I finally (finally!) met up with Chris Messina tonight. After, crap, a month or so of trying to match schedules (and that after a month of working up the courage to talk to him in the first place), I gave up and just started cancelling evening plans until we found a day that worked. Entertainingly enough, he thought we were meeting up for lunch (another option), when I thought we were meeting up for dinner. It all worked out okay.

After I told him I didn't mind heading up to the City (he did offer to meet somewhere in the middle), we ended up at the Grove on Fillmore in the City, pretty much near Kris' old haunt. On the way up to the City, I realized I was incredibly nervous about meeting up with Chris Messina.

Chris Messina.

Funny how that's how I think of him. Not "Chris." Maybe "Messina." But not just "Chris." Too many of those.

So, there I was, driving up to the City, definitely arriving ridiculously late (having called to let him know I was arriving late), with a giant macrame for a stomach. WTF? I haven't been nervous meeting someone in a long, long time. It was a strange sensation, not unlike just before the first point of an important ultimate game, when I haven't run off the excess adrenaline so that I can relax and play my game.

I kept thinking to myself, "He's just a person! He puts on his pants the same way every else does! He poops just like everyone else!". These thoughts were immediately followed by a long list of other things he probably does just like everybody else, none of which particularly helped me not to be nervous.

Bah.

So, the Grove is a bar joint "with good oatmeal." It was a little loud when we arrived (within two minutes of each other, so he was just as late as I was, though he later admitted he hates when people arrive late to agreed upon times, which I had sensed when I called around 5:45 to let him know I'd be a bit late).

I need to say now that Chris Messina has the most amazing deep voice I've ever personally heard. It's dramatic over the phone, which will cut off higher frequencies, and damn impressive in person. I think I could sit and listen to that man speak for hours (all of which would be spent with a dumb look on my face, I'm sure).

When we arrived, he pointed out three people in the bar/restaurant whom he knew, then explained that the bar was a pre-Blogger-Business-Conference dinner location for the conference opening tomorrow, and that most of these people, and more to come later, were meeting up tonight.

Oh. Cool.

Two people back in the order line from us, indeed, was one of the people meeting up, though not actually going to the conference. After we ordered and sat down, said person, Scott, came up to talk to Messina. 10 minutes later, my food arrived (Messina opting for only a smoothie), and 10 minutes later, Scott and Messina were still talking.

So much for talking about Drupal.

I ate for a while and met some other people who came through the order line as they arrived (Molly!). Eventually, Scott went to join the rest of the crowd forming, and Messina and I talked a bit about Drupal.

Whoo!

He asked what I was working on, so I explained a couple of the projects Mike and I were thinking of doing. Messina thought about them, and provided feedback that scaled back the project, but make it more feasible.

Eventually, his computer came out (Mac/powerbook, oh the lack of shock on that one is palpable), and he showed me the social browser his company is working on. At first, I figured it was just Mozilla with tags embedded in it. After a few moments, however, Messina showed me some of the other features (integrated blog creation, "breadcrumbs" and a "shelf") and I became much more impressed. I'm looking forward to my download. Especially since it does have tabbed browsing. Whoo!

So, Chris Messina's current project, is BarCamp, happening this weekend, which is an open (in every sense of the word: planning, presentation and followup) answer to the Friends Of O'Reilly camp (FoOCamp), also happening this weekend. Running from Friday to Sunday (as in, pitch a tent, stay the night, geek out, meet the other campers!), the agenda is set the Friday, with full participation from all campers (if you come, expect to present!).

I asked if the talks had to be technical. When he replied, "No," I offered to bring a ton (perhaps a tonne) of ultimate discs to hand out and present the game of ultimate.

I think I'll present the 10 Simple Rules of Ultimate, followed by video of how to play, then teach everyone walking beer ultimate, the so much more party-friendly version of ultimate.

At some point during the Flock demo (did I mention I'm eagerly anticipating being able to use the browser? I hope I don't need a Flickr account, though), I noticed it was really loud in the restaurant, and asked if he'd be up for going someplace else. After chatting with the group of pre-conference goers, we went across the street for gelato (the alternative being heading out to another loud place for a drink, ugh).

While we were sitting outside, with my freezing my ass off in the streets of freaking cold city of San Francisco in August while eating ice cream (my brilliant idea, I'd like to add), Chris Messina received a text message. Two seconds later, a tall, lanky black haired man came tearing out of the Grove and across the street. He flopped his arms around us, camera phone in hand, mouth wide open, and took a picture.

Huh?

I dodged.

He was quite disappointed, and tried again, telling me, yes, I was supposed to open my mouth wide, and no, wasn't supposed to dodge the photo.

Uh huh.

Even Messina dodged.

As the man ran back across the street, Messina commented, "Yeah, that's Andy. My roommate. And, yeah, he's always like that."

Heh.

Half way through the ice cream, I became far too cold to stay outside, so we went back to the Grove, where it was loud, but bearable by the front door. Andy came over and asked a "how" question (crap, I wish I remembered his wording correctly) like "What are you doing with this life?"

