Truer Words - A Journal

PMC Day 1: Sturbridge to Bourne, by the Numbers

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:03:02 GMT

Saturday, August 2, 2008

This was my sixth year riding the PMC, and my fourth year to include the Huckleberries ride (which makes it a three-day event). Those previous three years, I was totally exhausted on Saturday morning from the hard ride on Friday.

This year was different...

PMC Day 0: The Huckleberries Ride Again

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:50:25 GMT

Friday, August 1, 2008

This ride was epic.

There were fifteen of us, as shown in the picture below:

15 at the Start

From left to right: Scott, Joel, Jon, Tom, Mark, Dave, Tim, Not Sure, Ellen, Me, Steve, Mike, Mark, Not Sure, and Steve.

Could someone fill me in on the "Not Sures" please?

Did I forget to mention that I was riding with Lilliputians? They may be tiny, but they make up for it with numbers!

Click the image for higher resolution. (This is Mark Stockwell's photo, used with permission.)

Not pictured...

PMC 2008: Day -1, "Holy Screwed Up Feet, Batman!"

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:17:27 GMT

Thursday, July 31, 2008

“Day -1” is the travel day from home in Mystic, CT to our hotel on the MA/NY line in West Stockbridge, MA. This day is normally quite uneventful, if slightly stressful. I sleep poorly the night before (mostly due to excitement), work in the morning instead of packing, hear a little (deserved) fussing from Corinne because I haven't yet packed, then finally pack everything into the car and leave.

Things were a little different this year. I slept well, and only worked for less than an hour in the morning, while Corinne was at a doctor's appointment (checkup), and manage to pack most of my clothes before she returned. I checked my Gmail account to see if any new software donations had come in, and found that someone had donated 1,000 licenses of his app!

After Corinne returned and we finished the packing, I started loading up the minivan which we borrowed from my Dad for the trip. My bike was the last item to go in, and I was prepping it in the garage. Dad was holding Lauren, and kept "peeking" her out around the garage door so I could say "boo!" and make her giggle a little. The last time he did it, I jumped at her to get a bigger reaction... and my left foot landed squarely on an old screw on the garage floor... !

Our First Attempt at Camping

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:09:17 GMT

This was quite a weekend.

Occasionally, our ecclesia goes camping together. It's not every year, but probably 3 out of 4 years, in mid-June. Wanting to share new experiences with Lauren, I decided to give it a go this year.

I've never camped. Maybe 30 years ago, when I was little, Jed and I used to camp out in our back yard, but otherwise I've never camped. That's ridiculous.

We all got spots near each other at the Hopeville Pond State Park (thanks to Ellyn for organizing the whole weekend). Not being a camper, I have no tent so Mark and Michelle loaned us theirs, and an air mattress. Gary and Ellyn loaned us a couple of sleeping bags, and Lauren and I headed over there Friday evening.

Mark helped me set up the tent (he wasn't staying over night) and pump up the air mattress, then we all settled in around the campfire. At about 10:30 I said goodnight to everyone because she was falling asleep on my lap and I wanted to let her sleep in the tent. After a diaper change and lots of fun taking out my contacts near total darkness, she was curled up like a kitten on one of the sleeping bags, fast asleep.

That lasted for a little over an hour. More than enough time for me to fall into a deep sleep.

Then, she woke up. Happy. VERY VERY HAPPY. She came over to me. She patted my face. She laid her head down on my chest and said "aaaaahhhhhhh", then went back to sleep for three minutes. Then she kissed my cheek and slept with her head on my arm... for a few minutes. Then she laid down completely on top of me and slept for a few more minutes. Then she tried to get into the suitcases.

This went on for hours. She wouldn't settle down, and would cry when I try to put her back on her own sleeping bag. Otherwise, she was perfectly happy... but also totally wide awake and unwilling to let me sleep.

At 3:45 AM I finally gave up. By 4, we were both back in the truck and headed home.

I think if I were ever facing torture, I could handle some pain, but they'd break me in a day or two with sleep deprivation.

I/we slept until late morning, then drove back to the camp site. Saturday night we didn't even try: just went home, got a good night's sleep, and went back again Sunday morning.

I'm glad we tried, and I hope we can try again next year when she's a year older.

Nobody's Home

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:15:55 GMT

My grandparents needed some help with "things," so Ellyn (technically, my aunt... Dad's sister) asked Corinne to go down with her for a week. Originally they were going to drive, but (thankfully) I talked them out of that idea. They flew out Tuesday afternoon, and come back on Tuesday the 22nd.

With Corinne out of the house for a week, I can't sleep at home. (Shannon's 21, her husband won't be home for another nine months, and I don't want anybody getting the wrong idea.) Since I can't stay at home, I suggested they take Lauren with them also. Shannon and I both need to work, but one of us would have to take the week off to watch Lauren full time if she had stayed at home.

Thus, my first tweet of the day, yesterday, "Woke up alone in a strange house in a small bed, far from home." (The bed was in Ellyn's & Gary's guest room.)

For most of the week they're gone I'll be working from home, but mornings from Thursday to Saturday are at Rich's house. He and his family are out of town, so I'm making friends with his gigantic, 30-inch Cinema Display and officially Getting Stuff Done™. In the afternoons I'm heading home again, going for a ride (weather is PERFECT this week), then working at home until late evening when I head back into Westerly for the night.

Yeah, I'm missing my girls. :-(

Corinne and Ellyn both report that Lauren was a nightmare on the plane down there. She screamed more often than she was quiet, and just wouldn't settle down. She slept great Tuesday night, but terribly Wednesday night and awoke everyone except Gramma. When Corinne and I last spoke, Lauren was screaming in the background.

I think my girls miss me, too. ;-)

Shannon's son Richie was supposed to be up here now for a three day visit, but that was canceled at the last minute. So Shannon is bored, but has Saturday off and is going bowling with her friend Jen.

Quick status update on Shannon: she is now working a second job at a Hallmark store, and can't seem to decide between starting a cleaning business (simply because her Mom says she could make good money doing it) and going to school for massage therapy (which is what she really wants to do). I'm strongly in favor of the massage therapy (because, as I said, it's what she really wants to do), but she also wants to get her son back. If she's working one or two jobs and going to school for massage therapy, there won't be much time left for her kids. I'm hoping she'll just keep on keeping on until Mike comes home in January.

I've Had a Day... But Shannon is Home

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:57:19 GMT

I woke up Wendesday morning about 1 second before the alarm, at 6:44:59 am.

Corinne had asked me not to wake her (or Lauren). Lauren has had a really bad cold, and I had to leave at about 8 so "please just let us both sleep in."

Did some reading. At 7:30 I tried to wake Corinne anyway. We needed to pick up the pickup (heh) at the garage, so she'd have a car to meet us in Norwich at noon. "Mom and Dad will bring me," she mumbled, eyes still closed, before rolling over and going back to sleep.

