Tag: Oregon Posts

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 the live stream. In addition, they exported all my slides to JPG/PDF such that the people watching on the internet could go through my slides while I was talking. Apparently the live stream was nearly flawless as well, which is great. One thing that still bothers me about conferences in general though is sort […]

I woke up yesterday in Cascade Locks, Oregon and decided to hit the coast for a few hours. I bounced through Portland, grabbed a coffee and some breakfast, and had a really great, leisurely drive along a forested road towards Cannon Beach. I pulled in right around lunch time, and hunted around for a good place to grab some food. Thankfully I found a neat little brew pub, just a block from the water. I tasted a few of their beers, and also a nice plate of Halibut and Chips. Afterwards, I grabbed my camera and spent about an hour down on the beach. Cannon Beach is of course super beautiful. The big monolith in the water, Haystack Rock, is one of the largest in the world, and photos really don’t do it justice. In addition, Cannon Beach was used in a few scenes in “The Goonies”, so it’s a […]

I’m current hanging out at the KOA in Cascade Locks, Oregon. It’s fairly dead here tonight, mainly because most people left today to go back to their 9-5 routines. Thankfully the wireless works a lot better now that not everyone is using it. My friend Sean swung by tonight, so we had a few beers around the picnic table. It was good to catch up. Last time I saw him was probably about six or seven months ago down in Portland when I had a job interview. I briefly went into Portland this afternoon to do a bit of work and to unlock my iPhone 3GS. Once I had my phone unlocked, I went down to Best Buy and picked up an AT&T pay as you go phone. I tried to activate it in the store, but the system of course had problems and said to call them for activation. […]

This morning I woke up and decided to make some plans. Strangely enough, that line from Shawshank Redemption kept going through my head — “get busy living, or get busy dying. You god damn right.” Anyways, it also didn’t help matters that Dave and Lauren took off the other day, as well as Tanya and Gus. Even Dale left yesterday to go do some relaxing at a cottage. So Instead of just heading south without a plan (something I’ve done many times before and been burned for), I decided to call a few campgrounds first. Thankfully the little KOA right outside of Portland had one tenting spot available, so I made a reservation and then started to pack my car. Unfortunately for me, someone was moving in at the time, so I had to carry about six loads of camping gear down four flights of stairs to my car. It […]

I’m pretty close to wrapping up a few projects here, so much so that I’m half packed already for my upcoming road trip. Until this afternoon, I hadn’t really decided what I was going to do for a little break, but after talking to a few people, decided to hit the open road and see where it takes me. It’s more of a working vacation to be honest, as I still have a few client projects to do, but I plan to do them from beside the pool at a KOA, or little coffee shops near the ocean somewhere. I’ve been up and down the West Coast quite a few times now, so it’s a drive I’m familiar with. But every trip is a little different, and I usually meet lots of people at every campground I end up at. My friend Lynn lives in Seattle, and I haven’t seen […]

So yesterday I was sitting on my patio trying to figure out when to take a vacation. I still have a few small client-related items to finish off, so I’ve been waiting around for that. While going over everything in my head though I remembered that because I work from a laptop, there’s really no reason why I can’t work remotely. All I need is an internet connection once and a while to check email, and I’m basically golden. With that in mind, I’m thinking about testing my Nexus pass out in the next few days and heading south. Pretty much every KOA nowadays has free Wi-Fi, so I could easily do a bunch of work while camping on the coast. Given that I have some friends in Seattle and Portland, I’m debating loading my camping stuff and a guitar in the car and leisurely making my way down to […]