Angelo Computers - personal

Whirlwind of Travel

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:36:50 +0000

Oye! I don't think I can handle much more in the way of travel. It's about all I've done for the last month. Lis and I went from CA to TX to visit her family and take care of wedding stuff in the middle of Dec. Then we went from TX to MN to visit my family at the end of Dec. We went from MN back to CA for a few days. Then there was a death in the family, and so we drove from CA back to TX. Then we turned around and drove back. And then a few days later, I find myself on a plane back to Austin for work stuff. For a guy who hates to go anywhere, I sure go places!

Outside of traveling, there's not that much new in Aaronland. Wedding plans are coming along, but still very stressful. I can see why marriage is forever -- I know I certainly don't want to go through this crap a second time. I'm not certain I'll survive the *first* time!

Whirlwind of Travel

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:36:39 +0000

Christmas

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 16:14:27 +0000

Well, another year, another Christmas holiday. This year, I'm splitting Christmas day in half -- half the day is down in Texas, half the day at an airport, and half the day in Minnesota (it's a long day!). It's great to be able to see both families.

Lis' family celebrates on x-mas eve with the extended relatives. I had a blast, once I was done cooking the tenderloin. :-P Uncle Glenn brought a small portion of his impressive arsenal, which we went down to the pond and shot. I shot the 45 magnum handgun again, which is always cool. But this year I also shot a 357 magnum, and an AK-47. That's in addition to the 12 gauge Lawrence and I were skeet shooting with a few days earlier. Yee haw!

Community-driven content

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:06:26 +0000

Every so often, there is talk about a community-driven content project that seems to come up in the REALbasic community. These ideas run the gambit from OSS projects (like the WFS and CDL) to repositories (think SourceForge for RB code), to content (like a documentation wiki), and more. They always have a huge push of "yeah, that's a great idea!" from the community when they are discussed in public forums. However, it's my personal prediction that 99.9% of them end up failing.

I know I sound really negative when I say that, but I have enough years of experience watching these projects to know. There is a common behavior which I have seen with almost every community-driven project in the RB community. Someone comes up with a good idea and pitches it in public (mailing lists, forums, REAL World, etc). A bunch of people say "that sounds great!" So some more research is done on the topic by the originator, and eventually the figure out that the project is possible. A varying amount of effort is put into the project (it varies from a mild amount of effort to an enormous amount of effort) by the originator. The project is announced in a more formal way, and there is a call for assistance in maintaining the project. There is a large flurry of people checking the project out (downloading it, reading it, whatever) and an fairly large amount of suggestions on how to improve it. There is a very small amount of actual contributions in the form of work. After a period of time, the contributions go to zero and it's up to the originator to either drag the project along, or kill it off entirely as a loss.

Vacation Time

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:56:26 +0000

Wahoo! I'm done working until the end of the year (actually, I won't be back to work until Jan 3rd or 4th). I'm both looking forward to and dreading my vacation time. Lis and I are flying in to Austin on Saturday, and then we start the parade of vendors for the wedding. For three days, we have at least two vendors to meet and discuss things with. But the hope is that by Thur morning, we will have all of the vendors for the wedding picked out and lined up (with the possible exception of a DJ). While this will relieve much stress with both of us, neither of us is terribly excited about meeting them. Some meetings will be better than others (cake tasting is better than flowers, for instance). Once we're done meeting everyone though, then the fun begins. We'll be heading down to Lis' mom's house and spending time there.