Asymptomatic

Over the weekend, I visited Columbus, not just to hang out with skippy at ComFest and buy too much crap at Origins, but to attend and lead a session at PodCamp Ohio.

The side dishes to this entrée are actually better than the meat, but the meat was the point of the dinner, so that's what I'll talk about here. I'm all about focus here. Focus.

I showed up right on time for the welcome session on Saturday and checked in. I hadn't been able to show up for the Friday night meetup because of the previously mentioned "side dishes". I checked in and was shown to the "Speaker Lounge", marked off by signs with martini glasses (with olive!). After a brief welcome from another couple of session leaders in the lounge, we all shuffled down to Room A for the introduction.

I'm not going to do a play-by-play of the rest of the day, because that's already feeling tedious. Let me cover briefly a couple of sessions I did attend, and my overall impression of the camp. more

I took Nana and Riley out to lunch today, something I'm thinking of making a regular Thursday outing. Today we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger (note the surprising lack of "s") in Frazer, and had some yummy burgers. Nana said she hasn't had such a good burger in years, and I learned that she likes mayonnaise and fried onions on her burgers.

After we sat, a group of ladies came in and sat at the table behind me. I don't know if it was just one of them, or the whole group, but the terribly overpowering odor of baby powder slammed into my nostrils. It was so powerful, I nearly gagged and I could occasionally (depending on wind shift) barely taste my food.

I'm not sure what it is that possesses some people to odorify themselves like this. I mean, you might do this if you absolutely had to cover some other less attractive odor, but by all means, take care of that problem before slathering yourself with some other more powerful odor. I really don't see how that helps the problem, and I can only imagine what I wasn't smelling underneath all of the overlying stink....

On the Habari development mailing list, Daniel Smith writes:

I am interested in learning PHP (object)/MYSQL programming in general, and Habari-specific in particular. As a php newbie, could anyone please point me to any resources, latest quality books, tutorials or whatever, that could help me to learn how this all works?

An excellent question, and something that we experienced PHP folks would all do well to answer to help bring more people in and teach better coding practices.

For beginning PHP and MySQL, I really like the Visual Quickstart series of books. They have clear chapter goals and are rife with examples. Combine the books on PHP, MySQL, and PHP and MySQL with a willingness to frequently search the online documentation for both tools, and you can accomplish pretty much anything you set yourself to. Obviously, these are not for seasoned code veterans, but I think they're just right for people just starting who don't want to be babied but instead want to learn real code....

Somehow I've become addicted to Naruto, and I can't stop watching it. I think the only way I'm going to stop is if I run out of episodes.

Naruto is kinda of anime based on manga -- It's a cartoon. The comic books (manga) come out every so often, telling the story of Naruto Uzumaki, a ninja from the hidden leaf village, also known as Konoha. Ninjas in this story are usually helpful people, unless they are specifically evil, and Naruto is in training to become the Hokage - the leader of the village. Although he's such an idiot sometimes, his chances at Hokage are pretty slim.

What's tricky about Naruto is that he's a kind of an outcast because when he was very young he had the spirit (?) of the nine-tailed fox sealed inside him. The nine-tailed fox is a legendary evil figure, killing villagers wantonly. His chakra - ninja superpower essense - is very strong, and because it is sealed inside Naruto, Naruto occasionally has the opportunity to make use of it, often to amazing and beneficial effect....

It's been a week, I can tell you that much.

Independence Day is my favorite holiday, hands-down. This year, a bit of a wash due to the rain and some other circumstances. I think I'm becoming a hermit.

The neighbors are great. Very friendly, all of them. I just don't feel like I relate to them. Being with them all at once is hard, since they all know each other well enough that I'm still a bit of an outsider. I've never really been good at winning people over in groups first, although I think I can hold my own one-on-one. But I've never had the chance to do that with these folks, and I don't know how I would....