I called Dad. He would have their car up in Providence all morning. So, at 7:45 I left the house on foot and walked the mile to the garage, and drove the yota home. Corinne was up when I returned, and clearly felt pretty guilty about not getting up. "I thought that must be what you had done," she said when i told her I had walked. I wasn't upset with her, though. She and Shane are/were both very difficult to awaken in the morning.

After switching Lauren's car seat into the Toyota and topping off the Blazer's radiator (there's a leak in the cooling system, somewhere), I left in the Blazer at about 8:25.

Corinne called me at some point. She told me that Steve, our landlord, had been to the house this morning. With a real estate agent. They are going to sell the house, and we'll have to move. We've been here for about 9 1/2 years. OY!

Arrived at Quinlan Cottage (the halfway house where Shannon lived for the last five months) at a little after 10. She was out on the porch with a couple other girls, waiting for me. "Yay!" she yelled, clapping.

The four of us (including the two that were on the porch with her) carried her stuff out to the car. Good grief! She went to prison with nothing but the clothes on her back, and I literally packed the truck full of her stuff for the trip home.

We left at about 10:30.

Shannon and I talked for a little while, and I had her read a letter that Corinne wrote that explained her feelings about last week's "issues." After she read the letter, she said, "I'm going to make you guys proud. No more screwing up, I'm tired of people always being disappointed with me."

Stopped at a highway rest area to get something to eat (and pit stop). Shannon's treat! ;-)

I called Corinne (or she called me, I don't remember) to tell her we'd be in Norwich at about noon.

At a few minutes after 12, we pulled into the parking lot at the Norwich parole office. There was a guy there getting into his car... very slowly. Very, very slowly. Clearly he was waiting for us to get out so he could say something. So, we got out, and he said, "Are you here for parole?" Yes. "Ok. Because you can only park here if you're here for parole." Yes, we're really here for parole. I pointed at Shannon.

So I turned it around on him. "Are you Mark?"

Heh. He looked very confused for a couple seconds. "Ohhhh... oh! You're here to see me." He looked at his watch. "And you're right on time. I'm heading out to Middletown to pick someone up." (So in other words, he was leaving right as we were supposed to show up.) "Go home, and I'll be there in a few hours."

After searching the parking lot for the Toyota, we left hoping to find her on our way home. Instead, we found her in the next parking lot up the hill, just pulling into a space. Hugs all around, then I explained what happened and Corinne and I switched trucks for the drive home so Corinne and Shannon could chat a little. I predicted that Ossifer Sarsfeld would show up at our house around 4.

Arrived at home, lugged all the stuff into the house, had a late lunch, and put Lauren down for her nap.

I was trying to work in my office (in the basement) at 4:20 when I heard the loud knock on the front door. Told shannon he was here, and ran up to answer the door then found Corinne back in the bedroom.

Shannon is not under normal parole, she's under a program called "Transitional Supervision" (TS). She's still technically a prisoner. She's not allowed to leave the state or drive without permission. Not allowed to be near drugs or firearms. Any violation results in immediate return to the clink. He said he will ask his superiors about an exception to allow her to go to Westerly (where our 'church' is) thrice a week, but he was pretty clear that she woudln't be able to take the job she'd been (almost) promised at the Westerly Staples.

She's also required to get a job. So the standard policy is: you must have a job, but you're not allowed to drive. Nice.

We'll find out about the "exception" (to allow Shannon into Westerly) next Wednesday, when she has her first weekly appointment with him in Norwich.

After he left I spent a few hours working on my class, had dinner with Shannon and Lauren (Corinne never eats dinner at a regular hour, even though she cooks it for me almost every day), then left for class (where I was teaching) at 7:15. Class started at 8, finished at 9, and I was home at 10 and in bed a little after 11.

As I said: I had a day. In fact it feels more like two or three days jammed into one.

Registration for PMC Opens January 2, 2008

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 14:31:32 GMT

Registration for the PMC 2008 opens next week!

Pan-Mass Challenge - Registration for Heavy Hitters

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

This registration period is for 2007 Heavy Hitters only (those who raised $6,300 and above) and GUARANTEES the route, Saturday night accommodation, and return transportation* of their choice.

On January 8th registration will open for all alumni riders and we can no longer guarantee your preferred ride options.

*we cannot guarantee fast ferry availability

I actually considered not riding in ’08, but my reaction to "next week" has changed my mind. I'm excited!

My Week

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:29:59 GMT

Life is feeling a bit repetitive right now, and it's flying past much too quickly.

Life is feeling a bit repetitive right now, and it's flying past much too quickly. ;-)

Here's my weekday schedule:

6:30 — wake up!, shower, etc.
7:15 — read
7:45 — coffee at Dunkin Donuts
8:30 — stat working
10:00 — break, say hi to Corinne and Lauren
12:00 — lunch
1:30 — another break (sometimes)
6:00 — move from office to dining room, have dinner, watch Lauren
7:00 — Wednesdays and Fridays only — go to Westerly for class
9:00 — give Lauren her last bottle, put her to bed
11:00 — go to bed

Boring.

Times are variable by up to an hour, depending on the day, but the basic structure doesn't really change.

There are a few exceptions: two or three times per month I awaken Lauren early and pack her up for a trip to visit her Mom in Norwalk or her Dad in Somers. Both are about two hours away. It's a pain in the butt, but it provides a little variety in my week and it's good to see both of them. (Oddly, I can actually sit and talk to Mike in prison for 60-90 minutes, but Shannon can't have visits at the halfway house so all I can do is drop Lauren off and pick her up again a few hours later. When Lauren is visiting Shannon, I work from Starbucks for a few hours.)

The other exception: Tuesday mornings I have breakfast with Rich at 9:00 (again, times may vary, right Rich?) at a little diner in North Kingstown, RI, then we go back to his house to work for a few hours.

Do you see what's missing? I haven't ridden my bike since November 1st!

Something's going to have to change. If the monotonous schedule doesn't drive me nuts (and I think Corinne is feeling it at least as badly as I am), the lack of exercise certainly will.

I Am A Comedy of Errors

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:09:42 GMT

Yesterday afternoon I went for a ~31 mile bike ride. Due to weather and travel, it was my first ride in eight days.

When I ride, I put a cheap cell phone, my debit card, and an old license in a zip-lock bag, and put the bag in a jersey pocket. I can pick up Gu, Gatorade or a new tube if needed, or I can call Corinne for a pick-up. If I'm knocked out (as happened nine years ago), the old license will tell people who I am.

After a ride, I put the bag on the shelf by my bike. I'm all sweaty, so pulling everything out of the bag at that moment would defeat the purpose of the bag.

Well, this morning I awoke Lauren at 7:20 so we could drive up to see her dad (Mike) during the morning visiting hours, and still be home in time for a few hours of work and another short ride. First stop: the Dunkin Donuts right up the street, for coffee. I waited in line for ten minutes (grr), and then — at the window — realized I didn't have my wallet. They know me, and told me to just take it.