I didn't want to answer with what I did. I mean, how boring is that for an answer? So, I said, "I'm doing very well." At which point, Andy pointed out that was a "how much" answer, he wanted a "how", a qualitative not a quantitative answer.

So I replied, "I play a lot of ultimate frisbee."

And much to my surprise, Andy replied, "Oh, I love ultimate frisbee. Except that it's ultimate, because frisbee is a trademarked name."

"Oh! You play!?"

"No. I just know a lot of people who do. I used to play."

"How can you not play in one of the two power meccas of the ultmate world?" Though, now that I think about it, the power has shifted north to Seattle.

Andy was lots of fun. Come to think about it, he might just be the poster child for Munch's Scream. Turns out, he's 21. Just turned. Chris Messina is 24, having graduated from Carnegie Mellon in fall 2003. Good lord, are all the CMU alums I know a {Ch|K}ris?

I missed meeting Chris Messina's girlfriend, and didn't quite catch her name, it was loud. Something like Eres? Eris? Ires? I have no idea, I kept thinking Idris, as in the ultimate player on Jam. She looked a lot like Nathania Vishnevsky from PDI - the two of them could have been sisters, actually.

Eventually, the noise was too bothersome, and it looked like Messina really wanted to hang out with the crowd that had formed, so I let him know I was heading off. On the way back to my car, I admitted I was terribly nervous meeting him, which he, thankfully, chuckled at. I was happy to get that off my chest.

... what you put into it.

I went on a run this evening. It was the first run I've gone on since the begining of July, I think. Usually, I take Annie and we're done with the neighborhood loop in 20 minutes. But I have a lot (as in a lot) of ground to make up, so I dragged Annie around the neighboorhood for a longer run, instead.

I knew the run was going to hurt. I have bad shin splints in my left leg (made worse last week by tripping over a chicken wire fence that keeps the dogs out of one of my gardens). I have steel bands for achilles tendons that all the stretching in the world hasn't seemed to help. And I have a some sort of random pinched nerve in my left glute that's causing bizarre pains and muscle weakness in my left leg.

Can I just get a new left leg, please?

The worst part is that I have no freaking clue where all these injuries came from. It's not like I've been overtraining these last two months. No, that was in January and February.

They have, however, made me more clever in my training. How do you train for a high impact, running and quick turning sport without running?

(Quick answer: you don't.)

So, in an effort to let my achilles tendons warm up, we started out slowly. Think snail's pace. With the twang of the tendons snapping on each step, I managed to run the first half mile as a pace Annie could practically walk.

I managed to finally stretch out into a good run, which Annie kept up.

Until the first cat.

Instead of my dragging Annie, she scented a cat "somewhere up ahead", and sprinted in front of me, dragging me along behind her. We passed the Cat Smell™ and managed a block before the next cat came tearing out in front of us from under a parked car.

Zoom!

Eventually (where that's one pee, four cats, three couples and eleven dogs later), we made it home, with my knees aching only slightly.

Considering I made the run on the snack of champions (9 Pringles), we did okay.

When Kris and I went up to Seattle for Potlatch at the beginning of July, Ben picked Kris, Kevin and me up from the ferry before heading over to Lisa's work to say hello.

Ben knew where Lisa's office was, so he lead us to it, and let us walk in first. Lots of "Hey!"s and hugs followed. Seeing Ben and Lisa again was absolutely wonderful.

Later in the weekend, Lisa commented our walking into her office seemed the most natural thing, of course Kitt and Kris would walk into her office to say hello. Her comment meant so much to me.

I miss spending time with Ben and Lisa a lot. I miss the comfort level of a friendship where you can be gone for six months, yet seeing them again is the most natural thing. Where they know they can just walk right in the front door, no knocking needed.

When I was in Arizona last, to return Sam after his "grand adventure with Auntie Kitt," Paul messaged me during the day, at the same time he was chatting with Scott. At my prodding, he started a conversation, adding Brad in moments later.

It soon became apparent the three of them had definitely kept in touch over the years. While their conversation flowed smoothly, I was asking who everyone was (including wives and children), and what references meant, usually to shared past events together. Jenn doesn't use y!M, else I'm sure she would have been in the conversation, too.

The conversation wasn't quite the slipping back into the friendship I experienced with Ben and Lisa, but it was still a great conversation.

I had often lamented I lost touch with all my friends from high school - I have friends from before school, friends from elementary school and friends from college whom I keep in touch with, but none from high school.

I can finally stop that lamenting.

I'm glad.

Road trips are always interesting for conversations. On our way (to burn and pillage! An unsuspecting English village!) to Chico for the Disco Calientes tournament this weekend, Mark, Heidi, Kris and I managed to talk about everything from the Wicked musical (we listened to the whole soundtrack, talking about Pop!-u-lar!), to Mark's grandfather shooting off his bid toe when he was 7, to Alaskan salmon runs, to friends that died and the first deaths we experienced.

Kris' first loss was in high school. His friend was driving a Miata and managed to flip it. He died instantly with a broken neck, while his companion walked away with scratches. Kris said the passenger who lived was absent from school for a month, and things were quite awkward when he came back.

