I’ve traveled more in the past 2 months than I can remember. Last week I flew to Chicago for a week to be with Amy….then flew to Phoenix for Memorial Day weekend for our engagement party… and finally drove 14-hours with my Dad from Phoenix to California to go home. In two months, I’ve put 4400 miles on the truck! (remember, I drove from Chicago to Santa Cruz in April!)

Last week, I couldn’t stand being apart from Amy… so I jumped on a plane to Chicago (MDW). I had my first experience with the A-B-C “cattle call” boarding at Southwest airlines. What a joke. 30-40 minutes prior to flight, everyone is nervous as heck worrying if they will get stuck with a middle seat. Dig my heart out with a spoon! I’d perfer to just get my seat and deal with the possible middle seat annoyance once.

In Chicago, I worked hard (remotely), spent tons of time with Amy and Jesse (our dog), partied with the Orbitz crew, consulted with Orbitz as a now vendor consultant, and asked 3 of my close friends to be groomsman (Paul, Winthrop, and Brendan). Amy is adorable and I love spending time with her. Jesse is a ball but we need to train him to sleep at night. Being at Orbitz felt like being at home and I miss everyone there. Choosing groomsman is very hard, especially when I have a number of other really good, solid, respectable friends in Chicago (you know who you are) — but these 3 guys have helped me experience things like wear my first Tux, smoke my first Cigar, deal with relationships ups/downs, party all night in Chicago, and… understand what it means to be a good friend. Off to PHX.

In Phoenix, Amy’s parents held an engagement party for us with friends and family. What a night! I met such wonderful people, most of whom will attend our wedding. Amy’s folks spent over a day cooking a feast for the guests! It was a hit and I can’t wait to see them in 10 months.

It takes 14-hours and 800 miles to drive from Phoenix to Santa Cruz. Well, when you take a detour to see the Hoover Dam, that is. (warning: poor quality cell phone images). The Dam is incredibly huge and everything I expected after watching the hour-long documentary on the History channel some time ago. It’s worth seeing, but I wouldn’t make a vacation out of it. Overall, the terrain in California is more varied than any other state I’ve seen…. from desert, to rolling hills, to flat-land farms, to mountains, to the ocean. I’m really glad to live in California…

Download vim7 here.

Go ViM, or go home!

I like how this article takes an in-the-trenches approach to comparing using HTML Tables vs CSS. Ok, truth be told, I like the article because I agree with it 100%.

I’ve wasted about 4 hours trying to be anti-Table and use CSS-P (CSS for div tags and layout) and have just gotten extremely frustrated — not because I’ve had to learn CSS for the 4th time in 3 years, but because of the browser compatibility issues. I firmly believe in the DRY principle. If tables are cross browser compatible, then I code once and get compatibility for free. I’m not going to dick around with browser hacks all afternoon.

Off to tables for layout and CSS for pretty fonts and colors…

Ok. This will be the last post of the day…

but for anyone who knows me… this ViM thread is rib-breaking funny. I cried in laughter and almost lost it.

Here’s an example.

vim is only version 7

emacs 21.4

what else can you add to a text editor?
> well emacs was a text editor but we thought it needed something extra
> so now its a flight simulator.

Ok, I never post 3-times… but this is huge news. I’ve been in the midst of a cross-country move and job change… and somehow this news escaped me.

see the story here.

…do presentation layer web programming.

Here is why. I can’t believe multiple browser support is still such a problem. In this web article, they discuss how coding to a bug in the IE5.x CSS parsers allows you to use a single stylesheet for non-standard supporting (old) browsers. How ugly is that!

In the past 10 years as a software engineer primarily working with Internet technologies, I have never wasted more time than doing HTML / avascript / CSS / DOM / etc. type programming. I’m not even talking about doing pure graphics work — which is an entire beast on it’s own. Ok, I rant…

Today I fixed up my mountain bike. I went to the store and got new tubes, new brake pads, de-greaser, lubricant, and new pedals with a cage. Three hours and $70 later, I have a 13-year old Trek bike in top notch shape ready for the season! Year after year I keep wanting to buy a new mountain bike, but the practical side of me always wins — fix what you have because it’s in great condition and there’s no need to go spend > $1,000 when you can have a perfectly functioning bike for ~$50 and some elbow grease. And so I ride once again.

…in California.

After 4 consequtive days of driving from Chicago to California, I arrived at my new home in downtown Santa Cruz on Saturday April 29th, 2006 @ 2pm. Towing a double-axle U-Haul behind my new double cab Tacoma, the 2200 mile drive took just over 35 hours. Stats: max speed 80.9 mi/hr; moving average 56.9 mi/hr; overall trip average of 52.1 mi/hr. Stocked with sunflower seeds, beef jerky, bottled water, and a Garmin nuvi navigation GPS, the cross-country trip went through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. The full day of driving through IA and NE were wrist slashingly boring as the scenery from the first 5 minutes was repeated for 10+ hours. The plateaus of WY were beautiful. I stopped at the Bonneville salt flats in UT to see where the land speed records have been broken! NV was scenic but I have no interest in returning to Reno. In the end, CA proved to be the ultimate promise land with the forests of Tahoe, the lush, bright green, rolling mountains on the coast, all topped off with fresh ocean breezes.

Here are some notes from the trip:

Day 1 | Wed 04.26.06: late start. all stuff magically fit. left chicago 2pm. stayed Stuart IA. 365 miles driven. 10pm. middle of nowhere. wireless rest areas!

Day 2 | Th 04.27.06: proved: nebraska is flat. eastern wyoming. stayed Rawlins WY. 750 miles driven. 9:30pm. half way there - 1100 miles to go! antelope. middle of nowhere. wireless in B-hotels.

Day 3 | Fri 04.28.06: WY -> UT -> NV -> CA in one day. antelope. 16 hours. no good breakfast(s). 850 miles driven. 4 hours left! people living in middle of nowhere WY. plateaus. swarms of bugs. got gas downtown Reno. drove through pot-holes in pass to Tahoe in dark! Got last room at Tahoe BWestern @ 11:30pm.

Day 4 | Sat 04.29.06: CA. Tahoe. Traffic. Home stretch. 17 mountain pass was beautiful. Arrived at 2pm. unloaded U-haul. sushi dinner. crashed early!

Amy is still in Chicago for the next 6 weeks while she finishes teaching (5th grade). While I enjoyed most of the cross-country drive, we are going to ship her stuff and have her fly to CA.