Category: Personal

Can we crash (in Seattle)?

Well, thought we’d try something a little different — do a little crowd-sourcing ourselves. We’re coming up to Gnomedex at the end of the month and rather than stay at a hotel, we thought we’d see if we could tap our network and find someone to stay with in Seattle…!

We checked out Can I Crash but unfortunately, they only offer is already booked…

So, if you’re in Seattle or know someone who is and has space (and is also not evil), Tara and I would love a place to crash! Oh, and just so you know that we’re decent, here’s what we look like, if you didn’t know already:

Crashing Couple

Original photo by Will Pate.

For the rest of the month

iCal icon…there will be nothing but events. I kid you not.

  • June 20, 2006 – 10:00 – 18:00 – MashPit San Francisco III – at Wharton West, 101 Howard Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA
  • June 20, 2006 – 20:00 – Microformats 1-year Anniversary Party – at 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA
  • June 21 – 23, 2006 – Supernova 2006 – at The Palace Hotel, 2 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA
  • June 23 – 24, 2006 – BloggerCon IV – at CNET, 235 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA
  • June 23, 2006 – 19:00 – 24:00 – BarCampSanFrancisco Kick-off Party – at Microsoft Offices, One Market Street 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA
  • June 23 – 25, 2006 – BarCampSanFrancisco – at Microsoft Offices, One Market Street 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA
  • June 29 – July 01, 2006 – Gnomedex 6.0 – at Bell Harbor International Conference Center, 2211 Alaskan Way, Seattle, WA

(And yes, you can add these events to your calendar easily.)

Oh, and cool sidenote, Senator John Edwards will be keynoting Gnomedex. Guess if you can’t get the inventor of the internets, you can at least get a running mate.

I am a citizen and I have agency

Citizen Agency

So in case you missed it, Tara left Riya very recently, following a trend that’s at least a couple months old (but blowing out recently).

The obvious question is: “what comes next?”

Well, without much time and without much hesitation (which means going on the sense in our collective gut, which our worldly president espouses), we decided to take the plunge and start our own consorgency.

We’re calling it Citizen Agency. And we’re still trying to figure out what we’re gunna shape it into… but we’ve got some initial ideas.

The name was spontaneous to be sure, as we’re on a tight deadline to get this thing launched, but it captures some of the important organizing principles behind what we’re doing. And of course, no good project or idea is without a kickoff track to its soundtrack… so, substitute “Patriot” with “Citizen” in the eponymous song by Pearl Jam and a picture starts to emerge:

And I ain’t no communist
And I ain’t no socialist
And I ain’t no capitalist
And I ain’t no imperialist
And I ain’t no democrat
I sure ain’t no republican either
I only know one party, and that is freedom

Whatever this thing we’re building is, it’s gunna be consistent with everything that’s lead to our shared success so far, including starting with a community model and building it out through channels that respect the dignity of our consorgents and partners.

Ah, and if you have an idea of what kind of symbol might represent this idea, we’re all eyes.

Now in France

FING logoAfter something like 15 hours of flying or whatever, here I am, in France!

Things are good so far — staying with Christophe Aguiton of France Telecom and traveling south to Aix-en-Provence momentarily to meet up with the rest of the crew, I’m here to present on BarCamp, WineCamp, and Coworking at FING and BarCampParis. What I’m most interested in is what these folks are up to — and seeing how international solidarity and collaboration can further the plight of the modern independent. After all, they’ve got a bit of a head start on us, considering their history.

Change is good

oink. moo. yup.

In case you missed it (and I don’t really blog too much about personal stuff much, but it’s okay to be a little human once and again), Tara and Riya have bid each other their farewells and both are moving on to the next chapters of their storied Web 2.0 lives. Not unlike a certain fella you may know. Hmmh. Funny, n’est-ce pas?

We also packed up most of my stuff from Teh Langpad this weekend and moved it over to Tara’s place where I’ve pretty much been livin’ anyway. But yeah. Ho boy.

