jtnt://life/unedited

Got a call from my dad last night. He laid down some pretty serious shit.

The first thing, that he has some weird pain in his leg is relatively small, is hopefully nothing to worry about. It’s a little more worrisome than a normal leg pain someone might have given that ten years ago he stuck a sickle into his lower-leg, between the two bones, nicking an artery. They didn’t discover the nicked artery party until after he had spent a week in dire pain. This also happened to be the morning after I attended the prom with my girlfriend who was still in high school while I was not. But frankly, that’s a different story - but there is a story there.

The second thing, that he and my mother were driving to Georgia tonight to back my aunt up while she told her deadbeat, abusive husband she wanted a divorce - and this time was actually serving papers - was a bit more shocking. Apparently, she had brought divorce up before but he had threatened her and their two sons in any number of ways.

I don’t really have much to say about this, since I was never really close to my aunt or her family - aside from Thanksgivings and Christmas at my grandparents’ house. I think about it more from my father’s point of view - that this is all happening to his sister. Then I turn it on myself and know that I would be doing the exact same thing if Cay or Leigh needed me like this. It’s strangely comforthing in that it reaffirms my connection to my sisters.

The third thing was that a lump was found in my grandmother’s throat. She’s had a cigarette in her hand for probably close to 60 years, so that’s not entirely surprising. A week after the first lump was spotted, a second one showed up. They’re waiting on test results to see if they are malignant, but regardless they will have to be surgically removed. If they aren’t, they will continue to grow and suffocate her. That’s not pretty. And major surgery, which I would assume this would be, is always dicey with someone who is over 80 years old.

All this makes me think about things I wouldn’t have normally. I like that.

I’ve added to my collection of dead PDAs - although my first Palm IIIx that died I threw away in a cleaning/purging frenzy. I usually maintain that purging is good, but I still regret throwing that out just for history’s sake. I can see myself wanting to bring that out in 20 years just to see what things used to be like. I guess the Visor is pretty close, but that cheap, grey plastic on the IIIx is classic.

Anyway, I pulled the trigger today and replaced my severely handicapped Visor, which I bought as a refurb off eBay, with a brand-new Palm m515. I can’t wait for the color screen! I can’t wait for it to actually turn on when I need it to!

I was going to get a refurbished Handspring Treo 90, but I test drove a co-worker’s, and there was no graffiti pad. You had to use the built-in mini-keyboard. That was a deal breaker. If I could have tried it out for a day or two to see how that was I would have, but I wasn’t about to blow $250 on yet another PDA with which I was disappointed. Plus, I got a free mini-keyboard and leather case for the m515 anyway. Seemed like a no-brainer to me.

I get a certain amount of pleasure from sending people I know links that I think will interest them. It’s like the technological version of reading a book and sending it to someone whom you’d think would like it. I don’t find it any less personal or thoughtful than that either. Indeed, by virtue of the fact that I actually send these links sets it head and shoulders above sending someone a book. Sending someone a book would presume that I actually had time to read it myself.

I just got back from a three-day party/golf tournament put on by my good friend Martin Gravely down in Richmond. I am almost too tired to stay upright at my desk right now. After 2 rounds of golf (I shot a personal best 90 one day and won the “Long Drive” contest - with a, um, towering 212 yard shot - the other), 3 nights of drinking, and too many cigarettes to want to count, I’m running real low on gas.

This was the eighth annual SHO and my fourth. I - and at least a few others - look forward to this week-end like it’s Christmas. It’s become another 3-day holiday week-end between Memorial Day and Labor Day for many of us. There is only one other 3-day stretch that I look forward to as much as the SHO, and it’s another golf tournament week-end we put on down on the Outer Banks each year. Anyone that thinks golf is boring should tag along for the SHO one year.

The SHO party was dominated by two things this year. Live music - a first for the SHO - and kids. The funniest moment that I can remember came when Scott “Birdie Machine” McKnight, Drew Roever, and I were sitting inside talking with the TV on drag racing or something we weren’t watching. Some kids - none older than ten years old - were running around and came through the room. They stopped and asked what we were watching. McKnight turned to them and dryly stated, “Porn.” I can’t imagine what he would have said if one of them asked what that was. I kind of wish they had.

