And there I am, directly beneath the wristwatch on the pouring arm.

The overall quality of the sessions was very high, among the best of any technical conference I’ve attended. A couple of duds, but some really amazing speakers, too, bringing the average way up. But what I thought was particularly interesting was that, of the top five speakers I listened to, one was the creator of Rails (so set him aside), and the other four are current and former Java luminaries.

Stuart Halloway and Justin Gehtland of Relevance are still doing work for clients in Java, but also in Rails, and were to my mind the best speakers at the event. They speak at a lot of conferences, so if you ever have a chance or choice, choose their sessions. Great energy, great speaking skills, and exceptionally well-designed slides combine for two of the best technical talks I’ve ever seen. As professionals still working in Java, their insights into what makes Rails special were the most clear and well-defended of any at the conference.

Dave Thomas and Mike Clark, by comparison, like to start their talks with “My name is x, and I’ve been Java-free for y months and z days.” Not only did they give great talks during the conference itself, but they also taught the Rails Guidebook the day before RailsConf opened, and are terrific trainers and speakers. They still speak on the Java circuit, not about Java, but rather explaining this new Rails thing to Java developers.

At any rate, there are enough Java luminaries who are leaving Java for Rails that it at least should make any Java developer stop and think about why that might be happening.

Another thing I’ll mention is to repeat something Stuart Halloway said at the end of his talk. RailsConf 2007 will not be like RailsConf 2006, because even though Rails is experiencing strong growth now, it’s going to explode in the second half of this year and first part of next. As steep as the adoption curve is today, it’s going to be more vertical in 6 months.

Which means next year RailsConf will be a lot bigger, and accordingly less tight-knit and informal. This year’s RailsConf sold out the 550 seats in days. Even with a larger venue and 2000 seats, I predict next year sells out in less than two weeks. It’ll feel different. So if you attended this year, spend some time reflecting on the experience. It was special, and may not be repeated.

Last, let me be yet another person who points out how weird it was to be at a non-Mac technical show, and see so many PowerBooks and MacBooks (Accordion Guy covers this nicely).

This could be because Rails strongly imposes the taste of the primary developer of the framework. DHH’s sense of style and design is simple and elegant, and reflects his own personal vision of how things should be done. (I don’t mean to discount the contributions of the Rails Core here, but they are a self-selected group who had to possess similar tastes to join the project started and still guided by DHH’s (strong ;-) opinions.) Who does this remind you of? Is it any wonder that this appeals to Mac people?

Of course, it could simply be a reflection of how much better Ruby and Rails, and the associated software like Apache / lightTPD run on Unix-style operating systems compared to Windows, where they run OK, but not well.

At any rate, let me conclude by admitting that I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, and my goal is to be doing 100% Rails development work by the end of the year. I doubt that I’ll be giving a talk at next year’s RailsConf, but if I did, I want to be able to start with “My name is Michael Alderete, and I’ve been PHP-free for x months and y days”…

And it comes off tomorrow morning in an hour!

The problem is the wiring. Our house is a 100+ year old Victorian, and all of our phone wiring (except for the actual phone jacks) is on the outside of the house. And it’s old, and it’s been abused, and so on. So with all the rain we’ve been having, apparently water is getting into the wiring.

We’ve had PacBell out, more than once, and about the only thing they’re consistent about is that it’s our problem, not theirs. Even thought it’s on the outside of the house, it’s “inside” wiring because it’s past the junction box, and so our responsibility.

Anyway, it’s sunny and working now, and it looks like we might be done with the rain for a while. In the meantime, I’m calling wiring contractors, because I can’t take it when we don’t have internet access. I must be a junkie…or then again, maybe I need to have internet access to, like, work and earn a living…

“Yeah. We spent into the grocery money.”

“Worse. We spent into the booze money.”

The quality of the display is terrific. I dunno about doing color-calibrated print work, but as just extra screen space (which I’ve found I absolutely need to do web development productively), it’s spectacular, and makes the built-in screen on my laptop seem dingy by comparison.

I paid a little over half what we paid for Rochelle’s 20” LCD display a couple years ago. Hers is a little taller, at 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels, while mine is a little wider, at 1680 pixels by 1050 pixels. My display is quite a bit brighter, and can do picture-in-picture, sharing two of the four inputs. All in all, I thought it was a great deal for $535 delivered.

Today Dell is offering an even better deal, $422 before tax, with free shipping. That’s about $70 less than I paid. If you’re in the market for an LCD display, I highly recommend thinking about this one. Quickly, the deal ends in a week.