Drove back to the house, grabbed my wallet from the shelf next to my bike (in the garage), and left again. Corinne just shook her head. I could hear her thinking, "That's my husband!"

We needed gas, but were running a little late so decided I'd go back to pay for the coffee this afternoon, and just head for the prison in Somers, CT. Plenty of gas stations on the way (the Dunkin Donuts is at a gas statiion).

The first, just three miles from the house, was closed for renovations. So, we continued to Norwich and stopped at a big, new Citgo. Grabbed my wallet, hopped out to pump the gas, and as I opened it I had something like a daydream, a vision, of my debit card (and only credit card) waiting patiently in a zip-lock bag. On the shelf. Next to my bike.

Sigh. We'll try again tomorrow morning.

(At breakfast yesterday morning, Rich argued with me that I should always keep a little cash in my wallet. "Don't need it," I said, "I just use my card for everything." D'oh!)

Visit with Shannon, and Her Therapist

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:54:51 GMT

Corinne, Lauren and I drove to Norwalk for a visit with Shannon and her therapist, yesterday.

Though she still hates the whole experience, she has decided (or perhaps "realized") that discipline and structure are good for her. The therapist was there to express Shannon's hope that we'll provide some of that when she comes home.

She's coming home, we think, on December 26th. That's the date she's been given, and will most likely be under a program called "Transitional Supervision." Essentially, she's still a ward of the state. She'll be required to have and keep a full time job, and will be monitored very closely. But most important is that she'll be here, with us and her daughter.

Anyway, she's worried that she'll fall back into her old habits when she comes home. She has no resistance to peer pressure, and said that the first time she hangs out with her old friends she'll end up smoking pot (or worse).

We all agreed to a few simple rules. First, her friends can't come to the house. Our home is a sanctuary: ours first, and hers as long as she chooses to live here. Second, she's going to take care of her kids (both Lauren and her son, Richie) when she's home, and she won't bring the kids anywhere that they "shouldn't be" (such as where her friends might be drinking or smoking pot). Third, she's going to do what she can to support herself and her kids with the money from her job, and will work to pay off their old debts. We'll help her figure out a budget once we know what her income looks like. If she can also help with Mike's ongoing expenses while he's still 'away', she will.

The therapist rubbed me wrong at first, but we both relaxed eventually and it was a good meeting.

Afterwards, we gave Shannon a ride to Staples so she could show Lauren off to all of her coworkers. (Thus these pictures of her and Lauren in front of the store.) Then another quick ride to the Starbucks parking lot. From there she walked the mile and a half back to the halfway house, pushing the stroller and lugging the diaper bag, so she could have Lauren to herself for a couple hours. (We weren't supposed to drive her at all, but it was a few miles from the Therapist's office to Staples. The traffic was heavy and it was sprinkling.)

I worked from Starbucks for ninety minutes while Corinne ran over to Carters for some baby clothes (immediately after telling Shannon that we never need to buy clothes for Lauren because others have been so generous). We grabbed some lunch at Stew Leonard's, picked up Lauren at a few minutes after 2 PM, and were home again a little after 4 PM.

Gone for the Weekend

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:50:17 GMT

We'll be gone for the weekend, as of noon today.

Every year all of the ecclesias in New England get together like one big ecclesia in early October. This year — for the first time, as far as I know — it was turned into a full (study and social) weekend in Massachusetts.

This is, in fact, one of the reasons that Jed and Alycia chose to come out here at this particular time. Looks like it's going to be a great time.

I'm sincerely hoping that the place we're staying has absolutely no internet access. In fact a complete lack of phones would be great, and a good stiff wind to prevent smoke signals and carrier pigeons would be perfect. However, that's not very likely, so I imagine I won't be able to stay entirely offline the whole weekend.

("Just don't bring your laptop, Seth," I hear people muttering. Pipe down, you.)

PMC Day 0: The Huckleberries Ride Again

seth@macrobyte.net — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 03:59:26 GMT

This was the third year in a row that I participated in the Huckleberries ride. This is a 95 mile ride from the border between New York and Massachusetts (on Route 102 in West Stockbridge) to Sturbridge, MA.

A few things about this ride never seem to change: the core group who has been doing it for eleven years, the heat, and the pain of climbing the longest hills.

One thing that does change is how we all handle the weather and the climbing from year to year. Two years ago I rode quite well (for me) in spite of heat and humidity like I've never experienced (on a long ride) before or since. Last year was hot but rainy and I suffered with stomach cramps for the second half. This year...

BC for Jed's Wedding

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:16:38 GMT

I'm leaving for Jed's wedding in British Columbia in a few minutes.

It's been a crazy few weeks. I'm looking forward to the wedding, but I really don't like having to go out there without Corinne. :-(

Probably won't be any updates until I'm back on Tuesday (after a redeye flight). Don't burn the place down while I'm gone, please!

Visiting Mike

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:16:19 GMT

No ride today (though I did 40 yesterday), because I'm going to visit Mike.

"But wait," you say, "I thought Mike's prison was only fifteen minutes away! Why would a short evening trip like that prevent you from riding your bike in the afternoon?"

Well, first of all, you obviously have a great memory since I haven't talked about that in awhile. Congratulations.

Second, Mike has been moved. To Osborn CI, a prison that is all the way up on the MA border. Here are directions from my place to the Osborn Correctional Institute.

Ugh!

He needs the visit, and we miss him. We haven't seen him since he was taken out of Radgowski almost three weeks ago. Still... with traffic it's going to take almost two hours each way!

But Pink is So Not My Color!

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 29 May 2007 17:33:52 GMT

Shortly after leaving for Portland almost two weeks ago, my left eye turned slightly pink. "Allergies," I kept telling myself, though I've never had allergies. Hey, it could happen! The eye gradually turned more and more pink over the following nine or ten days, and the right eye started showing a little color, too. No irritation, no discharge, just bright, pretty colors. (Though Laruen looks better in pink than I do.)

Thursday, on the long ride with lots of sweat running into my eyes, there were a couple twinges. I ignored them.

Saturday it hurt. I left the contacts out as much as I could. I hate wearing glasses, but it's marginally better than actually going permanently blind. (That's a guess, since I've never actually been blind, but it seems logical.)

Sunday it hurt a bit more, but it stopped hurting when I was doing something physical like thowing a frisbee for hours with Bill Ellison (again). When we came home, it felt like acid was dripping into it every few seconds. Acid in, tears out. (Not as in "boo hoo," but as in, "Hey look, my eye is leaking.") So i went to the doctor, who put in a drop of something to numb it and immediatly had a new best friend!

So no, it's not an allergy as I wanted to believe. He diagnosed it as bacterial conjunctivitis, which is generally caused by either staph or strep bacteria. He gave me some antibiotic eye drops, and sent me on my way.

Three hours later, the numbing drops wore off... but by Monday afternoon, all of the pain was gone because the home team had finally started to beat back the invading horde. So I did what anyone would do: I popped in my contacts and went for a long bike ride! After all, I have to stay in shape if I'm going to win this war, right?

