Category Archives: Life

Charlie, Life, Web development

Excitement

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I can’t comment specifically, but there’s a few things happening right now that have me really excited (read: REALLY excited). The past year or so has been interesting, filled with ups and downs in plenty of areas. Some of those areas it’s probably best not to have ups and downs but there’s only so much you can do to control things in those certain areas. I suppose it’s a “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” situation. Well, here I am, still alive. And ready at that.

As I might have mentioned before, I’m a freak for learning new things. I’d probably be a lifetime student if it weren’t totally impractical and expensive, and eventually learning new things kinda seems pretty pointless if you don’t ever find a way to apply them somewhere. I signed up for this course, which is part of the excitement as of late, mostly to see what’ll come about by seeing someone else’s approach to problems with JS. I’ve been loving the applications built with jQuery lately, so I’m hoping that there’s a good extension of that area in the course. Even though some of the course is remedial in the beginning, what could it hurt to review a bit?

Other exciting news: Charlie’s talking quite a bit for a 15 month old, I find that so unbelievably adorable. He is, just like with most other development stages, shy about us catching him on camera or tape. So for right now, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Life

Kurt Cobain

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I learned a good lesson from Kurt Cobain. It wasn’t something that he did directly or indirectly that led to the lesson, more that my reaction to the life (and ultimately, death) of Kurt Cobain brought on what I would later discover as one of the most important lessons in my life.

From early on as a teenager I decided, for one reason or another, that I was going to be a judgmental, intolerant jackass. My mom initially identified it as snobbery, and I think in the beginning it was to some extent, later I think it was just a pattern of thinking I made for myself. At the time, I thought that conviction of your beliefs meant that one must shun all things that don’t mesh with them. Along with that, I was convinced that I was open-minded, cultured and educated. Looking back, I know now that I was purely sophomoric in a good many of my opinions, ignorant to the history that ultimately leads to popularity in not just popular music, but a good amount of culture that I thought I knew about. I was, as are most self-important youth, angry, opinionated and ignorant.

When it came to Kurt Cobain, I wasn’t particularly quiet about my distaste for him. Although I do clearly remember being much more angry about the mystery of his popularity and why everyone considered him to be such a genius than picking on the man himself, but as an educated musician myself—and by educated, I mean there was a time I could read music; now it’s just a bunch of dots, so take from that what you will—I took offense to mainstream garage rock and unleashed my undeserved vitriol on poor unsuspecting Kurt. It was wrong to do, and to this day I feel bad about it. Mostly because later I discovered that Kurt was pretty much the embodiment of angry, troubled youth and finding that out made me see him as a person—not just a musician whose work I wasn’t all that fond of.

The lesson learned from shedding my hypocritical (did I mention that I owned ‘Nevermind’ all while crapping all over it?) former self is that, yes people like different things, a lot of art out there is crap, (thank you Patton Oswalt) like what you like and drive on.

I have actually developed a decent collection of Nirvana that I do listen to from time to time and I serves as a reminder to make sure that I’m really looking at things before I decide that I don’t like them, and if indeed I do decide that I don’t like something to just simply leave it alone and save my energy for something more productive than hate.

Charlie, Life

Überdaddy’s cape is in the closet, for now.

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I’m interested to know how many dads became the stay-at-home kind in the past couple years. Although I’m now no longer the daily daddy I once was due to a new job, I’m sure if things were slightly different that it wouldn’t have been a poor choice to have me be exactly that. I’m pretty domestic and the wife has a very promising career ahead of her. Plus, I’m nuts about my son, he’s just a lot of fun to be around.

With that, things aren’t slightly different and I find myself back in the daily grind. It’s a difficult situation for me right now, I’m coming off a full year of watching my first child grow, turn one-year-old and I’ve been affected by that in a way I didn’t expect. The notion of spending time away from the family when I’ve got a full year of emotional growth behind it is hard to get past. I’m happy with my current situation and am glad things turned out well considering this year might have been difficult in a few ways, but the sacrifice isn’t easy.

Indeed, the time away from home makes the time spent at home sweeter and definitely gives me something to look forward to. The warmer weather is already starting to give a glimpse of how much fun this summer will really be.

Life

What’s that?

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It’s my front lawn! I’m a lover of winter weather, I could easily do with six months of winter and six months of summer—and that summer could have a high temperature of 55 degrees. I think I like winter mostly because I HATE hot weather, especially humid hot weather. There’s really just nothing fun about it for me. I also grew up skiing and sledding a lot, winter’s just always been my favorite time of year. Given that we’ve had a particularly snowy winter this year I’m pretty sure I’ve had my fill of it and the sight of a dormant lawn peeking through the melting snow has me pretty jazzed. It’ll be interesting to see how many of the projects I’ve got set aside for myself are completed and how many I decide can wait until whenever, meaning never.

Excited about getting a new bike, too. Ever since I had my Gary Fisher Aquila swiped from my back porch while living on Crystal I’ve wanted to replace it, probably with another Fisher but I’m open to other brands. Gonna head back to the Bike Rack and see what they can do for me. Every bike I’ve ever purchased with my own money has been from there, why break tradition? Besides, they’re nice folks and have good bikes, I’m sure I can find something.

Good coffee, Life

This week in Brent

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Going back for the second week of my new gig tomorrow. I like the place, the people are friendly, the workspace is nice and it’s close to home. It’s odd how important that last part is to me, but not that weird since I miss my family when I’m gone.

Getting a few shipments this week. Some lovely coffee from 49th parallel. I wonder how many people are now in love with their coffee since the olympics? It’ll also be interesting to compare it to the recent Intelli roasts that I’ve been drinking.

Also some more Ruby and Rails references making their way as well. Haven’t done much tinkering with the Rails 3 beta, probably best to polish my Rails 2 skills first. So many projects lined up!

Have a good week!