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After 8 fruitful years with Portland General Electric, I’ve decided to give independent software consulting a try. My first gig is at Avenue A | Razorfish. As I really enjoy writing software, this feels like a natural course. I foresee interesting challenges, fun projects, and a chance to co-mingle with the many great minds of Portland. Off I go!

I’ve been reading The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless, which so far is a history of theories on infinity. Infinity is something that I’ve always been interested in, but I had never read theories predating Hawking. I came across an article on the web today called A Brain Cell is the Same as the Universe. I’m afraid a brain cell is not like the universe. The universe is another name for infinite space and time. The web site claims that the universe is billions of light years across, which doesn’t make sense to me. Since when is the universe a finite structure? I just don’t see the comparison.

We’ve just returned from our trip to Texas, where we saw all of my family and visited Galveston, Kemah, and Houston. We had a good time, but it’s nice to be home in Oregon. The heat and humidity down there was a bit much. On flickr, you will find many photos from the trip.

Just in case someone doesn’t already know, Portland is awesome. Some of our local techies and bloggers have started a new web site where various citizens of P-town can express why they think our city is cool. I was wondering if they would get enough authors to make it worthwhile, but sure enough the articles keep on coming.

If you are interested at all in the culture and general environment of Portland, I would recommend reading PortlandIsAwesome.com regularly. Maybe one day I’ll even contribute.

I’m off to Texas tomorrow morning to visit family and see my new niece. I regularly keep up with Texas news, but I casually read it and move on. Today I came across an unusual story… well, unusual to those of us in the North. A man in Brazoria was routinely pulled over for making an illegal u-turn. The police found a 6 foot alligator and a water moccasin in his car, both alive. The snake had already bitten the man, but that didn’t keep him from driving along as if all was normal. And there’s more…Read the full story here. The funniest part is the comment by the Brazoria Chief of Police, who says, “Just a typical day in Brazoria.”

Weather is generally a boring topic, but 2008 has proven to be much less than boring. Northwest Oregon has seen late snow, followed by the expected sunny and warm days. Now, the snow is returning! Forecasts predict that the snow level will lower to 500 feet again this weekend. What’s going on? I bet Al Gore is confused…

photo by ArielAmanda

Now that I’ve had enough of the Perfect Day (sun is bad), I’ve migrated to the great indoors. There are at least 4 things I’d like to be doing while indoors: listening to music, looking at photos, browsing the web, and watching baseball. As it turns out, I’m doing all 4 at once! Check it out.

Today is the first perfect day of the year! It’s sunny and 70 degrees outside. Bren is working on her gardens, and I’m geeking out on the laptop. On flickr, you will find some photos of our first Spring outdoor session (taken from my laptop camera).

While considering the fun of programming today, I came up with a new mantra: “Software development should be like a mullet - business in the front, party in the back.”

Today’s biggest buzzword in the industry is “software as a service”. I propose that we toss that idea, and instead standardize on “software as a mullet”. The new approach will focus on having fun during the software lifecycle, while producing business approved results. This will be followed by books such as:

Mullet Oriented Architecture (MOA)
Mullets in the Enterprise
Mullet-oriented Design: A Practical Approach

From the Beaumont Enterprise (in Texas, where I grew up):

West Brook High School administrators on Wednesday defended a black-male-only mentoring session that has prompted a recent inquiry by the American Civil Liberties Union.

So, this high school in Beaumont decides to call an assembly of students to address issues such as education, test scores, crime, family and gangs. Good for them, except… they only invited black males! Now the ACLU is mad, and the school district is puzzled. A lot of people are trying to justify the assembly based on crime statistics, but, as The Bayou pointed out, if school organizers are being surgical with their message, why include ALL black males, some of whom are already model students? I don’t think it can be justified, and I think the ACLU should be all over them. I’m glad they are trying to address a problem, but come on - use a little tact.