Next Year in Jerus… I Mean Baltimore

June 11, 2010 By Lori 2 Comments

Moving to Baltimore

Way too many things. Last month was the first month I haven’t posted here since July 2005. Probably wouldn’t have even noticed except for the missing link on the Archives page. Very busy with work. I am enjoying my projects, but wish I was working on them when there wasn’t so much else going on.

Our trip to Florida and Baltimore was nice. Good to see the families. Karen and I are moving to Baltimore next year, probably in March. Almost did it a few years ago, but the economy crashed and we got stuck here. Thanks to K’s sister offering to rent our house, we can now go for real. It is a huge move. I have lived in California for 20 years and K’s been here a long time too. I like Baltimore a lot, but do not have enough experience there to imagine what it will be like to live there. We will be near K’s parents and that will be good. They can use our help. I really like all of K’s friends there. It is very easy to hang out with them. It will be awesome to live near my friend Kim again. Will also be nice to be on the same coast as my family again!

There are so many things to do. Karen has to take her licensing test for being a social worker in Baltimore. We need to find a place to live. K needs to find a job. I need to get hooked up with the Baltimore web development community that I am assuming exists. There is tons of stuff I need to do for my business. Have not had the time, money, or brain to do what needs to be done. AND, we have to pack up our house and somehow manage to drive 4 cats across the country in a Corolla.

Part of my business plan is adding some work/business stuff here on LBnuke. This site has about 1000x more traffic than my business site. It is the site I like to work on and the site that people I know visit. Of course I will keep my business site. I don’t want to connect that site to this site. Too personal. When I have bits of free time, I have been adding little changes to this site. The theme is new. Same design as before, but wider and better organization of information. I will be working on it until at least the end of the summer. Got some great suggestions from Lou Anne at Be-Found!. If you need some SEO services, I would recommend her highly.

The summer is turning out to be busy as usual and things will only get busier as we get ready to move. I will miss it here, especially the weather! Baltimore will be a new adventure. I think I am ready for it.

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First Annual Distraction Awards

March 23, 2010 By Lori 2 Comments

I have been very distracted lately! Too many things going on and I can not focus on any of them. Luckily, I have had no problem focusing on distractions. I would like to give recognition to the distractions that have proven to be most entertaining in the ‘First (and possibly last) Annual Distraction Awards’.

Best Web Standards Video to a Bob Dylan Tune


More info and lyrics @ Molly.

Continue Reading First Annual Distraction Awards »

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Filed Under: Geekery, Random Tagged With: ,

Happy Birthday to Me

January 28, 2010 By Lori 3 Comments
Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler on the Roof

Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler on the Roof

Today I am 43 and having an awesome birthday. Last night K took me to see Fiddler on the Roof with Harvey Fierstein at the Golden Gate Theater in SF. It was awesome! I think it is possible that he was born to play Tevye. Perfect. I was really wishing my family was there too. We used to listen to the 8-track of Fiddler on the Roof in the car all the time when I was younger.

Not sure what I will do the rest of the day. Kind of happy not having a plan. It is nice getting to spend the day with K :D Going to She’s Geeky for the next 3 days at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. No idea what to expect, but I love the idea of it! Had to miss Design4Drupal at Stanford last weekend. Went to the first session and then found out I had to work. It would have been a great opportunity to learn from some of the best, but it will also be nice to have some money! Luckily, DrupalCon is in San Francisco this year, so I will still be able to get my fix.

Ok, back to my regularly scheduled birthday now :)

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All Drupal All The Time – Too Bad I Can’t Breathe

November 6, 2009 By Lori 1 Comment

Writing on the iPhone. Hard to breathe. Shaky. Strangely okay besides that. Sometimes writing helps. Been very busy lately. All Drupal all the time. Besides from the insane learning curve and non-intuitive UI, I am in awe of its power and flexibility. After more than 15 hours of video tutorials and reading tons of docs, I am finally understanding how it works and how the code is organized. I am learning while building a site for an awesome organization. Will link to it when it is done. If all goes according to plan, it will launch around Jan. 1st, 2010. Not mentioning the org. because there is a board and I don’t know if things like that have to be decided about, but if someone who knows the answer and wants to post it in the comments, go for it :) I haven’t used Drupal to build a site since version 4.1 other than keeping my test site updated. Been wanting to learn it for real for a few years so very happy to finally get around to it. Still, it makes me appreciate the simplicity and clean code of WordPress even more than I already do. Been having some small jobs besides from that.

Me & K went to Monterey for K’s 40th birthday and had an awesome time. Happy birthday K! We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see the seahorse exhibit. It was amazing. We also saw lots of sharks and rays and other random sea creatures. We stayed overnight at a nice bed and breakfast and got home the next day in time to give Halloween candy to kids. Not so many kids this year.

Still hard to breathe but not so dizzy anymore. Sometimes it is kind of annoying to be me but most of the time I like it. Enough writing for now. I think it helped some.

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Filed Under: Autism / Asperger's, Geekery, Random Tagged With: , , ,

A Million Things

June 18, 2009 By Lori 2 Comments

Ok, not really a million things, but it sure feels like it lately. Luckily, my new combination of meds seems to be working and it a lot easier to do things than it was not long ago. There are a few bad effects too, but so far, I think more good than bad. It is always a tradeoff.

Things that are going on right now:

  • Me and K are doing everything we can to be able to move to Baltimore. Things here keep getting worse because the economy is extra sucky in California.
  • Cleaning our house and getting rid of stuff so it can be ready for appraisal. We have dates set up twice a week until the end of July to get stuff done.
  • Working, working, working. Almost done with 2 projects and have a phone appt. tomorrow to talk about what will hopefully be the next one.
  • Learning CodeIgniter. CodeIgniter is a PHP framework for rapid application development. I am really loving it so far, but there is much to learn.
  • Learning jQuery. I use it often enough that it is kind of crazy to have to look everything up all the time.
  • Waiting for my iMac to come back from the shop. It’s been having random strangeness for a while now and AppleCare has given up.
  • Working on my MacBook which is a lot slower and has half the RAM of my iMac. Booted off a clone of my iMac hard drive. There is a 2-5 second delay almost every time I click something. Still, gotta love the bootable clone!
  • Made my last dentist appointment before Denti-Cal goes away on July 1st. I hate going to the dentist, but it was nice to have the option.
  • Creating a new theme for LBnuke. Not sure why. I still like this one, but I was inspired to start from scratch in Photoshop and learn some new design techniques while I am at it. Actually, first draft was made with pen on a piece of printer paper. No new techniques there.

I am very overwhelmed and so is K. For the most part, things are really good and we are very lucky. Still, it is hard to be stuck here and it keeps getting harder as the California budget gets cut more and more. We are both trying to stay positive and focus on all the good things. There are many, including 4 cats, and aforementioned computer :)

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Filed Under: Random