No porn, but here are some pictures of the good time had by all.

Ok, so there is a Web Standards meetup.com group - of course. I’ve listed myself as a host in DC. Anyone else out there? Let’s get it on!

Version 3 of Phish.com was released recently. Done in tidy and valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS. What is cool is that though I am an avid follower of Phish and their music/culture, I found out about this from zeldman.com, a site I visit daily to discover the latest in web development news. The mixing of my passions is cool to me.

Are there people out there as passionate about both Phish and web technology as I am? I want to find you. Are you in the DC Metro area? That would be even cooler.

I was talking today with Tony of simiandesign.com - a new acquaintance via a job opening at my company (BTW, Tony is smart, passionate, experienced, and unemployed. Your company should hire him.) - about the fact that web developers in the DC Metro area are a very fragmented group. We don’t get together. We don’t fraternize. We do our work in isolation for our particular companies. There is no networking. Not even a meetup.com interest group. There should be. Maybe there will be soon…

I work in a small company. There is only one other developer. We have 4 designers, but they are pure graphic designers, with little interest in web technology let alone things like the web standards movement or the like.

I need to find others like me. I need to get together with other developers face to face (email groups just don’t do it for me). I need to see what others are doing, explore experiemental technologies, learn about new stuff - and do so with others. There have got to be others in DC that share this desire.

Is there anybody out there?

We are having the most intense lightning storm I have ever experienced in my life. Really close. Really long, sharp blasts. For the first time I am actually scared for my own safety and the safety of this very computer, so I’m shutting down and unplugging the thing. That won’t help, of course, if a tree falls on it. Better it than me. Nighty night. Gulp.

I’m doing some CSS tweaks (some not so tweaky). If you see anything strange, try not to gawk.

I’ve got to start writing down the ideas I come up with for topics to write about on this thing. Over the last three days I have thought of no fewer than five really suitable things to bring up here, but now all I have is this nothingness of a post to show for it. And this ain’t the good Seinfeld sort of nothing.

I was given a new 15gb iPod in celebration of 5 years at Erickson Barnett (formerly, eDesign). It is by far the coolest thing I own. And even though it was free to me, it has been the genesis of more than one impulse buy. The latest evidence of this:

• iTrip
• PowerPodAuto

The iTrip is, as the site says, “the coolest iPod accessory in the world.” It transmits whatever your iPod is playing over a customizeable radio station freequency. To listen to the iPod, just tune a nearby radio (like the one in your car) to that frequency and you have wireless audio. Ships July 21st.

The PowerPodAuto is more of a utilitarian buy. Now that I have grown as attached to the iPod as to my own thumbs, my greatest fear is being in the car and having the iPod’s batteries die. I will live in fear no longer.

I’m trying out this blogsnob thing in an effort to let the world know about my site. We’ll see.

I am building a site which must validate as XHTML compliant. This site also uses dropdown menus for navigation. The code I had been using for dropdown menus does not work when using a proper XHTML DOCTYPE - the menus appear in the top left of the browser window. (Take the DOCTYPE out altogether or put in an HTML 3.2 one, and they work perfectly.)

After much research, testing, and experiementing the only code that I found to both work for my purposes and also validate was code written for the cingular.com site.

I altered the design of these menus, but the basic underlying functionality was straight from the Cingular site. Being a scrupulous and generally ethical person, I decided that I needed to investigate whether I could use this code from a legal standpoint. So, I wrote the team leader of the cingular.com develpment team, one Brandy Fortune - the media diva herself - and asked her to investigate what it would take to get permission to use these menus.

She responded that she thought that since, a) there was no copyright statement in the code, b) the code is pretty much open source, and c) I was willing to give credit to the original developers that I should feel fairly safe in using the code.

I agreed, but felt the need to get a professional legal opinion. My friend Rob was the first to respond: