bithead redux

This is a photo of the Tacoma museum of glass, from the photo library on my iPhone.

I never really used facebook all that much, but the iPhone app for it makes it actually feel useful.

I’m posting from my iPhone!

I’m starting a new job soon.

The last day of my current job (for the University of Washington) is next Monday, March 3rd.

The next day I will be working for Brain Murmurs. Check them out at http://brainmurmurs.com

Dan Pasco (the CEO) has been a good friend for a long time, and has been trying to get me to work for him for, let’s see, years. He finally offered me some opportunities I could not refuse, and here we are.

Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to starting there. I’m going to be working on some really cool things, mentoring some really cool programmers, and really just realizing the sort of job that I’ve wanted for a long time.

You see, whenever I asked myself what I really wanted to do, the answer kept coming back as “Be a Mac developer.” Most of the programmers whose work I follow and respect are Mac developers.

I’m pleased that I will be joining their ranks.

I’m pleased that I’m getting my chance to be in the show.

Yeah, I broke my blog.

I wrote the software it was running on, and did the design myself. And then I left it alone for a while. When I posted after a long absence, the front page crashed. The RSS feed was fine, the individual post pages were fine, but the front page crashed.

So I went back to Wordpress. I’ll be slowly migrating the past posts over.

One of the advantages of the new platform is that some smart people have been doing good work to make the system work well with the iPhone. If you browse to this site in an iPhone, you’ll see it formatted in a way that is very iPhone friendly.

Sorry for the distraction.

As is the custom for any blog post that happens after an extended period away, I apologize for the absence. I’ve been writing, but just not posting, for the writing is about the sorts of things that I do not write about on the blog.

But here I am now.

I guess the most momentous thing that happened to me while I wasn’t posting was that I managed to break both of my arms. At the same time. I fell, tried to catch myself, and managed to cause what the doctor called “bilateral radial head fractures.” I crushed the radial head on the left side, and merely caused a hairline fracture on the right side. This is a nasty kind of fracture, and about 70% of the time the kind of injury I had on my left arm requires a radial head replacement. Luckily the doctors took a “wait and see” approach, and I healed in a way that meant I didn’t need surgery. I probably will eventually, but not for about 15 years or so.

Yes, it hurt, a lot. It still hurts. It probably will for a long time. I’ll get over it.

The fracture happened the weekend after I got back from my first-ever cruise. My wife and I had been wanting to try a cruise, and we got a great deal on one that left from downtown Seattle and cruised the Inside Passage. It was gorgeous. We had a lot of fun, and contrary to what we’d been worried about, we neither got sick or gained weight. I highly recommend going on a cruise sometime.

Two years back, my wife and I decided to try snowshoeing. We loved it. It’s simple to just drive up to one of the Snow Parks near the pass and just tromp around in the back country. This year, wanting to expand our repertoire of winter sports, and wanting to return to something we’d tried in the past, we went crazy and bought ourselves some cross-country skis, and the other accoutrements that go along with them.

Things have really improved around cross-country skis in the last decade. They look and feel a lot different now. Hell, I wore the boots for hours, just walking around. They were that comfortable.

One of the reasons we decided to try XC skiing again is because it is easier on the wife’s knees (she blew out her knee downhill skiing in the early 90’s). The other reason was that everywhere we went to go snowshoeing, there were also many XC skiers sliding by, looking like they were having a great time.

Hope for snow this weekend, we want to head for the hills.

My wife volunteers for the Red Cross. She is on one of the local Disaster Assistance Teams. She is on a rotation, and this week she is on call.

Twice now over this weekend, while we were over at a friend’s house, she’s gotten called to help find people shelter because of fires. Both times I looked up the address with the iPhone, used the google maps app to plot a route, and drove her there.

Then, while she helps people find shelter and fill out forms, I sat in the car and watched videos (I can’t help because I’m not on the team).

So there we go. My iPhone has helped roughly 30 people find shelter this weekend, if only indirectly.