Ready to Go Home

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 20 May 2007 05:44:13 GMT

The conference has been good, I think I've accomplished what I'm here for.

This evening, Sean and I meandered all over the back hallways of the convention center, trying to find some way to reach the glass towers for some good photography. Apparently it's not possible (even in a clandestine manner) without a ladder or the means to open locked doors. Oh well.

I'm the one traveling, so you might expect that I'd have something interesting to say about my day. For some reason i find Corinne's latest update much more interesting than anything happening out here.

Guess it must be time to go home. I'm obviously feeling a smidge homesick.

Picture of Sean and a Fountain

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 18 May 2007 21:03:37 GMT

Here's a picture of Sean McMains, taken last night on our way to dinner. Yes, he's taking a picture of a fountain on the sidewalk. These copper fountains ("bubblers") are all over the place.

Cool feature: click this picture to zoom in on the fountain. Try it!

Update: Now you can Zoom Out from this picture, too. This is what we call "meta photography."

RailsConf 2007: Really Starting Now

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 18 May 2007 15:17:57 GMT

RailsConf is finally getting started. The Guidebook, yesterday, was worth attending. Greg went to it last year, I missed it, so I'm glad I went this year.

Now Chad Fowler is actually giving a really good talk about changing the Rails community. He's a bit of an idealist, but he's also a better speaker than I remember. First on his list is having the 1600 people here donate to charity.

Crap. Now whoever is on screen is pushing Textmate. Sigh. He just introduced DHH as the man who introduced him to Textmate.

DHH: "the textmate story is a very interesting one, it's very similar to Rails."

He didn't like the text editors on the Mac, so he decided to do something about it. Says that's what he did with Ruby: he didn't like the "web stuff" on Ruby, so he did something about it.

I wish I was a DHH fan. He's very dynamic and, uh... "confident." He'd make a good leader, if only I were a follower.

The Stay-at-Home-Logue

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 18 May 2007 04:49:49 GMT

In response to my travelogue, Corinne has written up a funny accounting of the first two days at home since I left.

Have to say that I now understand why she wouldn't tell me about it over the phone. I think she didn't want to hear me trying to figure out if it was ok to laugh or not. :-)

When Lauren is crying because she's hungry, you don't have any choice: you simply MUST feed her. The alternative is (your own) death or total insanity, which clearly aren't "choices."

Her decision to feed Lauren in the back seat of the Blazer sounds familiar, doesn't it?

RailsConf 2007: Travelogue, Day One

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 17 May 2007 01:34:20 GMT

@ 6:54 AM (Eastern)

No trouble going to the airport. I drove to Dad's house, arrived at 5 am, we were at TF Greene by 5:45.

They've announced that the flight is "overweight" (overbooked?) and they need five passengers to voluntarily bump to the next flight in return for a $250 travel voucher. About a third of those in the waiting area jumped at the chance. I'm seated farthest away, and when I saw how many people jumped I didn't bother.

If an upgrade to first class on the Chicago-Portland leg was an option (or on the return trip), I'd have sprinted. ;-)

@ 9:35 AM (Eastern)

Oops! Scratch that. I don't know what all of those people were doing, but when they boarded the flight they still needed three people to bump themselves to another flight. I went to the desk and asked when they could deliver me to Portland if I bumped.

He looked and looked. Then looked some more. "6pm," he finally said. "Any chance of first class?" His response? "Oh, if you want to go first class then I can get you there at 5:15, and it's a straight-through flight to Seattle." (Well, not really straight through. We stop in Chicago where I'll have to change seats, but it's still first class on the same plane. [Update: or so I thought. Different seat, different plane, different flight, still first class.])

The flight from Seattle to Portland is very short and on Alaska instead of American.

So now I'm at Logan (Boston) instead of TF Greene, after a very long (rush hour) cab ride. The airline paid for the cab, but I had to pay the tip. I think it'll be worth it.

@ 3:39 PM (Central)

Man it takes a long time to fly across the country.

Flight to Chicago was uneventful.

I'm now about halfway (or more?) through the flight to Seattle. First class is fine... the seats are about as wide as those in coach from fifteen or twenty years ago. (Not nearly as wide as first class was about eleven years ago, the last time I flew in first.) The leg room is great and greatly appreciated, though.

@ 3:44 (Pacific)

I'm in Seattle. It's been years since I was last at SeaTac, I'd forgotten that it's really a gigantic shopping mall that happens to land jets in its parking lot.

Took me fifteen minutes to find a plug where I could hook up the laptop and phone for a recharge... all the way at the end of Concourse C, though my gate is more than halfway to the other end.

The laptop's charge isn't quite so important, because the flight to Portland is just 45 minutes on a puddle jumper. I'm unlikely to have the time or room to accomplish much of anything. The phone, though, is almost completely dead. It's a Sony Ericsson W600i, with a "play me some music" button that's slightly too easy to hit. When I took it out of the sleeve on my laptop's carrying case's shoulder strap, it was playing a song and had worn the battery down to almost nothing.

At least I remembered the charger.

I've been semi-productive on my flights. I didn't work the whole time mainly because I'm tired, but I did estimate a project for one client, and started some new work on one of "my" modules in BBEdit.

My final leg of this journey is in 30 minutes, boarding starts in 10. Final update of the day should be from my hotel in Portland. That's assuming, of course, that my baggage has arrived and that I can stumble (half asleep) to the right hotel shuttle.

@ 7:18 PM (Pacific)

Yay! I'm in my hotel room at the La Quinta, about two blocks North of the convention center. This isn't the official conference hotel, but the rates are better and the official hotel was booked when we tried to make my reservations.

My feet are sore, and I'm tired.

The flight from SeaTac to Portland was definitely a puddle jumper, but I had the very first seat at the front of the plane (not counting the pilot or the steward) with lots of leg room so it wasn't bad.

Took the "light rail" from the airport to the convention center station, then walked the block from the station to the hotel. Called Corinne to let her know I made it, talked for a little while, then tried to find Sean and Mark for dinner. Alas, I was too late, they're already at dinner, so I will forage alone tonight.

At least I'm here, and I've only been up for 18 hours so far. I think.

Dinner at Zaftigs With Some iFolk

seth@macrobyte.net — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:20:15 GMT

I had dinner last night in Brookline, MA, with Andy Inhatko, Rich Siegel, Dave Nanian and Steve Siska. (The Four Horsemen of the iPocalypse?)

The evening started with a drive to Rich's house in RI, where he surprised me with a gift: a real chainmail glove to protect my hand from the parrots when they're cranky! Very cool. Corinne and I both think this is something my brother would love, so I need to remember to show it to him when I fly out for his wedding in June. (But knowing Jed, he already has one.)

We drove up to Zaftigs Delicatessan in Brookline, MA for dinner. We arrived a little late because traffic was mostly stopped on Route 128, but everybody else (except Dave Nanian) was late, too: Andy had a chat with a mac user group, and Steve was stuck in traffic just like we were.

