WHAT???? Eleven days off in a row? Good gawd, get the straight jacket ready! Lots on the agenda including putting trim up on all the windows in my house (long overdue!), cutting and splitting next year’s firewood, getting caught up on my blogging, and of course, what kind of vacation would it be without reading some geeky computer book? I’m extra motivated on the blog part since Krumy declared a “battle of the blogs” this morning. Look for a couple videos and a few new blog posts of adventures from this past few months.

The good news is….I finally got internet access at home.
The bad news is…I finally got internet access at home.

I had it intermittently for a while…through Verizon, using my Blackberry as a modem. Verizon has a “deal” where you can tether your Blackberry to your laptop and use it as a modem for your computer to get internet access using your cell. The down sides are that it costs $30/month and that you have a 5 Gig limit before they start tacking on extra charges. Heck, I go over 5 Gigs every month just on the Blackberry itself. Boooo, bad Verizon. So, I’d get it activated for when I traveled so I had internet access on the road. And then I’d deactivate it when I got back.

Kathy J scored some major points today when she introduced me to Tetherberry. Tetherberry is a program you pay for ONCE – $49.95 – that you use to tether your Blackberry to your laptop and allows you to use your current data plan from your Blackberry. My data plan is UNLIMITED. So I pay $49.95 one time and have unlimited internet access instead of $30/month and only 5 Gigs from Verizon. Yeaaaayyyyy!!!

It’s not exactly the speed I get at the shop or at work but it works for email, general surfing, and even some minor web development. The speedtest came back at 400+ down and 100+ up. I’ll take it.

So my resolution to not have internet access at home is out the window because it’s just so darn cheap and easy. I plan to be disciplined about it though. STOP LAUGHING!!! But I’m still not giving in on the TV.

http://www.tetherberry.com/

And the best part is…the tetherberry.com site is built on Drupal!!!! So it HAS to be good!

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

I wouldn’t trade a single day of it.

Ackey in her younger years

Ackey at her best - backpacking the trails

Ackey gnawing on the mother of all bones. Lasted a day or two...maybe.

Ackey on her last backpacking trip...after a 15 mile day...too tired to lift her head to eat

Ackey insisting on sleeping in Charlie's bed...no matter how uncomfortable

Ackey tolerating some snuggling with Uncle Dave

Letting it all hang out

I’ll miss my Ackey-girl.

Friday, June 26

Finally got out of bed at 4:15am to make it to a HARD workout….and after only a few hours of sleep. (I still had to unpack from my last Colorado trip last night before I could pack for this one.) Went to circuit training with the HARD group. Holy cow. I’m gone for a few weeks and they up the ante on me. Got my butt kicked. It’s going to be a mighty painful next few days when the full soreness kicks in…especially after sitting all curled up on planes all day.

Made it to Denver at 5pm after only 1 delay. There was bad weather around Denver and we were put in a holding pattern for a while. Got a few glimpses of the mountains around Steamboat Springs when the clouds broke for a few minutes. Also saw another rainbow from the plane. Woohoo!

Saturday, June 27

“Do what you like, Like what you do” – That’s the slogan for the Life is Good brand and the theme for this weekend. I’m attending a Drupal conference in *gasp* Colorado. Yup. Back in Colorado in less than 2 weeks and this time with the added bonus of a Drupalfest. It don’t get no better. I’m in my element. With my people. Geeking out with fellow developers. Planning world domination with Drupal. Solving life’s problems with jQuery and pre-processing functions. Although, I’ve discovered you’re not a true geek unless you have a Mac OSX laptop and an iPhone. The iPhone is tempting but I’m not willing to go with AT&T to get it. Verizon’s been too reliable. The Macbook would be tempting if it didn’t require shelling out another $3K for a laptop and then another $4K to buy all my software all over again. That ain’t a-happening! I’m not THAT anti-Microsoft.

There is one aspect of this trip that sucks….the hotel. I was this close – | | – to walking out around midnight tonight and heading to another hotel. For starters, the toilet was stopped up when I got here. And no, Dave, I didn’t do it. I complained 3 times till they finally unclogged it. The bathroom sink drips constantly, the light in the bathroom doesn’t work and it’s party central outside at the pool. Oh and the air conditioning doesn’t work. I was expecting low budget but dang, it ought to be a little better than this for the price. But the bed is comfy and the shower’s hot and the kids stopped screaming shortly after midnight.

On a brighter note, I’m glad I was woken up ’cause Kathy J pinged me. She got to Frankfurt at midnight (2am eastern time and prolly around 8 or 9am in Germany – can’t remember if they do daylight savings time). She’ s safe and sound and didn’t barf on the plane. She said they flew at 40,000 feet at 600mph and could track the flight the whole time. Wild! Can’t wait till she starts posting pictures.

Met some neat people. Went out to lunch to an Argentinian pizza place (who knew?) with some interesting people from a Boulder-based Drupal company. Learned what Sangria was. Mmmmmmm!!! I normally don’t like the taste of anything with alcohol. But this was gooood. I could get used to it for lunch every day! Had so much fun we forgot to watch the time and didn’t make it back for the 2pm sessions. Woops!

