Recently in Personal Category

I've finally decided to take the plunge: I'm installing a Linux distro as a VM on my Mac.

I have resisted doing this for years and years and years. I've long thought that going Linux just meant that you're doomed to perennial tweaking and figuring out incompatible drivers. I don't give a rip about either of the "free as in's" when it comes to operating systems—I'm an unabashed Mac user, I pay for all of my software, and my programmatic life is completely Windows-based.

So why am I doing this? And why now?

Python.

I have been reading some really intriguing books on data analysis, social networking, and monitoring and all of the examples are in Python. I've always been tempted by Python the language and Python the community, and I've even made minor forays into that world. I know that Mac OS X is a great platform for Python but I have zero familiarity with Linux.

In the end, if I make anything significant, I'm going to want to host it on Linux so why not start now. With a virtual machine, I can duplicate my final environment without polluting my Mac or worrying about the differences between the two. I initially looked at Ubuntu but I think it's really more of a consumer-grade distro whereas I want raw server.

A colleague at work said that he uses CentOS; I figured that's as good as any and he certainly knows more than I do. So I downloaded CentOS 6.0 minimal and I'll see how it goes.

In moving my blog from Quick Blogcast to MovableType, I had a chance to revisit my decision to enable comments. Comments are always a mixed bag: the price of good discussion is eliminating comment spam—the blog's version of "broken windows." We've had decent success at it over at The New Clarion, but it took a long time to tweak the blacklist to get where it is today.

In the meantime, I had also started using Twitter quite aggressively. That is, essentially, a broadcast medium: you say things and people listen to them. There is some interaction but the key difference is that it's not exactly public.

That's the part about comments that I don't like. If you want to discuss some of my work, send me an email. If you want everyone to see your thoughts about what I've said, get your own forum. I don't care to host the opinions of those that disagree with me.

I have no regrets about turning off comments—I even did it over at Found on the Web. I spend zero time doing moderation and the extra work to send an email (while also not getting to vent in public) has severely limited the vitriol and bile.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

– Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech (text)

I've never been much of a career planner. I just try to do work that interests or fascinates me for as long as I can. Once it starts to get boring or I start getting wanderlust, I look around for opportunities to seize or work on creating my own.

Sometimes, though, I get a little down on the distance between where I'd like to be and where I am. That Steve Jobs quote, from a commencement address that I listen to more regularly than I ever would have thought, reminds me to not worry about it and to trust that great things are afoot.

After more than four years—incredibly—I got caught speeding. I got a 2011 MINI Cooper S Convertible back in October and it is way sportier than my previous one, Buzz. Let's just say that I frequently drove it rather rapidly.

It was just a matter of time before I got another ticket—going over 100 MPH was not terribly uncommon and I once got it up to 131 MPH. Unfortunately, I was clocked going 92 MPH in a 65 MPH area. The patrolman was generous and wrote it up for 85 MPH so that it wasn't criminal speeding.

Because it had been so long since my last one, I was able to take a defensive driving course to expunge it from my record. I had heard from other perps colleagues that you could take them online now, so I checked out the available schools in my county. I was prepared to go to my usual one, the Arizona Chapter of the National Safety Council, when I spied The Improv Traffic School.

Genius marketing! If I had to choose among approved schools teaching the same curriculum, one that promised to be funny would stand out from the pack. Intrigued, I signed up.

There were a couple of chuckles but they weren't any better than what a decent driving instructor would provide. The quizzes were exceedingly easy and it took four hours, which is required by the courts. (I thought about trying to defeat the mechanism that prevents you from completing early, but decided that I'd done enough already and toed the line.)

So now I'm on the straight and narrow for the next two years, driving like a "normal." I just might make it, thanks to cruise control.

Every year, I have a ritual I do about a week or so before my birthday: I make my birthday private on Facebook. The reason? I don't want the onslaught of hollow birthday wishes on my wall or in my inbox. Unlike this person, I think birthday recognition on Facebook is worse than not recognizing another's birthday at all.

The author contends that there's very little difference between writing down someone's birthday in a calendar as a prompt for subsequent years and Facebook notifying your friends that it's your birthday today. I emphatically disagree.

A person who takes the time to notice your birthday, write it down somewhere, and then follow through on the day of (or planning ahead if there's lag time) is head and shoulders above entering your birthday into your profile and then Facebook prodding people to make an empty gesture.

