Where you will find my (documented) thoughts, worries, concerns, and issues
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The Art of Animation Resort had left information on our door regarding our DME pickup. We had until 1:30pm to relax, do any final shopping, and pack. For our final breakfast, we went to Pop Century, to experience their …
This was the day I’d been waiting for since June. I have nothing against Epcot or Animal Kingdom, and I very much love the Kennedy Space Center. But when it comes to magic, the closest I’ll ever get to witnessing real …
I moved the family as quickly as I had the day before. My biggest need that morning wasn’t to get to Animal Kingdom, it was to return the car before we got dinged another USD$133. I’d gotten over the fact that we’d ended …
We were up early, hitting the front of the hotel for 8:20, to catch our shuttle bus to the Alamo Rental location just inside the Magic Kingdom‘s outer gates. We were renting a car for exploring! I had originally arranged …
It’s genuinely amazing what a single night of sleep can do for a person. I woke up feeling human. And apologetic about my behaviour the night before. And dying for coffee. Which, fortunately, the Landscape of Flavors has …
Our first FastPass was booked for 9:40am, so we had a need to usher ourselves along that morning. Up, shower, dress, eat, and on the bus for 9am. It was a bit hurried, but nothing more dramatic than trying to get the …
Walt Disney World covers an area of 110 sq km, encompassing the four theme parks, two water parks, 27 themed resorts, and their shopping/entertainment district, called Disney Springs (formerly Downtown Disney, among a …
We arrived in Orlando at about 1:00am. Amazingly, the girls were still awake (given, it was only 11pm Calgary time). The airport was nearly empty. And yet, Choo Choo sprinted ahead to see a giant (fake) Christmas tree, …
The biggest problem with Christmas around our household is Alex’s work schedule. Being an X-Ray Tech at Rockyview means that she has to work any conceivable day of the year, Christmas Day included. Add to that a …
Sorry for missing Day 4, folks, but we were having a bit too much fun to go anywhere near a computer to blog about it. Nyah, nyah, nyah. Yes, we’ve been busy. And been having fun. I mean, what else are you gonna do in …
Merry Ho Ho, everyone! Today, of course, is Christmas Day. We started our morning with a waltz down to breakfast in the hotel’s restaurants in our PJs. (Well, I wore clothes. I wouldn’t be allowed into most places with …
My dogs are barkin’. It’s been a day on my feet. A good day, to be sure, but a lot of walking, and a lot of standing. The same was true for Alex, and it would be for Mi Pequeña Niña if she hadn’t slept for a solid hour …
Alex found Barnes and Noble without difficulty. Choosing what to buy? Now that’s difficult. Upon her return, Mi Pequeña Niña and I suited up for our little excursion — the “other” major toy store in …
Our first family Christmas away from Canada has ended up being colder than we expected it to be a mere couple of months ago. Back then, we were expecting to be in Costa Rica. But due to certain unforeseen circumstances, …
Maybe not the entire world, but certainly the wired world — the people online. All day, ever since I logged on, I’ve seen Tweets, blog posts, momentiles, and the like about people who are absolutely dying to see the …
I love American politics. It’s my form of WWE — all the cheers and jeers with all the spectacle to go along with it. One day, I think the American presidency will go the way of the President of the Galaxy from …
Last session of the conference. And yes, another Schill recommendation. But this one I wanted to go to as well. We always have this problem — how to let people know something is private without the fear of …
Schill suggested I go to this one as well. Again, mostly because Schill knows the guy, but given how this is perennial problem for us as well, it couldn’t hurt to see how Flickr handles the problem. Presenter: John …
Hanging out with Schill today, and he’s giving me some really great suggestions on what to see. Although the CM team did suggest something different, he’s saying we should see this one. Naturally, Schill knows the guy, …
The name partly disinterested me, but I wanted to attend this one because of the needs for social marketing that we haven’t really nailed down yet. Presenter: Ro Choy, rockyou! RockYou! has successfully deployed several …
Not much to report here. It’s a panel, and not a particularly interesting one, sadly. On the bright side, this room has great connectivity!
