2011 Resolution Summary

Items that are crossed out are completed.

• Travel to Europe again. Travel to Asia or Africa.(Went to Australia instead. Which was an very, very acceptable substitute.)
• Visit a Disney park.
• See a place in the USA I've never been.
• Drop the waist size 2 inches and not break any bones.
• Go to Pycon and present or teach.
• Go to DjangoCon and present or teach.
• Present at LA Django
• Continue my Muay Thai and Capoeira studies, get back into Eskrima, learn some more BJJ, and practice the forms I know.
• Work out at least three times a week.
• Go back east and teach martial arts for a day.
• Finish some outstanding legal proceedings.
• Launch a site that does cool stuff and somehow brings in money. (Consumer Notebook)
• Get to the point with LISP where I can do cool stuff in it without needing a textbook. (I seem to have spent this time working on JavaScript instead).
• Blog once a week. That is at least 52 blog entries! (almost there!)
• Explain why I wrote Diversity Rocks.

Recap of 2010

This has been an unforgettable year. I can't believe all this stuff happened. I've moved many times, met wonderful people, and seen my life change in ways I could have never predicted.

The good:

• Met a whole new bunch of wonderful people - relationships to last a lifetime. Arthur, Audrey, Celso, Cody, Daniel, Jacob, Jeff, Lahn, Moriah, Skyler, Todd and others I'm certainly forgetting to my undying shame. Thanks for your awesomeness!
• Presented and taught at Pycon 2010.
• Had a blast in the blizzard of 2010.
• Prepped my house of 9 years for sale and sold it.
• Paid off my debts. I sleep so much better now.
• Left NASA after 5 years and 3 months for freelancing pastures. Thanks Eldarion LLC, Revsys LLC, Holdenweb LLC, and Bryan Klein. Being exposed to some of the incredible code and developers on these projects has made me a better developer. Show me more!
• Flew enough in the spring to put me ahead of notorious traveller James Tauber for about 2 months in sheer mileage accumulated.
• Got to reconnect with a cousin and met his lovely wife and handsome son. Also hung out with my Uncle Al and Aunt Sandra.
• Got a tour of Ames Research Center thanks to Michael Sims. He'll probably be presenting at Pycon!
• Attended another NASA wedding by Mark and Ariel.
• Took a cruise to Mexico on a ship that caught fire just months later.
• Said goodbye to Virginia and moved to Lawrence, Kansas to run with the unicorns and 5 months later to Los Angeles, California.
• Road tripped across the Western half of the country! Twice! Spent 3 days in Las Vegas over Halloween!
• Learned fundamentals of Capoeira from Celso Wills. Wish I could learn more from him. :(
• Learned how to drive and bought my first car.
• Worked on another course for Holdenweb LLC.
• Launched Django Packages.
• Presented at DjangoCon 2010.
• Started Muay Thai classes in Los Angeles. I've done quite a bit of it, but these were the first regular classes I've had in about 16 years.
• Brought my son to Los Angeles so I could spend a week with him for the first time in 15 months.
• Almost up to 7 years without a broken bone!
• Worked another year in Python related technologies.
• Started learning LISP and played a lot more with JavaScript (especially JQuery and JQuery UI).

The bad:

• Left my students in Virginia. The young ones were especially hard to let go.
• Had to say goodbye to friends in the DC area. Some people I'll miss are Alex, Beth, Brandon, Chris, Dave, Daye, Eric, Jim, Joe, Katie, Muhammed, Pilar, Rich, Renee, Ron, Sarah, Sebastion, Shawn, Steve, and Whitney. I know I'm missing some names!
• I'm far from all my immediate family: Carla, Ciana, Dad, Doug, Michele, Midori, Mom, Seth, and Timiri.
• Watched NOVA Django falter after I left the DC area. 
• Had to wait 15 months between spending more than a day or so with my son.
• Didn't really practice much Eskrima all year.
• Didn't blog enough. Last year I blogged almost twice as much!
• Frustratingly, haven't been able to finish something that prevents me from writing about certain things. Yes, this is quite vague, and my hope is to clarify it in a few weeks.

2010 Resolution Summary

Items that are crossed out are completed.

• Sell the house, pay off the remainders of my debts, and get my own place to stay. And get a car too.

• Travel to another country.

• Take my son to another country.

• Drop the waist size 2 inches and not break any bones.

• Go to an amusement park, visit the beach, and also see a part of the USA I've never been.

• Do more educational work for Python related technologies, and that includes getting the Django Education Foundation really rolling forwards.

• Throw away at least half my current stuff. I don't have much stuff now, and I want even less. Also, If I don't use or interact with any one of my non-book remaining possessions by 2011, I'm throwing it away.

• Move my blog to my own system and blog at least once a week.