Update 5/24: I thought under $500 was ridiculously low for such a good monitor, but it turns out Dell can go lower: the current deal is under $400!

(And note that this monitor proves I’m not an Apple Uber Alles freak; the Dell is a great monitor at a great price, with multiple inputs, at half the price of a comparable Apple display with only one input. The Cinema displays are lovely, but the Dell was the right features at a better price.)

One, when I was in high school, we had one of those kneeling chairs (though a cheap one, without the back, not the nice one Alex is considering), which I spent many a late night in, writing papers for classes (in WordStar on an Apple IIe with a CP/M card, uphill, in the snow…). After a couple of hours, it always felt terrible; often I would go get a kitchen chair. And I was young and limber then, I can only imagine what they would do to me today.

Two, I worked for 14 months for one of those dot.bombs that immediately went out and spent their fresh VC dollars on Aeron chairs. I loved mine, and wanted to buy it when the end came. But the CEO made a deal with the landlord to resolve the lease/rent, and my chair was included. I was very sad. I still think about buying one. I suppose if the remodel ever ends, I may do that this year, if I continue to work at home.

Three, about two years ago, Rochelle got a great little size A chair from an excess sale at her job. It was a $500 chair when new, from a premium office furniture maker, so it was a great deal at $40 used. And getting the small size was perfect for Rochelle’s short body. (Finding someone who carries the small size can be difficult; they are almost always special orders.) Every once in a while, I’d sit in it for an hour or so, while admin’ing on her computer, and thought it was pretty comfortable, if too small for me. So, when her company had another salvage sale, we bought another chair, in my size, and I replaced my $150 Costco chair immediately.

After two months, the “better” chair had hurt my back pretty badly. I had a spinal x-ray, an MRI, and various other exams. I ended up doing two months of physical therapy, because we thought there was something else wrong. But it turned out to just be the chair. After an hour of sitting in it, I would be in pain. When I finally realized it, I gave it to my mother, and went back to the old Costco chair, and my back has been in decent shape since. And my mother loves the chair that hurt me.

You would think I would have noticed that the chair was hurting me sooner than I did. I mean, I was in a lot of pain. But, when I get in front of the computer, I get focused on other things. I just never noticed, until it got really bad.

Anyway, the point of this long third story is that expensive chairs are not necessarily better for your back, and every person needs a different chair. If you can, take your laptop or a stack of paperwork to the chair store, enough for a couple hours of work, and get them to set you up with a chair or two that you think you might want to buy. And then, work in each one for at least an hour. But an hour may not be long enough, so ask about return policies, and don’t buy where you can’t return it within 30 days. You’ll pay a higher price, but you’ll be sure you’re getting a chair that works for you. If you’re spending even 40 hours a week in it, it’s worth it.

Casual users can view the basic traffic maps for free, but if you subscribe to the extended service, you get custom route monitoring (for your specific commute route, even primary and alternates), real-time alerts via email and text messaging to your mobile phone, and other features designed to keep you from getting stuck in traffic.

It’s these custom routes, and notifications of issues along them, that really make the service shine. When I was commuting regularly to Berkeley, I actually took a different route _to the site than from it. So being able to define multiple routes, and customize the alerts for the to and from segments for each, was the only way it was useful.

I am writing, of course, of our apparent decision to rip the kitchen out to the studs.

It started as a simple upgrade of our stove, as a gift from Rochelle’s mother. Then we got the bug for a “professional” style range. More money, but still a simple swap-out.

The structural changes started when we decided to take out the façade that hid the brick chimney in the kitchen. It seemed simple enough, taking out some sheetrock (we could do that ourselves), and then either cleaning and sealing the chimney, or painting over it. Add a little trim around the edges to cover the effects of ripping out the sheetrock, and we’d be done. Definitely more work than upgrading the stove, and we’d need expert assistance to clean the masonry, but still very much a limited project, with us doing the majority of the work.

Of course, it couldn’t be that simple. Taking out the façade revealed gas and water lines which need to be moved. And our floor is actually a platform over the original floor, added to level the kitchen back to true. It only went to the façade, not the chimney, so there’s a couple of square feet of floor that needs to be built up.

Added to that, Rochelle has always hated the cheap wallboard that runs around the bottom half of the kitchen wall. So we took that off the wall on the stove side of the room. Revealing wainscot that will need to be stripped of glue and paint, and then repainted, and new trim added above and below. And of course, with the walls in flux, it makes sense to redo the electrical on that side of the room, to get more than one outlet for the whole side. Especially since we’ve decided to move the refrigerator to that side of the room.

