Rendai

I’m in Phoenix this week attending the AYE (Amplify Your Effectiveness) conference. Even though the name is a little silly sounding, it’s been a great experience so far. This is an open space conference, where people are expected to participate. There are no powerpoint presentations and in most cases, no handouts at all. It’s all about understanding the topic through dialog with the presenter and those around you. Each session does an experiment where subgroups do some activity and discuss what happened.

I’m really liking it. It’s put me outside my comfort zone though. I talked more (and to people I don’t know) yesterday than I normally do in half a week. It should be good for personal growth, but has been uncomfortable at best. It’s weird. I guess I haven’t been around people I don’t know for so long that I’m not used to the ‘getting to know you’ dialog that needs to be done.

Yesterday I took two sessions, one about comfort with change and how to deal with it and another on better use of retrospectives. Today I’m taking sessions on making teams more effective and better ways on making the speed/quality tradeoff when developing software. Both are extremely applicable to my current job so should be great.

I didn’t bring my camera, but others have them. The hotel where the conference is located is really nice, and I’m digging the Phoenix weather. Should have brought sunscreen, but I’m not out in the sun too much. It would be really nice to live out here, but I say that about any place that I travel to. Must be something with Houston (ha).

It has been a fun few days. We’ve been keeping cool thanks to a cold front that came in Sunday. Unfortunately, we don’t have power, but have a few friends that got power yesterday (a hot shower is a great thing).

The hurricane itself was worse than I would have thought given how far we are from the coast. Power went out at the house around 1:30 AM. After that point, the only lights we had were from the glow of transformers popping around the neighborhood. They made an eerie sound close to what the monster in Cloverfield made. The hardest part of the storm didn’t hit until 4 AM. The odd thing was the power tried to come back on around then, but was browning out. I remember opening my eyes to see my digital alarm clock flickering (the ‘1′ would partially come up, then go out, then I’d see portions of the ‘12′ of ‘12:00′ pop up for a brief moment). I immediately ran (immediately in the sense of being groggy and sleep deprived) to the switch box in the garage to turn off the power to the house. I couldn’t see out of the front door to the cul-de-sac except for the slight glow from our neighbor’s front electric light flickering like a gas lamp. One thing I didn’t think about was the pressure difference between the outside and the house. I was pushed back the second I opened the door to the garage since it’s more open to the outside. Just walking to the breaker box was difficult with the wind curling around the garage doors.

The only other disconcerting effect of the hurricane was feeling the building shake from the more powerful gusts. In the future, we won’t be sleeping on the third floor during a hurricane. We took a quick look around once the wind started dieing down around 10 AM the next day. So far, there doesn’t appear to be any major damage to the house. There is a slight leak from inside the exhaust out of the AC. The cap probably came off in the high winds. If that’s the extent of the damage, I’m extremely happy though. We have running water that has been tested, food for quite some time, and friends that are kind enough to let us use their network access. Now we just need to get power restored to the homes in the surrounding area. We made out very lucky compared to other families.

Warren, his sister, father and I harvested over 200 lbs of Cynthiana grapes two weekends ago. He has taken graduated from wine kits to the real deal. We had a great time, and it was good to get outside and do something physical for once. I’ve been stuck behind the keyboard for most of the year and stretching my legs felt good. It wasn’t hard work and was over in a few hours. Cynthiana (aka Norton) grapes are a difficult grape to use, but does well in the area. This part of Texas has a few issues with a disease that kills most of the ‘noble’ grape lines, so it’s hit or miss.

In other news, I’m taking the next week off on vacation. We’re going to Austin for a few days but nothing really major. I had hoped to spend the week playing the beta of warhammer online but it doesn’t start until the 7th (doh!). Oh well, I have a ton of technical books I want to get caught up on. In either case, I don’t have to worry about work and can just take it easy.

When I was in high school, I was in Navy JROTC. Recently, an old friend of mine found me on MySpace and invited me to a website devoted to people that were in the same organization. Talk about old memories. I’ve forgotten how much fun it was to be part of something like that. I was on the armed drill team (yes, I know…), and pretty much everything else. Going through pictures on one of the pages, I found the following:

I can’t believe how skinny I was. Definitely needed a sammich back then.

2007 has come and gone. What a crazy ride it was:

• Sold our first house
• Built our first house
• Spent a full year at the new job
• Moved into the ‘big city’

It’s already hard to remember what it was like living in the ‘burbs. I have to say I wouldn’t go back unless forced at this point. Being able to go out and do just about anything at any time is really nice. Not that I take advantage of that… It’s just nice knowing I could if I wanted to.

With the house and work, it was extremely hard to find time to sleep and think, much less post on the blog. The team finished some major work yesterday, so I’m allowing myself the day off and will rest (you’ll note this is on a Saturday I write this). I’d go jogging, but it’s so cold outside that I’m wearing three layers of clothes in the office. I’d probably freeze into a popsicle on the side of the road if I did.

Speaking of jogging, last weekend was the Houston marathon. I wasn’t able to train for it last year, and didn’t even realize it was happening until the middle of Saturday. My knees still give me twinges so it’s probably for the better that I didn’t. I’d like to do something similar in the future, though. The amount of camaraderie the training group had was really nice. It’d be fun to be in a group like that again.