Mick’s Miscellaneous Meanderings

I spent a year in Germany just after graduating college. The first three months, I understood almost nothing of the German dialect I was hearing. So the brief conversations where I got to speak English were a welcome change. That’s how I felt this weekend when I got together with some fellow web developers. For a couple hours I got to speak geek, my native language.

The three of us are on a newsgroup of web developers. Joe was in from New York, Murray from Philly, and me from Harrisburg area. We met in Allentown, the midpoint, at the Bonefish Grill. Mmmmm!

I’d met Murray before…at a web developer conference in Las Vegas and on various webcam get-togethers (He’s got a GREAT office that shows in the background of the webcam sessions). His passion for web development is an inspiration. When others are ready to kick back and retire, Murray’s digging into a new programming language, taking on challenging projects, and still helping out on newsgroups and forums answering questions. When I grow up I want to be just like Murray…uhhh….Murray #3, that is. Murray #7 can get a little ornery. . (The joke is that there are 9 Murrays….it takes that many to help out in the newsgroups as much as he does and still make a living.)

This was my first time meeting Joe in person. He’s helped me countless times on various odd (and I do mean odd!) projects….everything from simply giving me a shove in the right direction to writing out code that could be copied and plopped directly into a project. And the amount of knowledge he has of PHP coding and *nix operating systems….I can only aspire to.

I enjoyed getting together with you guys. Can’t wait till the next No-NephCon.

Murray and me

Sue, Murray, Mickey, Joe and Judy

Gut wrenching. That about sums it up. 12 years of:

picking up the garbage scattered on the floor throughout the apartment because I forgot to close the bathroom door before I left
backpacking trips without a single whine about how much further we were going that day
giving her a bath because she rolled in something nasty when she was out running in the neighoring farm fields
running along side of me, forgetting that anything else even exists
replacing shower curtains because a thunderstorm came through while I was away and her safe place is the bathtub and her nervous activity is to shred the shower curtain
giving me her paw or rolling over or sitting in return for a treat
vacuuming up ungodly amounts of dog hair and swearing I would never have another short haired dog again
returning home to find the container of chocolate chip cookies or brownies I left on the counter laying on the floor empty
horrendous doggy breath
thinking that car rides were the absolute, most exciting thing life had to offer
unconditional love, company, friendship, and kisses