Sure you can customize the greeting, and that should be the least you could do. What about taking the time to get a card or a gift or even do something nice for that person? In this day and age of doing the minimum, such effort becomes that much more valuable and appreciated.

So maybe you should take a moment to scour through your Facebook friends and plan something real for their birthdays. Resist the urge to thoughtlessly post something electronic.

It's time to announce my goals for the coming year. Apparently, I missed last year (even though I did a recap on New Year's Eve). I love making resolutions because they crystallize the big picture plan for the whole year, but I do believe that goal setting is an ongoing process that's part of the general self-improvement that should be a part of everyone's life. So here they are:

1. Read 12 books: I'd like to be more aggressive about this, but twelve seems like a realistic number. I don't think I read that many last year cover to cover so it would still be an improvement.
2. Settle down: I tend to start new things entirely too often. It's time to stop and focus on a few things. I want to get into some routines and get much of my life on autopilot so I can concentrate my attention on the things that really matter.
3. Limit television: I haven't attached a number to this yet, but that'll be the first order of business. I've re-added my halved feed subscriptions since I'm blogging heavily at The New Clarion, so I've got to cut out some other time sinks. Television fits the bill. I'm going to watch Lost—that's a given—but I'm going to try to pick a handful of other shows and be ruthless in not caring about anything else.
4. Adore Sandi: with the adoption and ensuing chaos last year, I've really let my relationship coast too much. After 15 years of marriage, that's not unusual but I don't want it to be like that. I still feel a thrill being around her and I can't imagine life without her, but I know I don't convey that adequately. I want her to feel like she's the most special person in the world to me, when all too often I'm the only one that knows that.
5. Improve my writing: I think I can write better. By and large, the best way to improve writing skills is by writing more. I'm going to do that, but I think I can gain by being more deliberate also. Start from an outline, ask the metaquestions, and revise—things I don't normally do as I dash off a blog entry.

I think that covers what I'd like in resolutions: general statements about this year's direction.

I have much to be thankful for this year. Honestly, every year of my adult life has been great even with the ups and downs. My wife and I work very hard at living consciously and deliberately, so I feel like I've really earned whatever success and pleasantness I've experienced. Here's a smattering:

• My wife: I wouldn't be the man I am today if I had never met her. I feel so fortunate that we have such a strong relationship after 15 years of marriage, but it doesn't surprise me since I have so much admiration for her.
• My girls: my three daughters (5, 5, 3) are the biggest joy in my life. They're rambunctious, contentious, and mischievous but mostly they're just marvelous. I think I'm a better man for having them.
• My son: we're three days away from the journey to pick him up from Ethiopia. That will be the culmination of over a year of effort, paying through the nose, and complying with maddening bureaucracies. He will complete our family and I just can't wait to meet him.
• My job: Go Daddy is a great employer. The benefits and pay are outstanding. I've been fortunate to have challenging and interesting work. My team is reliable, competent, and nimble. I'm taking a month off to be with my new son and had to move my plans up a week with only two days notice, but my boss was fine with it (much more than I was) and expressed excitement at my upcoming adventure. I plan to stay there as long as they'll have me.
• My friend Larry: he lives in San Diego and I don't talk to him nearly enough, but whenever we do it feels exciting and refreshing. He's also the smartest guy I know—besides myself, ahem. We see him several times a year and the kids adore him.

I was going to list my iPod, my MacBook, and my MINI Cooper but their importance in my life is different in kind from the items listed above. They're great and all but their absence wouldn't leave a void in my life.

Let's compare how I voted to how the rest of my Arizonans voted. Outside of my district and county, I pretty much am out of step. I'm glad they voted down the "homeowner's bill of rights" and took a tax on home sales off the table permanently, but they also stopped same-sex marriage with a constitutional amendment, snuffed payday loans out of existence, and enabled a Masschusetts-style denial of private insurance.

My wife thinks that the proposition voting mirrored the spending trends on commercials. I cannot believe that, but it's a compelling argument. Some of the proposition wording was very precise and commercials about those measures were very deceptive—did people not look into the matter further?

It's done finally, so now's the time to move on and start accepting the outcome. I have got a couple of months to lay low, relax, and study before I join the Kulturkampf. An Obama presidency is a grand opportunity to publicize Ayn Rand and Objectivism since he represents such a stark contrast to us.

