I like to travel. Unfortunately, a side of my personality — the frugal side (both with cash and paid-time-off) — seems to keep me around Fort Collins. I threw all that to the wind and took a much-needed vacation to Ireland with Myles and Kim at the end of the May (very refreshing, more on this in a later entry). My frugality being what it is (an interesting side note here, I’m hardly ever frugal with dining out), I never (rarely, now) turn down a free trip.

As luck would have it, late last week, an email went out asking if anyone would like to cover the Sarix presentation on Pelco’s IP Road Show in Detroit and Cleveland. I answered in the affirmative about an hour after it went out, figuring that I’d already missed the window of opportunity (things like this rarely go unanswered for long). Turns out, I didn’t!

I received my official tee-shirts via FedEx the next day and was on a plane Monday morning. I found out later that neither Detroit nor Cleveland appealed to anyone else (I don’t understand why — Michigan and Ohio are lovely) and that I was, in effect, drawing the short straw. Not so, I tell you.

I made it to both roadshows, met a lot of cool people (some folks from Clovis, one from Orangeburg, our reps, and customers!) and managed to further develop my presentation and speaking style. My biggest takeaway from all of this was finding a comfort zone when speaking in public (and representing my company and the product I helped create). I think I grew more in the professional sense in the 4 days moonlighting as a road warrior than I have in years. I had a ton of fun, to boot.

More than that, apparently I did a good job. I was offered to present at the next set of road shows in Syracuse and Cherry Hill next week. It didn’t fit with my schedule though — need to catch back up for our upcoming 1.3 Sarix software release lest I be the cause of it slipping. Oh well, hopefully another slot will open up.

Firstly, I’m finally (with Myles and Kim!) making the trip to Ireland I’ve wanted to take for the last few years. The dates are firm, the plane tickets are booked, and the bike trip is scheduled. May 16th and “goodbye, Denver.” (at least for 2 weeks).

Secondly,my house (and the topic of this post), is getting a facelift. Actually, it’s more like a boob job. I’ve settled on and hired a contractor to finish my basement into a recreation/family room. I’ll move my TV down there and install a 7.1 system for movie watching. I may even get a ping pong table if finances allow (combine this with Ireland and I’m stretched pretty thin).

Thirdly, we’ve released Sarix at work! Finally! Three cheers!

In other news, the aforementioned Bostwicks (that would be Myles and Kim) have put a house under contract here in Fort Collins. Yay for them!

That’s all for now.

I, for one, became much more active in the months and now year since moving here from California. I’ve been riding my bike to work most days and enjoying the lovely outdoors we have here. I’ve also, probably with the help of my bicycle and a more sensible diet, have put off around 30 pounds.

I’ve hit a weight loss plateau as of late, but I’ve felt myself continuing to get trimmer. It’s really a remarkable thing.

Now, if I may be facetious for just a moment, it’s all about to come to a crashing halt. I am flying out to Clovis next week, at which point, I shall subject myself to the buttery and greasy missives of our chefs at the Blue Pride Cafe. I imagine I’ll come back having found those 30 pounds.

Or not.

Problem:
# php -v
Extensions are not supported on this platform.
PHP 5.2.5 (cli) (built: May 15 2008 16:54:51)
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2007 Zend Technologies


Solution:
build% cd php-5.2.5/ext
build% tar xfz xdebug-2.0.3.tar.gz
build% mv xdebug-2.0.3 xdebug
build% cd ..
build% ./buildconf --force
build% ./configure --enable-xdebug
build% make && make install


This builds Xdebug straight into PHP for profiling goodness. One caveat, I get this warning when I start PHP:
PHP Warning: Xdebug MUST be loaded as a Zend extension in Unknown on line 0


The warning doesn’t seem to affect much; I still get (reasonable looking) profiling data out of Xdebug.

At work – we’re making a concerted effort at work to get our product development cycle to the “Feature Complete” state. This means that all the prescribed features are implemented and that after this date (3/31), we will be in stabilization (“polishing up”) mode. As a team, we opted to make our ‘death march’ a twice weekly event (with company-provided dinner) instead of a whole-week pain fest right at the end of the cycle.

At home – I had the pleasure of entertaining David over the last few days. He was gracious enough to drive out from California and hang out with myself and Mary. We enjoyed some cycling along the city of Fort Collins trail system and out in Lory State Park. We visited some breweries and did some evening outings in downtown Fort Collins and Boulder. Fun was had all around.

In the community – I’ve started volunteering for the Betsy Markey for Congress campaign as a writer. Due to the incredible workload at work, I haven’t had time to put my thoughts to text. I’m hoping that when April rolls around, I’ll have more time. In addition, I’ve been selected as a delegate to the statewide Democratic convention in Colorado Springs as a delegate for Congressional District 4 and for Larimer County. Yay!

In the eCommunity – I’m actively (as active as I can ) executing my role as a server administrator on EsperNet. I’m also heading up efforts to replace the IRC daemon currently in use with a custom set of patches to ircd-hybrid. So far so good!

In my glass – New Belgium Springboard. Yum.

An unusual thing for me to say, to be sure. Those of you who know me best have likely been the victim of my railing against Internet Explorer, Microsoft, and all things silly between the two in my profanity-laced description of how web design actually works (this comic describes it fairly well).

Then Microsoft came around, announced IE 8 would pass the Acid 2 browser test and many cheers were heard the world over. “Oh, but wait!” say some, who read more deeply into the announcement. You had to request specifically, that IE 8 use its improved standards-compliance mode; it wouldn’t use it by default on well-formed documents (see here and here). More than a few web developers thought that was silly, myself included.

Microsoft has reversed it’s previous decision! In a recent blog post, Dean Hachamovitch, GM for Internet Explorer, announced that IE 8 would use its new more-compliant Standards mode on well-formed pages. Web developers who want IE 6 or IE 7-compatible rendering modes would have to specifically request that of IE 8.

So, kudos to Microsoft and its IE team. Thank you for supporting web standards!

So far, I’ve (grudgingly) given them a pass on the abysmal reimbursement schedule we have. My guess is that has more to do with my company being frugal than it does MES being awful. However, this does not excuse the excruciatingly long reimbursement delays.

Case in point:  a $40 reimbursement. They serviced the claim on November 9th, 2007. They processed the check on January 15th, 2008. That’s a gap of more than 2 months! What gives?  What could possibly justify a 2 month hold on a $40 check?

I can’t think of anything.

So, MES, you suck — congratulations. You’ve won the prize for worst insurer of 2008.

So, I Googled it. Just the word “Endura.”

I went page by page looking for references. I found all sorts of things that were called Endura, but not the “Endura” I wanted. Until page 6.

Page 6.

And on page 6, I found an indirect reference. Not even a link to our website (by the way, it’s http://www.pelco.com). This struck me as odd, especially given the networked, Linux, video, techno-geek parts that make Endura the world-class hub of your video security needs. What gives?

Oh, and by the way, a direct reference to our site didn’t occur in the first 25 pages of search result.

I guess I should call off my search now.

Update, a little later that evening: I tried the search again. Turns out Endura does make the front page, with a lower-case ‘e’ and no description. I’m not sure if I just passed over it the two times I looked prior to writing this, or if Google has transparently updated their search index. I’m curious to know if I leave this post up here, will I get better play on Google for the word “Endura”?

You’d think it’d have some more lively livery. Guess not!