While I was bumming, I spent a lot of overnights awake. One of the few things of consequence that happens in the middle of the night is Coast to Coast AM, a nationally-syndicated talk radio show which isn’t afraid to take on the “fringe” topics (aliens, conspiracies, Bigfoot, etc.). One night, they covered various natural ways of “doping” yourself with various sound patterns, optical illusions, and the like. The example that really drew me in was eating Stilton cheese before bed, even as little as an ounce, can lead to weird dreams.

I did a little research, found their source for this (the British Cheese Board, via the Internet Archive), found some Stilton, and gave it a shot last night. And, indeed, I had a strange dream. You see, someone had taken my ancient (ca. 1995) laptop and revived it. The laptop actually runs a first-gen Pentium with 8 MB of RAM and less than a gigabyte of hard drive space. It was still somehow running Windows 95, but it was running like I’d never seen it before. Some unnamed person in the dream had rigged up a wireless card, a fresh battery, and a mass storage device to it which reported several terabytes of storage (more than Windows 95 can support). I was confused and amazed in the dream, but before I could press for any real details or figure out that it was a dream, I woke up.

I still have more cheese to eat.

I moved into the house for the most part this last weekend. While there’s a few things I’ve forgotten, I’m ready to open up the house to my friends. What better day than Sunday, the 4th of July? I’ll be around all day long. There will be some kind of food for people (hot dogs is the current thinking, but I’m open to suggestions. I’ll make sure to have something veggie-based for my non-meat-eater friends, too). I’ll also have the Rock Band set up in the basement and an assortment of board games available if anyone wants to throw down.

I’ll also go ahead and let you know that I’m not expecting anyone to bring me anything. Except beer, if you want to drink some. I don’t drink myself, so my supplies are limited at best. If you want to come and want to drink, make sure you bring something to drink.

I know many people already have plans for the 4th. It’s one of those holidays where most have plans months in advance. So if you can’t make it out on Sunday, I won’t think anything of it. If you can only stop by for a little bit, that’s cool, too. I’d just love to welcome people into my new home if they want to come see it. I’m also not going to buy any fireworks, so I’ll be winding down the party around sunset to give everyone a chance to go to a show somewhere else around town.

If you want to come, track me down on the Twitter or the Flickr and I’ll get you the address.

Though it started with the January of Laze, this year is turning out to be one of the bigger ones in my time. Between my professional, personal, and social lives, I may hardly resemble my previous self by the time the calendar resets again.

Professionally, I started a new job back in February. It’s a smaller job compared to the one I left last year, but it still has its challenges. Mostly in the people I have to deal with, of course, though the work itself occasionally throws a curve ball. But, with less stress, less responsibility, and fewer constraints, my feelings have improved. I can see the impact my work is having on those around me, and everyone seems better for it. This makes it far more rewarding than the endless grind of patch jobs and hacks that only quieted demanding customers (rather than satisfy them).

Personally, I’m continuing to improve my body. The long road to fitness has brought me to where I’m somewhat active, eating better, and happy to be outside. I’ve also removed much of the clutter that filled my personal space. But the biggest change is that I’m in the process of buying a house. For the first time, I will live in MY house. This will show me exactly which habits belonged to me alone, and which were brought out only under the influence of others. Having seen the best and worst from myself in my previous living arrangements, I’m greatly looking forward to how I’ll be under my own control.

Socially, I’ve started to take on a full identity. Before, I was just a guy with a hat and a camera who would show up at events, looking for anyone. Now, I’ve taken on my own voice, figuring out what I really stand for and how to speak up for myself in a crowd. I’ve also begun several acquaintances, which I hope I can grow into full friendships. Of course, only time will tell, but I generally like the people I’m around now and they seem to like me.

At this rate, 2010 may end up being my most important year thus far. I’m looking forward to to the second half and what it will bring.

For most of us, walking fills a significant portion of our time. From ambling out of bed in the morning, to taking us where we need to be, through a leisurely stroll through the park, walking provides essential mobility. It’s also one of the easiest, cheapest, and best exercises we can do.

I’ve been working to keep my better personal habits up (eating the right kinds and amounts of foods, mostly), but I’ve pretty much maxed out on my long-term body reshaping project. A long, cold, filled with snow winter did nothing to help the situation, either. But, with Spring came new opportunity to get outside. I had generally planned to do more, but didn’t have any real concrete idea of what to do.

In mid March or so, I bought a new game which came with a pedometer. There’s some gimmicky bits that make it work with the game, but I was looking forward to it mainly as a way to track my progress with the “get out and do more” plan. I also moved to a spot very close to work, which made walking many days a reasonable option. Combine this with friends doing “30 Days of Biking” and a desire to join them in spirit, and I had a plan: do more walking in April.