I've been searching for the perfect word to describe Barack Obama fanatics. Portmanteaus seemed to be the perfect neologistical type but all the ones I have found were unsatisfying to pronounce. "Obamaniac" was the closest but it just doesn't work as a word and I've seen too many of them co-opt it for themselves. I don't disparage people who like it.

While driving home from dinner tonight, I came up with a doozy. With a sigh of relief at the conclusion of a long, tiring expedition, I offer up Obamaton. Looking over the results at Google and Twitter, I cannot lay claim to originality but at least I'm well clear of cliché.

I am a longtime fan of John Shadegg. I have voted for him in every election he's been on my ballot. I was heartened to see his name in opposition to the bailout bill when it failed in the House of Representatives. And I was disgusted when I saw his name in support when it came back around, this time with pork.

My initial idea was to punish him by voting for Bob Lord, his Democratic opponent. But that was just the initial feeling of betrayal talking. If I let politicians stabbing me in the back determine who to vote for, my voting would be governed solely by revenge. In today's political climate of unprincipled pragmatism, flipping politicians are in fashion.

After reading his reason for the reversal, I'm certain that he is definitely not his father. If Barack Obama gets elected, we'll need all the Republicans we can get in Congress so I just couldn't let my disappointment affect the long-range view. And he is more oriented towards small government than most of his GOP brethren.

Here's how I voted, starting at the top of my ballot and working my way down:

• President: John McCain
• U.S. Representative, District 3: John Shadegg
• State Senator, District 6: Pamela Gorman
• State Representative, District 6:
  • Sam Crump
• Corporation Commissioner:
  • Barry Wong
  • Marian McClure
  • Bob Stump
• Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, District 3: Andy Kunasek
• Maricopa County Assessor: Keith Russell
• Maricopa County Attorney: Andrew Thomas
• Maricopa County Recorder: Helen Purcell
• Maricopa County School Superintendent: Don Covey
• Maricopa County Sheriff: Dan Saban
• Maricopa County Treasurer: Charles "Hos" Hoskins
• Justice of the Peace, Desert Ridge: Paul Henderson (write-in)
• Constable, Desert Ridge: Cory Hazlett
• Maricopa County Special Health Care District, District 3: Susan Gerard
• Maricopa County Community College, District 3: Pam Petty
• PVUSD Board Member:
  • West Kenyon
  • Nancy Case
  • Anne Greenberg
• Question 1: NO
• Question 2: NO

Here's how I voted on the propositions:

• 100: YES
• 101: YES
• 102: NO
• 105: YES
• 200: YES
• 201: NO
• 202: YES
• 300: NO

If you are interested in why I voted for a particular candidate or proposition, leave a comment.

Google's made their 2001 index available for a month to see what the Web was like back when Google was first starting out. It was like a trip down memory lane: there I am at #7 in a search for my name.

Oh yes, I was on the Web since maybe 1996 back before there were blogs. We used to call them home pages, kiddos, and I called mine The Bill Brown Information Center. It used hover effects on the links and everything. It also reveals that I have loved yellow and blue for at least a decade now.

It's worth a look see: I used to have all of my essays available, exhaustive lists of my values, and a funny bio that is just so me. It's also interesting to note that back then Google and Northern Light were tied as my favorite search engines.

Man, I was so cool!

[UPDATE: Ooo, there's also this Bill Brown-designed club Web site that brings back a wave of nostalgia. I loved that font!]

The A.V. Club had a feature asking a bunch of people I've never heard of the question "what's your most-rewatched movie?" Their responses were interesting—and would be more so if I were familiar with the individuals—so I thought I'd share my answer.

I've thought about the subject a lot because my favorite movies aren't necessarily the ones I watch regularly. It's a crucial distinction because there are several movies that I don't think are good or great by any stretch but I enjoy watching a lot. My favorite movies aren't necessarily those that I can (or do) watch regularly but they really resonate with me whenever I do.

My all-time most re-watched movie has to be Happy Gilmore, which I think most people who know me would be surprised to find out. I watch this at least once a month and sometimes more, I can quote from it liberally and extensively. My favorite scenes are definitely the ones with Ben Stiller as a nursing home orderly. It makes me laugh every time.

Aside from that, I like The Italian Job, Dumb and Dumber, and Back to the Future. I must say that getting rid of satellite and the three-at-a-time plan from Netflix have cut into the time I have to re-watch movies: I could have made a much more extensive list two years ago, for example.

