Hoofnagle.org

Well, I haven't touched this blog in far too long. Should YAPC people visit because of this post, ignore the CSS, the creaky MT install. *shrug* Whatever. I'm busy.

So, I've spent the past 3 days at YAPC::NA 2008 and for all my friends who don't work in perl, I rather pity you. It's not that your Java, Ruby and bizarro flash-interpretive languages aren't good to write. They are (some of them -- ahem). But *you* haven't seen Ingy the professional ham do a strip-tease. (Tossing his underwear from behind the curtain, I tell you!) or heard Matt Trout get good laughs out of righteous indignation and the word fuck or heard the "I'm f*cking Steve Ballmer" song. (Which I'm trying to find, but it seems not to be online anywhere. Not shocking since it was just released "into the wild" about 45 minutes ago and it would've been spoiled if anyone had seen it early.

Point being, the perl people? They are fun. And friendly too. There were 350 people here, most of them seasoned programmers even if they were new to perl and the level of investment in the community was very high. My frivolous regret? I didn't bring enough cash with me to the auction to compete for the right to be the auctioneer in charge of selling off lunch with Larry Wall. (Who accepts being sold like an expensive tart every year with real grace). And as much as I like perl what this really reminded me is how much I love code. My code. Your code. Any code someone is really joyfully writing.

Therefore, I hereby declare that (as soon as I clear it with my spouse) there will officially be a monthly SuperHappyDevHouse at my place in Washington once a month. Dates to follow. If too many people want to do this, we will be forced to find alternate space but what the hell. If I don't set dates to hack. I don't hack. So come on over. Coffee's brewing.

Posted by karen at 06:43 PM

I uploaded a bunch of Halloween parade pictures here. However, I've finally got off my rump and password protected my kids photos. I'm gonna send out the password in email to those I have email for, but... a lot of you (ILEN!) I don't. So! If you want to see my pictures using Scott Evans's wonderful new photo gallery maker applejuice ping me and I'll send it to you.

Posted by karen at 02:57 PM

So we recently lost our minds completely and allowed Betsy, our about-to-be-four-year-old, to invite everyone she knew to our house for a party. Our thinking went thusly: We will not go to Chuckee Cheese or other venue in which children disperse in all directions and don't hang out with each other or their parents. We will not be having a Princess Fest in which little boys would have a poor time. We will not be buying a cake that someone else made and we will not be supplying pony rides or any other such insanities, else when she's sixteen she'll be asking us to finance a moonshot. So many things were going to have to bow to mommy and daddy's desires for wholesome, non-commercial fun that by-god, we said to ourselves, at the least she should be allowed the extravagance of inviting whoever she wanted.

And the list grew. And it grew. And it grew. And the RSVP list sat. And it sat. And it sat. Until two days before the shindig when suddenly a flood of "yup, yup. Planning to be there!" Phonecalls came to me while I was trying to work. 1,2, 3...15... 25... ohgodohgod 32 kids. Right. And attendant parents. Whom we will have to feed and entertain.

Now a blow-by-blow account of sitting up until midnight prepping goodie bags, stuffing the pinata (because who could resist letting little kids beat Dora the Explorer with a big ole stick) might not interest you. And a post mortem of things we ought to have done (for example starting the grill at 9am and prepping ALL food the night before) also might be overly nitty gritty. The party happened. Reed, my mom and I worked like crazy. Betsy seemed to have a pretty good, though somewhat overwhelming, time and she and Ginger collapsed in an exhausted puddle when it was all over.

But when the party was all over, we still hadn't opened presents yet. And that's worth a discussion. I thought hard about whether to post this post. Would attending parents who read this blog be offended? Did I care? I dithered. I fiddled. And in short, anyone who is insecure enough to wring their hands and say-woe-is-me-she-hates-us-cause-we-didnt-include-a-gift-receipt has got it all out of proportion. I hate no one. The things Betsy was given were lovely. And other friends could use this entry. Nuf said. People with little children who will attend parties in the future, consider the following rules next time your kids are invited to a birthday. The following are good birthday party ettiqutte for (at least) the preteen set.

1. As a matter of ettiquette, it's polite to call the inviting parents and ask them what their preferences are about gifts for their kids.

2. If you make the aforementioned call, it is negated as a politeness unless you actually USE the information so gleened to buy an appropriate gift.

3. Especially if you did not follow rules 1 and 2, it is polite to include a gift receipt with what you buy so that it can be returned if it's a duplicate or ... ahem... deemed hopelessly inappropriate.

4. If for some reason you really can't do 1, 2, or 3... buy something without monstrous Disney or other marketing push behind it. Books -- especially classics -- are *very* safe purchases.

5. Extra credit for thoughtfulness goes to parents who put presents into gift bags instead of wrapping them in wrapping paper. This is for two reasons: a. It makes parental pre-snooping of gifts to be sure there's nothing you don't want your tot to have much much easier and b. You can reuse the gift bag next time your own child takes a gift to a party.

I may actually have an ammendment to the overall list next September about how you should behave when the parents ask that no presents be brought. I think that's what we're going to try for the next few years.

Peace, yall.
K.

Posted by karen at 12:17 PM

I took very very few photos of my wonderful biking vacation to Driggs. The marvelous Janet Bee, however, took more. She asked me to put them up on the net for her, so here they are:

Janet's Teton Tuneup Pictures.

Posted by karen at 03:37 PM

As I'm not a chaser of internet luminaries, I'd missed knowing Molly Holzschlag and her work until pretty recently. But today it's not her web-y skillz that make me pay attention to her. She posted a couple of days ago about Owning Her Bitter and it arrived in the midst of my ruminations on what it means to be successful, happy, rich. Molly's looking at her life and feeling financial and emotional poverty inspite of a damn fine set of gifts to work with. Her career feels stalled, her personal desires for family and children aren't coming to fruition. She's starved at the root, and is staring down the barrel of not just the dark night of the soul which theoretically ends every 12 hours with a new sun, but the dark night of fearing her incipient bag-lady-hood as her life rots instead of ripens into what should have been a fruitful middleage.

Yah. I feel that. Ok, I don't live it, but I live at all times at essentially two disasters worth of remove from it. One good trainwreck taking the family, one good business tidal wave taking the job. Or maybe a physical disability. Point being, the full cup that runs over for me is shatterable. So's yours, probably, whether you notice it or not. You can't look over your shoulder all the time in fear, it aint healthy, but then there's Molly sitting right there struggling with the ultimately ineffable, the how do you go on, the need for something to get up in the morning for. Hell, Molly's hardly the only one.

My personal answer to the fear of living old, alone and unspeakable is simple, maybe simple minded. Don't look. That sort of future is one that is called into being by thinking about it. Feel it creeping at your spine and breathing in your ear, but you never turn round. You walk like Perseus out of Hades, towards the light. Find things to love, even if they're not what you wanted to love in the beginning. And walk on.

Of course, I've acreted quite a pile of people and things to love. Easy for me to say that. And Perseus failed, so who the hell do you have to be to never look round? You'll note, if you followed the link to Molly's post I haven't said a damn thing about her professional sense of despond. She's multipublished, brilliant and broke. I'm middle of the road competent, no luminary and not broke. My recipe is somehow the same. Don't look round. Take new contracts, write new books. Earn, earn, earn. Do everything new today so the might have beens don't eat you.

Good luck, Molly, be strong. We're rooting for you.

Posted by karen at 03:03 PM