Full Frontal Nerdity

After an extended stint sitting on the bench at work I finally have a project. I am going to be working for the some people who make robots. Needless to say I am really excited about the project for many reasons. First and foremost I wont be sitting at work just twiddling my thumbs. I mean I don’t do nothing at work. I researched magento, python, and django. But I have to have some main goal in mind if I really want to learn a new language. On the up side, my Foosball skills have improved substantially.

One would think that not working for almost 2 months would be a good thing. But I am not person. I choose to stay busy. I get bored having nothing going on. In the two months that I was waiting for a new project I started three side projects. I am writing an iPhone app. I dont really have really high hopes for the app, but it was something to pass the time. All i have to do is finish it!

My second project is www.beyond6th.com. It’s a podcast that I started with some friends of mine. We decided to just give it a shot. So far most of the response has been positive. For some reason everyone thinks we are pretty funny.

The other project is a lan party in Austin. We have already purchased the domain. www.keepaustinlan.com. Its not just some small at home lan. Its a larger 100+ person lan. So far we have gotten about 8 people in the Austin gaming community behind it, as well as Intel. Intel is actually going to be providing most of the gear. Things such as a power generator, and networking equipment. All we have to be able to get together is the venue, tables/chairs, and the people. So it looks like it might actually take off. The whole reason for the lan was the fact that everyone left quakecon with a sour taste in their mouths. The internet connection was terrible and many modern games require a connection. So gaming was limited.

So, its been a while since I have done one of these, but I figured now was as good a time as any.

Well, I have fallen off the wagon with the smoking. Well, not totally. I only smoke on the weekend now and typically only at night if I am drinking with people who have cigarettes. So some success there, but not total success. I am taking it slow this time. I am having less and less each week. I just find it strange that I can go 5 days without smoking, but as soon as I have an adult beverage in my hand and a friend with a cigarette in his lips I just give in immediately.

On another note I just got back from Quakecon 2010. What is this quakecon you ask? It is a huge gathering of nerds and computer gamers. Everyone brings their own computer and sets it up in one huge dark room where for 3 days everyone plays games and chats and basically nerds it up.

Quakecon:

Highlights of the trip:

• Aimlessly wandering around the hotel and the lan area talking to strangers and having some beers. These folks are a strange bunch of people.
• The sounds coming from the B.Y.O.C. were vevuzelas and people whooping. We gave this species the name “the whooping nerd”.
• Volunteering and meeting a bunch of people that way.
• Finding out that my girlfriend is pretty enough to become a professional “gamer girl”
• Winning a free game by getting the best time on left for dead survival mode.

I still haven’t had a single puff and its day 11. I think Ill slow down on the smoking reports. Unless I fail.

This weekend my buddy alex invited me out to a Ren Faire. My first thought was that it was going to be a bunch of ren nerds and obese women wearing corsets. I imagined some renaissance newspaper boy exclaiming “hear ye hear ye, we are to have a gathering of all the nerds within a 100 mile radius.” I took his call and drove the 45 minutes outside of Austin while blasting Andrew W.K. and Metric down dirt roads. Once we arrived It was pretty much what I had imagined earlier. A “man” with an impressive set of moobs was there to greet us and instruct me on where to park my “future carriage”. Immediately I knew I was in for a treat.

Upon entering the gates my first order of business quickly became a cold glass of anything with alcohol in it. We search for what seems like and eternity all the while passing men wearing fairy wings and women whose breasts were being held in only by what must have been witchcraft.

Upon reaching what ended up being the furthest bar from the entrance, I am introduced to this concoction called “mead”. It is 5 dollars for a small glass or 18 for the bottle. So of course I get the bottle, it just makes fiscal sense. After which I witness what must be the equivalent of a mid evil strip tease (gypsy’s belly dancing) and a parade who’s members ranged from robin hood and his merry men to pirates. During the parade we all notice a sign for a wench auction.

We head to the wench auction that apparently takes place at 1:30 daily, but instead end up front and center for a jester. This guy was actually quite entertaining and talented. It may have just seemed so as I was starting on my second bottle of mead by now. But I had a blast watching this guy. It did turn out that he had just won the international jester competition. I don’t know how much competition there really is, but he was definitely the best jester I’ve ever seen.