I had the walk to work to help me, providing about 2000 steps a day, if I walked to and from twice. Combine that with regular daily activity set a baseline day at around 5000 to 6000 steps. Between a nearby park with a walking track, as well as area hiking trails and some of my other hobbies, getting a good working average above that wasn’t too hard.

The month began with a lot of enthusiasm and effort. In the first five days of the month, I averaged over 10000 steps a day. This was a mixture of walking to work, finishing moving, and extra activity (like disc golf and bowling). After that, being finished moving, then a brief sick bout cut the extra bits down a bit. There were still a few good days in there, but many were in the 6000 range or even below. As the month continued, my attention was drawn in other directions (my friend needed some aid, I went through the home selection process), so my steps never rebounded to the early highs.

In the end, despite not having any set goal to begin with, I finished the month with a little over 210k steps, which I think is a good baseline number to work off. I’ve set a goal of 250k steps for May, so we’ll see how that goes. At the very least, I have some numbers to work from to gauge my progress by. I hope this can bring me back to the progress I had been making.

Yesterday (October 3, 2009) saw BarCamp Omaha 2009, a one-day conference with open, ad-hoc discussions in three broad, general categories: creative, technology, and entrepreneur. I hadn’t attended last year’s, nor any of the others held in the region, and the web site really didn’t make it too clear what to expect. People were talking about it on Twitter, though, all assuring that it would be awesome. At five bucks, it was cheap enough that even if it was a bust, I wouldn’t be out more than a day’s coffee.

I thought I might give a talk about my developing my phone app. People might find it interesting to hear someone’s experiences, plus no one ever shows enthusiasm for the Windows Mobile platform (it’s always iPhone this and BlackBerry that). But the app was behind, and I wasn’t really feeling the passion to talk about it I had at the onset of the project. So that idea just faded away, untold to anyone.

I got the idea, as a joke, to talk about my life as a “professional bum." I would relate the whole process to running a business: how you have to be aware of other people’s schedules, work with a finite and constantly-dwindling set of resources, convince others to add to your resources so you can keep the job alive, and finally plan your exit from the job. The concept seemed so ridiculous that I got a good laugh out of it, never intending it to be taken seriously.

So, Saturday rolls around, I roll in still with this idea in the back of my mind. I start talking with Sandi (a friend I met through Flickr), who was polishing up her presentation. I shared my joke with her, we both got a laugh out of it, but I started thinking that I could actually do it. The event started and once they had a good set of starting speakers, we broke out into sessions while they finished signing up and scheduling the talks. About halfway through the first talk I sat in on, I decided that I’d go for it. I figured I’d waited long enough that they’d either need something to fill a slot, or they’d be full and I’d be off the hook.

I went to the board, filled out a card with my talk title, and was officially on the schedule. No backing out now (not that I wanted to). I tried to mentally organize the general order of my talk, some of the main points I wanted to highlight, and figured I’d just wing it from there. Note: this is not a good plan. If you ever plan to present anything, and you’re taking it seriously, at least write down your bullet points once. You’re much less likely to forget where you were going that way.

My slot rolls around, and there I am, standing in front of a group of at least 20 people. I tried to be pretty punctual about starting my talk, probably kicking off somewhere around 2:03. By 2:08, I was out of ideas. I know this, because I actually pulled out a clock. Yeah, that felt good. That’s when I opened it up to discussion. And lots of people had questions. The crowd really helped push the conversation along, and made me feel much less like an unprepared dolt who should have skipped this talk. One person related their experiences as a “career student,” one the gap caused by a layoff, one really related with her life as a stay-at-home mom.

One particular person in the crowd (one of the people I had recently followed on Twitter, Josefina Loza) asked me if I had a place where I was documenting my journey. I noted the 365 project as one thing, though it doesn’t really serve that role. I also noted Twitter as probably the best place to “check my progress.”

I spent some time considering what she had said today. Perhaps she’s right, perhaps it is worth documenting. Perhaps people will want to read about it, or I will find value in talking about it, even if it’s just to a vacuum. Perhaps the people on Twitter wouldn’t enjoy the endless tweets that individually would mean very little.

I have this blog which is fairly disorganized, and fairly sparse on content. Why not put it there? So, that’s my plan. I’m going to start writing down the things I do in a day, how they contribute toward the goals I’ve set or how they encourage or discourage me in my drive to achieve those goals. The posts will generally not be as full or detailed as my blog posts have been to this point, but there should be more of them. There may still be the occasional full blog post on particularly deep subjects (like, for instance, devoting myself to documenting my daily life in a somewhat organized manner), but it should be a short, quick read for anyone that’s interested.

So, here's a poll, courtesy the greatest polling website I've answered over 500 polls on, GoPollGo.