Definitely not my strong point. But I wanted to go to this given all the working in tagging as of late. Presenter: Duane Nickull folksonomies became powerful quickly because people got tired of waiting for the so-called …
Maybe it’s just me, but running keynotes every single day of a conference seems really silly, and waters down the value of the concept of a keynote. But I digress. Either way, this morning features Tim O’Reilly (again), …
Oy. I can’t seem to get a decent connection to anything anymore. Too many people with wireless connections. They’ve got big-ass routers, but it ain’t helping. Gonna stay offline for reliability. Presenters: Charlene Li …
Room is huge and darn near packed. I get the feeling this is gonna be a good one. I think I’m going to have to type quickly for this one. Presenter: Jacob West (Fortify Software) Jacob runs the security research group …
Debated between this one and learnings from Twitter. Felt that maybe this one might be more … insightful. Gotta learn to stop listening to my gut instinct. Presenter: Gavin Bell Gavin’s background is cognitive …
Last session before lunch. Freaking hungry (no boiled eggs at breakie this morning). Might take off a bit early to get a jump on lunch and battery charging. Presenter: Ryan Sarver Context is about location — what’s …
Only session of the morning. We break for lunch, then more sessions this afternoon. Sorry for all the delays in getting these posted. It seems that while the wireless strength to connect is pretty good (there are hubs …
Unlike other conferences I’ve been to, they seem to have a lot of keynotes. Strikes me as a little odd. The only real person who do a “true” keynote would be O’Reilly, since he coined this term in the first …
Well, wasn’t much of a “crawl”, at least for me. Met up with Jim at the Expo hall, about 20 minutes before they closed the floor. (What’s with closing the Expo hall at 4, anyway?) Skipped the keynote. Went to …
Just in case you’re following the threads from Web 2.0 Expo, they’re gonna be a little delayed today, folks. First of all, I had my Firefox suddenly kak out and took all my notes from the first session with it. Furious …
And the fun continues. Another morning at the conference, and another day of hard-core typing. I’m also up on Twitter now (le sigh), so you can get some notes as I go along. Presenters: Dawn Foster (Jive Software), …
Being here solo, you can’t help but notice things that go on around you. (Hey, you gotta keep yourself interested/occupied somehow, right?) First off, it’s pretty easy to see who is actually working in the Web 2.0 world …
In the afternoon session today, I’m going to learn what it’ll take to build the next generation of apps. I’m curious to see what they’ve got to say. Presenter: Dion Hinchcliffe Room is about 90% full, compared to …
Notes from the Web 2.0 Expo. This is on the Cross-Cultural presentation. Presenter: Aaron Marcus (Aaron Marcus and Associates) Waiting for presentation, have heard several languages besides English (in a hands-up poll, …
Despite the sobering realisation that I’d forgot to actually register for this conference before coming (this is what happens when you try to do do much before going on a 2.5 week vacation, only to return for one day …
Late arriving in San Francisco, no thanks to an incoming snowstorm in Calgary. The deicing truck broke down mid-hose, and we had to wait 30 minutes for another one. But it gave me more time to have an interesting chat …
Well, the wedding’s done, Tamara and Dan are wed, and pretty much everyone is pooped. The bridal party was out late the night before, the groom’s group was fairly tired, and I’m just beat from all the running around. My …
It’s been nearly a dozen years since I was last (and first) in Las Vegas. It’s been a long time, and this city has changed a lot since I was here last. And not all for the good, I should say. If you’ve watched CSI, …
Day 2 got off to a lousy start. I was sick. Nastily so. At first, I thought it was a hangover (I might have had — perhaps — one beer too many last night). But I realised very quickly that this was not, in fact, a …
Tech Summits are dicey things. Sort of like trying to catch a greased pig. You can see it, you can describe it, but it’s a pain to pin down and hold still. It has a life of its own and just as soon as you get your head …
Well, I’m back in Chicago again. Currently in the “Missile Command” meeting room (all the meeting rooms here are named after video games). We’re staying at the Hard Rock Hotel (pretty much right across the …
I love travelling — I honestly believe that I don’t do enough of it. Always makes me feel more energised, and sitting on my duff all day long really makes me pine for it. So I’m lucky to be getting around a bit in the …
Okay, yes, everyone’s heard about Stephen Colbert‘s run for the presidency. Those of you who watch his show regularly (sadly, I do not; though Alex is becoming a massive fan) know what Colbert is like. Perhaps not the …
Oh, I’m gonna get in some hot water for this one… So the other day, I heard a comment that the Loonie was the highest it’s been since the early 1970s. About the time Tricky Dicky was in the Oval Office. That made …
Well, I haven’t had a chance to finish with the blog entries yet (editing is such sweet fun), but I do at least have the gallery of photos from our last Hawaii trip up for viewing. The full list will appear in the …
Alex wanted a beach day. And beach day we had. Well, once we sat through a rather lengthy time share sales pitch, anyway. That was part of the deal from the activity purchase. USD$100 off the total price if we sat …
