Blahgorrhea

Looks like great Jeffrey’s think alike: Blahg.

I’ll forgive him — I’ve done my fair share of stealing as well.

Apparently, the self-help phenomenon is an $8.5 billion a year business. Maybe I’ll write a book on how to write self-help books. We could use more of those.

With all the recent talk about “thin wallets” and “front-pocket wallets,” I decided to go ahead with my old plan to make a new wallet out of clear packing tape. I got inspired during a bike ride and came up with a sweet woven tape design:

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I’m always somewhat disappointed in these technology conference/summit things. I go in with the expectation that someone much smarter and much more successful than I will have at least one piece of fantastic wisdom that will enlighten me. Invariably I am disappointed, and it is not because the speakers are not much smarter than me (they are) or much more successful (they are). It is because they have learned the same things in their experiences as I have, and honestly, most of it is all common sense. [Continue reading…]

I noticed today (all of a sudden and four days after I resumed blogging) that my blog was broken — none of my content was showing up. I suspected it had something to do with one of the plugins, as I had had a similar issue when I was first setting up the blog. So I played around with the plugins and found that one was outputting this error message:

Warning: preg_replace_callback(): Unknown modifier ‘|’

Knowing very little about PHP and trusting the good net citizens out in the world (well, those on the web at least), I did a quick Google search for the error string and found some interesting results in Google’s cache. Expecting to quickly find that an upgrade to PHP caused an issue with the Markdown plugin in WordPress (which was the issue and had been fixed in a newer version of Markdown), I instead found that a lot of people were having the same problem I had, but no one wanted to discuss it.

I had my “holier-than-thou indie record store clerk” cherry popped this afternoon when I went to Rasputin to purchase the Wolf Parade album. I know what you’re thinking: “After that diatribe on how different Jeff is, how come he is just now getting around to buying the Wolf Parade album when all his indie friends already have it?” Well, fear not, Wolf Parade is still filed under “indie” at Rasputin, so as far as I’m concerned, I am still ahead of the curve.

So I went to the register with the album in hand, and upon seeing my selection the clerk said, “Finally someone is buying a good record.” I joked with him, “Who?” (which he didn’t really get). He told me he hadn’t been able to catch their shows when they were in town a few months ago, but his girlfriend saw both. Then he went on to tell me about the ol’ Canadian sound and how there is another Canadian band with a similar sound that apparently shared studio space with Wolf Parade. I promptly forgot the new band’s name as the clerk told me how they new band has what you’d consider a “Brooklyn sound” with Casio keyboards and a drum machine, even though they have a drummer too. More experimental.

If only I could remember the name, I’d be totally ahead of the curve this time around.

Years ago a friend pegged me as “different” — independent opinions, strange tastes, odd hobbies. He thought I went so far as to relish in being different — that I enjoyed it and embraced it, deliberately accentuating those characteristics of mine most different from the people I associated with. I was reminded of that comment tonight when another friend of mine noticed my wallet and asked, “What is that thing?” [Continue reading…]

I have a lot working against me at work. Aside from being in a new environment with new people, I am trying to be a productive member of the team while working on an application built on a host of new technologies and frameworks. I love that I get to learn new technologies, but I get the sense that I am going about it all wrong, hacking away at new code in a copy-and-paste manner, instead of learning the technology and applying it as I see fit. I don’t feel like I’m learning the way I’m working now — or maybe I’m learning just enough to get by. Makes me feel like a fraud. [Continue reading…]

As I was peeling a pummelo yesterday, I thought to myself, “This fruit is a pain in the ass to peel.” It’s got a tough, almost impenetrable outer skin, underneath which there is a thick layer of bitter pith that is practically impossible to rip off. But once you get through those layers, you are awarded with sweet yummy fruit, well worth the effort it took. Just like me. If you were a fruit, what would you be?