Category: personal

Road Trip Vacation: Out West and Back Again

We've recently returned from a three-week road trip through the U.S. It covered around 5,400 miles spread over about 85 hours in the car and a 7,000-foot elevation change, with an average speed of 64.0 mph (max of 90.8 mph), across around 13 states, and using countless gallons of gasoline.

It's the kind of trip I've been wanting to do for a while, but have always had difficulty finding the time for, let alone the sense that it was the best use of money and energy (on that point, with the way energy prices are headed, perhaps it was one of the last opportunities for such free-wheeling). But we did it, and it was great, and I'm thankful for the privilege and resources that made it possible to see the land in that way.

You can view my photos of the trip, and then fill in the gaps and see some different angles from Anna Lisa's photos from the same.

Some highlights include:
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Upcoming conference for Indiana bloggers

Blog Indiana 2008Are you a blogger in Indiana? Are you interested in learning more about blogs and blogging? Consider attending the upcoming Blog Indiana 2008 conference in Indianapolis on August 16th and 17th, 2008. The event is a 2-day blogging and social media conference that aims to promote education, innovation and collaboration among Indiana’s fast-growing blogging community. The lineup of sessions looks great (even if it didn't include me as a presenter and panelist, and even if it wasn't sponsored in part by Summersault). You can learn about blogging basics, legal issues, corporate blogging, monetization, podcasting and videocasting, analytics, and much more.

The cool part is that the conference is only $49 for both days, and even cooler, I've got a 15% discount for you if you use this link to register. If you're interested in blogging and social media at any level, I hope you can make it.

Solution for Google Treasure Hunt "zipfile" question

You may or may not have been following the Google Treasure Hunt competition, a puzzle contest designed to test your knowledge of Computer Science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia (as described on the Google blog). It's also a way for them to find potential engineers to be assimilated --er, hired. I took one of the questions for a spin today, and thought I'd post my methodology to solve it. It probably wasn't the fastest way, but it worked for me; if anyone has suggestions for improvements, let me know! Here's the puzzle:
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A few new blog interaction features

I've upgraded the WordPress software powering this blog to a more recent version, and added a few more ways to interact with my posts at the same time:

  1. I'm now using Gravatars - "globally recognized avatars" - to display user-uploaded images next to the comments that people post. This creates a little bit better sense that you're interacting with real humans, and even adds a dash of color. If you want to try it out, just visit gravatar.com to upload your avatar today.
  2. You can now choose to be e-mailed about follow-up responses to a particular post that you comment on. While you can always subscribe to a post's RSS feed to track comments, sometimes getting an e-mail is the easiest way to go - and don't worry, you can just as easily unsubscribe too.
  3. Some time ago, I added a post rating system to the blog, allowing you to indicate what you think on a scale of 1 to 5 stars (5 being the best, of course). Posts with high ratings get a little more attention elsewhere on the blog, and each star you add also help an angel get its wings. It's a way to give feedback without typing out a comment - "thank you for helping us serve you better."
  4. Also added some time ago, but now more prominently featured, you can see posts that are related to a new blog entry, listed right below the entry itself. I tend to circle around some similar themes, and so this is at least a helpful way for me to see how things tie together; I hope it's a useful way for you to explore my other writings too.

There ya go. Let me know how this stuff works for you; as always, this space is a work in progress.

The one where we almost died in a high speed car chase

Just a few minutes before it happened, I had said, "You'd think people would pay better attention to what's going on around them on the road." We were barreling west on I-70, heading to a wedding in southwest Indiana, and I'd just watched the second police car in a row with its lights and sirens at full blast trying to get by a driver ahead of us who wasn't checking their rearview mirror enough. We didn't know what was up ahead, but I didn't have a good feeling about it. Perhaps in my own nervousness about what was in front of us, I apparently also stopped checking my rearview mirror frequently enough, because the next time I looked at it, there was a third police car right behind us, lights and sirens blaring, trying to get by. Not good.

A few miles up the road, the traffic in the eastbound lanes across the median were going very very slow. And not because of any apparent wreck or other barrier. We were trying to figure that out when I saw more lights up ahead - brake lights, flashing red and blue lights, and glints of sunlight off of surfaces that were moving in directions and patterns that just didn't seem right. A cop cruiser cut dramatically across the median, and then another came back across the other way, also really flooring it. "Uh-oh," I said. The cars ahead of us were coming to a full stop. Then we saw the white van weaving in and out of the traffic ahead, and then it was coming toward us on our side of the road, twisting and turning on and off of the pavement and grass.
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This Saturday: The Internet as a Political Tool

I'll be speaking this Saturday the 17th at a free event held at Morrisson-Reeves Library, on "The Internet as a Political Tool" - how the Internet continues to change the world of politics and what it means for local citizens. The talk starts at 10 AM in the Bard Room. If you're interested in politics and technology, please come and join the conversation! For more information, you can check out the flyer on the Morrisson-Reeves website.

On Doing It Myself

Lessons in Metallurgy - WhoaI think one of the more dangerous ideas prevalent in our culture is that "you can't do it yourself, so you always need to buy something or pay someone to do it for you." As our society becomes more and more dependent on complex machines, systems and skill-sets that fewer and fewer people understand, individuals become less and less equipped to have any real control over their livelihood. When those who do have the control and power aren't available or have different priorities or cost too much...well, things can get bad.

I had a moment of awakening about this a number of years ago when I was sitting in a local hair stylist's chair having my hair cut. On my recent visits I had been observing the process more closely than prior haircuts in my life, and partly out of resentment for the $15 I was paying per 10-minute haircut, partly out of an engineer's curiosity, I starting asking questions about where her equipment came from. Together we concluded that she was using a trimmer I could get at a local store for about $20, and therefore that the main value she brought to the process was the ability to see the whole of my head to trim it when I could not. Ah-ha.
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Links and Feeds for the Week - April 12, 2008

The feeds reminder and redux edition:

April Fool's Day 2008, So Far

MineWell, you know my criteria for good April Fool's Day jokes. Here's what I've kept track of so far for the day:

What else ya got?