Category: Adventure

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Adventure

Free Chicken and Waffles

While on lunch break, I noticed a little something going on in the now closed KFC parking lot next to IHOP. There were some chefs from Reddings in Atlantic City cooking up some free chicken and waffles outside. Free food, especially from Reddings is something that only the dumberest of the dumb would pass up so I stopped my car to check things out.

There were several reporters there from numerous local publications covering the challenge that apparently Reddings had issued against the chicken and waffles that IHOP had apparently just recently added to their menu. They were out to prove that the IHOP chicken and waffles was inferior to their dish.

After waiting a minute or so for my waffle to finish, I was very politely handed a big plate and could hear the cameras all going off. Apparently me being handed a plate of chicken and waffles is quite the event these days. I then found a nice curb to sit on and digged in.

It was excellent, the fried chicken was especially good. Several reports continued to ask me questions while their photographers continued to take photos of me eating on the curb. I’m sure there are now several photos of me looking like quite the slob (chicken and waffles can do that to you).

It was nice to have a random bizarre lunch occurrence, seems like I had only had one so far this week. By the way Reddings does make some good food from what I sampled and will have to make a stop over there to try more of their menu.

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Adventure

Jury Duty in Atlantic City

Yesterday I had to do my civic duty and participate in jury duty. This time it was in sketchy Atlantic City not the fairly new building in Mays Landing. I had to park in a parking garage a few blocks from the courthouse.

The parking garage was pretty gross. The walk from the garage wasn’t too pleasant either. I don’t know how they have jurors make that walk. I honestly wouldn’t want my mom to be walking in that part of town.

When I arrived at the courthouse I had to go through a metal detector. I made it through on my first attempt, I felt so proud. Then I had to wait in a line with some fairly miserable people (it is jury duty after all) to get registered, etc. Many people were talking about how fed up they were with living in New Jersey and how they were hoping to move someplace else. I’m pretty sure it’s the cost of living and taxes that primarily had them up in arms.

Then I took a seat and waited and waited some more. Luckily one of the cases had settled early that morning, so they would only need our group for one potential trial. The woman next to me turns out is the sister-in-law of someone I grew up with. She was really cool, and destroyed me in two games of checkers on her iPad. Apparently I’m pretty bad at checkers. I did defeat her in a game of air hockey however. I was surprised at how many iPads people had brought there.

As we were being led to the courtroom like cattle a former co-worker’s husband recognized me and we chatted a bit. Mr. Battistelli shared my views on Atlantic City (or at least the part where we were situated) and it was cool to see a familiar face.

As we got to the courtroom for jury selection, I stood hoping not to get called. This just wouldn’t of been a good week had I been selected. It was most entertaining listening to some of the excuses that people had once they were called up. After about an hour and a half, the jury was selected and we were sent home.

They really need to come up with a way to make the process a bit more bearable. iPad checkers and air hockey are my suggestions.

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Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 3

Day 3 was pretty cool. I walked over to the West Egg Cafe for an early breakfast. Got blueberry and granola pancakes which they called crunchberry pancakes. They were massive and very good.

The Keynote Speaker was very entertaining. It was usability expert Jared Spool. He gave a good presentation, and had much of the room laughing at times.

Workbench: Managing Content Management

About the Workbench module. This modules seems great and will be a perfect fit for atlantic.edu to manage users and the content publishing process. This is a very exciting module and I look forward to using it.

Drupal Commerce: Setting up Shop on Drupal 7

This was an excellent presentation. It’s great to see just how much hard work goes into module development. I’m going to have to seriously consider whether or not to go with this one right away or not. Great job.

Drupal 7 Theming Basics

Wasn’t a big fan of this one. There were a lot of errors on the slides, it seemed a bit hurried.

Building awesome user interfaces with Drupal 7’s Form, AJAX, and Theme systems

I was just plain old burned out at this point. There was some cool stuff demonstrated, but I thought it was a bit too much for me to follow at times.

Night Exploration

I walked over to the massive Apple Store then stopped by Giordano’s to get some dinner. I went with the Italian beef sandwich not the deep dish pizza. I then walked in some other random stores for warmth, stopping in the Giaradelli store for a yummy peanut butter something sundae. It was great.

I then stopped in the Disney store to see if they had Thanos. They didn’t, but oh well I continued to explore more of Michigan Ave. The shopping is really weird to me, Floors are kinda small, but many many stories tall. I know it makes sense given the buildings here, but it still seemed rather strange to me.

On my way back to the hotel I let some bum sucker me into a shoe shine. Yep, that’s right I got my sneakers which should of been thrown out 4 months ago shined. I feel so dirty and scammed right now, but just didn’t have it in me to say no. I’m really getting exhausted from this whole adventure.

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Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 2 & Exploration

IMG_0749I work up early and took a walk around the city in the rain to find something to eat for breakfast. I would up at some simple bagel shop. It was nothing too special. Then the sessions began.

