Christopher Schmidt

Mistakes...

2009-10-28T14:06:48Z

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.)

Lynne's Wedding

2009-10-05T04:42:06Z

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?

Happy Birthday to Jess

2009-09-22T13:49:10Z

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.

Working

2009-09-21T15:19:41Z

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?

Shinybook Arrival

2009-09-09T16:45:18Z

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.)

Life

2009-08-20T12:46:48Z

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.

It's that Time Again!

2009-07-17T14:05:43Z

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.

Aughhh

2009-06-17T15:02:26Z

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.

crschmidt @ 2009-05-27T11:24:00

2009-05-27T15:28:18Z

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...

Rain, rain, go away

2009-05-27T15:14:31Z

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.)

Dear Allergies...

2009-05-26T15:38:35Z

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?

Wow, I'm Sheltered

2009-05-04T14:35:06Z

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.)

Roller Coasters

2009-04-23T15:04:51Z

I want to ride a roller coaster.

Stasis

2009-04-05T14:47:04Z

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.

Happy Birthday to me

2009-03-19T11:20:27Z

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.

Kids are cute.

2009-01-31T15:24:24Z

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."

comfy seat

2009-01-25T12:39:22Z

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!

OpenStreetMap Mapping Party, Somerville, Feb 14th + 15th

2009-01-25T00:59:46Z

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.

Oh, LJ

2009-01-06T13:48:00Z

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

2009-01-03T12:31:28Z

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.

Happy New Year, Everyone

2008-12-31T21:30:02Z

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

flickr2facebook

2008-12-30T07:57:12Z

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

2008-12-25T15:23:42Z

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. much. food

2008-11-27T22:51:51Z

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.

Photos

2008-11-18T16:00:59Z

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