Today on my first day at Carbon Five, I got registered for my accounts: email, tracker, etc. And of course:

I USE HIPCHAT, Y U NO GUY.

Hipchat’s founder, Pete, tells the story of Hipchat aweseomeness here.

Fitness

1. Get to 185 lbs / 34” waist: I slipped a bit during the holidays but want to get back to my college graduation weight. Stretch: 180lbs.
2. Run Bay to Breakers 13K: Was sick for last year’s running
3. Take up a martial art: I’ve always been meaning to get a grasp of a defense art. I’ve chosen Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Sport

1. Be able to shoot a handgun within respectable accuracy
2. Learn to play golf: last year I bought clubs and developed a swing, now I just need to learn the clubs and when to apply them
3. Attempt archery
4. Play croquet in the summer in Golden Gate Park (again!)

Fun

1. Have some. Really
2. Dance regularly

Life

1. Be a better communicator with my girlfriend: I don’t think anyone could be too good at this
2. Be more mindful: When engaged in something always look for the positive
3. Adopt a more positive and less cynical temprament
4. Read (did pretty well with this last year)
   1. Mix literature and non-fiction
      1. Literature
         1. Read “The Clown”
      2. Non-Fiction
         1. Globish
   2. Translate Aeneas to Augustus
5. Write
   1. Blog more
   2. Share code via Github
      1. Add RDFa impementation to RedCloth
6. De-learn the dvorak keyboard and get back to typing 90+ wpm

Career

1. Read
   1. JavaScript
   2. Refresh with Heads First guide
      1. “…The good parts”
   3. Node.JS
      1. Make a demonstration application
      2. Read the book
   4. Ruby
      1. Refactor LatinVerb into a discrete stack of gems
      2. Implement in Rail 3.0
   5. Read HF Servlets
   6. Read Maven book
   7. Read HF design patterns
2. Pass Scrum Master Cert
3. Get feature requests implemented in Cisco Quad
   1. Markup
   2. Development staic
4. Refresh understanding of statistics

Ah, Verbot, you cute little guy, with your hard plastic shell head, your friendly pseudo-Japanese visage, and your weird white microphone with a dangling black cable antenna… Thanks to incessant advertising during Transformers, everyone knew the sacred name of this proto-Cylon. Verbot was undoubtedly the toy of aspiration in my 4th grade Christmas year. I even recall in art class that the Y bechromosomèd were DRAWING verbot on those vast expanses of manilla paper. I think it would be fair to say that we had Verbot on the brain.

Having incredibly generous parents, come the dawn of the 25th of December, I had a Verbot.

Here’s how it would work.

1. Turn on Verbot
2. Hold in a chest button that corresponded to an action
3. Repeat the command you wanted to associate to the action
4. Hope that the solid red LED would light, indicating successful recording
5. More often than not it would take 3-4 repetitions to take
6. Now, attempt to repeat in proper voice, tone, and timbre the sounds that you associated to each command. A typical session would be:
7. Forward. Forward. No !@%!@!@$!@% I !@$!@%!@ said !@%$!@% you stupid !@%$!@%. Right. Forward. Forward. Pick Up. Pick-úp. Píck-up. Lift. Forward. Forward. NOTE: Cursing is optional, usually on the part of the parent wondering why the heck Santa brought this stupid !@$!@%!@% that doesn’t work.
8. Realize that 6 commands is not greatly entertaining after about 30 minutes.
9. Power Verbot down
10. Think of something cool you meant to do with Verbot, usually about 40 seconds after you slid his switch to OFF.
11. Loop.

I recall on Christmas Day eve, my father and I used Verbot to pick up a mini Pepperidge farm canister of parmesean cheese and move it across the dining table. That’s right, Verbot, petit garçon.

These were the good times.

My father seemed to have better luck with the Verbot because he understood what it was like to have an object of limited understanding, few interesting activities, and limitless capacity to ignore basic instructions: he had 2 kids already.

Speaking in level tones he seemed to be able to get Verbot to stack blocks, something like brain surgery with a cauliflower stalk. What can I say, anyone who grew up coaxing extra horses out of a GTO (think Luke Skywalker) in the canyons of Amarillo must have had a John Connor like grasp of machines.

But as all toys invariably go, at one point Verbot ended his playble life and was superseded by the next wave of kiddie conditioning.

I suspect that Verbot may have been the tipping point for many of us. Combining Verbot (effectively a Turtle) with an introduction to LOGO gave, I think, a generation its first taste of practical robotics. Just last month at Rubyconf there was a session on programming mini-controllers with Arduino.

I wonder how many of us first had our imagination kindled by these ‘bots.

Viva Verbot!

Next week I’m attending RubyConf where I will run in the Rubyconf 5K &emdash; my first! I’m a bit anxious about being last, but on the other hand, I’m not going to be sleeping in late and bopping down to the raft o’ donuts unlike most, so I can feel good about whatever my time is.

Buy / make it now, you’ll definitely need them later.

This is my new wallet.

I’ve long been a fan of the cigarette-case-as-wallet. It helps you cut down on your wallet footprint, and doesn’t encourage you to get bad posture when driving, seated, on a conventional wallet.

Each half holds 6 credit cards. Pictured is my Cisco ID and my Austin Swing Syndicate card. It has a really nice hematite metal exterior

If you’re interested, check out kyledesigns.com, this is case #10.

Exterior view

…upon closer inspection the music turned out to be a church gospel chorus…

…and she was not having an epileptic fit, it was her bodily demonstration of the moving capabilities of the holy spirit…

I thought it would be cheap to pull out the cameraphone on that one.

While at the intersection of Page Mill and El Camino I caught this red light and thought I would share the cameraphone pic of the fog coming over the Los Altos Hills.

Everyone thinks that the bay area is struck by fog in the winter - I admit, it’s poetic like that and Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” adds to this poetic vision. However, the fog comes in the summer, actually.

Well, it comes year round in many parts of SF, but the big thick billows - that’s summertime.

It’s damnable - days like this making you remember how lucky you are to live in a boring, expensive, sunny, perfect climate part of the world with the most powerful technology companies and the most liquid venture capitalists in the world.

The Molestermobile

Kids, if you see a van like this lurking about your school and the driver thereof is proffering you candy, you should turn and run the other way - find a teacher, preacher, police officer, whatever.

I stole a wallpaper from this site.

This gets me back in deciphering the Moveable Type template method.

…other links will be added back in later….