Views Demystified

I found this session to be very useful. It started a bit on the slow side and I was beginning to feel that it was going to be a waste of time. But then out of the blue the attachment display was mentioned. For reasons that cannot be explained I wasn’t aware of this in Views. This alone was amazing to discover.

Making Beautiful Maps

This session was ok. The openlayers library and TileMill are two things that I will be checking out. The guys were extremely knowledgeable, but at times a bit too much over my head.

Design Thinking

The panel was great, but I really didn’t like the session. There really wasn’t any solid point to it for me. They just played a few videos and just seemed to be winging it at times.

Baby Got Backend: Content Administrators are Users Too

This was a pretty goos sesssion, the content admins are very important to me when developing a site. They had some very useful tips. I just wish they had shown some actual examples.

Drupal 7 JavaScript for Developers

I didn’t know what to expect, this can be a very difficult subject. The presenters did do an excellent job though. Good suggestions of examples and going over #states was great. Some very useful stuff here that I’m bound to use in the not too distant future.

Lego Store

I did make a trek (actually just 3 blocks or so) to the Lego Store. They had some amazing sculptures there. Including a life size Darth Vader and R2-D2! So glad I stopped here for some photos.

I also managed to walk around the city a bit too. Some amazing buildings here, with impressive sights all over the place. I never got that creepy feeling where you feel like you have to be on alert while walking around. It was really pleasant minus the damp rain.

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Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago Day 1 Sessions and Field Museum

IMG_0678
Overall the sessions were pretty solid on day 1.

Introduction to Module Development

This session was great. Even though I’ve made modules and gone through dozens of tutorials on how to do so, having someone right there go over the process was perfect. The speaker did an excellent job of describing the steps and tips along the way.

Notable highlights include the dpm() function as well as debug_backtace(). His explanation of how to get variables  from a page was huge. I was stumped on drilling down several arrays and objects, but now I think I’ve gotten it.

Rockin’ HTML5 with Drupal

This session was packed, with people sitting on the floor and outside the doors. It really shows just how much interest there is in html5 right now. The htnl 5 Tools Module is one that I will have to give a look at. I’ve been studying up on html5 a bit recently, so not much of the session was new to me. But it was well presented and they did give out stickers.

Crafting App Interfaces with jQuery

The presenter was hilarious. That alone made the session pretty solid. The material covered seemed a bit too advanced for the audience at times and didn’t tie into Drupal quite enough as I had hoped it would. Overall it was ok, and I will be checking out .live() in jQuery.

Views for Hackers

I’m sorry, but this session wasn’t at all what I was expecting it to be. The presenter was without a doubt brilliant, but I was hoping for more examples of what could be done with Views compared to it’s history and how it actually works.

Field Museum

The conference booked the Field Museum for it’s opening night party. The place was amazing inside and out. It reminded me very much of Night  at the Museum, and maybe even was where it was filmed, probably should look that up when I get a sec.

The exhibits were great, and at times I felt like I had the entire museum to myself. I’ve posted many photos on Flickr. Having woken up at 2:30 that morning and flown in, I was pretty hungry and tired. So I destroyed the yummy buffet. And when I say destroyed that is not an understatement. Numerous attendees passing by did inquire if I hadn’t eaten in days from my behavior. Plus the food was pretty good too!

The big exhibit was Sue, the largest, most complete and preserved Tyrannasaurus rex in the world. She was most impressive indeed

Categories
Adventure Development

DrupalCon Chicago 2011

Woke up at 2:30 this morning to catch an early flight into Chicago to attend DrupalCon. Driving to Philadelphia International Airport was a cinch. Being the only fool up that early on the road does make for easy travel. I did see a man vomiting outside of his car on the ride over. That was rather interesting.

I did get a little lost looking for parking at the airport. I kinda drive out of the whole place then had to get back in. Luckily a really nice guy working for Southwest helped me out. The plane took off on time and we even got there 10 minutes early!

On the ride I sat next to Paul, who described himself as a Chatty Cathy. He was a rather talkative fellow, but it did make the time pass rather quickly. It turns out he owns a software company and is looking to hire a front-end developer. So we had much to discuss, and we did eventually agree on how much he should pay his future hire.

I arrived at the Sheraton just in time to catch the opening keynote. So I pretty much had perfect timing today. The opening keynote was pretty solid, but it seemed like they were pushing the Kool-Aid a bit too much at times. The numerous videos and blasting of a song Proud (or something like that) id get old rather fast.

I just ate lunch from a box. It wasn’t that bad. I happened to be sitting next to Jeremy Keith, who happens to of written one of my favorite books of the past few years. He was a really friendly guy, it was really nice to meet someone who really taught me a lot about how I script today in person.

My phone just rang and my room is ready, so I’m going to get my key drop my stuff off then catch the next session. I’ll post more after my sessions.