Resolutions for 2012

• Go to a Python related conference in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
• Attend at least one JavaScript related conference or event.
• Upload all my outstanding pictures to Flickr!
• Make Consumer Notebook profitable.
• Find more ways to make Audrey Roy happy.
• Pull off an Aú sem Mão during a Capoeira Roda.
• Attend my first Capoeira Batizado.
• See a place in the USA I've never been.
• Work out at least three times a week.
• Drop to a 32 waist
• Visit friends and family back east. Been over a year since I've seen my sister!
• Blog once a week. That is at least 52 blog entries!
• Visit a Theme park.
• Learn how to surf or snowboard.
• Implement something in node.js, backbone.js, and handlebars.js
• Take a high level Python class from the likes of Raymond Hettiger or David Beazly.
• Teach some Python or Django.
• Have a beer with Thomas, Andy, Andy, Tony, Garrick, Bernd, and the rest of Ye Aulde Gange.
• See my old DC area friends such as Eric, Chris, Steve, Beth, Sarah, Daye, Renee, Kenneth, Leslie, Whitney, Dave, and many others.
• Visit my Son.

I love this girl!

In every person's life there are those incredibly memorable experiences that stick with you forever. The entirety of PyCon 2010 is for me that experience. You see, PyCon 2010 saw me introduced to the lovely, talented, and brilliant Audrey Roy.

Moments after I heard her lovely voice for the first time, we looked into each other's eyes. After that moment, I spent every waking moment of the conference finding excuses to spend time with her. Fortunately for me, most of her tastes for talks and social events matched my own. Within days we were dancing in each other's arms.

By the end of the PyCon we both knew we had something special. So after the conference we both flew back and forth across the country every two weeks for months to keep seeing each other. My phone bill skyrocketed. I became intimately familiar with Skype. It was crazy and magnificent. Finally, on May 5th of 2010 I moved out West to be with her for good.

Audrey may seem shy at first, but she has a fierce heart (FYI, she played Ice Hockey for years and did the bargaining for my car). She has a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. She supports me in everything I want to do. If you enjoy Django Packages and follow Open Comparison, she came up with the idea. We cook and eat healthy, and besides our differences on seafood/mac-and-cheese we are a food match. She loves my family and they adore her. She is a talented visual artist in any medium she attempts. As a developer, she learns unbelievably fast and produces high quality code in languages such as Python, C++, JavaScript, Objective-C, and anything else she touches. She hacks the Linux kernel so she can use her preferred peripherals. Her role in the technical community continually grows, and recently she launched the PyLadies advocacy group.

Airborne girlfriend!

An incredible thing about Audrey is that she makes me a better person. I didn't see this at first, but my good friend and mentor Steve Holden pointed it out. She doesn't just bring me joy, she makes me a more tenacious, honest, and compassionate person.

Life is never perfect, but thanks to Audrey and the Python community that brought us together, life is just plain good.

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.

Leaving NASA

This has been a hard post to write.

I was delighted that on January 3rd, 2005 I started my first day working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). While I wasn't working on science efforts, I was at least contributing to the cause. In 2005 I was introduced by co-worker Chris Shenton to Python, which became my favorite programming language ever. I also learned tools like Zope, Plone, and Django. Over the past five years, I've met a lot of fascinating people in and around the agency, a list that seems endless in size and scope. That includes astronauts, scientists, engineers, developers, managers, and so much more.

This meant so much to me, and maybe because my first memories of television as a child were the moon landings of the early 1970s. I dreamed as a child of being an astronomer or astronaut, and sometimes I plot how I would redo my life to fit these dreams if I got a second childhood.

In the past year I've had some incredible opportunities present themselves to me. I've been presenting frequently on Django and Pinax. I've had the singular honor of writing course material for Holdenweb, LLC on behalf of the O'Reilly School of Technology. Representing NASA as a contractor to the Python and related communities has been both enjoyable and a great honor.

Yet all things, even good ones, must come to an end.

I've decided to become an independent consultant. My first project will be working with Revolution Systems (Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Frank Wiles) on a neat stealth project that looks very promising and once launched will help people. The project will be Python/Django/Linux based, and the client insists on accessibility, testing, and quality work. We'll be exploring the boundaries of what has been done with those tools and besides what must remain proprietary, a lot of our work will end up going back to the community. Sounds like my kind of thing!

My last day is April 1, 2010. I'm both excited to explore this new project, and saddened that my professional world for the past five years is coming to an end. Yet the overlap in technology and the participation of the NASA SMD python group in the open source world means that my work with NASA isn't coming to an end, its just transforming into something different.

Nevertheless, this is the end of an era for me.

