Month of December, 2007

Merry Christmas

Hope y'all have a merry Christmas!

NPR's Best Hip-Hop of 2007

I need to listen to all of the albums mentioned in NPR's Best Hip-Hop of 2007.

1. Kala Artist: M.I.A.
2. 8 Diagrams Artist: Wu-Tang Clan
3. Graduation Artist: Kanye West
4. American Gangster Artist: Jay-Z
5. Space Music Artist: Dyme Def
6. Big Doe Rehab Artist: Ghostface Killah
7. Desire Artist: Pharoahe Monch
8. Bayani Artist: Blue Scholars
9. Gutterfly Artist: Lifesavas
10. Remixes Vol. II Artist: Ratatat

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Pizzeria Bianco

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of having dinner with Cinnamon and Andrew. They're in town for the holidays to visit Andrew's family. Luckily, they took some time out to have dinner with Chris and I before we leave town to visit our families.

We went to the famed Pizzeria Bianco. They know a couple food writers who wrote a book about pizza. Apparently Pizzeria Bianco was rated the best pizza in the US by these guys. I've heard the pizza is great too so we decided it would be worth the wait. Cinnamon and Andrew arrived first and they were told it would be a two and a half hour wait. Chris and I arrived about 45 minutes later. We sat outside, drank wine, ate snacks, and caught up. The company was great. Since Cinnamon and Andrew live in Chicago, we don't see each other very often and it was great catching up.

We were finally seated for dinner sometime after 9pm. I'm not exactly sure, but we must have waited over three hours for a table. We ordered the Wiseguy, Italian sausage and onions and the Rosa, onions and pistachios. Both were very delicious. Pizzeria Bianco's pizza has a very distinct smoky flavor which sets it apart from any pizza I've ever had. The salami on the antipasto plate and the cappuccino after the meal were also favorites.

It was a wonderful, wonderful night and a great party of this year's holiday season.

Predictions

Aaron recently posted his predictions for 2008 and it got me thinking. I don't have a long list, but I do want to mention one prediction of mine.

I predict that the movement to buy and sell handmade items will grow next year. I truly believe that with the focus on global warming, people are thinking a lot more about what they buy. I also believe that people want to connect with each other. I predict more sites like Etsy.com will be popping up and we'll see more and more people making and buying handmade things.

A great article in the New York Times about the "handmade movement."

Quote of the Day

"No starting the engine unless you're going to drive somewhere."
- Chris

Luminarias at Desert Botanical Gardens

Saturday night I surprised Chris with a visit to the Desert Botanical Gardens for Las Noches de las Luminarias. We had a great time walking in the garden and listening to all the musical performers. It was the perfect event to get into the holiday spirit.

We finished up the night with a lovely dinner at Durant's. Durant's is a Phoenix icon that I've been looking forward to visiting for years. The steak left a bit to be desired (at $40 it should have been the best steak I've had in years), but the service, atmosphere, and crab macaroni and cheese made up for it.

View all the pictures.

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Chocolate Star Bakery

The other day I complained about a company that gave poor service online. Today I discovered a Scottsdale company that gave GREAT online service.

I ordered cookies for a client today from Chocolate Star Bakery. While I personally haven't eaten their cookies, they looked good! The site was super easy to use and very clean. So I placed an order and even got to specify what day I wanted the cookies to arrive!

What really impressed me was that I got a phone call only 20 minutes after I placed the order. The nice lady from Chocolate Star Bakery called to see what I wanted on the card to accompany the gift. She took the note and confirmed the cookies would be shipped today. Now that's customer service!

I will definitely be doing business with Chocolate Star Bakery again.

Mac wants to be a lap dog

Chris's black lab, Mac, sure has adjusted well to living with me. In fact, I think he's 100% comfortable now. He doesn't love me as much as he loves Chris, but that's to be expected.

Last night while Chris and I were watching TV. (Monday is TV night.) Mac crawled up into my lap. At 80 pounds, he's a little too big to be a lap dog, but it sure was sweet!