At this point, the contractor helping us with the heavy stuff said that we really ought to take the whole wall out, and if we take out the ceiling too, we can install a ventilation shaft for the hood we’re planning for the range, add wiring for more ceiling lighting, and level the ceiling to match the floor. And if we’re taking out the ceiling and half the walls, well…

At every step, the decision to proceed seemed reasonable. But inch by inch, we’ve gone from an appliance upgrade to a brand new kitchen. We think we’ve got a way to do the whole thing in two or three stages, which makes it possible for us to afford it, but then again, I really did think we were not doing a remodel in the first place.

The only thing keeping me from utter despair is the knowledge that we will cherish the new kitchen, in much the same way we cherish our remodeled bathroom. That was something we scope-crept into also, when the engagement bathtub Rochelle wanted was too big for the room, but it’s been the single best investment we’ve made together, in terms of the happiness it brings us. I’m sure the kitchen remodel will turn out the same way.

If we survive it.

At any rate, I need to get back to work, instead of continuing to fuss. Bye!

Took me a little over an hour to do the majority of the work. I think most things work now, even if it’s not exactly completely the same as the 1.2 version. I still have a few plug-ins to add and test, and then add to the templates, to get everything back to where it should be. But all the hard stuff is behind me.

Let me know if anything seems wrong…

But, we started looking into options, researching in Consumer Reports and in cooking and food resources. Rochelle eventually found this article, A Range of Options, by David Rosengarten, which blew away both the Consumer Reports mantra of low cost, high value appliances, and our gift budget.

But, once you commit to getting a centerpiece-style range, is it even possible to just do that? Not if you’re Rochelle or me.

The next obvious requirement is to get a new stove hood, because we currently have no ventilation in the kitchen, except opening the back door and window. And, well, looking at the wall it would be mounted on, it’s actually a fake wall, built (by the previous owner) to hide the brick chimney behind it. Let’s take that out!

And, when we measure the chimney in the basement, it’s clear we’ll be getting a lot of space back. And when you combine that with the need to conceal the ventilation pipe, you come to the inevitable conclusion that we need new floor-to-ceiling cabinets in that corner.

After doing all of this, is there any doubt that we’ll need to paint the entire room afterwards? Especially since we’ve been planning to take the over-sink cabinets off the wall for over a year? And that horrible fake tile siding that lines the lower half of most of the room?

And these are the plans we haven’t quashed. Because taking the cabinets off the wall is really the first of many things that should happen to that side of the room.

But, since we’re not really remodeling, those will have to wait. Hopefully…

I was, to say the least, a little skeptical. I mean, I understood that file folders are an important component of GTD, and even picked up a box of them at Costco the other day so I could get started GTDing, but really, the joy of file folders? Come on!

So I cracked the box this evening, with the intent of getting one folder out to hold all the magazine clippings I save to remind myself to check out something interesting. I even got out my P-Touch labeler and made a label for it.

Then I found another group of stuff on my desk that I could put in a folder. Labeled that one too. 15 folders later, I’ve emptied the labeling cartridge, but my desk and the top of the filing cabinet have no more lose papers.

Consider me a convert. Fresh file folders are cool. And I’m heading to the office supplies store early tomorrow to get a new cartridge for the labeler.

For me, the thing that dominated the year was my new “job” as a consultant. I’d done some consulting before, but in 2004 I managed to string together almost an entire year of work. Mostly half-time, so it wasn’t quite the income I would have liked, but I was able to pay the bills, and that’s pretty amazing. Really, all the credit goes to my primary client, Nicely Done Solutions, where the majority of my work comes from. They’ve kept me busy, and I hope to keep doing work through them for some time.

That dominated my day-to-day, but my biggest accomplishment in 2004 was my five year wedding anniversary with Rochelle. We have many more of those in our future, if we can both resist the temptation of butter.

After a frenzy of traveling in 2003, we mostly stayed at home in 2004. A short trip to Boston, where Rochelle was attending a conference and I was eating cannoli, was the furthest we went. We also made our traditional Thanksgiving visit to Rochelle’s family in Texas. And our longest trip was a road trip down to Palm Springs, where we stayed for two weeks in a condo, while Rochelle wrote the culminating papers for her Masters degree. (Which was Rochelle’s biggest accomplishment of 2004, successfully completing her Master’s program. All over but the paperwork. Yippee!) I mostly loafed around and read a couple of books; in fact I think that was the only fiction I read all year long.

