Masses of people are shoulder to shoulder, cheek to jowl in tiny rooms and endless hallways and elevators shouting and talking and whimpering and crying for hours endlessly. Elevators that connect to other elevators going up and down. Shuffling from place to place, memories only lasting moments. It seems like we’ve been here forever but I can only remember the last few minutes.

I find an empty hallway leading to a screen door with a sign that says Emergency Exit. It looks like this has not been used in decades. On the other side of the door is an abyss. I didn’t go through but I sat at the door and breathe the clean air.

I share this secret with one and then another companion. The second has a son. I don’t know how he remembers he has a son; something about being a parent much transcend the memory wipe that happens every few minutes. The son is having a panic attack and can’t breathe, so we bring him down the empty hallway to the emergency exit to sit by the screen door. After a few minutes he is yanked from his father’s grasp and drawn back into the fray by an invisible hand. There’s a warning message; we can feel it, but we can’t hear it. It says something like Boy has spent too much time outside. Penalty. His father cries so we reassure him will find him again. We’ll always find him.

I look at the screen door and wonder why I’ve never opened it. I push the latch. The door swings open and I sit on the ledge and look out. Blackness. Far below I can see a very dim outlines of rectangular shapes, stacks of something. As I keep gazing out into the dark it seems like the floor below is not as far as it was. I turn around, grab the ledge and lower myself until I am hanging by my fingertips from the screen door. I look down. The floor now seems just a few feet below me. I let go. I fall in slow motion and land on what I can only describe as a stack of empty dvd boxes, but on a scale where I am very small or they are very very large. Looking around I see endless stacks of various heights in the distance.

Off to my left there is a hill and beyond the hill what seems to be a building. A low, long office with lights in the windows. More of the lights come on and I see movement on the hill heading towards me. They’re coming.

And that’s when I wake up.

Donate at least $25 (My LLS page, or use the widget to the right) and you will receive a special gift from me. A real, tangible thing, not just a Thank-You email (though you’ll get one of those, too!). What is it? It’s a surprise, but I guarantee you’ll like it. Just make sure you include a mailing address in your donation.

Thanks again for your support and GO TEAM!

(If the widget doesn’t load or you’re mobile, my Team in Training page has donation links too.)

Committed to what? To running my first half-marathon – the Avenue of the Giants on May 6 – as part of Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. Team in Training helps me train for my race and in return I am fundraising for LLS.

I hope to have as many of you as possible virtually cheering me on, and I’m asking you to help by making a donation to my fundraising campaign.

Please visit my Team in Training page to donate online quickly and securely plus learn more about my progress. You will receive a confirmation of your donation by email and I will be notified as soon as you make your donation. You can also see my progress in the handy widget on the right side of this page.

Each donation helps accelerate finding a cure for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Nearly 958,000 Americans are battling these blood cancers. I am hoping that my participation in Team In Training will help bring them hope and support.

On behalf of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, thank you very much for your support. I greatly appreciate your generosity.

I’ll post updates here as my training and fundraising progress and as I get closer to the actual race. And of course, I’ll post race-day photos.

Thanks again.

I suppose the first question to be answered is, which “me” are you following? There are at least four.

Yes, I know. Sigh.

@smartwatermelon is my first, original Twitter account. It’s public, so anyone in the world can read my Tweets and follow me if they so desire. Nowadays @smartwatermelon is the account most closely associated with my job at HP/Palm–many of my recent followers are (directly or indirectly) a result of this Tweet from Lisa Brewster (@adora) of Palm’s Developer Relations:  

Welcome to @palm, @smartwatermelon! He started today as SDK Tools Engineer and will be working closely with @lemketron.

March 21, 2011 1:32 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Adora

Lisa Brewster

@smartwatermelon is also (sort of, a little bit, in some circles) known for being name-checked on The Rachel Maddow Show as a result of this Tweet, retweeted by Rachel herself and actually displayed on the show. I’m still gobsmacked over that one. 

RT @smartwatermelon: Jon #Huntsman's campaign song http://t.co/g37oJr5 (attn @Maddow, @Lawrence)

May 20, 2011 5:29 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@maddow

Rachel Maddow MSNBC

Finally, as my primary public account, it’s the one to which I have various social-network services tied. You’ll see Tweets from Foursquare, GetGlue, Twitpic and Untappd. Quite a lot from Untappd, actually. It’s also the account which is shown in the Twitter widget in the right column of these pages.