Go Daddy's bringing Merlin Mann out to give a new talk tomorrow and I'm pretty jazzed. You may recall that he came out for an earlier event just this May for his Inbox Zero talk.

I'm excited for this presentation because its subject matter has been on my mind lately. I've been experiencing a debilitating sense of ennui and a lack of motivation. After much introspection and deliberation, I think I've located the source: too many great ideas and a fundamental uncertainty about which is the best course of action.

When I say too many great ideas, I mean it. At this moment, I've got some compelling ideas to contribute to an open-source project I've taken over—I still need to write up a blog entry about that fine mess I got myself into; a book idea that is unique, unprecedented, and possibly the start of an entire franchise—two actually, but the second one is going to require the first to be very successful; an iPhone application that could make me some decent side income; a historical project that could bring me enormous satisfaction; and a raft of business ideas that are all feasible to varying degrees.

In the face of all these nearly-equally viable choices, how do you pick one and set yourself to it? Normally, I'd consider a matrix of factors like which one has the most potential, which one lends itself well to maximizing time with my family, which one fits in with the life I envision for myself, and which one is best suited to my strengths. But there's no clear winner in this regard.

So I stew and dawdle and get distracted easily. That lack of focus makes me upset because that's not me! Any time I start to make some progress on one of these big-ticket ideas, some inner voice nags that another one is a better use of my time. Meanwhile, I'm caught up on my feed reading and on top of Twitter, which makes me even more unsettled because I know that these things are not the best uses of my time right now.

Merlin is not going to tell me anything I don't already know. Heck, I am even familiar with all of the techniques he's listed in his slide deck. But maybe his talk will be rousing enough to jar me from this rut, to just pick one from the many and get things done.

Then again, maybe writing this blog entry itself has provided sufficient impetus.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

I'm getting ready to fly out to San Francisco for the F8 Conference put on by Facebook. We're leaving Phoenix at 7:20 AM and returning to Sky Harbor by 10:30 PM, so it's going to be a long day but very much worth it—I hope. I plan to blog my raw notes for each session throughout the conference for my colleagues that couldn't attend as well as posterity.

I just deployed my latest effort: the Official GoDaddy.com Domain Search Dashboard Widget. I know, it's not a terribly catchy name but it's quite descriptive. It's a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X that enables you to check domain name availability. It's certainly a variation on a common theme but what can I say? Domain registration is bread and butter.

This widget was a little different than the other ones I've done, however. It's got all the visual flair attendant with Mac OS X, to be sure. The animation took forever to get just right and smooth. It also had to have an update mechanism since it doesn't reside anywhere that we can control. The update process is fairly simple but so is the app itself.

It consumed a lot more time than you'd expect, but I enjoyed it. Well, except for some of the fighting with Dashcode. Oh and that issue I had all yesterday with the little loading spinner: that drove me nuts trying to pin down the cause. (Incidentally, in the open method of the XmlHttpRequest object, if you specify false for the asynchronous parameter, it will not run any code that updates the widget until the response comes back. But only in the Dashboard version of WebKit. Safari works just fine. It was a pain to track down.)

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

I left a store the other day and was accosted by one of those signature gatherers trying to get some initiatives on the November ballot. This one was a little unusual in that he had nearly a dozen petitions for me to sign. I asked what they were because I ain't signing squat without knowing.

He breezed through them stating the position of each: prescription medicine plan, banning payday loans, lowering taxes on new home sales, and some others that I can't remember. I suggested that I'd be willing to sign for the tax decrease but that I didn't agree with the others. He was dumbfounded and said that I wasn't voting on any of them just enabling them to be on the ballot. I again said that I'll sign one but none of the rest. He shrugged and said that I couldn't sign any of them then.

If I wasn't in a hurry, I would have explained to him that there are things that don't belong on the ballot. I don't want them to be put to a vote because they're restrictive and infringe on our liberties—the initiative process should not be an end run around individual rights. I would have analogized it to signing a petition to enslave illegal immigrants: it would likely be defeated at the polls but it should never get that far. I'm certain that it would have been entirely lost on the guy.

I stumbled this weekend across an intriguing Ask Metafilter post about backyard theaters. With the idea of community building on my mind, visions of neighborhood movie nights swirled in my mind. People love drive-ins and a well-considered slate of movies could really bring out the people.

In the ensuing thread, I found an awesome site for doing it right. It covers all the technical details as well as the logistical ones. For example, showing a movie to anyone interested in attending is considered a public viewing and would therefore require a public performance license. But showing a movie only to invited guests is a private viewing, like watching your DVD at home.