After dinner we walked a couple doors down to an ice cream shop, where Rich snapped a picture of Andy (and where, after we left, I took the picture of the group).

It was a good evening with lots of chat about a movie I hadn't seen (Borat) and a certain phone none of us can own until at least June.

Oh, if you're looking at my pictures, don't miss the ironic OnlineRealty.com OFFICE — that's just wrong, Rich and I thought for a moment we had fallen into Second Life — nor the brick building with a wall of fake windows.

Jed Has Finally Entered Canada!

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:00:15 GMT

Jed just called me. He's finally in Canada... more than three months after he left our house!

(You may recall that a driving violation, years ago, had prevented him from crossing the border back in December, and he's been stuck in Seattle ever since.)

On March 10th he let us all know that he was finally free to enter Canada. He called me a few times today... his paperwork had arrived, and everything was ready to go. Then he needed directions to the closest Post Office on his way out of Bellingham, and promised he'd call again either after he crossed or was bounced yet again.

The funny (or amazing) thing is that this time they didn't even care who he was. They didn't ask for any paperwork, never ran his plates. They didn't ask to look inside his camper trailer. They never even asked him to step out of the truck!

Next up: Mister and Missus. I can't wait!

Macworld 2007 Recap

seth@macrobyte.net — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:27:14 GMT

My intent at the start of my travels for MacWorld 2007 was to provide daily updates on my goings-on and derring-dos. Hah. With all the hours in the show hall, and Dinners (with a capital D) every night, I quickly learned that there was almost no time for writing.

This entry will attempt to provide those details which I can recall…

My previous entry finished on Monday morning, and mentioned my plans for the day. This is where we'll pick it up.

Monday

Booth Setup

Bare Bones rented a 2-meter booth in the "overflow hall". There was room there for two presentation stations, or one station and stacks of literature, window stickers, and CD's. They chose the latter.

When I arrived (30 minutes early), nobody and nothing was at the booth. No boxes, no computer, no literature, nobody from Bare Bones. Nobody. So, I spent some time chatting with the guys from provue (makers of Panorama), and then went back to my hotel room.

Back to the booth again at 2:30. The "media rental" guy was there, and was annoyed that we hadn't received anything yet, so he made a call and five minutes later the computer (Dual G5 tower) and the display (30" Apple Cinema) were delivered.

The mac had the wrong display card for that display (only 64 MB of vRam), so it was only able to drive it at 1200x800. I thought that was actually a *good thing*, as it was for presentations, not "daily use." Eventually everybody agreed (or at least agreed to give it a shot), and I'm glad: the display looked great if you were standing back a few feet. We often had large crowds watching our demos, and the low-resolution display made it possible for them to see everything we were doing.

Brian Arrives

Brian arrived in the area a bit early, but I couldn't leave until 3 so he found a parking space over on Mission St. and then walked over.

We met up outside, and I took him downstairs to the show entrance. Couldn't take him past the doors for the lack of an Exhibitor badge, and the 90 year old security guard was clearly prepared to Take Him Out.

Eventually Rich came out, they met, we all chatted for a minute, and then Brian and I found his car so we could go…

Touring Fisherman's Wharf

Oh the tourist-trappiness. It was nearly overwhelming. Every shop offered kitsch at off-season discounts.

In the mid-nineties, while traveling all over the country at the behest of RR Donnelley's sales people, I'd been to San Francisco with Dirk Samuelson (an RRD employee). We found a shop, somewhere, with some very high quality sweatshirts and I bought a couple for my girlfriend, Corinne. Only recently did those sweatshirts wear out enough to require dumping, so I picked up a couple more. I couldn't find anything quite as nice as the old ones (isn't that always the way?), but I did my best by looking at the offerings of every single store.

Brian picked up some chocolate for his girlfriend (whose name happens to meet Macrobyte's standards, even though he hasn't worked at Macrobyte in many years ;-). Then we dropped our packages at his car and returned to Pier 39 for some pictures of the sea lions and us in front of Alcatraz.

After the pictures, he drove me back to the Marriott and then headed back out of the city.

Brian worked for me at Macrobyte for over a year, and we've been friends for over a decade, but that was only the second time I've met him!

Working the Booth

One of the benefits of working the Bare Bones booth is that everybody already knows about the flagship product, BBEdit. In fact, a lot of the people who come to the booth just want a new t-shirt, want to talk about how they use it every day, or they just want to thank someone for creating it. Very cool. Some were very enthused, and that's putting it mildly. (The one day I wore the shirt all the way back to my room, I was twice accosted by BBEdit fans.)

Bare Bones wasn't there for the accolades. It makes for great PR, but the real point was to demo their newest product, Yojimbo.

Truth be told, I was a bit skeptical about Yojimbo before the show. I'd been a beta tester, and then I'd used 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 a little. I installed version 1.3 but didn't do much with it. My problem was that I was too conscious of what it didn't do, so I never really gave it a chance.

That first day, I completely avoided doing demos of Yojimbo, and instead focused on answering questions and doing anything else I could think of that would save me from having to demo an app I wasn't really sure about. I watched Ciaran and Patrick, though, and some ideas started to gestate.

Wednesday morning, first thing, someone asked me to give them a demo of Yojimbo. Overnight I had thought about it enough to know how to tackle it, so I gave my first version of what would become "Seth's Yojimbo demo." It was effective, and I showed most of the app's features in about seven minutes.

Over the next three days I gave that demo many dozens of times, and kept refining it down to the point where I could literally demonstrate every feature of the application in under five minutes, while at the same time I told a simple story about using the software.

With practice I became more effective, and learned what to say. For example, I could show someone how to encrypt something in the application with a single click, but that always resulted in glazed eyes or the question, "Why would I want that?" However, as part of the story I mentioned that the receipt for the gift I've just purchased is right there for my wife to see, but I can hide it from her by just clicking that encrypt button: immediate comprehension.

People like stories.

Tuesday

Breakfast at the Garden Terrace again, this time with Patrick Woolsey (Rich Siegel's partner at Bare Bones) and Ciaran Benson (who worked the booth with us all week).

After eating, Patrick and I went down to the hotel's Shipping & Receiving dept. to pick up the t-shirts and schlep them over to the hall. Ciarnan went to the printer to pick up data sheets of BB's products.

Once we were all at the booth, we only had two things to do: collate all the data sheets and media kits, and fold a couple hundred t-shirts. Ciarnan worked on the paper while I folded.

Eventually, I figured out how to fold the shirts so that the Bare Bones logo was centered on the front. I showed Patrick and a volunteer from another booth how to fold them. With three folders we made short work of the pile.

Then I helped Ciarnan finish with the media kits and data sheets, just as hundreds of visitors swarmed the show floor.

Rules of the booth: drink a lot of water, use the Purel (hand sanitizer), and ask everybody if they have a question. Most will say "no," immediately before asking a question.

Rich's Friends

A bunch of Rich's friends came to the booth toward the end of the day, expecting that Rich would join them for dinner. He had other plans already (see below), but they still hung out at the booth for at least an hour. The bantering was fun.