After this, we wander around some more and I decide I am way too tipsy. So I wander off to buy a turkey leg. I run into this guy. I knew I had seen him somewhere on the internet before. Then I remember I was on a mission for the leg of a turkey. Its almost a given that you have to eat a turkey leg at a place like this. I mean how does a guy like me get away with eating a salad at a place like this? After devouring my turkey leg barbarian style, my girl and I decide to watch some plays. My buddies dad is part of these plays and they are quite enjoyable even though there are no microphones and all the actors have to yell everything.

At about 5Pm we decide to call it quits. But the mead has not finished its fight. So I hand the keys to Erica and we start heading home. On the way we stop at a convenience store and I buy this potion called monster “nitrous”. This was the worst mistake of the weekend. All it did was intensify my soon to come hangover and made me feel like my skin was crawling. So not only could I not go out later that night, I couldn’t sleep through my hangover, and it felt like 1000 tiny bugs were all over my body. UGH. But all things considered, I would go to a ren faire again.

So today is the day before 1 week of no smoking! I think I should reward myself… with a cigarette?!? I kid, but yesterday I woke up and literally my first thought was CIGARETTE. I managed to fight through the craving by just focusing on getting ready for the day. Today there were no temptations or cravings. I have even been able to hang out with friends who smoke without lighting one up myself. My success thus far has given me an overall feeling of health and achievement. Also, I found this cool little graph the other day. It gives you a time line of what your body goes through when you quit smoking and has helped me remember why I am doing this.

Last night I went to a bi-monthly gaming meet up that takes place at the Applebees on Brodie and 290. My buddy Shane runs the thing. It is an event where people bring all kinds of consoles ranging from the NES to the PS3 into the “restaurant”(I put that in quotes because I don’t consider eating anything there but appetizers) and play all kinds of games from NBA Jam to Modern Warfare 2. It is always a good time. The dollar beers kinda get the fun times jump started. I find it entertaining to look around and observe all the other patrons of the place poke fun at us with each other for being geeky or nerds. Then watch as the conversation progresses to “OMG I totally used to play that game” and “Remember Sonic the Hedgehoge?” This just leaves me thinking “Yea, nice name drop man. I’m sure you played Mario Bros. and probably Duck Hunt as well.”

Work has been quite fun for the last few days. I am finally out of meeting/design hell. I hate to call it work. I love what I do and don’t feel like it deserves the moniker. So I’ll call it my job, but that doesn’t fit it perfectly either. Well either way, I am finally getting to code again. Sometimes I just wanna code. I love that feeling where you chug a monster and get “in the zone”. Your coding away for hours on end but don’t realize it, then you look up and realize 5 hours have passed and suddenly you really have to pee. But you don’t. You just sit there and look at what you’ve created. Marveling in its greatness, how well formed and elegant it is. Programming is a lot like construction work mixed with art and architecture. When its good it has the elements of all three. Its well made and has an artistic beauty to it. Well at least good code does. Sometimes your just patching up a dam with bubble gum or fixing a wobbly chair with a piece of cardboard.

I am also going to start including the most amusing picture I have seen in the recent few hours. So here it is:
Picture

So this weekend I didn’t have a cigarette. Although the challenges were many.

Friday: I went for a jog around Town Lake (lady bird lake but i refuse to call it that). After not smoking for 2 days the jog was extremely successful. I was not winded or gasping for air. I didn’t expend all my energy just trying to breathe. Prodigy’s new album was blasting through my headphones. It was a great little jog. Everyone seemed to be out and the overall consensus seemed to be it was a great day. The running high I got from this jog pretty much made me forget that smoking and cigarettes existed. So exercise is now a way to deal with a craving for long periods.

Saturday: I woke up and groggily wandered out to the kitchen to make some breakfast tacos. When I look out the kitchen window I see what looks like an urban jungle. The grass was about calf high. I say grass but its all just weeds. Apparently the elderly woman who occupied the home before me paid little to absolutely no attention to the yard. So after the tacos I go to try and start the mower. Of course it doesn’t start! I spend 10 minutes mucking with it and then Erica comes over and gives it one pull and voila! it starts. Its pretty emasculating when your girlfriend does something that is supposed to be left to guys like me. I say guys like me because I think I do lots of manly things.

