My good friend, Dan Wilson, pointed out to me a short while ago that there was some spam that had made it onto the Flex Blog aggregator, All You Flex Are Belong To Us.
It seems that one of the Feedburner RSS feeds that was being used for one of the blogs was taken over by someone else. I have updated the feed in question and have deleted the 'spam' entries.
Sorry about any issue this may have caused.
Yesterday, Liz Frederick of Adobe announced 1) The Adobe Community Expert program was being re-branded as Adobe Community Professional and b) the list of participants in this program for 2010.
I am on that list!
I consider it an honor to not only be part of the program (again), but to have my name listed along side some of the greatest people and brightest minds in the ColdFusion community.
Thanks Adobe!
This is a repost from 2 years ago on this date. I will continue to post this every year until I feel it is no longer fitting.
Unless you live under a rock, you are undoubtedly aware that to day is the 6th 7th 8th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As I am sitting here working, I am reminded of how I spent that day.
Like most Americans, I first heard news of the first plane that hit the World Trade Center on the news, and then watched in horror as the second plane hit the other tower and ultimately watched both towers fall. Unlike most Americans, I was unable to watch the events of the day unfold on TV. I had already made the switch to web development and was working in the IT department of the company where I had spent 12 years (at that time) as a paramedic, including 2 as a manager, but I was still certified as a paramedic and frequently worked extra shifts to pick up some extra cash.
One of the things my company was tasked with was setting up a staging area at a local airport. The plan was, as survivors were removed from 'Ground Zero' they would be flown to airports around the area so as not to overwhelm hospitals close to lower Manhattan. It was decided that I would be in charge of setting up and coordinating this staging area. I was sent to the airport at about 11:00AM and started preparing for what could have been hundreds of victims.
At the staging area, we coordinated with over 150 people from approximately 50 different police, fire and EMS agencies. It felt good to be doing something, something we were sure would help. From the airport in central New Jersey, about 40 miles from Ground Zero, we could see the smoke from the towers. We did not have a TV and relied on phone calls from others to get information as the day wore on.
As time passed we would get messages that we would be receiving patients soon, yet none ever came. After 9 hours at the airport, having not treated one person, we were told our services would no longer be needed and we could go home. It became a stark reality to me that anyone who would survive was already out of the towers.
In the days following 9/11 my company sent numerous crews to offer assistance at Ground Zero. I was on one of these crews at Ground Zero. While we were not on the pile of rubble trying to find bodies, we were close enough to see the utter devastation that was lower Manhattan. It is a scene that will never be wiped from my mind, but I am not sure I would ever want to.
My whole career as a paramedic I always said that as long as I could walk, I would continue to do the job, even if it was only part time. After 14 years as a paramedic, I let my certification lapse in December of 2003. The events of 9/11 played a huge part in that decision. It had nothing to do with fear. It had everything to do with the fact that I knew if something similar happened on my watch, I'd be running in to help people, regardless of the danger, and this would not be fair to my family. I also knew I could not change who I was, so the only way to ensure I wouldn't do that would be to remove the possibility of it happening, so I left EMS completely.
To this day, when I think of the towers falling, or seeing Ground Zero up close and personal, I get nauseous, I get physically ill.
So, I am a fantasy football nut. Each year, I usually have 3-4 teams on various sites (such as ESPN.com, NFL.com, etc). The problem is that I rarely know anyone else in the league and that kind of takes some of the fun out of it.
So, this year, I decided to start my own league and invite people I know, or at least know of, to join. I took the geek route and named the league 'CF-ootball' and each division name is a previous CF pre-release code name - yea, I know it's so geeky, its bordering on uncomfortable.
Anyway, if you are interested, let me know by leaving a comment below, and make sure you use a valid email address there I can sent the invite.
Have you registered for CFUnited yet? If not, why not? The 'early bird' discount ends tomorrow. So, go register. Go ahead...I'll wait....
OK, now that we got that out of the way, we can talk about the real important stuff. How many of you knew that one of the amenities if you stay in the hotel was that you get a free round of golf at the resort? I am sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that I think this is way cool. I love golf, and take any opportunity to play new courses. I have heard great things about the courses at Lansdowne, but have not played there yet (even though its only about 45 minutes from home).
I was planning on getting a group of people together for a little outing. I was thinking Wednesday Tuesday would be the best day. I would make any arrangements with the golf course and we can kind of play as one big group. There is one caveat though, if you sign up to play in this little outing, you will be randomly placed in groups with other CFUnited attendees/speakers. I think this is a great way to get to know other people.
So, who's with me? If you are interested, please leave a comment below and I will start to make the arrangements.
*UPDATE*
Please note I got the day mixed up, I was thinking of doing the little outing on Tuesday, NOT Wednesday.
This year at CFunited, Liz is planning an 'Open Mic' night where conference attendees will be able to share some of their talents. If you have some kind of talent, sign up to preform. Currently there are people signed up to play music, perform magic and read poetry.
Based on the fact that I spent a short period of time performing stand-up comedy, Liz, from Stellr, has asked me to be the emcee for the Open Mic. What does this mean? Well, I will be the one introducing all the acts, and interspersing some of my old stand-up routine (and hopefully some new stuff) in between performers.
A friend told me, "if you do good, the audience will love it, and well, if you bomb, the audience will love it, but in a different kind of way. So for the audience, its a win/win". I find it hard to argue with that logic, but really hope I don't bomb.
Oh, and hurry up and register, the early bird ends real soon. The chance to see me make a complete fool of myself might just be too good of an opportunity to pass on. You know you want to see if I will, so you better be there.
I hate to say this, but if you sent a message via the contact form at AllYourFlexAreBelongToUs over the last few months, I just now got the messages and fulfilled any requests to have feeds added.
I chalk this up to a change in mail servers, a rogue rule in my email client and my own inattentiveness causing me to miss the messages. If you sent a request to have your feed added and you do not see it show up on the feed list tonight, please let me know.
Sorry for any confusion or frustration.
Last week my company, Alagad, announced an opportunity to win some cool stuff that will be available for attendees of cf.Objective() and CF United.
Aside from the cool prizes such as a Wii, an iPod Touch,a Mac Mini and others, you can also win a kick ass laptop bag. All the Alagadinas were fortunate enough to have been given one of these bags and I have to say its pretty sweet - by far the best laptop bag I have owned. The bag alone is worth the effort to enter the contest, the other stuf is just icing.
Don't forget to look for the Alagadians next week in Minneapolis!
cf.Objective() is rapidly approaching and its time to take care of something very important....finalizing the plans for the pre-conference round of golf. Myself and several other CF-ers are planning to play golf on Wednesday afternoon (5/13) before the conference kicks off.
If you are interested in joining us, please leave a comment here. We plan on choosing a course and time and booking a tee time very soon.
I make no secret about the fact that we homeschool our children. I also make no secret that when the idea first presented itself, I was against it. When we tell people we homeschool, we get a wide range of reactions/responses from people, but a few nights ago, we got the best response ever.
We were in a restaurant and my oldest son and I were talking about something, I do not recall what it was. While we were talking, a woman at the next table over says to me, "Your son is very polite and very intelligent." I thanked her and she then turned to my son and asked, 'Where do you go to school?"
My son replied, quite proudly, "We are homeschooled."
Her response, "Well, that explains a lot."
My wife and I then spent about 20 minutes answering this woman's questions about homeschooling such as how to get started, what benefits there are, what kind of curriculum we use, etc. She seemed genuinely interested in homeschooling as an option for her children.