Someone fussed that BBEdit doesn't support a certain, very simple file type used by Mac programmers. So that night I started throwing a module together, hoping to finish it by the end of the show. Didn't quite get there, but I did have it fully functional by Sunday night. (In fact, it's already in that gentleman's hands and is being beta tested.)

Dinner with the New Rock Stars

Brent had written to a small group on Monday night about having dinner on Tuesday. In his words, "A post-keynote, post-first-day dinner with a few smart folks sounds like just the thing." Apparently, a typo resulted in my receiving the invitation also, but rather than point it out I simply accepted. ;-)

So, Tuesday night we met at the top of the escalators before walking to the restaurant. Attendees included Brent Simmons, Buzz Andersen, Gus Mueller (his page mentions meeting me, in a funny way), John Gruber, Niall Kennedy, Patrick Woolsey, Paul Kafasis, Rich Siegel, Ted Leung, myself, and possibly one or two others whose names I can't remember (sorry!).

Update: Here is Ted's picture of the dinner.

I don't remember what I ordered, but it was terrible. Yuck. Niall — sitting right next to me — made me very jealous with his gigantic, juicy hamburger. Wah.

After the introductions, we mostly talked about the death of Apple Computer, Inc. (the pundits were right all along!), the new Apple TV, and the iPhone. Most notably, the lack of 3rd party app support on the iPhone, which bit everybody in that group right in the tuckus.

Oh, and I told my...

Funny John Gruber Story

What John Gruber story? OK, here:

BBEdit 8.6 added support for the Markdown language. (Markdown is like HTML shorthand, basically.)

Writing the Markdown support for BBEdit was very challenging. This is a language that's designed to be processed once, to convert the markdown to HTML. Speed of processing was not a consideration. However, I (that is, BBEdit's Markdown module) need to process at least part of the Markdown content with every keypress, so as to figure out what to color and how to color it.

While John was beta testing the module for us, he had a bunch of very particular bug reports and feature requests. He wanted everything to be just so. It was tiring, but I appreciated it because we needed a lot of testing very quickly.

Then he submitted one last bug report. Apparently, inline links can have titles (which I knew), and those titles are delimited by quotes. Here's an example:

This is some [linked text](<link_url> "link title").

The syntax docs on John's site said that inline link's titles were delimited by double quotes. Markdown.pl, John's implementation of Markdown in perl — the canonical Markdown interpreter — used double quotes to delimit link titles.

John's bug? He pointed out that even though it's not documented, and the interpreter doesn't actually support it, it's (somehow) a bug that BBEdit did not support 'single-quote delimiters' around the link titles.

(I still think it's funny, but I guess I can see why nobody else would.)

Wednesday

I don't remember much about Wednesday except the MacSB dinner, which was a couple blocks from the show.

After walking down there, I almost went into the wrong place. The restaurant I could see had a sign that said "Chaam Cafe," so I assumed I'd been given the wrong name. However, as I drew near I saw another restaurant next door, and the part of the sign I could read said, "t Cafe". I found out Thursday that others actually went into Chaam Cafe, and two of those with whom I spoke enjoyed a Mac-related party with a bunch of people they didn't know, and got a free meal out of it!

I ate with Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba, Jerry Kayne, and Willian Van Hecke from The Omni Group. However, the restaurant was very crowded and I was tired, so I left as soon as I was done eating.

Thursday

Breakfast

As with every other day on the show floor, we had breakfast at the Marriott. Rich joined us this time, and Agnes (one of the Omelette chefs) recognized him immediately and asked where he's been all week!

"The Fetch guys" sat with us.

MacBrainiac Challenge

Rich was the captain of the developers team for this year's edition of the Macworld game show, which pit the developers against the reporters with trivia questions. Chris Breen was the host.

At the last question — which was actually a challenge, not a question — the teams were tied. The challenge was to send Chris an electronic birthday greeting from their computer (one computer per team), without using email and with the understanding that his laptop was completely off the air.

The solution was to send an SMS message to his cell phone, from iChat. The contact info had been pre-loaded onto both machines, but you had to know how to use iChat with SMS. The reporters tried to use text-to-speech to have their mac deliver the message to Chris vocally, but that answer wasn't accepted. (This really annoyed Andy Inhatko.) Frankly, I think the only reason it wasn't accepted is that it's not the answer they expected. The question should have specified that the solution had to work whether Chris was in the room or 1,000 miles away.

Anyway, the developers won.

Show Floor

My Yojimbo demo was in full swing by this point.

The last couple days of the show mostly blurred together, but I think this is the day that Merlin Mann interviewed Patrick at the booth for about fifteen minutes. You can watch the video, here.

Patrick is about 6' 4" (Update: that said 6' 1" originally. Sorry Patrick. All you little guys look the same!) and weighs a good and very solid 280-290 pounds. Throw in the dark hair, the beard, and the low, rumbly voice and you'll see why I call him Paul Bunyan. :-) Put a knit cap on his head, a plaid, flannel shirt on his shoulders, and an axe in his hand...

Rich wasn't around for most of the day. He spent all day meeting with press people, being interviewed about BBEdit and Yojimbo.

Dinner

Rich made dinner reservations for us at a Chinese restaurant, Brandy Ho's. I walked all the way (a couple miles) in, which felt great. Man, what a city for people-watching. (Corinne wouldn't have enjoyed the walk quite so much, but as I walked I thought about how much she would have loved seeing all the people.)

In attendance at dinner: Rich, Patrick, Naomi (BB's PR person), Sandy (former BB marketer), Sal Sahogian.

Yeah, that's right. I had dinner with Saul, who you all know. :-D

He told a very funny and very memorable story about his days as a nightclub manager in NYC. No room to retell it here, but the best line was, "Sal, I'm starting to get upset," said in a very quiet voice.

After dinner, Rich joined me for the walk back and we mostly talked shop until we had to split for our separate hotels.

Friday

Friday was a blur of exhaustion, sore throats, and Yojimbo-demo-burnout. ;-)

The show ended at 4 PM on Friday instead of 6 like the rest of the week, and most of the hall was rolled up by 4:30!

I couldn't find anybody at the show who was actually selling iPods (how crazy is that?), so after the show I walked to the Apple store to buy one for Corinne. Picked up a 30 GB black (which she seemed to really like when I gave it to her Saturday).

Apollo

Update: I met Apollo on Friday, for the first time ever. Not sure how I forgot this when I first wrote it up, except that I was tired of writing!

(Apollo is a cyclist from the bay area, who has made some very generous donations to my PMC fundraising efforts in the last couple of years. He also had a horrendous bike accident that nearly ended his cycling for good.)

He works right down the street from the Moscone Center, so he took an extra-long lunch break to meet me and see the show. Rich and I were out wandering the show floor (after a friendly, thirty minute chat with the tm boys). We had stopped to talk to a known BBEdit user who happened to be 6' 6" tall (Rich said he felt like a hyphen between us), when this stranger walked up and said, "You must be Seth Dillingham!" He figured it out based solely on the fact that there were two guys there wearing BBEdit t-shirts, and I was really tall!

