Category: Life

Here’s one reason why I haven’t been posting very much on this site lately:

Back in March my boss announced his retirement. A month or so later, his job was posted on our employment opportunities page.

I turned in my resume for the job around the first of May along with a few other people from outside the district. I interviewed for the position last Monday.

This morning, the school board held a special meeting to discuss several personnel items. During the meeting I was officially employed as Technology Director.

I finally got around to uploading the pictures I took of Leia in her prom dress over a week ago.

Click the picture above to see all five pictures. I would’ve taken more, but she was running late and didn’t really want to stand still.

Check back tomorrow to find out why it took me so long to get these uploaded…

We spent all day yesterday working in the kitchen. We pulled off all the cabinet doors, sanded them down, primed everything, painted everything (twice), and finally put all of the doors back on with new hardware.

We didn’t take any before pictures, but here are some after pictures.

 

Matthew seems to like it.

Back on March 28 I decided to stop eating beef. That decision was mostly brought on by this quote:

If you’re worried about getting cancer, do yourself a favor: steer clear of red meat and rich foods, and avoid cigarettes.

Robert A. Weinberg, MIT Center for Cancer Research

I remembered reading 30 Days to Success by Steve Pavlina and decided to try going without beef for 30 days and see how it went.

I did slip a few times – on April 6 I went to a meeting with free pizza. I grabbed a few slices (1 hamburger and 1 pepperoni) and ate them before I even thought about it. I’ve had pepperoni pizza one more time since then. I’ve also had two muffaletta sandwiches (I miss Central Grocery…) in the last few weeks, but I’m not really sure if they had beef on them or not.

Anyway, it’s been over 30 days now and I can honestly say I haven’t noticed much of a difference. When I cut out Dr Pepper and sweet tea from my diet I noticed an immediate change – I lost about 10 pounds in 2 weeks.

Back then I replaced all that sugar water with just water. In this case, I’ve replaced all of the beef with chicken, pork, and seafood. I’ve also eaten several diffent kinds of meat substitutes (Garden Burgers, etc.), but we were eating these before.

I plan on sticking with this new diet as long as I can (forever?). I’m also going to try to replace more of what I used to eat with fruits and vegetables. I don’t think I’ll ever become a full vegetarian, but eating more vegetables couldn’t hurt.

I read this one on somebody’s weblog today, but I can’t remember where.

How many kids with ADD does it take to change a light bulb?

I don’t know, how many?

Let’s ride bikes!

I think it’s probably more funny when I tell it in person. At least Paige thought it was funny when I told it to her. But, I guess she’s obligated to laugh since we’re married…

I tried to use my house key to unlock the door at the high school today. I was about to be late for my class so I was probably rushing just a bit.

Luckily, a student came running out the door just as I was trying to go in. After I dodged him and his giant backpack I caught the door and went in.

Just in case anyone’s wondering – the days when students would open the door for a teacher are long gone…

Maybe it’s just because it’s late at night and I’m tired, but this quote seems to really speak to me right now:

Obstacles are what you see when you turn your eyes away from the goal.

– Joseph Cossmann

What do you think?

It’s hard to believe that I’m back at work.

Well, not really. I’m sitting at my desk, staring at my laptop, with the server humming over in the corner. It would be harder for me to believe I’m anywhere else. I guess it’s just hard to believe that spring break is already over.

South-by-Southwest was great. I’ll try to post a full update later today covering everything I saw. In the mean time, I did take a few pictures while I was there. You can see of few of my pictures at Flickr.com.

Also, they’ve posted audio from a few of the sessions. The Opening Remarks by Jason Fried and Jim Coudal are worth the download, as well as Jason Kottke and Heather Armstrong’s Keynote Conversation.

It’s seems like just about every weblog I’ve look at lately says the same thing:

I’m off to Austin for South by Southwest!

I don’t know what else to say other than: Me, too.

We’re leaving at around 5:00am in the morning and will hopefully be in Austin by 10:00am. We’ll be spending the evenings with Geoff and Tony and coming home Tuesday night.

It’s going to be great to get to listen to and meet some of my web designer / developer heroes like Joel Spolsky, Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Fried and many others. I’m even going to bring a few books for signing.

I had a hard time deciding which sessions to attend. Almost all of them were interesting to me. I’ll be booked solid from 10:00am until 6:00pm every day. There are also parties every night until at least midnight, but I’m afraid I’ll be too wiped out afer a full day of sessions to attend any of these.

Hopefully this will be the inspiration and motivation that I need to finally finish a few of the programs that I’ve been working on for the last few years. I haven’t forgotten my new years resolutions yet. I still have to make at least $1000 this year from something other than my day job.

I’ll be taking lots of pictures on the trip and hopefully updating this site with notes about what I’m doing. Check back tomorrow evening to see if I survived the first day…

The last few weeks have been a little hectic, to say the least…

Way back on January 28 I attended BarCamp Dallas. First, it has nothing to do with bars, and very little to do with camping. It was mainly a bunch of geeks getting together to talk about geeky things. In other words, it was my kinda place.

You can see a bunch of pictures on Flickr. Yes, I’m in a few of those. This one’s a bit like Where’s Waldo. I’m not sure what I was thinking in this one.

I attended six sessions on a variety of things – ruby, linux, javascript, etc. I also gave a little presentation. You can grab the audio from my session over at Web Logs Work and see what you think. I guess I should post my Power Point file and source code eventually.

Long story short, BarCamp was great. The event was free, the food was free, and everyone seemed seemed to share and grow. It was really great to be able to hang out and talk with so many smart people.

About a week later I headed off to Austin for Texas Computer Education Association Conference. I stayed in Austin February 7th through the 10th.

I’m not sure what to say about TCEA. I felt a little out of place there. The conference was dominated by teachers who were a little geeky, whereas I am a geek who knows a little about teaching. So, the sessions were mostly not for me.

For example, I attended a session by a “futurist” who flew in from California to speak. During the session he talked about Google Earth, Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts. Most of the people in the audience seemed fascinated by what he was saying. The whole time I was thinking – I started my blog in 1999, does that mean I’m from the future?

I also attended a session about Linux where the speaker didn’t know the difference between Gnome and KDE. But maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe only the super geeks like me should even care about the difference. If anyone wants to spread the message of free software to the masses, I certainly won’t stand in their way.

I did attend a few sessions about running a district IT department that were interesting. It’s nice to see the way other districts deal with the problems we all face. Some of the other districts had a lot more staff and money than we did, but I did hear one guy say that he was the IT department.

I’d like to post more details about some of the other sessions I attended, but the session list on their website is not very helpful. It doesn’t even give the time that a session ran. Not to mention that session handouts are still not available.

I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m being too harsh on the conference. I really did have a good time there, and I think I learned a few things. I’m sure I’ll go back next year. I’ll probably even try to present something.

I also had a chance to eat at some great restaurants in Austin, and I got to hang out with Geoff and Tony for a while which is always nice. Geoff even took me out to eat for my birthday.

I’ll be heading back to Austin for South by Southwest on March 10. The Interactive portion of the festival promises to be a truly great gathering of web geeks from all over the world.

I’m sure I’ll also post my thoughts on SXSW, hopefully before April…