AC Capehart capehart

I woke from a weird dream this morning. A new colleague (who doesn’t really exist) was objecting to some work that I wanted to do that would leverage the cloud and improve the user experience because it would “cause more workload.” Some time later, we’re at a webdev meeting and I realize I’m the supervisor of all these people and the team is so large it’s unwieldy. Someone higher up in the organization is talking to us about something that’s not particularly engaging.

I tweeted that I was going to drag myself outside today, and probably be glad I did. I did, and I was. I decided to go for a wander on my street bicycle. I’d not gotten more than a couple hundred yards when I had a little trouble shifting, so I immediately turned around to diagnose with tools at home. I eventually decided that the support for Sam’s sidecar was pinching the shifter cable.

I don’t really think of myself as an adrenaline junkie, but the way I’m beaming at the moment may be betraying me. I just got back from a mountain bike ride. It was amazing (or if you’re reading this from the UK, it was brilliant. Or if you’re reading this on teh inter webz, it was teh awesome)! The girls are away, there are trails nearby that I’ve only begun to explore, I had no plans for the day, and because it’s California, the weather was simply perfect.

We’ve been making an “outgoing” chart to help Sam, in social situations, to be more, well, social. She’s been doing a good job, and recently completed said chart so as a reward, we’re going to Fairyland in Oakland. This morning, we were talking about the day and she said she was going to go as a fairy. Because it’s fairy land. Mom asked what Mom and Dad should go as.

<p> The three of us went to the Maker Faire ((Carolyn especially enjoyed the spelling of &#8220;Faire&#8221; as it&#8217;s the French infinitive of &#8220;to do&#8221; or &#8220;to make&#8221;! )) today. I was ambivalent about going originally as it seemed like it would be a bit of a hassle to get there. Originally, it was going to be only Sam and myself going, but as Carolyn helped us figure out how best to get there, she decided it looked interesting to her too, so we decided to all go.

I wrote the following on my birthday, the day before we left for the UK for a month. Alas, our home router died that day too, so I didn’t actually publish it. I’m going to date-adjust the post back in time to when I actually wrote it instead of when I finally got back to the states and therefore around to publishing it. Today, I turn 39. It’s feeling kinda old.

Sam got her first “bicycle” today. We got her a “balance bike” or “walking bike”. We’d looked around and found some pretty good deals on amazon, but we wanted to try it out in the shop before making a purchase like that. So we went to a few different bike shops including Performance that didn’t have any. We wound up at “Mike’s Bikes” where they had a few from Specialized. Sam was really cute as she skuut’ed around the store on it, making “ch” “ch” sounds.

Something has happened at work that has caused me a certain amount of anxiety. In response to that, I decided I really needed a pet project. I still don’t know what that project was going to be, but there were a few technologies that I thought I’d like to know better / play with. Specifically, Twisted, Stackless and RabbitMQ. I got on to the ubuntu box that I host in the amazon cloud and started doing updates so that I had a current box to do some of the above installs on.

Sam and I were looking at a map of the UK and Ireland and I asked if she knew who comes from Ireland? She didn’t know that that’s where her (great-)aunt Janet is from, so we talked about that. She asked where her (great-)aunt Scotties is from, and I said “Richmond, where Grand-mère lives now.” The following conversation ensued: Sam: Daddy, I’ve got a new country coming. Dad: Oh?

We took the Eurostar from London to Paris on Thursday, and returned today (Sunday). I took Thursday off, and then worked from “Home” on Friday. We have about a 15 (adult) minute walk from the flat to the Brighton train station. From there, it’s a little under an hour to London, St. Pancras. From there, a little under three hours to Paris Gare de Nord. From there, 15 min on the Paris Metro and 5 minutes to the flat.