conference yesterday.

jennifer: Saw a couple people in pretty serious GothLoli yesterday inside Tokyo Station, and thought of you. (Though I'm sure I'm messing up the use of the term. :))

(When is LJ going to stop with the Undead Journal thing? Halloween's over, man.)

Sleep Schedule Thursday Evening: Stay up until 11:30 packing. Pass out. Get up at 3am, start packing again.

Get on plane to Chicago, 8am Boson Time. Probably sleep about 1.5 hours out of 2.5 on Boston -> Chicago flight.

Get on plane to Tokyo, 11am Boston time. Fail to realize beforehand that flying from Chicago to Tokyo means there *is* no night time, despite landing a day ahead. Despite flying for 12 hours, I never even see a slightly darker sky.

However, I get an entire set of three seats to myself for the first hour of the flight, which seems good for my chances of decent sleep.

Then, I am entirely too nice when a Japanese woman asks to take the seat next to me -- I figure that it's no big deal if I only get 1.5 like everyone else instead of 3.

Then realize that she intends to bring the person she was with *with* her, meaning I don't have 1.5, I have 1 -- and the person I was sitting next to isn't that compact either, so it's less than 1. So much for sleep.

So I end up with not enough space, and the woman to the right of me keeps cracking her window open to take pictures of the mountains in Alaska, shining bright sunlight in my eyes.

Once we were over ocean next to Russia, that stopped, and I was able to get about 2.5 hours of fitful sleep on the rest of the flight. Arrival in Tokyo at 1am Boston Time. (2pm local time.) Get out of the airport around 3pm local time.

Next is getting to the hotel. 1 hour train ride -- no sleep, but some work on my presentation that I gave this morning. Then a 1 hour-ish walk through the maze that is the subway station, and to my hotel, arriving around 4:30PM.

Get online, check email, body says "hahaha, joke is on you, it's 4am according to me! And you've been up since 3am!" Pass out. At 11ish PM local time, wake up (10am Boston time), and only sleep fitfully/dozingly for the rest of the morning. Get some food from a mini-mart at 2:30 AM. Finish presentation and workshop materials while watching Dead Like Me.

Come to conference at 8:30am. (7:30PM Boston time.)

So, let's clarify. I woke up at 3am Boston time on Friday. It is currently 12:45AM Boston time on Sunday -- just 2 hours short of 48. I believe that I have likely slept approximately 11 hours in that time.

That is far too little. I don't have enough adrenaline for this shit. I want a damn nap.

So not ready for Japan. And I thought I was underprepared for the Cape Town trip!

Still taking photos. Now participating in photowump: a 'photo class' like thing that a friend is doing as a favor to a few of us who have cameras but don't use them enough. :) Looking today, I've taken 3500 photos in the last month -- 4000 in the last 5 weeks. I think that means I've taken more pictures in the last 5 weeks than I have in the previous 3 years...

Picked my first 'pic of the day' that I don't really like technically yesterday -- I got a portion of the cart in the bottom right corner of the pic that kinda ruins it for me. Still, overall, I like the colors and the lines in it, so I'm sticking to it.

I leave for Tokyo Friday morning. I'm going to miss Halloween, which I'm sad about. :( Hopefully all goes well for the family in the week I'm gone: I'm sure that Jess would love for people to hang out and spend time with her here to help out with stuff, if you're free sometime next week.

Wow. Japan. Still kinda going 'wow' over that. :)

Everything else in life is just a rush to get things in line at work so I can leave at the moment, so I apologize if I'm somewhat boring.