• Get a mountain bike and have reasons to use it.

• Get back into Eskrima, focus more on BJJ, get into Capoeira.

• Hire a maid. I'm not messy, but I want someone to do the fine tuning of my place.

• Go to Pycon, DjangoCon, and a new conference.

• Have a beer with Thomas, Andy, Andy, Tony, Garrick, Bernd, and the rest of Ye Aulde Gange.

Rainbows on the prairie

What is life like on the prairie? Well, under the right conditions it is like this:



About two months ago I rented a nice house a few miles outside Lawrence, Kansas. My original goal was to bike into town a few days every week. However, I'm leery of biking alone down rolling country roads so I bought myself a cheap little car. It gets me to and from Lawrence.

My fun new activity is Capoeira. It keeps me in shape and is something new and exciting for me to do. In order to support the Capoeira, I started up a local meetup. Yeah, at the extreme end of things you see some crazy acrobatics but for most people its the chance to have fun and get in shape. I should post some video online of my antics at Capoeira.

I'm also doing a bit of cooking. The kitchen in our house is really nice and I'm practicing my old culinary skills. My hope is to do a cook-off or a food camp with local friends at some point. Or maybe just relax and just cook for fun.

I tried a ballroom dance class in the area but was not happy with the quality of instruction. Also, that each class we learned a whole new dance form meant that you never really got comfortable with a single method. That said, I did learn some nice steps and hope to do them at a conference and found I really enjoy salsa.

The food here is generally cheap and good. Especially when it comes to core produce and meats. Getting some of the edgier ingredients means paying coastal prices or more. Fish and seafood seems to be hit or miss. I've heard the barbecue is outstanding but haven't been to any of the really notable places.

Life is a lot cheaper here. The dollar stretches amazingly far. My monthly rent on a really big house is a third of the cost of my mortgage or much less than what I was paying for a room in Arlington, Virginia. That means I do a few more of the things I really enjoy and also be able to save at a good rate.

Moving away from DC

Way back in 1969, when I was about a year and a half old, my family moved to Laurel, Maryland, which is about 20 miles north of Washington, DC. Since then, I've lived in central Maryland, Washington, and Northern Virginia. I enjoyed my friends and family, and the things that I've done.

Yet I always wanted to see the rest of our world, try new things, explore new horizons. Breathe different air, if you will. My ideal existence would be to live in a lot of different places, living six months for a time in place to place so I can get a good experience of the planet.

Not long ago conditions came together that made it feasible for me to do all this. My house is sold, my son is 18, I don't currently own any furniture, and I have a job that allows/encourages for telecommuting (and that is because of Python and Django).

So on May 5th I'm moving to Los Angeles, California for a short term stay. I'm there to hang out with a certain artist/developer and to go on a vacation that I've wanted to do for many months. More details on this move in another post.

In early June I'm moving again to Lawrence, Kansas. I've got a number of friends there, but much more important are the professional reasons. The entrepreneur for my start-up will be living not far from there, Revolution Systems offered me office space, and the cost of living is amazingly low. Another nice feature is that its in the central point of the USA, so flying anywhere on the continent doesn't take that long.

I'm very excited, but I'm also sad to go. I'll miss being near my son, my parents and siblings. I'll miss all my DC area friends, who are way too numerous to list. I will certainly miss all my students, young and old, not to mention the other teachers at OMAA.

I will be coming back in late June, and then perhaps in either late July or August. And who knows, maybe someday my travels will bring me back to the Washington, DC area for an extended stay?

Resolutions for 2010

Since I start my decades at zero, that means we have just 4.5 hours left in this first 10% of the 21st century. And with just 4.5 hours left, I post my New Year's Resolutions.

• Sell the house, pay off the remainders of my debts, and get my own place to stay. And get a car too.

• Travel to another country.

• Take my son to another country.

• Drop the waist size 2 inches and not break any bones.

• Go to an amusement park, visit the beach, and also see a part of the USA I've never been.

• Do more educational work for Python related technologies, and that includes getting the Django Education Foundation really rolling forwards.

• Throw away at least half my current stuff. I don't have much stuff now, and I want even less. Also, If I don't use or interact with any one of my non-book remaining possessions by 2011, I'm throwing it away.

• Move my blog to my own system and blog at least once a week.

• Get a mountain bike and have reasons to use it.

• Get back into Eskrima, focus more on BJJ, get into Capoeira.

• Hire a maid. I'm not messy, but I want someone to do the fine tuning of my place.

• Go to Pycon, DjangoCon, and a new conference.

• Have a beer with Thomas, Andy, Andy, Tony, Garrick, Bernd, and the rest of Ye Aulde Gange.

New Year's Python meme

Tarek Ziade blogged this first. I'm just following the herd cause thats what a lone wolf does...

1. What's the coolest Python application, framework, or library you have discovered in 2009?

Django and Pinax. Technically I discovered those in 2006 and 2008 respectively, but it wasn't until 2009 that I got to really dig in. Django was really a blast from the outset of 2009, but it was about five lines of code that made me realize this was the framework to follow. Pinax is like a magical function decorator for Django, what more can I say?

Sphinx rocks too. I don't use it enough!

2. What new programming technique did you learn in 2009?

Thanks to James Tauber I really got into JQuery. Thanks to Brian Rosner I really got into Git as a DVCS. Yeah, I know YUI and HG are part of things too, but my dark secret is that part of why I really dig JQuery and Git so much is the guys who got me started on those tools.

3. What's the name of the open source project you contributed the most in 2009? What did you do?

Its a toss-up between Django Uni-Form and Pinax.

Django Uni-Form is my first successful open source project and about 75% of the code is mine, plus all the documentation and most of the marketing. Speaking of which, every NASA Django project (except for one) uses Django Uni-Form. Its in use by Discovery Channel, PBS, Washington Post, Washington Times, Richmond Times, and more. Of course, it wouldn't be anywhere near the success it is without the contributions of nearly a dozen people.

For Pinax I haven't done as much of the code as I wanted in 2009. Personal life issues swallowed up a lot of my time and energy, but I certainly evangelized and documented and taught it nearly every day. Pinax is not just me, its James Tauber, Brian Rosner, Jannis Leidal, and the rest of the Pinax and Django communities.

4. What was the Python blog or website you read the most in 2009?

Twitter. Certainly there are blogs I really enjoy following, but twitter is where it was at in 2009 for me. I read every blog it seems on Planet Python and Django, but my favorites include (in alphabetical order) Alex Gaynor, Chris McDonough, Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Jesse Noller, and Tarek Ziade.

5. What are the top three things you want to learn in 2010?

Driving cars.

How to cook again.

Much more Capoeira.

Something really nifty in Python I don't know yet.

How to count to three.

2009 resolution summary

Items that are crossed out are completed.

• Compete in tournaments and/or races

• Refinance the house

• Go to yet another country

• Get more people hired at NASA (Welcome Chris Adams!)

• Learn Django, JQuery, and get better at zc.buildout and CSS

• Stay with NASA another year

• Test for my 3rd degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do

• Not break any bones

• Fix up more rooms in the basement

• Take down that one tree in the backyard

• Enjoy my family more (Things are better with my parents, siblings, and perhaps my son).

• Go to PyCon, Plone Conference 2009, and DjangoCon

• Become much more active in the open source community

Recap of 2009

This has been an interesting year. Incredible life changes have meant I've gone between screaming excitement to the doldrums of depression.

The good:

• Made an amazing number of new friends this year. In alphabetical order I can think of Alex, Barbara, Brian, Chris, Eric, Jacob, James, Jannis, Jeff, Jesse, Mike, Niall, Rich, Shawn, Steve, Zain and others I'm certainly forgetting to my undying shame. Thanks for your support and also thanks for opening my eyes to what the world can be really like!
  

• I went to the West Coast for the first time! In California I visited friends in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and San Jose. In Oregon I visited Portland. The fun and food was amazing. California was vacation, Oregon was work.

• Got involved in the Python, Django, and Pinax communities, reviewed talks for Pycon, became a Pinax core developer, started up NOVA-Django, started up the still nascent Django Education Foundation.

• Worked another year in Python related technologies.
  

• Tested for my third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Worked my Muay Thai. Got better at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Learned a little Capoeria.
  

• Almost up to 6 years without a broken bone!!!
  

• Stayed with NASA, for five years total now. Saw good people hired like Chris Adams and Tom Rando. My team set up a collaboration space. Launched a big internal Pinax powered application called SMD Spacebook and am helping on a major outreach application.

• Began my new side consulting efforts which will be mostly educational based. I like teaching anything, from martial arts to technology! Worked on a course for Holdenweb, and am teaching a long tutorial at Pycon!
  

• Reconnected with some old High School and Middle School friends. Am able to give one of them some business.
  

• My son turned 18.
  

• Grew a goatee.
  

• Kept teaching martial arts.

• Got a new road bike.
  

The bad:

• My marriage of 12+ years fell apart. I've lived in a lot of places since, but none of them my own.
  

• Participated in a well done project that lost out to a mediocre project that won because of resource attrition and refusal of customer to effectively market the effort.
  

• Didn't push hard enough to prep my house for sale until December. Going into more debt to finance the work.

• Didn't really practice much Eskrima all year.

• Lost a cat named Ao-Chan to kidney disease on Obama's Inauguration day. She was an aloof, regal, agile beauty who deigned to give us lots of love and affection.