OMG…the music!

I have an ipod and an FM transmitter for the car. If you don’t know, it plugs into my ipod and sends the music to an empty FM station so I can listen through the car stereo. It’s very cool because I’m done with CDs and all my music is stored on the computer and ipod (for portability).

The transmitter needs to be tuned into a pretty empty station in order to work and be heard clearly (without static). Unfortunately there were hours and hours of driving time through the Midwest and above that for whatever reason, I couldn’t find a station empty enough to make it worth tuning into. Instead I spent hours hitting scan and bouncing between country and religious stations.

S– and I were headed out to run a quick errand today and she wanted to listen to a CD. I popped open the changer and what did I find…?

Six great CDs ranging from Tom Petty and System of a Down to Wyclef. They were there the whole time! Oh well.

Hood River, Oregon

I made it into Hood River, Oregon about 1:30 PST today.

The alarm on a car outside my hotel room window last night went off about every 20 minutes it seemed. Finally about 4 I decided it was’t going to stop so I might as well hit the road.

Idaho was beautiful and the mid-June snowstorm I encountered in Lookout Pass between Montana and Idaho was certainly unexpected.

The tip of Northern Idaho went fast but Washington was painful. Most of what I drove through was desert-like and knowing I was so close…but still hours away made it all the more painful.

I finally crossed over into Oregon about noon with a few more hours left to go. Battling the winds shooting down the Columbia River Gorge with four bikes on the car (acting as a big sail) seemed to make me go backwards.

Ah…finally sweet relief and a place to crash…Hood River.

Check out the Flickr pictures from the trip.

Missoula, Montana

I spent most of the morning in the Badlands and Black Hills Forest taking pictures. With lots of time to make up, I drove about 15 hours today for a total of almost 950 miles. Ouch!

I’m spending the night in Missoula and shooting for finishing the trip through Idaho, Washington and Oregon tomorrow. The legwork and extended time in the car today should leave me with an “easy” 7 to 8 hour day tomorrow.

Murdo, SD

Tonight I’m in Murdo, South Dakota, a few hours East of Montana/Wyoming borders. In almost 800 miles of driving today, I crossed all of Iowa and most of South Dakota. I’m beat and headed to bed even though it’s only 8:30p here.

Tomorrow’s agenda is a quick stop at Mount Rushmore for pictures, Custer National Forrest to see some bison, and hopefully make it as far as Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.

I’d like an easy day of driving Sunday to finish up this trip. We’ll see what happens.

I’m Not Dead…Yet.

I think that line is from Monty Python…technically I think it’s, “He’s not dead yet”. At any rate, I’m not dead. I’m just in Illinois.

Some of you know and some of you do not. I’m currently driving cross country to Portland, Oregon. I’m relocating.

That’s part of the reason I haven’t written here since I don’t even know when. Too busy with house and packing and moving preparations.

I hoped to post pictures here of my travels. I’m taking them. Unfortunately it seems I’ve packed the USB cable for my camera who knows where. So pictures will have to wait until I unpack. Stay tuned…

Fully Subverted

Since implementing Subversion at work,I’ve been anxious to get some of my own files here at home under source control.

I’m now pleased to announce that it’s complete and went rather painlessly. I installed Subversion this weekend using one of the graphical installer packages. After I got that up and running,I chose Tortoise SVN as the client,mostly because we use it at work but it also integrates nicely with Windows. Tortoise gives you a contextual menu right in Windows explorer that allows you to manage all your version controlled files (or add files to source control) by simply right-clicking.

If you’re new to setting up source control and repositories (like I am),it doesn’t get any easier than these two applications. Now I just need to setup up my repository so I can connect to it from my laptop.

Hulkamania!

After sleeping for maybe an hour in 10 to 15 minute intervals on the red-eye from the West Coast,I was in no mood to get my picture taken when my parents met me at the airport this morning.

Until I saw this guy:

Oops…let’s rethink that URL

I spend WAY too much time online reading blogs,news,etc. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. This guy found company URLs that when read the right way probably aren’t exactly what that company had in mind when they purchased them. Enjoy!

Top 10 Worst Company URLs

The New…

• Single
• Empty house
• Job
• ColdFusion
• Free time lunch

Hackers & Painters

I just finished Hackers & Painters Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham. For those of you not familar,Graham was the co-founder of Viaweb,the web’s first online e-commerce store generator. Graham and Robert Morris sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998. Hackers & Painters is a collection of Graham’s essays on topics ranging from the education system to the ideal programming language.

I like Graham’s essays because although his topics are wide in scope,he breaks it down in a manner that lets you know he’s really spent a lot of time thinking about it. Now I’m no Paul Graham but I think I spend an almost painful amount of time thinking about a variety of different things. It’s almost relaxing to read the thoughts of someone who thinks more than I do.

I’m not sure if it’s because this topic came at the end of the book so it’s freshest or because this is a big topic lately at work but there’s a paragraph or two that’s been stuck in my head since I read it. It’s in the essay titled Revenge of the Nerds under the Recipe heading. It’s about “best practices” and “standards”.

Graham suggests that managers push for the adoption of best practices and standard technology because they’re safe choices. Any company can fail at any given time. Graham proposes that failure of projects that use best practices aren’t viewed as failures of management but rather as failures of technology and the industry that chose it (at least as far as those managers are concerned).

Don’t get me wrong,I think standards are a good thing. I try to construct all my sites using and validating against W3C standards. In the 1800s,it was nice to know that railroad tracks constructed in the West using a certain gauge would match up with those constructed starting in the East using the same guage. It’s also nice for those building skyscrapers to know that a steel beam will support the same weight whether it’s purchased from Metal X or Y Steel. I also think usability standards are also important. Web users have come to expect certain behaviors from certain web controls and it doesn’t help anyone to deviate from them.

On the other hand,I think Graham’s point is that innovation doesn’t come from safe choices or doing what everyone else does. This is where small companies excel. Maybe nobody told them things aren’t done a certain way or maybe they have nothing to lose. Graham quotes Erann Gat as saying that “what industry best practice actually gets you is not the best,but merely the average”. I don’t think any company can afford to be average. What do you think?