Category: Life

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Life

After Some Thought

So I was able to read through the feedback given after my talk at the 2011 Chippewa Valley Code Camp and I now have some random thoughts after my first real talk. I’ll present it here just for fun.

  • I was really, really nervous and it came through too much. This one might be mitigated just through repetition of this same situation, but I might need to keep myself a little more distracted and maybe run through the talk a few more times to keep myself from showing how nervous I am.
  • Self deprecation is really what I do, it is how I talk with people. It is part of how I judge what a group is like and how I’m going to go from there … but not everyone likes it. Might have to be something that I just keep going with even in face of some resistance.
  • Need to bring more practical information on the “HOW” or at least balance it a little bit better with the “WHY”. I could talk about the WHY all day, and there is a place for that, but a little more HOW would not hurt me.
  • On the plus side, some people found that I was funny. Need to tell Laura that one.
  • Going to need to stress to people that I don’t use PowerPoint … running Keynote at the moment. On the flip side, if they are noticing the transitions, then maybe it is time to simplify things down a little bit.
  • Practice, practice, practice, practice … practice?
  • Where is the line between over-practicing to the point of mechanical and practicing too little to the point of stumbling? Need to explore this in my mind more.

Overall, I’m happy with how it went. I have a lot of work to do to clean up not just this presentation, but my presentation skills overall. The main thing is that I need to find my voice and how I want to approach my audience and then build from there. Thanks to everyone to came to the talk and provided the feedback, it was very appreciated.

I have a place to work from. Time to clean it all up.

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Life

Things I’m Thankful For

On the night before Thanksgiving (here in the United States at least), I thought I’d take a quick look at some things I am thankful for.

This time last year I was working for Apple in Milwaukee, living in a rented house 40 minutes away from work, working shifts at a mall, and my wife and I had recently found out that we were expecting our second child.

Zip ahead a year and I have much to be thankful for, and partly because of how much has changed in just a year. Looking back, the only things that have been constant is my faith, family, and my 1996 Toyota Corolla.

I think I’ll stick with that for now. Over the past year a lot of things have changed, but those are the main things I am thankful fore. I honestly can’t believe that Laura puts up with me every day, and I am amazed at how she manages to keep our lives in order at home even with two young boys who require her full attention.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Life

The Web’s Present Future

I was privileged to give a talk at the 2011 Chippewa Valley Code Camp this morning. I titled it The Web’s Present Future: Responsive Web Design, and I think it went alright. The audience was great and I didn’t die. WHOHOO!

I have posted my slides along with some resources as well. You can find them here.

Thanks everyone for coming!

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Life

Looking at Harvest 2011

Farmer Bob

The above is who I call Farmer Bob.

This post is nothing more than a little post about what I’ve been doing over the past two weekends. I’ve been helping with something I never really helped with before: harvest.

First, let me say that I would not have been able to help if not for Laura watching our two boys by herself for the past two weekends. She does the same thing during the week and I don’t know how she does it, and then I abandon her for two weekends to help take the corn out with my dad and brother. So, thank you to Laura, especially, for taking care of our boys while I played with the big toys in the field.

Now, you need to understand that I spent the first 24 years of my life pretty much distancing myself from the farming operation on the family farm as much as possible. I went ahead and focused on music and technology (among other things) while my younger brother spent his time learning the family trade side-by-side with our dad.

Sure, I got in on baling hay, loading hogs, and other smaller things but Kevin spent his time out there fixing the machinery, combining crops, running in loads, working up the fields for the next year, planting crops, etc. He was learning how to be a farmer and I was imagining myself coming back and visiting for fun.

Little did I know what happened during all of those years. I think the quote goes something like this:

You can take the boy from the farm, but you can never take the farm out of the boy.

I’m probably messing it up, but the gist is that in getting away from the farm I grew up on I began to enjoy doing those thing I had distanced myself. It really came to a head last year when I was able to help take loads into the co-op and found that I … enjoyed it. I enjoyed working on/for the farm.

It was strange.

It was strange in the way that you find something out about yourself after years of trying to deny it. I actually do like farming, or at least certain aspects of it. Laura likes to point out that I would not do very well with the mundane, everyday tasks that are involved with farming (I have a hard enough time getting up in the morning for my sons … animals would had to wait), but there is still a part of me that enjoys certain aspects … and harvest is one of them.

Am I going to get into farming full-time? Probably not. The idea is there, but at this point I don’t think I would be happy doing that. However, I do look forward to spending some more time out there during critical junctures of the year and helping out where I can. An extra hand at times can mean an expanded operation without needing to get more help.

Plus, Jamis loves to ride in the tractor and combine.

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Life

Praising A Book Apart

A Book Apart is doing something right. I own (or will own) each of their books and I will probably be doing that for the foreseeable future. They’ve got something right with their highly targeted, focused, short books which cater to the web design/development community

It is awesome to see someone shaking up the technical publishing industry.