Which is partly why I'm happy that I'll still be in touch with my fellow NASA SMD Python contractors such as Katie Cunningham, Chris Shenton, Chris Adams, James Saint-Rossy, and others. I also plan to be real friendly with the awesome Ames Research Center Python/Django/FOSS groups such as the intrepid Mark Friedenbach and the entire incredibly awesome Nebula team.

I'll miss having the pleasure of working with Leslie Cahoon, Jessy Cowan-Sharp, John Kasmark, Bob Ryan, Candace Solomon, Bill Keeter, Gamble Gilbertson, Meredith Mengel, Malik Ahmad, Jenny Mottar, Mike Brody, Virginia Butcher, Dawayne Pretlor, Michele Montgomery, Jim Consalvi,Siew Chin Hon, Hans Goetzelt, Shannon Lantzy, and many more.

Lastly, I'll miss the honor of serving civil servants such as Gretchen Davidian, Sharron Sample, and Ruth Netting and others.

Apologies to Katie

Katie Cunningham is a good friend of mine. We met about nine years ago through a mutual acquaintance. We had a number of similar interests all tied to general geekery and kids. I've always appreciated her honesty, humor, and work ethic. In December 2006 I got her a job at NASA, which eventually got her involved in Python and various related communities.

One thing I like about Katie is that she likes to cook and she always does so from scratch. Her focus is on a mix of various savory dishes and baking. Since she takes care to find out her friend's allergies and preferences, it is a rare moment when people do not like what she cooks. One of my absolute favorites is a blackberry cobbler that she makes, which she does not destroy with loads of sugar. She knows that when taken in quantity sugar adversely affects me and that I also love blackberries.

I'm good at entrees and appetizers and sides, but baking is beyond me unless I use a pre-mix. So I really respect what Katie does.

So anyway, recently on twitter when she was discussing bagels with Jacob Kaplan-Moss I called her out publicly for putting icing on cheesecake. As an Ashkenazi Jew from family who spent generations in the New York area (although I was raised in Maryland) I'm picky about cheesecake. Legal toppings are berries, and going crazy with toppings is having those berries in a heavy glaze.

Well, it turns out that the illegal toppings cheesecake instance was not done by Katie, but rather her mother. Katie's mom is a wonderful lady who is also a cook whose work is worth tasting and all around wonderful person. But she puts a thin layer of sour cream icing on cheesecake. While I'm sure somewhere there is a Jewish law against illegal toppings on cheesecake, Katie's mom's defense is that she is not a Jew. And I certainly appreciate her Southern style fare.

So, for what it is worth, this is my public, formal apology to Katie. She rocks and if you are smart, you'll convince her to bake for you.

Pycon 2010 report I

Pycon was an incredible learning experience and networking opportunity. I met many good friends again and made just as many new ones. In addition, this was the first time I presented and did so on Pinax two times. Furthermore, in the name of diversity, this instance of Pycon saw the premiere of the Financial Assistance Grant for Women. We also had a dedicated talk on Diversity as a Dependency. The benefit this focus on diversity was that...

um...

yeah...

like...

uh...

um...

Diversity Rocks

Did I learn a lot at pycon? Heck yeah. Networking was life changing. And unlike previous conferences, I'm in a position to take advantages of opportunities offered. The next few weeks and months will see a lot of changes and challenges for me.

Note: I've got to keep some things under wraps for now so I'm going to have to aggressively moderate comments. Feel free to comment, just don't take comment rejections personally.

Note II: For reference, this post is mostly about Audrey Roy and some about the job offering I got at PyCon 2010.

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.

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

Reconnecting

Yeah, this isn't technical, but it is still a post!

I remember the first time I met a best friend. I was four years old. I saw another boy obviously my age walking on his tip-toes. Maybe he was trying to be taller. His nick-name was Scooter, and to this day I've got no idea as to what his name was. It was in his house that I remember seeing men on the moon live. I was five when I moved away. I saw him a few times but we grew apart. Eventually we lost touch.

I was six years old and just starting first grade when I met John. I think his last name was Oplenger. We became inseparable and I remember navigating my way across a mile to find his house. That was back in the 1970s when kids did that sort of thing. We made stop-animation super 8 films together. I was eight when I moved away but we stayed in touch for several years. Eventually our interests grew apart and we lost touch. I might have seen him a few times in my late teenage years, but I didn't have the guts to go up and talk to him.

We moved as I turned 16 so I switched high schools at the end of my sophomore year. I left the people I knew behind. I lost touch real fast with most of the people I knew back then. Thanks to Facebook I've reconnected with a few. Yet I wonder what ever happened to Mark, Steve, David, Jack, Donald, Katy, and many others.

After my aimless college years I drifted uselessly for a while. I lost touch with people I knew in my second high school and college. In 2000 thanks to Google and the now wretched classmates.com I started to reconnect with those old friends.

During my aimless college years I met a smart, pretty girl named Christine. She was the one I should have dated. Ha. The follies of youth.

I'm sure over time I'll find everyone I knew. I'm delighted to find these people and to see how their lives worked out. That even the craziest of us have turned into responsible parents seems like destiny. In return, no one seems surprised by how my life has turned out.

But the ones I really miss are the ones whose names I can't quite recall, or whose names are so generic that finding them seems impossible. People like Scooter, John, Christine, and others.

19 more posts to go!

Quitting Caffeine Fail

In the crazy heady days of May two months ago I decided to quit consuming caffeine.

I cut out coffee, soda, and black tea. It was surprisingly easy. Hooray!

So I happily went along drinking herbal teas like chamomile, cinnamon-orange, peach, and of course, green tea. Life was great! I was getting my anti-oxidants and none of the bad stuff. I could hang with my co-worker Katie and be one of those 'cool non-caffeine drinkers'.

So one day weeks ago I mention to Katie at some point that I was going to make some green tea and offered her some. She said she couldn't have it because of the caffeine, then she blinked.

Which means she just figured something out. Then she declared:

OH MY GOD YOU HAD NO IDEA GREEN TEA HAD CAFFEINE!!!

That was followed by a bit more of mockery.

So yeah, I failed to quit drinking caffeine then. However, today, while I'm home being sick, I'm trying to quit again. Wish me luck.

Help me make a new Avatar!

A couple years back I went to Naples, Italy for the 2007 Plone Conference. It was my first trip across an Ocean. My first trip to Europe. In Heathrow airport I met Rocky Burt and he took the picture that became my avatar.

Well, I want a new avatar. That means I have to do another cartwheel some place I've never been. Some place exciting. And that is where you come in.

Basically, I'm looking for suggestions of places to go or invitations to go visit you wherever you might be. My budget isn't large, but my enthusiasm is without bounds. I love the heat so if your idea or invite is cheaper in summer time that is even better. The costs involved determine the duration of the event. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of places like:

• Africa
  
• Asia
  
• Brazil
  
• England
• France
  
• Germany
• India
• Italy (even Naples again!)
  
• San Francisco

Screw it. Lets go the whole way:

• Anywhere a thousand miles away from Washington, DC.

This becomes feasible for me after May 22.

Quitting Caffeine

I don't remember my first experience consuming caffeine. My parents let us kids drink soda of all types, and that included colas. They also smoked around us and covered our house in artificial wood paneling. Ah yes, the lovely 70s.

As a teenager I drank lots of coca-cola with my buddies. I remember putting away 2-liter bottles. Was it then the energy of youth, the caffeine, or the sugar that made us jumpy afterwards?

During my early teen years I also started to work in restaurants. At my second job one summer I came in once after a 17 hour day and just felt dead. The Sou-Chef felt sorry for me and poured me a big coffee, dropped in an ice cube, and covered the result with fresh cream. I woke up after that and in the process, got hooked on coffee.

So it was back in my heady Java days of 2002 that I decided to quit caffeine. I had already kicked sugar for health reasons. Alcohol was something I only drank on special occasions. I decided I could be totally vice free. I don't remember my process, but I do remember being rather proud of myself. Then I got really sick. I drank lots of tea, forgetting somehow that the tea I was drinking was caffeinated. And I was hooked again.

As the years went by I would time when I would drink caffeine. I knew I had to drink it every 12 hours to avoid withdrawal. Coffee in the morning, soda at night. I had an addiction. I periodically gave thought to quitting, but the habit didn't seem so bad.

For the past six months, I've actually reduced my caffeine intake. Between smaller portions and longer intervals, I felt like it didn't rule my life anymore. For the past two months I've gotten it down to coffee in the morning and diet coke when I eat away from my desk.

Then, for health reasons, several months back my co-worker Katie Cunningham had to quit caffeine. Suddenly I felt awkward every time I drank coffee or soda around here. The same way I feel when eating meat around a vegetarian Hindi or pork around a Jew or Muslim. I'm not sure why I feel awkward that way, but I do.

Recently I've been making a lot of changes in my life. I've stopped watching television entirely, become a neat nick (I'm not that messy to begin with), and quit caffeine.

Considering how infrequently I drink caffeine quitting it wasn't that hard. I had my last bit of soda on Saturday morning. The only symptom I suffered was last night I went to bed with a headache; a headache that might be allergy (high pollen count here in Virginia, US) related.

I think I'm vice free now. Well, almost. I do drink alcohol socially. And if I run into insomnia I will have either red wine or a beer if I can't find any wine.