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!