When I look at where I'm at today, it's impossible not to feel profoundly lucky. I'm married to a super-hip lit-craft goddess, I work for a company full of smart people I genuinely like, I enjoy the work I do (from the comfort of my home, most days), and I have cookies.

That's right. Cookies.

The trick, though, is that my work has slowly evolved from "Go to the office, code, come home" to "Wake up, work on stuff you enjoy, fall asleep." That's awesome in a lot of ways, but it also means that I've had to build new skills to keep life sane. Come evening, it's often tough to figure out how the transition from "work coding" to "play coding" happens, precisely -- let along the transition from "coding" to "family, reading, kittens, etc."  Continue reading...

I've been on the road for the last 10 days or so with the rest of the 'Bots, first for a training workshop in Providence and then for some on-site training with a client in NYC. It's the longest Catherine and I have been apart since we married, and it's been be back together after so long. It's startling how much those kinds of rhythms can become part of how you measure your days, and how off-kilter it can feel when they're disrupted.

The work itself was great, though -- the workshop was the largest we've ever done, with almost fifty people and a new venue to fit them all. Feedback has been great so far; there were a lot of great people there working on interesting projects. It's encouraging to see all of us (the Lullabot team, that is) polishing the flow and professionalism of the material. With each workshop, things are more refined, better focused, and so on. James did an awesome job organizing the week.

Spent the weekend in New York with James and Liza doing a bit of recuperating before diving into another two days of training with in-house developers for Mansueto. Their IncBizNet project soft-launched in beta a little over a month ago, and they're in the final stretch with the new Fast Company site. It's the culmination of over a year and a half of business development, planning, and then Drupal development.

And today? Back in the saddle with code reviews for Mansueto, outlining on the O'Reilly book, and other assorted projects. And this morning, my name popped up on the list of confirmed speakers for the 2008 SXSW Interactive conference. I'll be participating in a panel discussion about open source web software organized by the head of Palantir, a cool Chicagoland design/development company that's been doing great stuff with Drupal lately.

Whew.

Never a dull moment!

I've been all kinds of busy for the last several weeks, and haven't bothered posting much to any of the usual spots. Drupal 6's pre-beta cycle is rolling along, though it seems to be a little less purposeful than the last release cycle. It feels a little like the community is waiting for something to happen, without being sure what that something is.

Over the weekend, though, I did manage to put some of the finishing touches on Growing Up Goddy, a group blog for a circle of folks who spent serious time in the Evangelical Christian subculture. It's in the early experimental phase, but hopefully it can be an interesting place and perhaps a launching pad for some good research and commentary.

It's always fun discovering bugs in your code that make you wonder, 'How did this ever work?' It's like going on a road trip, and noticing a funny chunka-chunka-chunka noise your car makes whenever you take it over 65mph. You get home, and you take it to the mechanic and they open the hood and say, 'Oh, well, here's your problem. The engine's been replaced by a wedge of cheese.'

On the one hand, it's comforting that the solution is so simple. On the other hand, it raises a troubling question: 'How the frack did I drive 450 miles in a cheese-powered car?" It takes a while to regain one's trust in the idea of a predictable universe.