The most notable moment for Apollo, though, was clearly when the cute Australian boothbabe stepped in front of him and offered him some information about some product. Let's just say she could have sold him any software... ;-)

Apollo went back to the BB booth with me, experienced The Yojimbo Demo, took a couple pictures, and went back to work. Nice to meet you finally, Apollo!

Bare Bones took us out for a huge steak dinner at Harris' Restaurant. A little too far to walk (I was told), but totally worth whatever it takes to get there. Wow. Second best steak dinner I've ever had, and certainly the best ever at a restaurant. This was a celebratory "family dinner," with Rich and Patrick, Naomi, Ciaran, and myself.

Saturday

Saturday morning I packed my suitcase and caught a cab. There were five people in line ahead of me for the cab, but they all got on a shuttle.

Took the taxi to Rich's hotel to pick him up, and then to the airport. So far, it was all smooth...

Airports Schmairport

My itinerary said United Airlines, but when I tried to check in with United they told me I was supposed to go to US Air. GRRRRRRRRR. That's in another terminal about 500 miles away. So I said goodbye to Rich and hurried over there (though I had plenty of time).

Check-in took forever because my bag was overweight. This also cost me $50. It took them 20 minutes to print the receipt for that $50. This meant that by the time I got to the security line, I was already pretty frustrated.

Beep! That's me, trying to go through the metal detector.

"Sir, you'd better take off your watch and your belt. If you beep a second time, we have to do a personal inspection." That sounded ominous.

Beep! That's me, trying to go through the same metal detector with a tiny, forgotten pillbox in my pocket. I had to strip down to just shorts and t-shirt and stand in a phone booth which is rigged to detect eplosive residue. After that, the "personal inspection." I had to stand with my arms out the sides, palms up, while they wanded me from head to toe. This is all done right out in the open, of course. For your protection.

I checked my anger. Humiliation is the order of the day when you fly, now. It's the next best thing to security!

On the flight to Philly, I sat next to a Java programmer who was very jealous of how fast my MacBook Pro could wake from sleep (he had a Dell), and an old consultant to the printing industry who knew all about the startup of the RR Donnelley Lancaster West plant (which is where I met Corinne). He even thought he recognized her picture.

Philly to Providence was just a 40 minute flight, and I sat next to a couple who cuddled and made out the entire time. Touched down in Providence just a few minutes early, and walked straight to the baggage claim...

... and right past Corinne, who stood there looking amused. I realized what I'd done just a second too late. ;-) (In my defense, I was expecting her to be waiting for me outside, and I was trying to read the signs to see where my bags would come in.)

Thank you, Bare Bones, for letting me help out at the booth. It was a great week! (And it's even better to be home!)

Flight to SF, Dinner with Rich and Friends™

seth@macrobyte.net — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:29:38 GMT

Flight

The flights from Providence to Washington/Dulles, and from Dulles to SF, were exactly how you want flights to be: utterly boring and uneventful.

Thai Food

In fact, everything yesterday was boring except for dinner! I'm staying at the Marriott San Francisco, but Rich is at the W. So after I was settled in and caught up, I walked over there so we could figure out what to do for dinner.

The W has a slightly bizarre lobby. It looks like the entrance to a nightclub. I told Rich that it looked like they were sizing people up as they walked in, to decide if they were dressed well enough to get into the club. About an hour later the third (of four) for our dinner party showed up, and he also said that it looked like a night club! (I even walked most of the way around the building trying to find the real entrance.)

Rich, of course, has a ton of friends out here right now as he's been in the Mac software business (and successfully) for a long time. So I'll just consider myself lucky that he was able to go to dinner with me/us last night: doesn't look like that will happen again until (perhaps) Thursday.

The dinner party of four consisted of Rich, Ciaran (another friend of Rich's who will be helping out at the booth), someone who used to do the Bare Bones marketing but whose name I can't currently remember (sorry!), and myself. We went for Thai food.

On the way out of the hotel, Rich asked the concierge where a certain Thai restaurant was that he remembered from years past. "It was a little hole-in-the-wall place up on such-and-such a street..." The concierge didn't want us to go there. In fact, he repeatedly recommended something closer, and in the end he actually said, "It's much nicer, but I think you'll like it anyway." I repeated that twice after we left the hotel, shaking my head. What a snot.

Still, we went where he recommended, and the food was good, and served very quickly. There didn't seem to be any waiting at all, but we were discussing a tentative plan for World Domination (via fobs and keys, of course) so the wait may have just passed very quickly.

Rich has a picture of the dish I ordered... it was very pretty. If he sends it to me, I'll update this post.

After dinner we all went our separate ways, and then I went to bed.

Breakfast

This morning I went down to the buffet (at the Marriott's "Garden View" restaurant) for breakfast. Wow! The food was good, but the wait staff was amazing!!! There were at least two staff people (in vibrant, cobalt blue shirts) per guest. Seriously. But they were all very good at not getting in the way: when I walked from my table to the buffet, they always stepped aside or changed course, so their numbers were never a problem. And they were all very friendly... lots of "good mornings" and smiles all over the place.

(I'm not a big fan of formality, nor the effort to make the guest feel like royalty, but I admit that their almost-choreographed behavior was impressive. Still, I prefer the genuine friendliness of our waitress at Snoopy's, and Corinne still makes the best breakfast I've ever eaten.)

Today

We're setting up the booth this afternoon at 2pm, but that should only take an hour, maybe a little more. Brian is going to show up at about 3... I'd like to introduce him to Rich, if he's available, but then he and I are going to find something to do for the rest of the afternoon. The weather is nice, so perhaps we'll go to Golden Gate park (his idea).

Home Status

Corinne says she's doing ok at home, and managed a decent night's sleep last night (two down, five to go). Unfortunately, she woke up with a sore, puffy cheek. We knew she needed some dental work, but now it's urgent so she made an appointment for Wednesday. :-(

Mike's lawyer called my cell phone a few minutes ago to find out "what I wanted." I just "wanted" to know if he felt a letter of support for Mike & Shannon would help their case at all. He changed his tone very quickly: he feels it would, indeed, be quite helpful. So now I know what judge to write to, but I still need to speak with Shannon's lawyer to make sure she feels the same way and to let her know to expect it.

Traveling Solo!

seth@macrobyte.net — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 01:27:02 GMT

After RailsConf in June '06, Corinne said she was never going to another technical conference with me. I was too busy during the conference to pay much attention to her or spend much time with her. We never went anywhere or saw anything: I only left the hotel to pick up some supplies at local stores, and once to pick up pizza with Greg.

She was bored out of her mind, and was quite serious: no more travel with Seth to technical conferences.

Then I was offered a chance to work at the Bare Bones booth at MacWorld SF (which starts Tuesday). Yes, that's right, I'm almost certain to be the tallest and most unlikely booth-babe in MacWorld history!