Heidi's friend was driving her Mustang home from having tea with another friend, having skipped out on going out to the bar with the rest of the crowd Heidi spent time with. At one point, Heidi's friend lost control of her car, and spun out, coming to a stop on the road. An older couple in a second car, following Heidi's friend's car, witnessed the spin out and stopped to see if she was okay. The wife got out of the car, and walked up to talk to Heidi's friend, when a truck struck the car, killing both Heidi's friend and the good Samaritan. The husband witnessed the fatal crash. Heidi, driving home later along the same road, commented to her friends in the car that someone must have had an accident and it looked like a bad one.

Mark's first friend lost killed himself by rolling over his own head. Mark had already experienced the death of a family member, but not someone his own age. The group of boys were out four-by-fouring when the truck stuck. The driver, as Mark says, "though the best was to fix the problem was to open the door and stick his head out. Yep, it's slipping. Oh, look, it's sticking." The kid was pulled out of the truck, which then rolled over him, killing him instantly.

My first experience with the death of a human was at Christmas one year when I was 11 or 12. We were over at my grandparents when a woman came up to the door, frantically calling for help. The house was two doors down the block from the corner where she was pointing. One aunt called for an ambulance, the other rushed to help the woman's husband. Turns out, he had had a heart attack while driving and managed to pull over losing consciousness. Several of my aunts were nurses, the youngest of which was at the house, and ran over to perform CPR. The man was in his truck, leaning back, looking up, mouth open when they opened the truck door. Several people pulled him out to put him on the ground to perform CPR, and he vomitted all over the place, making CPR almost impossible as they were unable to clear his throat to help him breathe.

The next death I was more aware of was that of a classmate from Indiana. Her death happened, however, when I was in Arizona, I believe my junior year in high school. She was the star of the basketball team when I went to school with her in junior high school, ninth grade. She was the passenger in the front seat of a car driving around Dead Man's curve out near the big Catholic church and the golf course. There were four people in the car, all high school students. A drunk driver struck their car around the curve. My classmate's head went through the boombox in her lap. She and two of the other three occupants died. The one who lived went on to compete (relatively successfully, I believe) at the state swim championships three weeks later.

The next death was the suicide of a football player at my high school. He was good friends with a cross country running, whom I remember seeing as she walked by nearly crying the morning after her death. Mark and Kris both commented that the somber mood of a school the day after a tragedy is what clues the rest of us not intimate with the deceased, that something bad has happened. The cross-country runner's body language was my first clue, though I didn't know until the end of the school day what had actually happened.

I remember years before noticing in passing some airline crash on television. I was over at the Klein's house, passing through the living room following Jenny, when Ken asked me what I thought about the tragedy. I shrugged it off, "I don't know anyone on the plane. Why should I care?"

Years later, those words would smack me in the face when I learned of the death of Ben close after high school graduation. He died on the crash of Northwest Flight 255, out of Detroit. Wind shears. And a pilot who had turned off the cockpit alarms.

Ben's death was the first one that I truly felt. The first one I truly cared about. The first one that forced me to question my own mortality. I remember crying my eyes out at his memorial service, and being so confused why no one else was crying.

18 years later, it still hurts.

On Wednesday night, Kris and I went with Heather, Megan, Megan, Heather's friend, Warren, Kate, Beth and Chris to see Wicked, the musical. The musical is based on the book Wicked, by Gregory Maguire, a copy of which has been sitting on my desk for, oh, several years now. The tragedy of that statement becomes apparent if you realize the book is actually a loaner from Kris' friend (and my ex-classmate) Eric Newman, who loaned Kris the book for me, and has since left Oracle and no longer works with Kris.

Must read loaner books faster.

Must read...

The show itself was entertaining. We had fairly good balcony seats (off to the left, but with few people in front of us) and the audience was amazing! Lots of young people, some children, mostly high school girls and college women out with their friends. For a Wednesday night, the place was packed. Well, for Friday night, it would have been, too.

Thankfully, Heather was wise and gave me an aisle seat (need to be first to the restrooms!), but I thought I would be wise and use the restroom before the performance.

Which brings me to this open letter.

There were, once again, empty stalls because no one bothered to look under the doors to see if they were occupied. I don't get it. How freaking hard is it to look under the doors? Look, dammit, look!

On Wednesday, there were 3 empty stalls (of 12). When I realized there were three, I waited until there were two women in line in front of me (neither bothered to look), then went into one of the empty ones.

The other two can find their own empty stalls.

My bladder's full.

I'm knee deep in Java for the first time in a year and a half. Much to my surprise, it's interesting. And even more surprising is that I'm able to follow the client's environment setup. Mike purchased a new development system (Windows XP, bleh), and setting it up has been a bear, but I have to think that's more because of the OS, and less because of the development environment.

The only issues I've had have been not recalling all the setup steps before hand. Instead, I'll do a step, look at the results, realize, oh yeah, I forgot this other step, adjust it, and keep going.

Well, that and the firewall blocking each and every system request. After about an hour, I gave up and just disabled the thing.

So, yeah, it's nice to be able to make progress with the development environment I struggled with years (5 years!) ago.

Of course, Kris can fix any of my problems in five minutes.

Five minutes!