In addition to the possible community aspects, I could see using a backyard theater for poolside movie watching or the inevitable slumber party fun. I am really jazzed about the idea, but I'm going to wait to act on it because there's so much other groundwork that is more pressing.

Today was Go Daddy's first annual TechFest, which brought together all of Go Daddy's IT staff from around the nation for a conference. It was a chance to meet the people you might have only ever dealt with via email, IM, or phone. It was held at F1 Race Factory, which we bought out for the whole day. Events took place in its set of meeting rooms as well as a massive air-conditioned tent set up in the parking lot.

The main suite of presentations dealt with the company as a whole: Bob Parsons' candid (and hilarious) biographical sketch and reminiscences of the early days from employees that had been there 5, 9, and 10 years. It is simply astounding how far the company's come from those salad days—it's grown significantly in just the three years I've been there. For the first couple years of its existence, all the employees of Go Daddy worked in a house out in Cave Creek. The old-timers regaled us with tales of servers in the laundry room and concrete pillars erected in front of the garage for insurance reasons so that an errant car wouldn't take out the entire development staff!

I gave a presentation on unit testing and test-driven development to approximately 37 people. (I say "approximately" because that was the attendance figure I had going into the presentation but I didn't actually do a count during.) It was a version of the one I'd given in March to an internal team but all gussied up. By popular request (of those who didn't attend the talk), here's the slide deck. I can put it up because it's entirely meaningless without me flapping my gums up there for an hour.

The set up surrounding the presentation was one disaster after another. I couldn't find my VPN card so I couldn't do a demo using a live connection. Then I made a screencast version of the demo, but the software I used for Windows could only export to a SWF. That meant that I had to open it up in a browser and use the context menu controls of the Flash plugin to navigate the video. My room was designed for 20-25 and didn't have a built-in projector system, which further limited the available seating. I overcame each of these obstacles in turn because I allowed plenty of time to sweat out the details. I can't emphasize enough the need to really explore your presentation environment before your talk; if I had relied on the previous night's once-over, I would've chewed through valuable talk time fretting little hurdles as they arose.

I think the presentation went swimmingly! My boss came in for moral support but left rather quickly when he realized that I had it well under control. I was joking, I was animated, I was lively. I'm really happy with my decision to use rather spartan slides: it prevented me from just reading off them, eliminated reading ahead, and kept the audience guessing as to the images' significance. Further, the audience asked technical, methodological, and insightful questions during the Q&A. That told me that they were engaged with the material, which is exactly what a presenter dreams of. And quite a few stayed 15-20 minutes past my allotted time to go into more detail!

The event closed with Merlin Mann's presentation of Inbox Zero, which was amazing, and then the traditional overdoing of the prizes. I've been doing Inbox Zero for years but I found myself rapt due to his easygoing and quietly-hilarious style. It was worthwhile just to watch his presentation style; I think he made a big impact on the Go Daddy crowd.

Next year's can't come soon enough!

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

This weekend, Sandi and I were watching television when we saw an advertisement for a new show on CBS called Swingtown about a married couple that decide to engage in swinging. What the hell is wrong with the world? I'm no prude, but casual sex among married couples strikes me as profoundly wrong and not to be celebrated. Promiscuity is wrong in general but beyond the pale in spouses. Celebrating it is reprehensible.

We decided then and there that we wanted to live in a small town—a more wholesome place with better values that repudiates this Bacchanalian emotionalism that seems to have taken hold of our culture (at least the public face of it). The trouble is that we love our house, we love Phoenix, and we love the desert. No small towns accommodate those needs. So what to do?

My wife, the observant one, realized that Boulder Creek—our little subdivision section of Phoenix—is kind of like a small town. Why can't we make this into the small town we'd like? Well, obviously, the residents of Boulder Creek are varied and all-too-transient so I'm speaking figuratively. If we surround ourselves with good people (with good children), there's no reason why we couldn't get the positives of a small town while retaining the benefits of the big city!

Our little community is just like every other subdivision: get home from work, close up the garage door, and retreat into the microcosm. So we've just got to think of how to crack into that, how to give our area an identity that makes people want to participate. We've got to build the community that we want to live in.

Got any ideas to share? I'm thinking about a community Web site and perhaps a block party, but maybe you've seen something that works better. Please let me know either in a comment or by emailing me.