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It's Time to Plan a Wedding

Chris and I have been engaged for almost 6 months. Wow, the time has gone so fast. When we got engaged, we decided that we wouldn't plan a wedding for a year or so. We wanted to see how living together would be. (Most important! Especially after dating from different cities the entire time we were together.) Living together is great...really, really great. And we've been talking about a wedding.

For some reason, this whole topic makes me nervous. I haven't entirely figured out what it is about my wedding that freaks me out, but I'll announce it when I do. It feels like there's so much expectation wrapped around the event that it's just easier to be overwhelmed. Most days when I think about a wedding, I feel overwhelmed so I stop.

Over Thanksgiving, my parents brought up the topic. They're very supportive and relaxed about it. They just wanted to know what year we were planning on getting married. Because their 40th wedding anniversary is 2009 and they're planning a big family event. (Which is going to be so awesome! It's such a blessing that they're still together and in a healthy relationship after all these years.) They didn't want to have two major family events in the same year - wedding and anniversary party - since none of us have that kind of vacation. Well, my father does, but what can you expect after 35+ years with the same company? They offered us first pick and said they'd be totally flexible with scheduling their event. My parents are awesome.

Hearing the year 2009 and imagining a wedding that far away was hard. I don't think I want to wait that long to get married. We're happy and we're sure we want to be committed to each other forever. So I told my parents that we would get married in 2008 and we would celebrate their anniversary in 2009. That was all fine and good until the glass of wine I had at dinner wore off and I realized what I had done.

I committed to planning a wedding.
In 2008.
And 2008 was only a month and a half away.

I haven't been freaking out since that realization, but only because I'm not thinking about it. Typical avoidance behavior...but it works so well! Time isn't on my side so I have to face the music. It's time to plan a wedding.

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Election Photos

NPR has an article about the site TheStumpingGrounds.com, which is a photoblog for a group of freelance photographers following the presidential race in Iowa. The pictures are amazing. I especially like seeing photographs that aren't what you would see in the mainstream press.

I love this picture of Obama, because of his smile and he's got a great logo.
I like this picture of Obama because it's not about Obama at all.
I like this picture, because I don't know who he is but I think he's secret service.

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Etch-A-Sketch Love

Look what I found on my dresser tonight before getting into bed. I'm so lucky that Chris loves me!

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The Strokes always make me think of Journalism Josh

Josh, I'm thinking about you! Hope Harvard is treating you well.

Ewww

As seen in the grocery store.

Braydon

My nephew is so cute and so happy! I can't wait to see him at Christmas. Thought I would share this adorable smile and help brighten your day.

Integrum Holiday Party

Last weekend, my company, Integrum, had a holiday party. It was the best party I've been to in a long time - plenty of food and drinks, an ugly sweater contest, and a white elephant gift exchange. I loved seeing my coworker's significant others and their children. I think everyone had a great time celebrating a great year for Integrum. I'm so, so lucky to be a part of a great company with such great people!

Photo Highlights

Enjoying the photo booth Chris and I setup.

Being a Finalist in the Ugly Sweater Contest (and jumping!)

Receiving an iPhone from the company

Having Chris with Me

View the entire set of pictures.

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BarCamp Phoenix

Today I attended BarCamp Phoenix. Thanks to James Britt and all the others who put this even together! These are my notes from the day.

List of What's Coming in the Future - Ray Neimeyer
Reviewed last year's topic & how relevant we still feel they are. (* marks something as relevant/exciting/still upcoming)

• Virtualization*
• Transcoding
• wpfe, flex
• Functional Programming going mainstream*
• Utility Virtualization
• Identity 2.0*
• Less AJAX
• RIA
• Personal Web Services
• URLs everywhere*
• Tele-Immersion
• VOIP
• TV Advertisements on Web
• Ubiquitous Recording*
• Return to Print
• Fabrication*
• Living Room Computing (HTPC)*
• Digital Paper*
• User Context
• Municipal Wi-Fi
• A/B Split Testing on the web*
• SD Radio
• Better Battery Technology*
• OpenSource Revolution*