And, as you know, Teh Space is off and running. Like, a real workspace (but it’s still not the same as finally having something of a home). But still.

Oh, and tomorrow I leave for France until Sunday. Yowza.

And did I mention Picoformats (shuddup, yes I am serious)?

Comrade TaraWell, anyway, this whole post is really about Tara and how brave she is to be going out on her own in all this. There’s a lot that she has to figure out, but even more opportunity that she needs to figure out how to make the most of it… I’m proud to be her PiC and to watch eagerly as she ponders her next steps and where she’ll lead the Pinko Brigades from this point onward.

I’ll tell you one thing, it only gets more interesting from here.

Damn, where’d I go?

This is me, when I was like 4 -- by Miss Rogue

So I realized that I’d been writing “Whoops, sorry for the radio slience lately” to kick off most of the emails I’ve sent in the past phew days and figured I oughta update the ol’ blog with some quick hits.

I’ll defer to Tara for a recap of things over the past 10 days while we were there and then after the fact. And don’t miss Robert Ouellete‘s greatly flattering post.

Anyway, so my laptop b0rked and I sent it off to Apple before I left… unfortunately, it wasn’t ready until I was boarding my plane, so I had to take my backup system (damn, I am a spoiled kid) along with me, which was having intermittent hangups every time I booted. Oh well, okay, whatever.

Toronto was a total blast — a really great town with a lot of great folks (and Mesh and BarCampTdot ruled). And The Drake was simply mahvalous. And even had connectivity once or twice… owing to the half hour I had to spend booting my damn system.

Me @ my grandparents'Anyway, once we arrived in NH, that was it for net connectivity. My mom has dial-up, but it only works on PCs (lame-ass PeoplePC) so I was effectively offline and without a functioning computer for, OMG, 4 days. But seriously, it’s suckage and unaffordable downtime when you’ve got WineCamp, Coworking, a trip to Southern France and BarCamps up the wazoo in your immediate path!

So bah, Apple, this is all your damn fault. I blame you! Here’s a tid bit of wisdom for the ages: if you’re going to buy an Apple, make damn sure you buy AppleCare.

This is the second display they’ve “reworked” and the second logic board I’ve had replaced on this machine. I’ve had previous logic boards, displays, video cards, power adapters and the whole rest replaced before. And thankfully everytime it was completely covered.

Anyway, that’s the deal, and why I’ve been MIA and might continue to be as I scramble to catch up as my life runs asunder. At least I’ve got the best and most patient PiC in the universe to ground me throughout. Phew! (oh, and the new shoes are her influence… finally!).

Out of Towner Meetup: Teh Boris & ClaimID

Everyone’s favorite hand waver, Boris Mann of Bryght is here as well and Fred Stutzman and Terrell Russell of ClaimID for Startup School and IIW and are huuuuungry!

It’s last minute, I know, but if you can make it to tonight’s Out of Towner at Osha Thai at 7:30pm you can expect some great food and very captivating conversation!

…specifically:

  • Identity 2.0
  • Drupal
  • Microformats
  • NP Tech
  • Coworking
  • Open source
  • …other yadda yadda!

Ok, c u there. Kbai!

Untitled #1

Woke up at 5am. Couldn’t sleep. Must be jet lag.

Decided I’d go for a jog. Yes, a jog.

Went for said jog.

The doing was more important than how it went. Which, admittedly, was not bad.

Question: why is health so rarely talked about on geek blogs? Surely I’m pushing it with my own case of RSI, fatigue, laziness; last I checked, I’m still not 100% cybernetic. I have a sore throat, for example. But it’s like gym in grade school to which all the nerds were allergic. Is biology just not as interesting as electronics? Oh well. I’ll speak for myself — it concerns me — my health that is — but it seems noticeably absent from the things I read day in and day out. My problem to be sure; curious nonetheless.