My blog. Personal thoughts, anecdotes, and musings.
I hate flying.
The trip started off with a long wait at the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport where I checked my luggage and waited for security.
Our plane came in and I immediately noticed that it was one of those propeller-driven planes from the 60s which had been demoted to a shuttle. That didn’t give me a good feeling.
I felt even worse at security. I removed my shoes, laptop, cell phone, and PDA, only to have the metal clip from my leather PDA case set off the metal detector.
Lillian and I are presenting at HighEdWebDev this year about Ruby on Rails and how developers can use it to be more productive. I’m hoping for a good turnout so I can generate more interest. It’s neat to see how far the community has come in the last year. There are well over 200 unofficial plugins for the framework that people can use. There are tons of new books coming out, and I am seeing developers do some really amazing <a target="_blank href=“http://www.
Book progress
Published October 19, 2006
I’ve been busy working on the book. I’ve got about four chapters done and the rest all mapped out. It’s a really interesting process that will take longer than I had expected. Pragmatic Bookshelf has a really neat production system; I get to see how my book will look as I write it.
The most difficult part of this whole process is just finding the time to write. I’m hoping to make some progress over the next two weeks.
IT Jobs
Published September 13, 2006
Getting a job in the IT field can be really difficult unless you know people or know how to market yourself. It’s not enough just to know your stuff. The people who get the jobs are the ones who either know someone who can get them a gig or are really good at promoting themselves.
You might think that promoting yourself means being a big egomaniac and bullshitting people into hiring you.
We went to the Festival in the Pines on Sunday with Dad. There were over 250 craft booths there with people selling all sorts of things from music CDs to jewelery to wooden furnture. I saw quite a bit of things that I would have loved to buy but I had no way to get them home safely.
It was hard to do that festival without Mom though. For years, even when I was very little, we’d all go together and look at the exhibits, enjoy the food, and roast in the unbearable hot temperatures.
Book
Published August 28, 2006
I signed the contract for my new book. It’ll be around 250 pages and I hope to have it done by January. The book will show programmers how to make things look pretty. I’m hoping to make it as easy to follow as possible for people who don’t have a formal design background so this process will be pretty interesting.
I’ve got a pretty large outline done and I’ve started working on the excercises for the tutorial sections of the book.
I spend a lot of time working with the Ruby programming language and the Rails framework. There was a huge security vulnerability announced today and we were all told to apply the patch. Unfortunately we weren’t told exactly why, or what the vulnerability is.
Many of us have looked at the source code and figured it out.
Looks like the storm is over. The core team has patched the holes and most people are safe.
The plan was that Erich, Josh, and Carissa were going to all get up early and go decorate the reception hall at the golf course while I stayed back with the kids. Everything was going according to plan until Erich’s car got a flat tire.
This just keeps getting better.
Did I mention the part about the ring? He left her ring in his car at the hotel, so that’s one more stop that needs to be made.
Josh’s car broke down right before the rehearsal so he hasn’t gotten his tux yet. Mine fit but his dad’s pants needed alteration. Erich picked his up but he may need some modifications to his jacket.
We didn’t get the rehearsal started until about a half-hour later and we were an hour late for the reservation at the restaurant. At least they didn’t give away our tables!
Josh organized a golf outing yesterday for anyone who was interested. We went to Wild Ridge and had a decent time despite some rather rude behavior by a certain member of the staff. I didn’t golf but I did zoom around all day in the cart. That was kinda fun, and it gave Josh a chance to relax a bit. Pictures are in the gallery.