Months had passed since RailsConf. The bad memories had subsided. "Ooh! San Francisco!" took their place. She wanted to go. I remembered the frustration (and reminded her), but frankly… I love having her by my side and didn't put up much of an argument.

We got tickets for the both of us.

Then Mike & Shannon — and the unborn baby — came into our lives. Work has been pretty good for the last few months, but it's not like we're rich (we couldn't have afforded this trip as a vacation, for example). With a bigger family to care for, the cost of (her) tooling around the city all week started to weigh on our minds. Last night she announced that she didn't think she should go.

For me, that came out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting it. I argued that it was too late for that, and that she'd change her mind again by morning.

Over the next 20 hours or so, we did what we also do when we disagree: we both switched sides. Repeatedly. (Note that this is not the best way to solve a disagreement!)

We tried to compromise by switching her return trip to Wednesday instead of Saturday, but it wasn't an option.

Now I'm sitting here in a hotel near the Providence airport, by myself. I used to travel alone all the time (I ate United's "Mileage Plus" program for breakfast) when I consulted for RR Donnelley, but I haven't gone solo since we married in 1997.

So the lonely giant goes off to San Francisco, mateless, and will miss his little lady every step of the way. If you see him on the streets of the big city, listen closely and you'll hear him mumbling. "It's only a week. It's only a week."

On the other hand… not having her with me means there will be nobody to stop me from buying (for her, of course) the brand new G6 iPod Phone iTV Pro. Or whatever they're going to call it. :-D

A Sense of Family

seth@macrobyte.net — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 01:44:31 GMT

Jed moved in with us at the end of July, 2005. His bedroom was in the back corner of our finished basement, right off the incomplete kitchen. My office is down here also, at the other end of the house.

I've always worked long hours — being self employed makes that almost unavoidable — but having Jed down here changed something for me: I regained a sense of family that (I'm ashamed to admit) I'd lost at some point in the years since Corinne and I were first married.

It's not that there was any trouble in our marriage. Not even close. We still felt like a couple, and we've always been in love with each other. We just weren't a family. Maybe it was related to losing Shane, I don't know.

Children aren't a required element of a family: I believe you can be a family of two. Plenty of parents-and-children "units" aren't very family-like. So, to my mind, children aren't the key.

Having Jed around provided me, at least, with that sense of family. The moment he left (Dec 6th), I was instantly aware of the loss of that feeling. I felt family-less.

At the same time, I became keenly aware of Corinne, upstairs, going about her day. She's home more now that she's not working, and her “office” (the bird room) is still having the drywall repaired and repainted, so she spends most of her time in her “new” office (the livingroom right above my head), or in the kitchen which is just one room over. I hear her movements, puttering around the house, talking to the animals or on the phone (or to herself!)

So what of it? I've found my lost sense of family by doing the obvious: spending more time upstairs, with the person (and critters) that make my family unique. I've totally stopped watching TV (for a couple of weeks, now), too, so when I'm upstairs I'm able to pay more attention.

Aside

Related to this — though I'm not quite sure how — is another change. I've been going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, every single day. Going to bed by 11 and getting up by 7 when everyone else is still sleeping, then having my breakfast and doing the readings out on the deck as the sun comes up.

Nothing earth shattering, but it's weird that this happened without my making a conscious decision to do it. For months I had been going to sleep extremely late, and then was too tired to get up at any decent hour.

Again, it changed when Jed left, but I think this is just one effect in a long chain of causes-and-effects.

I can't over-stress what a big deal this is for me. A lot of things in my life feel more “right,” now, than they have in a long time. And of course, this “sense of family” is stronger than it was when Jed was here (brother versus wife...). Plus, work has been more challenging and rewarding than it has been in years.

Questions

What will happen when the “bird room” is finished (possibly Friday, with a couple more days to move all the stuff back in there) and Corinne's office is no longer in the living room? There's no room for me to park in the bird room in the evenings, so it looks like we're going to replace Corinne's eMac with a used (or cheap and new) laptop so that we can BOTH be in the living room (or wherever).

If we're going to do it, I'm hoping we can pick it up before MacWorld SF. It'll be handy for her to have her own machine, so she can still check her email after mine is stolen from the show floor. ;-)

(Oh, hey, I hadn't yet mentioned that we're going to MacWorld...)
With all of these changes, all this new-found sense of family and rightness, will things get even better (or just “differenter?”) when we have the brand new baby girl here in the house?

(Oh, hey, I guess I hadn't mentioned that yet, either!)

Jed's Progress

seth@macrobyte.net — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:51:16 GMT

Jed is making some real progress in his move out to British Columbia. He just called (I think mainly because he was bored) a few minutes ago.

He had a flat tire today on the trailer which cost him a full four hours in Ohio. It would have been just 30 minutes, but before leaving he joined A Better World Club instead of AAA, and apparently they're restricted in Ohio. I'm not sure what that means or why it would be so, but that's what he said. He was at a service station for 3 ½ hours while waiting for his tires and then actually had to install them himself.

There were various other problems with the trailer that cost him a full day, but they're all sorted out now.

He'll be in Indiana tonight. When we spoke, he was coming up on Toledo, OH.

He's not enjoying this trip, but at least he's ok and making progress.

Truer Words - A Journal

PMC Day 1: Sturbridge to Bourne, by the Numbers

PMC Day 0: The Huckleberries Ride Again

15 at the Start

PMC 2008: Day -1, "Holy Screwed Up Feet, Batman!"

Our First Attempt at Camping

Nobody's Home

I've Had a Day... But Shannon is Home

Registration for PMC Opens January 2, 2008

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

My Week

I Am A Comedy of Errors

Visit with Shannon, and Her Therapist

Gone for the Weekend

PMC Day 0: The Huckleberries Ride Again

BC for Jed's Wedding

Visiting Mike

But Pink is *So* Not My Color!

Ready to Go Home

Picture of Sean and a Fountain

RailsConf 2007: Really Starting Now

The Stay-at-Home-Logue

RailsConf 2007: Travelogue, Day One

@ 6:54 AM (Eastern)

@ 9:35 AM (Eastern)

@ 3:39 PM (Central)

@ 3:44 (Pacific)

@ 7:18 PM (Pacific)

Dinner at Zaftigs With Some iFolk

Jed Has Finally Entered Canada!

Macworld 2007 Recap

Monday

Booth Setup

Brian Arrives

Touring Fisherman's Wharf

Working the Booth

Tuesday

Rich's Friends

Dinner with the New Rock Stars

Funny John Gruber Story

Wednesday

Thursday

Breakfast

MacBrainiac Challenge

Show Floor

Dinner

Friday

Apollo

Saturday

Airports Schmairport

Flight to SF, Dinner with Rich and Friends™

Flight

Thai Food

Breakfast

Today

Home Status

Traveling Solo!

A Sense of Family

Aside

Questions

Jed's Progress

But Pink is So Not My Color!