Yeah, I know — why am I on a computer if I’m on vacation? Relax, I have good reason. Our house is now effectively sold, and for whatever reason we’ve been unable to fax properly from Hawaii back to Calgary. Very odd, …
Ah, there’s nothing like waking up on a sunny day. Even better, there’s nothing like clean underwear. After a hearty breakfast, we made an effort to do two things: Book a dinner cruise (they’re usually fun) Book a luau …
We slept last night with the sliding door to the balcony open (with the screen door closed) and the air conditioning off. A bit humid, but wow, does one feel better with fresh air in your lungs. I honestly don’t think …
Oy. This vacation is not off to a good start. One of the conditions of this vacation was that we were to incur no red-eye flights (in other words, no sleeping on the plane). That meant getting there and back was going to …
Darren G. and Michael T. doing the presentation. Core values: leadership (excellent choice of word) in ease-of-use. Web-centric technology. Long-standing customer satisfaction. Differentiators: seamless management of …
After the last batch of sessions this afternoon, we broke up for about two hours to wait for the gala event. Apparently, this is the big event of the Summit conference. Bad things tend to happen. (Jim, think of any given …
Seth Miller of Miller Systems. A highly recommended presentation. Young guy. Definitely a tinkerer gone pro. Miller Systems is a UX-centric web dev firm. Been around 12 years. RedDot partner since 2002. Several …
Just spent an hour talking with the presenter (Darren Guarnaccia) about RedDot software and partnership avenues. Anyhoo, on with the good stuff… “This stuff is a little bit forward thinking.” It’s …
Presented by Shannon Ryan of Non-Linear Creations. We know a lot about SEO, so we’re gonna be picky. A couple of slides on Non-Linear’s business models. But emphasis on Digital Marketing with emphasis on Email Marketing …
All content managed through RedDot, no external components. 10% of entire revenue stream done through RedDot (including onlike ticket sales). http://www.aqua.org/ Went through a similar development process to what we …
Talked to these guys last night. Heavy duty RedDot users. Don’t use the built-in publishing system — wrote an entire export using RQL. Publishes are down to 1 minute, and they’ve got at least 100 times the content (and …
There was a “commonwealth” dinner last night. Originally meant to be just we Canucks (there’s quite a few of us), the Australian contingent was invited to come along as well. Apparently, Australia is becoming …
Mostly regarding the work done for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. Purple Monkey (agency doing presentation) seems to run similar to the way CM works with respect to helping clients figure out what they need. Wanted …
Nathan Carver presenting. Talked with this guy many times before. Admits that this is a tough topic as experience with templates is varied. Prefers div to tables (no surprise there). Dangers of nested containers: more …
A little late in starting. Presenter reminds me of Rosemary, for some reason. Organizational structure (IT team separate from content entry) similar to how we want to work. RedDot responsible for publishing the sites. …
Okay, hard for me to avoid it now. We use RedDot. There, I’ve said it. Now let’s move on. Met Detlef Kamps (RedDot President) last night. Nice guy. German, and speaks English very well. Looking forward to my breakfast …
I have no idea who the guy is on the stage. He came out after a Harold Faltermeyer-esque opening movie (complete with Windows system click sound at the end) and started talking. No introduction whatsoever. John …
So as you’ve already read, I’m currently in Huntington Beach. Why? In an acronym: CMS. Recently, as some of you know, we launched the Rolex.com website. It was done using a CMS system. I’m here for two reasons: to see …
[This entry originally posted on How To Get Lost: The Last.] Yesterday was a day of lasts. The last train (finally, even if it was just an airport tram; I was thwarted from taking the airport express train by a …
Yesterday was tough. We did a lot of talking. We didn’t leave the building until we were done. The three of us, Lark, and Jim went for dinner at some steak house. Despite having been out with the client before, I felt …
My first Valentines day with Alex, and I have to be 3,500 kilometres from her. It could be worse. I could be in Kanata. First thing: Room change. Last night’s room was one Mark and I had booked. Tonight’s is on the …
Leaving Alex this morning wasn’t easy. Given the events of the last couple of days, I would have preferred to stay in bed with her. But business calls, and I’m off to New York (though Newark) for business meetings with …
Despite having the room to myself, I was really groggy when I got up this morning. I know it wasn’t a result of last night, though, as I didn’t feel any worse for wear. I showered, packed, and checked out (using the …
Allard and I hit the restaurant in the main atrium for breakfast, joined shortly thereafter by Christian and a very tired-looking Jules. Powdered eggs aren’t exactly the breakfast of champions. Jules has been up late …
I hate waking up before 6:00. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with it. Today, though, it was necessary. Today, I fly to Chicago. Was ready for my 6:30 pickup. Allard was collecting me for the trip to the …
It was once said that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Fear is the oppressor of souls and nations. It is the beginnings of hatred and suffering. And it’s what has kept me away from Vancouver. Fear of my past. Fear …