Also met some Drupalers from PA. Go figure. Fly to Colorado to meet people from PA. We talked about setting up a Drupal usergroup for central PA. That may be a project for the fall. We’ll see.

And darnit…I’m sucking air AGAIN! Geez. So much for acclimating. It started all over again with the breathing-stale-air feeling. Walked back from the conference center SLOWLY while trying to talk on the phone…probably sounded like I was running. I was so out of breath.

Sunday, June 28
A few months ago I attended DrupalCon in Washington D.C. At the conference, one of the sponsors, Lullabot, introduced their new Drupal training DVD’s. I went home and immediately bought the videos. When I watched them, I was mesmerized by the eyebrows of one of the trainers. He had the most expressive eyebrows I have ever seen. The first time through, all I did was watch his eyebrows. It took a second time through the video to actually pay attention to the content.

Yesterday morning I ran into this guy that looked familiar. I thought maybe I had run into him at DrupalCon D.C. It turned out to be eyebrow-guy from the video. We ended up at the same table for lunch today. He was hilarious…and super knowledgeable about Drupal. It was interesting listening to him talk about the little Colorado town of 800 people that he lives in that has no cell phone service and about Lullabot and Drupal…and of course, I was once again captivated by his eyebrows.

Nate explaining Drupalese by writing on a napkin

Monday, June 29
Time to fly home. Bummer. I enjoyed DrupalCamp Colorado even more than DrupalCon in D.C. because it was smaller. You actually started recognizing people by the end of the conference so it was easier to meet people. And yet most of the sessions were still high caliber. So I really wasn’t ready to leave. I could have hung out a few more days with these people. But real life was calling.

So boarded the plane for 3 uneventful flights back to Harrisburg. Finished another Drupal book – Drupal 6 Javascript and JQuery – and then napped the rest of the way. I need a vacation from my vacations!

April 4, 2009 – the birthday of all birthdays.

The HARD Runners group decided to run the 1st annual Garden Spot Village marathon in Lancaster, PA. We would be running it as a relay, divided into 3 teams of 4 runners each. We were the Hard Runners Team 1 (the serious group, i.e. the fast runners!), The Young (Nicole and I) and the Restless (Bonnie and Shawn), and The Bold and the Beautiful (we never settled who was who on that team!). Nicole and I would be officially running leg 3 of the marathon – 8 miles. Unofficially, I planned to also run leg 2 (4.x miles) with Kathy J and Shawn, and leg 4 (6.x miles) with Cindy and Michelle to get my scheduled long run in for the Colorado marathon I plan on doing in June.

The I.D. scramble
We met at Shawn’s at 6 a.m. for carpooling to Lancaster. First stop was .1 mile down the road for coffee. Second stop was .1 mile back to Shawn’s for people to get their driver’s licenses for the packet pickups. At 6:30 we were off.

Club Durango
Arrived, picked up our packets, and figured out how the shuttles worked for the relay starting points….not very well. They left at 8 and 8:30. Never mind that the people running the latter legs wouldn’t be running for 2, 3, or more hours. I had talked Nicole into running leg 2 with me in addition to our 3rd leg. So we rode out with Kathy J. and Shawn to the first drop off point – some farm field in the middle of nowhere….to wait an hour….in the cold…and wind. Wait, that should be

WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND!!!!!!!!!

We stood around trying to keep warm. Wait, that should be “we stood around trying to keep from being miserable!!!” I hunkered down beside a car, trying to get out of the wind. Didn’t work very well, the wind just whipped around. I tried the door of the car to see if it would open. Low and behold, it did. With very little coaxing, we got Marc to go ask the water station volunteer if that Dodge Durango happened to belong to her. Yup! Could we sit in it? Yup! Woot! Major score!!! The 5 of us crawled in and life was good again. The miserable cold and wind turned into a fun hour of clowning around in Club Durango.

The Village Idiots
Life was good until the first leggers showed up. We saw them coming and jumped out of the car to meet them and get the race chip. We asked how it was with the wind. They both sloughed off the question and told us to get going. We did….running directly into a brick wall. The wind was fully in our face and was so strong that we were literally running in place with some of the stronger wind gusts. It took so much more effort than normal just to move forward, never mind thinking about making good time. This would be constant for the next 8 miles and then intermittent for the next 5. After a while we got smart and started running in single file, drafting off each other…so only one would get the full brunt of the wind. I’m not sure but this tactic may have resulted from trying to redeem ourselves from being called the “village idiots.” Apparently some people don’t understand not only why we would be attempting to run in such conditions but also why we would have PAID $50 EACH to do so. At that point, I was questioning it too. Village Idiot, indeed!

