Categories
Travel

Storm, salt blizzard, and The Trucker and the Biker Gang

I left Reno late – about 10:00am. Heading east, the clouds begin to gather and the sky darkened. Around the highway, lightening flashed and you could see sheets of rain in the distance.

The wind was blowing and dust devils appeared here and there in the plains. One particularly audacious devil seemed to parallel my car at one point. It’s presence said: One more tree down in the forests of Brazil and I would be a tornado instead. And you and your little aluminum can would be tossed into the next county. Hee Hee.

The storm broke on both sides of the road, but the freeway itself was remarkably free of rain. Just when I thought I would miss out of my first thunderstorm driving experience, a wall of gray crossed the road. Wet. Very wet. Lots of lightening too.

photo of thunderstorm

The thunderstorm was fun, but the salt blizzard in Utah, with visibility reduced to about 2 feet was a bit intimidating.

Salted in the shell, Shelley. That’s me.

Worst part of today’s drive was somehow getting in the middle of a biker gang – and this was a gang, not Sunday bike riders – who were playing chicken with a trailer-less semi. I was surrounded by bikers, trying to avoid the semi as it would cross back and forth across the freeway. Ugly, ugly and very scary. As soon as a path cleared, I hit the gas – I had to exceed 100 MPH in order to finally get away from this group. I’ll be honest and say I didn’t particularly care if a cop stopped me at that point.

Other than this bit of macho bullshit, drive was nice and I’m in Salt Lake City. I’m taking a break from driving tomorrow. Hopefully more pics for you Sunday.

BTW, the ThreadNeedle discussion is getting quite interesting – stop by and add your 0.02. I’m particularly interested in people’s take on “filtering” out posts from a discussion. My first take was “no way”, but now…is there room for regular and extra-crispy in ThreadNeedle?

Quick: Look for the faces in the photo (answers provided tomorrow, winner to be checked for drugs.)

aok.jpg

Categories
Technology Travel

Reno calling

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

A quick update because connection charges are ruinously expense at the hotel (Silver Legacy, Reno).

Long trip was cancelled and I’m heading to St. Louis direct. The move this last week was, well, horrible. Thankfully the folks at Delancy Street (non-profit foundation that employs people in various positions), came through and rescued me today, packing up the rest of my stuff. I am sicker than a dog is all I can say.

Heading to St. Lou in easy stages.

Thanks to everyone for the incredible efforts with Thread the Needle, or ThreadNeedle, or Needley. The great thing about this project is it’s the first to be designed via the weblogs.

One thing I have been stressing with TheadNeedle is no popularity – no rank – no listing of buzz – nothing of that sort. We’re here to have a conversation, to connect. Quality of conversation should matter, not quantity of links.

Am I out to lunch on this one issue? Should popularity of threads be denoted in some way?

Looking out hotel window at a massive thunder storm rolling in. I get to drive through my first t-storm tomorrow. Cool.

Categories
Weblogging

Neighborhood news

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Like myself, Victor is moving. Unlike myself, Victor is moving with five kids. Five kids.

Can you imagine the size of the moving van?

Speaking of kids, time to send congratulations over to Gary Turner – he’s expecting his first baby in December. Congrats, Gary!

Update Not that anything’s being announced or anything (*ahem*), but check out some very cool ultrasound pics that Ben and Tempe have provided.

Categories
Standards Web

Issues of accessibility

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Mark Pilgrim’s Thirty Days to a more Accessible Web. The series covers basic steps we can take to make sure our weblogs and web sites are accessible.

His first tip is on DOCTYPES.

I tested my weblog against the 508 accessibility test at Bobby and according to the results, not necessarily trivially easy to read, I should meet this standard. However, I don’t meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 standard.

Does anyone meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 standard?

Once I’m settled, I’m enlisting the help of experts among my virtual neighbors (weblog translation – I’m whining, begging, and groveling for help because everyone knows I’m a back-end developer and know shit about front end stuff) to make sure my weblog and web sites are accessible.

If you have a weblog, don’t you have something to do about now?

(And once you’re done with that, move your tushie over to AKMA’s and give him some requirements and suggestions for Thread the Needle.)

Categories
Technology

A day in the life of a technical architect

Client: When can you tell me what you think of the software?

Me: When do you need the evaluation?

Client: Tomorrow.

Me: Tomorrow?

Client: Yes, we’re meeting with our clients tomorrow.

-sigh-

Me: Well, what’s the potential user load for the software

Client: Half a million customers

-pause-

Me: At once?

Client: Yes. What do you think it will take?

Me: A miracle