So: techy stuff with an emphasis on mobile devices, Macs and general geekitude; politics, especially the liberal/progressive kind and especially the ridiculous aspects of such; social-network checkins; and beer.

The name? Oh, the name comes from a watermelon-flavored soft drink made by the Coca-Cola company that’s only sold in China but can be tasted at Club Cool at Epcot in Walt Disney World and also at the Coke Museum in Las Vegas. Well, you asked.

Interested? Intrigued? Inchoate?

@swm_photos is a special account I use for live photoblog updates using my EyeFi card. When I take my camera, phone (for tethered Internet access) and EyeFi card on a photowalk, the resulting pictures are uploaded in nearly realtime and tweeted to @swm_photos. This is mostly so I don’t overwhelm @smartwatermelon followers with quick-succession tweets. I’ll tweet from @smartwatermelon when photos are forthcoming to @swm_photos.

You’ve come here from a link from MousePlanet–one of my (infrequent) articles, the Twitter widget on the MousePlanet home page or perhaps you met me at at Disney park? You want @MPAndrew, my public account for MousePlanet, Disney and related Tweets.

I’m far less active on @MPAndrew than on @smartwatermelon (which might be a good thing) but if you want to know what I’m doing in the Disney-related Web arena then @MPAndrew is the account for you. It gets busiest around the time of our semi-annual MouseAdventure events and whenever I’m at or near one of the parks. I also occasionally tweet about some of the “backstage” or behind-the-scenes technical aspects of my work on MousePlanet.com.

Not enough? You want to know the real me? Then @andrewmrich is the account for you. This one, however, is a private account. That means Tweets from this account aren’t visible to anyone I haven’t allowed to follow me.

My use of @andrewmrich is much more of a long-term, very high-latency conversation among friends who already know each other. If you already know me in real life (and it’s not from work or from a Disney connection) then feel free to put in a follow request.

I keep the followers down to a minimum on @andrewmrich, though, to keep the conversation at a comfortable pace, so don’t be offended if I don’t approve it. Just scroll up to the top of this post and re-read the clever and witty descriptions of my other three accounts again.

And thanks for reading.

Tim Hortons Coffee

Mornings require coffee. Mornings in Canada require Tim Hortons.

No, that would never happen. The only thing worse than high school for me was… actually I was going to say Basic Training but in Basic I learned how to shoot. I have no interest in ever seeing or talking to any of those people and do not want to step foot into the hallowed grounds of William Howard Taft High School ever again, thank you very much.

Nose cleaning, tiger style

– take apart and clean the garden fountain

- rewire the back patio lights

- strip and reseal sealant around the sunporch

- finish rebuilding the balcony floor and railing



And that's just a tiny sample!

Apple Mini Retail Store – Stanford Shopping Center

What's that you say? Don't I already have a shiny new MacBook Pro? Sort of. It's still a little bit shiny and it's almost three years old, which in laptop terms is pretty far from new. That $1000 would pay for a little less than half of the new model I have specced out.

• 7-Zip – a free, open-source (GNU LGPL) Zip utility.
• Windows PowerToys – specifically CmdHere and TweakUI. The former adds a context-menu item to folders and drives in Windows Explorer that opens a Command Prompt window (cmd.exe) to that folder or drive. The latter is a general purpose UI (user interface) tweaker that lets you adjust many aspects of Windows, from trivial (style of arrow on shortcut icon) to significant (X-Mouse style mouse tracking).
• GnuWin32 utilities – specifically Core, Wget and Which. These are command-line tools adapted from Unix which are very useful when, well, working on the command line.
• Notepad2 – a text editor, much much better than the stock Notepad that ships with Windows. Free. The “RC6″ version showed now includes an installer which replaces the stock Notepad.
• Sysinternals – a suite of tools useful for programmers and others who need to hack into the internals of Windows. My favorites are PSExec, PSFTP and Handle.
• Winkey – Add additional functionality to the Windows key (and it works with the Command key on Macs).

I’m sure there are more but those are the ones I have installed on the three Windows installations this week.

NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 23, 2011

SEA OTTERS – AND THE STATE’S SEA OTTER

FUND – NEED YOUR HELP TODAY

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even a $1 income donation on your state income taxes can

keep the fund alive and help protect an iconic marine mammal

California’s sea otters face grave threats and the state fund that contributes to their research and recovery is equally in danger if voluntary taxpayer contributions fall short in 2011. Animal aficionados in California must donate nearly $261,000 to sea otter conservation through their state income tax form in order to keep the fund alive in coming years.

“The fund supports critical research projects, so we hope Californians will come through once again as the tax deadline approaches,” said Andrew Johnson, manager of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Otter Research and Conservation program.

The money raised by the fund – just over $1million in the past four years – supports researchers and agencies working together to understand the impacts threatening the survival of California sea otters, including infectious disease, oil spills, limited food supplies and degradation of coastal waters where otters live, and how we can aid this population’s recovery.

“Last year, our sea otter population faced its second decline in the three-year average in over a decade,” said Jim Curland, marine program associate for Defenders of Wildlife. “This fund is too important to sea otter conservation to let go. Past contributions show that Californians love their sea otters. We hope they can really rally together this year.”

In 2010, the three-year average sea otter population was just 2,711 animals – well below the 3,090-animal threshold required to consider moving sea otters off the endangered species list and an estimated one-fifth of the historic population.

Heading into the final days before the April 18 filing deadline, Californians can support efforts to save this keystone species by contributing to the California Sea Otter Fund (Code 410) on their state income tax form.There’s no upper limit to the amount taxpayers can designate for sea otters, starting from a minimum contribution of $1. All contributions through the tax form are voluntary.

Californians who’ve already filed their income taxes but who would like to donate funds can visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium websiteand click on the “Save the Oceans” link to support the Aquarium’s many efforts to save sea otters.

The mission of the nonprofit Monterey Bay Aquarium is to inspire conservation of the oceans.

Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities. With more than 1 million members and activists, it’s a leading advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard our wildlife heritage for generations to come.

-30-

my nemesis

One of my earliest memories is of being at this museum with my parents and being awed at the giant whale hanging from the ceiling.

When we visited NYC a few years ago I wanted to make sure this was one of our stops. And indeed, there is still a whale hanging from the ceiling. I wanted to hang a smaller whale from our living room ceiling but was overruled.

maybe I am obsessed with my mandolin!

The A in Andrew is for my father's father, Arthur.

The M in Michael is for my mother's grandfather, Morris.

I've been told that "Rich" was originally "Reich" but that was changed when they emigrated.

Crashing boarder

I tried snowboarding once (once) around two years ago at a ski resort in Tahoe. I don't remember which one it was offhand. They offered a "snowboarding for absolute beginners" half-day course. Though I didn't actually injure myself, it didn't go terribly well. I just couldn't manage to stay upright for more than a minute at a time; I'd get going, overbalance one way, overcorrect the other and then BAM on the ground. Luckily I had thick ski pants.



(That's not me in the picture; I never got that far up the hill.)

O’Reilly Books for code4lib2009 book raffle

(in mostly alphabetical order, with varying levels of expertise and necessarily incomplete)

• Ant
• Bash
• Batch (Windows shell)
• CSS
• HTML
• Javascript
• MySQL
• PHP
• VBScript
• XML
• XSLT

Things I want to learn:

• jQuery
• node.js

He'd likely say something about food and giving him some.

Of course he'd have to be awake first.

020712-N-5471P-004

According to this distance calculator, it's almost 8,000 miles (great circle distance) from Los Angeles (where I lived at the time) to Kuwait City. My unit was actually based in King Khalid Military City, Saudi Arabia and Camp Doha, Kuwait, but Kuwait City will do for distance calculations.



The second farthest would be on our Panama Canal transit cruise from a few years ago. That distance was "only" 3,264 miles from home.



I couldn't get too much farther away from home; the antipodal point (~12,000 miles) from me is in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Even before Nokia announced they would be essentially giving up in the mobile device arena and partnering with Microsoft in a combination of failure, I was thinking it was time for a change. I've been here over three years now since the Avvenu acquisition and it's completely worn out its welcome. So I'm in active discussion with two companies and have nibbles from a few others. Change is scary but sometimes not changing is worse.

Symbian build scripts

I don't know you, nor you me;

Let's keep it that way