June 2008 Archives

Moved to a new house at work

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I'm now sitting in a new house.  Yes, house--my company now has 3 houses in the Montrose area of Houston that we all work in.  They're beautiful old houses, turn-of-the-century, that have all been recently restored to become office space.

I don't have my own office, but it's not that bad--when you're developing code, it helps to be in the same room as your teammates.  We're a little cramped in the new space, for "future growth", but for now it's not bad.

We'll see how it goes...

LSRPCA June 14-15, 2008 at TWS

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I was there.  Didn't drive (much), though.

Why not?  Well, I was privileged to attend the instructor training school.  More like a boot camp than a school, but in a very good way.  I always thought that instructing would be easy.  Well, maybe not "easy", but I thought that I'd be instantly good at it, because I've been driving on the track for a few years.

Boy, was I mistaken.

Instructing is hard.  I commented that I felt like a green driving student again, only now I'm in the right-side seat.

However, as the weekend went on, I felt more and more comfortable, and I started "getting it".  I think that I did pretty good in the training, although I haven't heard whether I "passed" yet.  I now really understand why instructing truly is the next level of HPDE driving, and it will definitely make my own driving better.

The "instructor instructors" that we had were incredible, and I really appreciate all of the time and energy that they and LSRPCA take to ensure that the level of instruction that students (and new instructors!) receive is absolutely of the highest quality.  I truly am committed to making sure that I continue that tradition in my own instructing.

Google saved my blog

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A couple of days ago, I upgraded my blog software to MovableType 4.  I made a backup of my entire installation and database, and figured out how to do a "fresh" install, including a new database.

I did a stupid thing, though, and accidentally deleted my backup file.  (don't ask)  I figured, well, I'll just start over, and then I remembered that Google caches web pages.  A few minutes of cutting-and-pasting, and I had all of my old entries into the new blog database.  Nice.