Be it ever so humble … and a little messy … there’s no place like home. I missed yesterday’s log. Oops. Basically, the testing went well — the changes I made held and so far, things are looking good. That …
Today was a good day. Finally. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of finally overcoming a problem that’s kept you up a night, sent you to perhaps the dullest city in mid-eastern America, had you eating mediocre food …
I hate this city. And Memorial Day. The two of them combined? Well, let me tell you… I figured I’d stay in today and get some work done. Fine, no problem. Or so I thought. I got up later than I’d planned (probably …
Today was my day off. It didn’t start that way — I was figuring on getting a lot of work in, but as I went out to scout for lunch, I decided that the day was nice enough that I would take a little walk. My logic says …
Ugh. It never fails. I get a long weekend, I get lousy weather. I had hoped to go to the Cincinnati Museum today, but the weather kept me indoors. Okay, that sounds like a really stupid statement — if I’m going to a …
Another day, another hotel. Owing to some strange reason, there seem to be a lot of people coming to Cincinnati. Can’t really figure out why. The Omni was completely booked for today when my room was booked on Tuesday. …
I’m trapped. Metaphorically speaking, that is. Today, I effectively did nothing. I spent the day trying to solve problems, but not really accomplishing anything. I started off with a conference call with Critical Mass …
My alarm went off early this morning. I rose somewhat slowly (I hadn’t quite adjusted to the time zone), but eventually found my way into the shower. That woke me up enough to get dressed, shave, and prepare my notes for …
It’s been a long day. It all started about a week ago. One of our clients, whom I’m afraid I cannot mention, had a problem with the website we developed for them. Actually, it wasn’t the client so much as it was our …
We’ve been blessed with a good winter this year — it hasn’t rained much. (Of course, I would be writing this on a rainy day.) In fact, we’ve had a lot of sun, though it has been fairly chilly. Yes, I realize that chilly …
On Monday and Tuesday, I experienced my first real business trip. I probably would be more excited about it than I should be, but we went to Seattle. Whoopee. Going to Seattle for a business trip is like … well, …
There’s only so much rain you can take before you start to go a little strange in the head. It has rained here nearly every single day since 1 Nov 1998. We’ve had about 10-15 days in that stretch where it didn’t rain, …
The fallout from the round of layoffs a week and a half ago came to a rather disappointing end — one of our lead programmers decided he didn’t want to work for corporate America, and quit. Just as the game he was working …
By morning the rain had stopped, leaving cool damp weather in its wake. We stirred shortly after 08:30, all of us awake in a relatively short period of time. Our first surprise was to open the curtains and find that we …
Little kids sounded the morning knell, much like how an air raid siren warns of impending disaster. I’m not suggesting that we had a bad day, but it’s not exactly the way I’d wanted to start it off. Our waking patterns …
Despite Dhar’s snoring, I had a fairly decent sleep that night. As was our habit, the first order of business was a shower. Dhar was one step ahead of me, something I gathered by the sound of running water from the …
The morning was sunny and humid, much like the day before. We awoke between 08:00 and 08:30 following a long and comfortable night’s sleep. Showers were the order of the morning, to prepare oneself for the long day …
As a kid, I could never sleep in a moving car. I could never understand why, but the motion made me feel uneasy and I would sit there until we stopped (usually at home) before passing out. This inability to sleep in cars …
The morning was cool, but not uncomfortable. Dhar had slept in the navigator’s chair again, but for once wasn’t awake before me. Not having relieved myself the night before, my bladder was now rather tight feeling, the …
I awoke to a vaguely disturbing dream about sirens, manifested by emergency vehicles running up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, just in front of our 16th floor window. No sooner than my head cleared enough for me to …
One thing about using an air conditioner — always use the air exchange feature. The air inside the van was beyond musty that morning. It smelled horrible. I woke blinking towards the navigator’s side of the van, …
Morning began almost the same as Colorado Springs: cool and bright. But our distance south had provided us with a few degrees more warmth, making the morning not quite as shocking as the day before. Something else was …
Dawn arrives early at high altitudes, but we didn’t notice until around 09:00 that morning. Dawn also arrives very cold. When we went to bed, the temperature was something in the neighbourhood of 10 degrees Celsius. Not …
The rain came down so heavily I have yet to see an adjective to properly describe it — “sheets” is not hard enough, and “Niagara Falls” is far too much. Somewhere in between will have to suffice …
I awoke at a little after 08:00 that morning. I wasn’t the slightest but groggy, my usual waking state — I was excited. The day had finally come. I wandered out of my room. Dhar’s (rather, my sister’s) door was open, and …
Observer’s Log: Traveldate 890714.17 Day 15 We are presently at our cruising altitude of 31,000 ft heading for New York. A few minutes ago, we passed over Iceland. Earlier this morning, Kelly B., Pete and myself scouted …