Other Clubs
By the time Nicole and I finished our 2 legs, I was ready to be done. There would be no 4th leg for me! We handed off the time chips to Cindy and Michelle and waited for the shuttle…dreading how long it would be, when out pops Patty offering a ride to the finish. Woot! She had waited for us! You rock Patty!!!! We headed back and heard Patty’s account of the race…of hunkering down in Club Porta-Potty to stay warm!!! And of Michelle and Cindy hunkered down in the Club Ambulance to stay warm!!!! ROTFL!!! You do what you gotta do!

Party Time
We got back to the start/finish, got food and a nice massage. Shortly after, everyone else finished up and we headed to a pub for some serious partying. We rehashed the race, wished Patty luck at the Boston marathon, and chowed down, and worked our stomach muscles from laughter so they would be as sore as our leg muscles the next day!

Returned to Shawn’s from the race to find my car “decorated” for my birthday with balloons and window markers. It was graffitied with things like, “Happy Birthday,” “old fart,” and “Honk, it’s my day.” I’ve gotten 13 honks that I know of thus far.

Party Time, Round Two
I got home, took a long nap, and then got ready for round 2 of my birthday. Went out to a club with some friends from work and laughed like hyenas all evening.

Party Time, Round Three
Woke up a bit…uh…groggy…feeling a little…uh…under the weather. Took a little while to get going. But got ready and headed over to a couple of friends’ house for the day. They’d asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday – go kayaking? Go to a movie? Etc. I opted for some nice downtime of just sitting around, relaxing, talking, eating hot dogs and ice cream, and enjoying the beautiful, sunny, spring day with some really cool friends.

It was the best birthday weekend EVER!!!!!!! Thank you EVERYONE!!!

Marc always makes everyone feel so welcome.

On the shuttle – Waiting to be dropped off in the middle of some field somewhere

Ann at Club Ambulance

Marc saving a porta-potty from tipping….errr…more likely, causing it to tip.

Al, the only completely crazy one of the bunch, on the home stretch of running the entire marathon with encouragement from Sharon.

Massage time for Bonnie and Marc

Massage time for Kathy J.

All finished with the medals to show for it.

Kathy, Nicole, and Michelle hanging out at the post-race festivities

Patty and boyfriend replacing burned carbs.

Shawn and Cindy on the outside with Marc being typical Marc in the center.

For my birthday, Marc, being the thoughtful guy he is, went to the men’s room and bought me two condoms for the big evening I had planned with friends from work. Uh, thanks Marc. Ahem.

Jen, me, and Bonnie hanging out, waiting for food.

The group

Over the weekend, co-worker and good friend, Katie, finished her monster of a thesis (like 100+ page thesis) that she’s been working hard on forever and will be officially graduating with her masters degree this spring. So I decided to “decorate” her office in celebration…to the tune of almost 200 balloons…piled waist deep.

Then I sent an email to the entire first floor apologizing for when she has to pop them all to get to her desk.

So CONGRATULATIONS Katie. Hope you’re still speaking to me.

Got to take a break from websites and computer stuff to spend an afternoon with my co-workers at Ski Roundtop where we snow tubed along with doing some other fun activities, including playing Scrabble and Taboo, eating, joking around, making marshmallow beings, bidding at a silent auction, etc. I’ll let the pictures tell the story. Congrats to the winter party crew for putting together a fun afternoon.

By the way….anyone else wake up with REALLY sore upper arms on Saturday morning? Sheesh!

Me, Katie, Harold, Babs, Jill, Diane waiting for the buffet to open

Snow tubing – let the fun begin!

The slopes are a-calling

Donna gives it the thumbs up.

Hang on there Andrea!

Holy cow! Sally really gets into it!

Heather, Tina, Lucia, and Adam ride as a train

Kelly, Diane, and Kelly make their own train

Emily, Jen, and Jessica

Katie

Wild ride there Karen?

Soaring down the hill

Please don’t tell me someone peed in the snow. Really now.

Cut-throat game of speed Scrabble

Meet Don. Don’s a runner. More accurately, Don’s an ultrarunner, a runner who runs races longer than marathon length. In fact, he often does 100 mile races. Yes, you read that right. 100 miles…of running (with walking sprinkled in). Yes, crazy. He’s got me hooked on the concept of running distances greater than the marathon, although I still can’t fathom 100 milers. I just can’t imagine being 18 miles in and thinking, “Oh good. Only 82 more to go.”

Don’s not just a crazy runner though….he’s just plain crazy. We (Don, me, Sharon, Carol, and Carl) just did a 15 mile trail run this morning. There is a 3 mile hill in the beginning of the run, much of it steep. Don entertained us with snippets from the Sound of Music, particularly, “The hills are alive…with the sound of music…” on the way up. He didn’t let the fact that he can’t sing stop him either. You’ve really got to meet him to really appreciate him…his boundless energy, his stories, his humor.

I’ll be crewing and pacing him in the Leadville, Colorado Trail 100 Miler this summer. I’m psyched. Colorado. Trails. Running. Mountains. Views. Woot!!! Is it August yet?

Ohh…and the outfit…clearly, he’s very secure in his masculinity.