2007
At Oceans 13
Tammy declares that I cannot wear my new fishing shirt to work, citing that “there has to be a line somewhere”.
One of the tweets highlighted in my MarketWatch Farewell Video.
Watching AllThingsD Gates/Jobs interview. Transcript.
Getting even happier with my iTunes-centric music world. I should have caved years ago. 🙂
Mazie's First Baseball Game
Grandpa Bruce came into town for the Memorial Day weekend. It was a nice time, and the most time that Mazie has gotten to spend with Grandpa Bruce since he lives so far away. I think the highlight of the weekend was the Twins game. Mazie’s very first baseball game and the Twins put a “W” on the board for her.
Alona, Bruce and I went to the game and Tammy hung out with Mazie while she finished her nap. Mazie and Tammy joined at the top of the 7th inning which was perfect timing for her. There is just no way she could have sat through an entire baseball game. I got to have some great Dad time with Mazie on my lap. I explained that our guy throws the ball to this other guy and that one of their guys stood in the middle and tried to hit it with the bat. If he did hit it, our other guys out there would try to catch it. Baseball redux for a 2 year old. I brought my crazy camera lens and got some great photos.
Shortly after she arrived the Twins had a big play and drove 2 runs in. The crowd roared with enthusiasm and Mazie was a little freaked out but held it together with a lot of thumb sucking and me holding her. I think she actually had a pretty good time, particularly when we got some ice cream. 🙂
Cold Press Coffee
I had a great coffee moment today that I just have to share. It’s worthy of sharing because there is information here that is new to me, and it highlights why small, local coffee shops are great.
I have two “coffee moments” each day. The first one is at home with my DeLonghi Espresso machine that I’m still loving. Two shots easily obtained with the press of a button. Just great. The second one is in the afternoon with a quick walk to One on One and get some afternoon espresso.
It’s summer now, or at least summer enough, and I’ve now switched to iced drinks in the afternoon. My typical drink is iced espresso. It used to be a triple shot over ice, but I’ve brought it down to a double shot over ice to reduce the shakes later in the evening (too much caffeine!).
I like my iced espresso, but it’s not very much liquid and just disappears too fast for me. So, I presented my problem to our favorite barista.
me: So, I want an iced drink – but there just isn’t much liquid in iced espresso. What do I do?
barista: Well, you could add water to the espresso.
me: That sounds horrible.
barista: Or how about iced coffee?
me: Brew sucks.
barista: Hmm… how about a cold press?
me: Huh? What in the world is a cold press?
barista: It’s great. We take a pound of beans and cold brew it with 80 ounces of water for 12 hours…
The conversation about cold press continued for quite a while. I got one, and it was perfect! The cold press is never heated, and slow brewed for 12 hours and then pressed through a cloth filter. It’s incredibly smooth and wonderful. I’ve got a new favorite drink!
Your not going to find something like this at most coffee shops. And your also not going to find such a helpful person with their headset on punching your order through their assembly line. What a great discovery. Try a cold press the next time you can. If you like serious coffee on the colder side, you’ll love it.
Canadian Fishing Trip Intro
I will soon be departing on a Canadian Fishing Adventure. T-minus nine days before I head out with my father-in-law and all my brother-in-laws to Canada for a week of fishing giant fish. Really giant fish. Fish that, if you are not careful, can severely injure you. I’m not an expert fisherman. I’m not even a basic fisherman. I haven’t fished for a decade, and this trip will double the amount of time I’ve fished in probably my entire life. This fills me with some trepidation.
However, I’m also really excited. This isn’t the type of trip I would typically go on so it’s fun to try something completely outside of your typical zone. Plus, fishing is loaded with gear and I’m a gear addict so that is fun. We’ll be departing for our trip and heading into the great unknown with a sun that never sets and more water than land, GPS in hand of course.
We’ll be eating a lot of fish. I’m going to pack some extra stuff just in case. I’ve ordered some wacky natural bars to take along called Figamajigs. They are supposedly pretty good, and should be a nice break if desired.
We are going to be totally off the grid. Forget the Internet. Forget phone lines. Forget cellular. There is a little bit of power via a solar panel and a generator that can be started from time to time. Digital cameras and such can be charged, but that’s about it. This will be the longest that I’ll have gone offline for quiet some time. The urge to pick up a satellite phone is strong, but the price point is enough to push that urge aside. Plus I’d probably be stoned if I showed up with some crazy phone.
I’ve got a little bit of additional gear to get or arrive via UPS. We are limited to 80 pounds of gear and I’m probably going to be right up against that with fishing stuff, photography stuff and clothes. I’m going to journal while I’m there and post when I return. I’m looking forward to the northern waters, really huge fish, time with the guys and giant fish stories to lie about when I return.
2007 Olson Family Weekend
This year was the 4th annual Olson Family Weekend! This year was Angie’s turn to plan and there is only one more year before we loop back around for the next round of trips. It was a great weekend and Angie did a great job putting it all together.
We had a great weekend up at the Lundeen’s cabin (huge thanks to Lundeen Sr. for allowing us to overtake their cabin!). The cabin was cramped with 11 people and 3 dogs, but it added to the fun actually. The weather was sketchy but that didn’t slow anyone down either.
Rather than reading, go take a look at the pictures from the
weekend, or
watch a couple of videos of Mazie from the weekend (thanks for the
videos Angie!) [I removed the videos from YouTube].
Serious Development in JavaScript
JavaScript is a really powerful development environment. Really.
Many developers don’t agree with that statement. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. First, the word “script” appears in the name of the language and developers are often pejorative of anything with the script word in it. The logic goes something like scripting may be fine for hacking out little things, but cannot be used to build real applications.
I think the other black eye for JavaScript was that the first uses of the language were purely trivial. Remember the first time you had snowflakes falling on a web page? Or how about going beyond blinking text to text just jumping all over the place. True, the first implementations using the language were primitive.
There are other issues that you could highlight. There are no threads. It’s not compiled. Namespace is very loose. But this all misses the point that some of the most sophisticated and sexiest web applications out there are largely built in JavaScript. I personally spend a lot of time everyday now in JavaScript applications thanks to Google. Developers need to focus more on this language as a serious development environment, and the tools for it need to catch up. Venkman is nice for debugging, but more is needed. Further tools like Google Gears will extend JavaScript even further including off-line.
The May 2007 issue of MSDN Magazine featured a cover article called Create Advanced Web Applications With Object-Oriented Techniques (whew, mouthful) that touched on building JavaScript in a more sophisticated way. It’s a good read, and will start your thinking down the path of using JavaScript for more than snowflakes falling off your mouse pointer.
Congrats to my sister Alona for passing her social work exam!