New Topics

• Localization
• Open Source Phones
• Utility Computing
• Darknets
• Custom Programming Languages
• Open Source Culture Everywhere
• Blurred Definition of Computer - phones, EPC, etc
• Solid State Storage / Bio Storage
• Privacy Awareness / More Anonymity
• Transparency
• User-generated content
• Self Distribution

Google Bigtable - Maulik Shah, software engineer at Google, internal systems - things that Google uses (HR, collections)
Bigtable: A distributed storage system for structured data
Paper was written by a number of people at Google
How would you take care of 100 terabytes of data?
Google Earth 70TB, Google Analytics 200TB, Crawling Internet 800TB
1 terabyte is about 100 people's pictures
Bigtable is essentially a map: distributed, persistent, multi-dimensional,
Google is known for using bad hardware so the engineers have to plan for failures & redundancy.
Most of this discussion I didn't understand, but I did find the row ID fascinating. IT's a URL backwards. It means all the data is in one place, or in order. Don't have to go to multiple machines in different locations for the same data.
It seems that the database know how to balance the load. It will move tablets that are too large to a new machine so there's enough room. Locking happens when a machine fails. Then another machine will pick up the tasks of the failed machine and the lock is removed. The mechanism for the locking is called "Chubby" and obviously, it's critical Chubby doesn't fail.

The community would like to engage people at Google more. How do we get the word out?
http://azgroups.org/ - one calendar for all groups

Lunch - pizza sponsored by Google

Online Contact Management - Brian Shaler
"When you join a social network (eg Twitter) how do you find out which of your 'real life' friends are already on it? Email/Ask them all?" - Most responded to post on Twitter
Import address book, search for names, but there's no real good solution.
Some solutions: Plaxo - centralized address album, vCard, hCard, RSS
Brian came up with XID. "X" for XML; eXtensible ID card.
Recently started working on it. See "Braincrack" (ideas that get stuck in your head) from Ze Frank.
brian.shaler.name/xid/alpha/register - option online resource to setup XID
A url gets rendered - xidcard.com/your_id
Plus there's a Firefox extension in the works.

Facebook Apps - April Holle
What are the basic building blocks for Facebook?
Consider building on top of the "social network." Think about the growth you can have by touching your audience. Think about what they, their friends, their family, etc. will find useful in their daily life.
News feed - it's very difficult to get an app listed in news (yet customers really, really want this)
Notifications - person to person
Messages - applications can send messages
Good examples of apps - Food Fight
What is the Facebook value? 6th most traffic-ed site in US

Virtualization - Kimbro Staken

NYPD - Poor Online Service

Today I ordered pizza online from NYPD. The online interface was good and I was easily able to place my order. Unfortunately, NYPD can't process the online orders properly. My coworker went to pick up the order at the time specified by the online system, and he was told the order wasn't ready. It would be another 30 minutes. I ordered at 11:45am, the online system said 45 minutes so pickup should be at 12:45pm. The actual pickup time ended up being 1:15pm. That's horrible.

NYPD, don't do business online if you can't deliver. Your service today was atrocious. I will never order online with you again. And I am seriously considering never doing business with you ever again.

Location:
New York Pizza Department
211 E. Warner, #101
Gilbert, AZ

*Update - the manager was very apologetic to my coworker who did the pickup. The manager also gave us $20 off the $80 order.

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Santa Drives a Minivan

I saw Santa at the gas station last night. I wasn't too surprised that he drives a minivan. It's probably a great car for all those presents.

Refresh Phoenix

The December meeting for Refresh Phoenix was held last night. This is my meeting summary.

Announcements:
Plenty of new jobs are listed on the Google discussion group; also Brian Shaler announced jobs at his employer - designer (entry level), developer (.net, database), copy writer (with experience in automotive); April Holle mentioned her employer is looking for a project manager/project coordinator; someone else (who I didn't know) announced GoDaddy is looking for a designer
Feel free to post about meetings in any site you use - Upcoming.org, Eventful, etc.
SXSW Interactive - March 7 - 11 in Austin, TX (summer camp for geeks!)
BarCamp Phoenix - Saturday, Dec 8th at UAT
Inza is getting a liquor license for wine & beer (I'm really excited about this one!)
ReadPhoenix.com is a great place to find local bloggers so post your blog!