Finally, I make good on that promise I made back in September: a new blog within one year. :) More good site news: I fixed the blog's timezone to mine (US Central Time) instead of Central European Time or maybe something even further east.

Now, there's some things I acknowledge about myself. There's a lot of things I'm good at, a few I'm great at, and some things that I just simply suck at. And a graphic designer I am not. I think this looks better than what I had at least, and it better fits into the landing page (http://programmerman.net). So I'll set it on "good enough for now." What do you think?

I love the smell of coffee in the morning. Well, any time, really. I’ve grown quite a bit over the last few years in my appreciation of the various characteristics of coffee, though I’m not yet to the point of being able to smell out a good coffee. Fortunately for me, there’s plenty of places more than happy to recommend a good roast.

One such place is The Village Grinder, a long-standing local coffee house, born the same year I was (they beat me by a few months). It’s in Countryside Village in what’s now the center of Omaha, around 87th and Pacific. It’s attached to The Bookworm, a local independent book store. It’s pretty much your standard coffee shop: roasted coffee, a few teas, the accoutrements of the coffee process (presses, cups, etc.), a coffee bar with an espresso machine, pastry case, a few tables, generally welcoming atmosphere.

I’d driven past it plenty – it’s a couple stores down from the Coldstone I used to frequent entirely too frequently. I’d always been curious about it, though I’d never really made any effort to go over there. They were always closed when I was out, because I was out late and they weren’t. They keep “specialty shop” hours rather than the “cram here all night” that a lot of more recent places keep. So if it’s after 6 (earlier on the weekends), drive on by. There’s a Starbucks at the other end of the building for your evening coffee needs.

So how did I end up going in here enough times to write a review? Well, I was introduced to the place from a picture I saw in the Omaha group on Flickr, celebrating their 25th anniversary. The person responsible for the picture proclaimed them to have the best espresso in town, so I had to make time to give it a shot. And I’m glad I did. I think they actually do have the best espresso in town, at least in the mocha form I usually drink it in. Served in a generic foam cup (ideal for taking with you without the extra work of putting a sleeve on) and topped with whipped cream, it went down like no coffee drink I’d ever had.

But it’s inconsistent. Never bad, but I’ve had drinks that ranged from mediocre to “OMG, I’d drive hours for this.” I think I’ve figured out what the difference is, because it’s not the ingredients or the tools (they only have one machine). Okay, any of you familiar with the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Well, one of the characters is a trucker who drives around complaining about how it’s always raining. Turns out, he’s a rain god, the rain is just happy to be around him and follows him wherever he goes. I think the person who’d originally posted that photo may be a coffee goddess, because whenever she works the beans, it comes out amazing.

There’s also a pastry case that always looks like it has good stuff in it, but I never seem to go in in the mood for coffee and a snack. One of these days, I’m sure to try something food-related.

Then there’s the coffee wall… it’s literally a wall of coffees. Various different blends, from the standards like French Roast and Espresso, to some more eccentric ones, to a variety of flavored ones. Each fills a glass jar with its name en-Sharpied on the side. The jars line a pair of ceiling-high bookshelves. These are what lead to the majority of the wonderful smell of the joint. I’ve tried a few of their blends, all have been good either straight black or mixed with cream.

So, a good atmosphere, a good selection of freshly-roasted coffees, snacks, and hit-or-miss espresso drinks. Is it a place worth going into? Sure, especially if you like the small, independent, quiet kind of coffeehouse or some beans to take home for your brewing. Is it the only place I’ll ever go for coffee? Nah. Will I be back? I’m sure.

I finally fixed the title of this blog. It's "Programmerman's Ramblings," not "Progammerman's."

I know comments are broken. It's a Heisenbug, though, because it works perfectly on the debugger. Go figure. They're close to a new version of the engine I'm using, so I hope that fixes it.

I was driving home, when I decide I'll go downtown instead. Except that there's a roadblock. So I stop, ask what's going on. "Road's closed, you'll have to go around." Okay, fine, which way would you prefer? Next thing I know, I'm standing there talking with the cop. Car's gone, but I don't notice. So why's this all locked down? "Officially, we know nothing, but I think they're raising taxes tonight and are afraid of an uproar." Then I notice his partner has a camera, so we strike up a conversation about that. "Oh, I love my camera, but I never use it for official work, because it doesn't verify properly." I'm now standing in the lobby at my office (give or take), talking about how my camera has an add-on that would fill that role. And then I wake up, continuing the conversation in my mind for a couple more sentences.

So I have a problem... I baked too many cookies. Now I need to eat them before they go bad. A container similar to the one pictured here... lasted about 4 hours. I'll probably have to go back to the mass sharing method.

Anyone want a cookie?