Well, I made it back home late last night. Thankfully, the border agents didn't grill me as hard as they normally do, otherwise I probably would have started with the smart ass responses. I gotta say, WordCamp Portland was a really amazing event, so major kudos to everyone involved in pulling it off. In fact, with each WordCamp I attend, I think that bar is getting progressively pushed higher and higher. For example, prior to my talk someone came and fitted me with a wireless microphone in addition to a normal microphone, the former being for ...

Yes, that's all I've become. I wake up, I go outside, my plants get mad at me, and I spend the morning watering them and looking after them. For those who are just joining the saga, I planted a few tomato plants on my patio at the end of May. I've watched them grow, seen them fall down a few times, nursed them back to health, and in return, I've been rewarded by the growth of a pile of little tiny tomatoes. One of the challenges with growing fruits and vegetables on your patio is that it's ...

Well, folks, Blogathon is over. Most of us left workspace sometime around 6:30am yesterday. I went with Rebecca and John back to their place, and we got there probably close to 7am or so. While everyone was totally fried, there was brief talk about watching a movie for a while to help the brain ramp back down to sleep mode. I laid down on the couch then, and woke up a few hours later to some of the sounds of downtown Vancouver. At that point I adjusted some blankets, and fell asleep again, waking up sometime around ...

Some days I wake up and still find it a bit weird that I'm back in my home town. I'm totally enjoying myself here, more so with each passing month, but certain aspects of being here are still strange to me. High school literally feels like yesterday to me, probably because I spent so much of my 20s in school, but when I think back to high school here, I have a hard time putting all the pieces together. For example, I went by my old house I lived in when I was 17. Strangely enough, I couldn't ...

"These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration: -- feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that ...

Tomorrow I'll be packing up and making the long journey back home. Truthfully, I'd probably rather leave tonight if that were at all possible -- not because I'm not having fun here, but mostly because tomorrow is just going to involve sitting around and killing time before our flight. I fly out of San Francisco in the early evening, and will land in Seattle sometime around 9pm. From there, we have to find my car and drive back to downtown Vancouver so I can drop Rebecca and John off at home. While they've offered me up ...

Yesterday was WordCamp San Francisco, and Rebecca, John Bollwitt, John BIehler, Dale and myself all attended. The night before we thought it was a good idea to sit around and drink margaritas until around 2am, so we were all a bit tired during the event. But it was a great event, and we're all glad we made the trip down. Several fairly exciting things happened during Matt Mullenweg's State of the Word Presentation. First, Matt showed a slide which displayed some of the new profile information that is going to be coming to WordPress.org -- BraveNewCode has ...

Well, last night was interesting, to say the least. For those of you who follow around here, about a year ago I decided to host my blog from home instead of on some shared hosting account. My main reason for doing that was that I had been through around 3 shared hosting providers that year, and all of them had let me down on more than one occasion. So I figured I could do it better myself. Which was true to an extent. However last night, while I was packing boxes near the server, I guess ...

Here's a shot I took of around Chilliwack, BC, Canada on my way back from a family visit.

Lately I've actually been sleeping fairly well, given how much trouble I have routinely had in the past. I've been trying to keep a fairly consistent schedule these days, going to bed sometime around midnight, and trying to be up around 8am or so. There's a period of time between about 7 and 8 in the morning that is pure bliss these days, where I just kind of fade in and out of sleep and stretch periodically. Now that it's a bit colder, my heater is on slightly, so my room is nice and toasty at ...