You Can't Win - January, 2007

Monday, January 22, 2007

Looks like I've been tagged by Dan Miser, now I'm supposed to share 5 things about me that most people wouldn't know.

My junior year in high school I was in the very first computer class offered by Waukesha South High. We had 1 TRS computer with an LED readout (no monitor), plotter (no printer), using a card reader instead of a keyboard and cassette tapes for data storage. And it was so cool I used to cut other classes to sit in the computer lab.

While serving in the Marines, I spent several weeks in the summer of '83 at Area 25 for a training exercise. I didn't know it at the time, but area 25 is a bit southwest of "Area 51", both are part of Nellis Air Force range / Nevada Nuclear Weapon test site. And no, I didn't see any aliens or UFO's while I was there.
During my time in the Marine corps, I was the only person I knew with his own computer. In 1984 I purchased an Apple IIc with it's 9" green monochrome monitor, 1mhz CPU, and a whopping 128kb of RAM. I spent many a free hour pouring over my stack of Nibble magazines and my Beagle Bro's "Peek & Poke" charts, banging away writing ProDOS and Pascal programs.
I started working for the family resturant shortly after turning 12 (making I think $1.10 per hour). In the 32 years since then I've never been without a job. I've never been fired or layed off, and I've always had another job lined up when I quit my current one.
I've totaled 3 vehicles and had another 6 or so accidents in my life. I've never been in accident as a passenger in a vehicle, and I've never had a passenger with me in my accidents.

Monday, January 22, 2007 11:05:35 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

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Saturday, January 20, 2007

CodeMash 2007

I made the trip down to CodeMash in Sandusky OH this past week. I ended up driving the 6 hrs there instead of flying because there's no flight into Sandusky, I would have had to fly to Cleveland then rent a car and drive the hour to Sandusky... just didn't make sense to me.

I have to say I was fairly impressed with the conference, for their first attempt the organizers did a great job of it. They had a good showing of speakers, including keynotes from Neal Ford, Bruce Eckel and Scott Guthrie. Topic's ran the gamut - Java, Ruby, Ajax, .NET, Smart Clients, you name it they had a little bit of everything. Ok, not entirely true.. there was no Delphi there, but I can't fault them for that since they never claimed there would be. Even as such there was plenty to keep me busy there, I got a lot out of Mary Poppendieck's session on Lean Software Development.

All in all it was well worth the trip, I'm looking forward to CodeMash 2008.

Saturday, January 20, 2007 10:53:37 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

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C# | Delphi

Sunday, January 14, 2007

America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride

I've taken on another commitment for the year - but one that is for a very worthy cause. I've joined the Team In Training (TNT) to help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I'll be participating in America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride at Lake Tahoe, NV on June 3rd. It'll be the first time I've ever entered a race of any sort. I've run 20+ miles a couple of times before, but that was 2 decades ago (a whole lifetime!) when I was in the Marines, and it wasn't for any sort of competition.

Now comes the tough part.. well, tough besides hitting the gym several times a week and going on all the training rides with the rest of the TNT team, then riding a bike 100 miles around Lake Tahoe, Nevada. I need to raise $4200 in donations by May 23. I've never been part of something like this before, so it's going to be interesting. They give a number of ideas on how to do fund raisers, etc. but I think it's gonna take some effort to get there. Sure seems like a lot of money to get people to just donate out of the kindness of their heart.

Sunday, January 14, 2007 9:28:26 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

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Fundraising for LLS

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