dave astels

In my first foray into the world of online Tshirts, I placed orders with StylinOnline and MakeUSmile Tees. Both orders were processed smoothly and arrived quickly.  I’m very happy with them and thought I’d mention it.  Go check out their wares. 

George Carlin passed away last week.

The world is suddenly a less funny and more politically correct place. He will be missed.

I thought I should let everyone know that, although things will never be”back to normal”, I’m feeling great.

I’ve been back to work for almost 2 weeks. The diabetes is under control and my blood glucose level is where they should be. Getting used to the new routine of finger pricks and injections hasn’t been an issue, which was a very pleasant surprise. Dietary changes weren’t overly onerous… just the portion management being the biggest change.So, all in all, things are going well. I’ve even started learning Mac/iPhone development and Spanish.

Dave

I came close to death last week. Such a thing gives one pause to think…

Life is too fragile to waste on bland food, bad music, cheap wine, weak coffee, unpleasant women, undue rushing about, and poorly written software.

… I’m just sayin’, is all.

Carpe Diem

Steve Jobs isn’t the only one who can quote Dylan.

… speaking of Steve Jobs and changin’ times… I may be bumping into Mr. Jobs at the local Cupertino Starbucks before long…

Next month I’m heading to California… Silicon Valley to be specific.

After over 3 years of saying “I’m not interested” to Google, I’ve accepted their offer of a position. I’m not sure how public I can be yet about what exactly I’ll be doing… but it will leverage my experience and expertise in Agile Development, TDD, Ruby, Rails, and RSpec.

This change is not without some sacrifices, but we think it’s the right move at this time. One downside is having to end my association with Obtiva… which I have greatly enjoyed. They’re great people and great to work with.

One benefit is that I won’t be having to focus so much on billable hours to cover the bills anymore… so there should be more time for things like RSpec and writing.

I’m in New York doing some teaching this week. I’ve been before but usually only for day trips… once for an overnight. This is the first time I’m here for several days at a time. Tonight the weather was nice enough to get out for a walk after class. It’s such a blend on the streets. I’ve grown myopic living in rural Atlantic Canada where everyone pretty much looks the same. I sat this evening at the window counter of a burger place (corner of 6th Ave and W 32nd St) facing out on W 32nd. I like watching people, so this was a great way to spend a meal. Pretty much no two people who went by had the same shade of skin (maybe a slight exaggeration.. but not by much). And my hotel is in the middle of “KoreaTown“. Home is going to seem somewhat blander.

I’ve been doing some work with Obtiva for a while. It’s been a good experience for everyone involved, and so we’ve decided to take the relationship to the next level.

I’m happy to announce that I’m now part of the Obtiva team, doing project work and training (primarily Ruby and Rails based).

It’s been a long time since I blogged. It’s a long story, but things were rough until April… getting screwed over by a client. We ended up getting some money from them in the end, and I’ve hooked up loosely with a shop run by quality people that I know well enough to trust. Since then, I’ve been keeping as busy as I can handle with building web-apps in Rails. So things are going better.

To kick off what will hopefully be a new lease on life for this blog, we’re switching things around. First is a new look. That’s partly just visual, and partly due to switching from Typo back to WordPress (which has come a long way since we switched away from it). Some things are working, some are not (like the tag cloud :( ). So bear with me as things get finessed into shape here. 

Update: the tag links work now.

Wow… it’s the end of October again. A year ago we were in the process of buying our house. Now we’re close to our second Yule here.

We did a family pumpkin carving tonight, the results of which you can see in this post.

Other than that, the occasion has pretty much snuck up on us, busy as we are with finishing up a client project and readying to launch a service to fill a conspicuous gap. More on that later.

All of us TextMate users got a Halloween treat when we got to our desks this morning (assuming we have auto update set). The splash screen and application icon are the wicked jack-o-lantern you see to the right, while the “no file loaded” background was a nice cobweb. Nice to see the TextMate folks have a good sense of fun… all the more reason to use their kick-ass product. See Allan’s post here.

As Nancy pointed out, I had some adventures in ink cartridge refilling today. What usually involves the included hand drill bit (to drill a hole in the ink cartridge to allow refilling) ended up involving a saw and snips.

but.. as discussed in the 37s blog today… I made it work. I’m pleased to report that surgery (hacking) was successful and we are printing again :)