James Archer led a discussion about the web survey by A List Apart. This survey was a ground-breaking look at what is going on in the web industry. Over 30,000 people responded! I'd recommend looking at the results...it's pretty interesting.

Personally, my favorite statistic to think about is that 16% of the respondents were women. It reminds me a lot of the same statistic from most MBA programs - 20% female attendance. Where are all the women?

I took some notes from the meeting last night, but right now I think they're pretty boring. The thing that sticks out in my mind is that there seemed to be a lot of side conversations going on all night. I wonder if the topic was boring to people or if they were having their own conversations about the data. Maybe the topic wasn't suited for such a large group discussion and that it would be better discussed in small groups. (Hmm, we've never had the Refresh group split into small groups for discussion. That could be an interesting exercise.) I know that I, personally, had some side conversations going so I can't point fingers. The bulk of my side conversations was about the data, but one was completely off topic (but hopefully means some new business for Integrum).

After the meeting, I had the pleasure of meeting a bunch of new people. Dinner and drinks at Rock Bottom after the meeting was a ton of fun too. I really enjoyed having the chance to get to know Cotton a bit better. I had such a good time that I didn't get home until nearly 11pm!

Despite the fact that I think my notes are boring, I'm going to post them. Feel free to stop reading here.
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Age: Quick straw poll at Refresh shows about balanced between 21 - 24 and 25 - 32.
Gender: 16% on survey; less at Refresh only 4 or 5 women

Job title: Interesting to see the breakdown; can't believe some people are still called "webmaster"

Region: such a large group in the Midwest was a surprise; someone from the group thought Chicago & Minneapolis

Education: More than half of the surveyed have a bachelor's degree and 15% has master's. This was a surprise as the way it used to be was less degree.
About 1/3 or less at Refresh had bachelor's degrees. Only 1 person (me) had master's degree. Though after the meeting, I learned that Mike will be earning his master's degree next week!

Blog: 72% surveyed have a personal site or blog. Wow! Could this be because word of mouth about this survey was through the web?
How many are actively blogging?

Hours worked per week: James thought it was reassuring not everyone was working 80 hours a week. This was fascinating to April because it feels like we're working more.

Refresh Phoenix had 4-5 people who have been in the industry more than 10 years!

Shaler wanted to see the question, "What percent of web developers are ADD or ADHD?"

Derek Neighbors thought the geographic bias questions were interesting. He's talked to a lot of people who believe you can't make money in the SW and can't develop here. The survey seems to say the opposite.
Who filled out the survey? Were there people from here? Is Derek just talking to the jaded people?

Job satisfaction / raise / frequency of job change - correlated?
Is satisfaction really as important as raise? Or are people leaving jobs to get raise?

Matt Gist shared that at the Future of Web Design conference, Zeldman fielded questions about this survey. While generally, people feel it was a good thing, A List Apart realizes that there's a lot of holes. They don't know how to handle the survey next year. Do they fill in the gaps and make it a 90 question survey?

Someone (that I don't know) thought it was interesting that so many of the usability experts work for the government. Accessibility is very important to government agencies.

Derek asked "Are there any small business owners using this survey to figure out how to compensate their salaries?" James said he did.
Follow up question, "As an employee how do you want your employer to decide how to compensate you?" Group said it depends on type of agency (ex startup), benefits, personal needs.

People would like the survey to cover benefits (such as health insurance). Also interested in benefits such as bring a dog to work, foosball table, gourmet chef, etc.
People also wanted to know more about turnover - why people move from one job to another.

"Baby A" Arrived!

Last night Summer and Greg's baby (aka. Baby A) was born. It's a girl! She was born at 11:26 PM on Dec 1. She is 7 lbs, 9 oz, 20.5 inches long, and a 14 inch head. Both Summer and the baby are doing fine. Despite it being a late night, dad was up early sending email with pictures. It's so exciting to see this wonderful child we've all been waiting for.

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