I did get a chance to enjoy more fiction than those couple books, though, by finally giving Audible.com a try. Rochelle started her subscription to the service last year, and has really enjoyed listening to the audio books on her player. When I gave her an iPod mini for her birthday, I inherited the Audible.com Otis player she had been using, and started using it while I was driving. While the Otis sucked, the audio books are fantastic, and there is no better way to enjoy them than on a digital player; CDs and tapes are more expensive, and you have to constantly change them to keep going. Not with the iPod, or even the Otis, which can store almost nine hours — or hundreds of hours for the iPod.

We continued to improve our home with a number of projects, including replacing the solid wood back door with a wonderful wood door with glass panels that lets in far more light. In spite of the glass, with the redone (and now straight) door frame and new weather stripping, the kitchen is much warmer now than it was with the solid door we replaced.

Also in the kitchen we added a display shelf along one wall, to better show off the ridiculously large collection of champagne bottles we’ve amassed. I’m sure we’ll have to purge the collection at some point, but for now it’s fun to have them all in a row, and know that we’ve found and enjoyed some really fine wine in the last couple of years. The bottles on the shelf are only from the last two years, but it represents far more champagne than I drank in my entire life before Rochelle.

We painted our bedroom from top to bottom. Rochelle picked out three new colors that matched our antique bed frame, and over the course of a week, we stripped and repaired walls, and painted painted painted. The results are not perfect by a long shot, but it’s still a tremendous improvement for us.

Also in the bedroom we ended up replacing all but the headboard of that bed frame, which lowered the mattress and gave us a much more stable bed. The antique bed frame itself was quite solid, but the queen conversion kit that came with our McRoskey mattress replaced the solid side beams, and made the bed horribly shaky.

The biggest improvement we made was replacing the old, grim gray carpet that Rochelle picked out 10 years ago with new carpet that is warmer-toned, and coincidentally hides cat stains far better. That went into our parlor, office, and bedroom, as well as the hall closet, which we somehow omitted from the hardwood floors project a couple years ago.

In the office, we replaced almost all of our furniture, getting rid of our desks and a chrome shelving unit, and replacing with much bigger desks and some standard shelving from IKEA. They’re not perfect, but they look a lot nicer than what we had before, and work a whole hell of a lot better with the computers, etc., than the old stuff did.

We didn’t eat out as much this year, and so we discovered fewer new restaurants than we usually do. We still found a few, including Saha, where Rochelle’s favorite chef from last year went after he sold and left our favorite find of 2003 (which is no longer particularly special). The cuisine can best be described as Arabic fusion, and combines Middle Eastern spicing (the chef is from Yemen) with French technique. It’s extraordinary, and everyone we’ve taken there has agreed that the prix fixé dinner would be a bargain at twice the $27 it currently costs.

On the topic of food, I took HomeChef’s “essentials” cooking course (4 hours one night a week for 12 weeks), and had a blast. I made a lot of the food at home during the course, but haven’t cooked as much as I’d hoped to after the class ended. Still, I probably cooked more in 2004 than in 2003, which is a trend I’d like to continue in 2005.

We only threw one party in all of 2004, and it was on the last day of 2004 (more on that in another post). Shame on us. Look for that to change in 2005.

On the technology side, I got a new computer, my first laptop, and have really enjoyed the new mobility. Before the current generation of PowerBooks, I always felt that getting a laptop was too big a compromise. There’s still a big performance gap between the PowerBook I got and Apple’s professional desktop systems; and my hard drive size is limited compared to what’s available in full-size systems; and the PowerBook’s screen is quite a bit smaller than what I had before; etc. But with the current laptops, the hardware has advanced so far that what you get is more than good enough, and the trade-off of headroom I don’t need for mobility I want is now possible.

We also switched to a new DSL provider, Speakeasy, which is both saving us money and providing better service. We stuck with our reduced cable plan, which is $14 a month, and we (mostly) don’t miss the channels. At the end of the year, we signed up for Netflix, so we could get the movies back. Minimum cable plus Netflix is less than half what we were spending for our premium cable services, and gets us pretty much everything we want. Except for ESPN…

I made roughly 60 posts to this weblog. And I sold zero BeBoxes. Both of these numbers need to go up in 2005.

I gained back much of the weight I lost at the beginning of last year. That number needs to go down in 2005.

The cats all stayed healthy and happy, and we didn’t add any new ones. The number of cats in our house needs to stay the same in 2005.

And that was my 2004.

I especially enjoyed this quotation:

Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.

Possibly this will save my Saturday mornings from Rochelle’s depredations. (I am an owl, Rochelle is a lark.)

Anyway, it’s longish article, but some sections with considerable scientific detail are easily skipped, and overall pretty interesting.