Here’s my list of things I think are manly:
Lift weights 3 times weekly +1
Box/Krav Maga +1
Drink Whiskey straight +2
Grow a Beard +3
Attempt to confront possible intruders boxer shorts +2
Drive a Scion Tc +0 Maybe +1 for knowing its a girl car and only caring about the “green” factor
Own an English bulldog +5
Wear a fedora +1
Squat Thrusts +1
Cooking bacon with a blow torch +3
Paintball in a T-shirt and shorts +1

I mean I’m the one who is supposed to open the stuck jars, I’m the one who is supposed to take out the trash, I’m the one who is supposed to start the mower!!! So after admitting defeat and mowing the yard, I spent most of the afternoon painting the interior walls in my house. Erica decided that we go with this green color which I absolutely hated at first, but it has grown on me. So, she wins again…. now this is getting out of hand!

Girlfriend starts mower for you… -20

After my workout yesterday I had plenty of energy left over. So I go home and mess around with my web server and get Drupal installed on it. I have gotten as far as the installation and installing new themes. It was actually quite an easy process. Pretty painless until I found out the version I downloaded 2-3 weeks ago was an old version and needed an upgrade. Fortunately the upgrade process was not that difficult. It seems to be the all in one savior I have been looking for. You can add custom modules, themes, etc. I am now officially a http://drupal.org/ believer. I have convinced my boss/officemate to switch our homepage to drupal and it looks like I will be taking the reins on this project. I am using this experience to learn more about drupal both at work and at play.

Surprisingly I was too focused on installing Drupal and that absolutely EPIC salad Erica (my GF) was making to actually think about smoking. However on the drive to work today, the story was different. I had a craving the size of Texas! It became especially apparent when I witnessed the guy in the car next to me on the congress bridge lighting up what seemed to me at the time to be a cigarette sent down by the gods to test me. I was able to resist, mainly because I didn’t have any smokes on me. Its easier to not smoke when you don’t have anything to smoke.

Last night after Erica was fed up with me fussing around on the laptop I sat on the couch and read a book that just arrived at my door. Thanks Justin A. and thanks Amazon Prime! It is titled the 4 hour work week and it details how to work more efficiently. It has been an interesting read thus far. I have already made changes to my daily workflow. Firstly I dont read email except for once a day. Second, I have downloaded leechblock add-on for firefox. It allows me to block out facebook, digg, reddit, bloglines, etc. So that even when I naturally type www.facebook.com in my address bar, It takes me to Community Techknowledge’s home page, www.communitytech.net. Just as a reminder of what I should be focusing on. This may sound a bit restrictive, but I am focusing on my career right now and I want to be the best at what I do, so this technique forces me to cut through the distractions like a samurai sword through butter.

I have decided to quit smoking today. Cold Turkey. For the probably 10th time. Today has been pretty bad though. The cravings are there for sure. After having my lunch I definitely wanted to have that cig. Every few minutes I think about giving in and just having another puff. I think “What bad could one more really do?”

SXSW was an absolute blast! Here’s a list of bands I saw:
Muse
Snoop Dogg
She and Him
Street Sweeper Social Club
Macy Grey
Andrew WK
Metric
Among others…

The interactive portion of SXSW has taught me so much. I felt quite overwhelmed with the sheer number of people there, as well as the big names there. I mean I met gina trapani, jeff jarvis, The Oatmeal, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Just to name a few. I have taken so much away from the panel and cant wait for next year. I will be installing Drupal on my webserver (www.eddiecantu.com). Just so I can learn it and love it. I have heard many great things about it.

On a side note, I have created my first working prototype at my place of work. Community Techknowledge. I went to a panel during SXSW and learned the value of using prototypes and doing them quick and dirty. So I used ZEND framework to create a “prototype” controller and created step actions for my first prototype. Loaded up an existing page from our website and copied out all the HTML into the view for step 1. Then I used firebug to edit the elements on the page for the following steps and pasted that HTML into those views. Thus creating what appears to be a fully functional website, but Its actually just like a PowerPoint slide show. Its all scripted ahead of time. But it looks impressive.