I went up to the City today to hear Terry Chay, a college classmate (hallmate? housemate? what do you call the person who lived across the hall from you in college?) speak at a local PHP meetup. The two of us ran into each other a few years ago at the first public Yahoo Hackday, where Terry completely didn't recognize me ("Hey, to be fair, you used to have long curly hair and glasses." Well, to be completely fair, it was BIG curly hair, and yeah, glasses). A few times other here and there, but, really, a classmate working in the same area as I am? One who doesn't intimidate the crap out of me? Yeah, totally going to go listen to him speak.

So, Caltrained up, wondered if this was going to be a long walk to from the station (it wasn't), walked to the meeting location, wandered into the room, wished I hadn't arrived so early, dropped my stuff down, and waited. I started talking a bit with a couple of the people around me, which actually made for interesting conversations.

One guy was there to learn about frameworks (Terry's talk being "Making Frameworks Suck Less"), because he was getting ready to write his own. I briefly tried to discourage him, suggested the recently out book "PHP5 CMS Framework Development" might be worth checking out, though I hadn't read it yet. He was in a stable job, working for a local university, and comfortable where he was.

Another guy was just getting started on a new company. He had left his previous job a few months before, enjoying the time off, and working on his own projects. After determining he was literally just getting started, I recommended he use CalGold, a website geared to making starting companies in California straightforward by listing all the permits you'll need, and where to go to get them.

What made the conversations interesting to me was that both of these guys were at different ends of the work spectrum. The one guy was in a stable job, not really interested in taking risks, but curious about what it's like to have your own company. The other guy was jumping, taking the biggest risk of all to start his own company without a safety net (hi Kris!), but didn't know where to start really. And I happened to have answers for both of them.

I'm not sure they liked my answers (owning a business is hard, never not stressful, and good lord, do you learn a lot by doing it. I told the two of them about how client work is probably the most stressful work, because you're always doing something different, and never 100% sure you're doing it right. However, if you have a short attention span, this kind of work is perfect, since you'll be doing different projects every time.

I did notice early on, though, that Terry was actually cramming for his talk when the first two speakers gave talked. He had given the talk (at least?) once before, and was listening to his talk, taking notes and generating this talk's notes from that talk.

I approve.

Terry's talk was interesting, but didn't flow as his previous talks I had seen him give flowed. He explained the talk was a new talk for him, and he didn't know the exctly place to put his curse words, but that he hoped he had enough of them to keep us entertained. He did start his presentation this evening by requesting that people listening talk about his presentation, agreeing and disagreeing, summarizing and expounding, commenting and criticizing as appropriate. He seemed particularly interested in hearing ay disagreements, as in conflict is where you learn and grow.

Of course, he didn't use so many words to encourage the negative part. He was much more succinct on that part. In particular, he said, "You can even post

'That Terry is just such a fuck job'

... if you want." Not that I agree with it, but if that's what he wanted posted, well, okay, there you go.

The central premise of the talk is that frameworks make choices for the developer by removing options, and, at some point, the developer isn't going to like those the choices made.

Problems with the framework usually happen when the application is big (big big big), or the developer wants to do do something outside the typical uses of the framework. Usually solutions to such problems include modifying the framework (making upgrades difficult or impossible) or (my favorite) extending the framework.

I don't know, seems to me like frameworks are quite similar to life: you make your choices, and have your experiences, and as a result, you're constrained by the results. At some point, you need to move beyond the limits you've placed on yourself, or extend them, in order to get done what you need to do.

I left immediately at the end of the talk, as I'm still on East Coast time, and 10PM is not only past my bedtime, but when I turn into Miss Cranky Pants. I managed to make it to the train in record time and pass out in an unoccupied seat. Surprisingly, I did wake up a station before Mountain View, so I didn't sleep through my exit. Yay!

On a whim this morning, while looking for a pair of clean pants to wear to work, having not been home long enough in the last week and a half to even THINK about laundry, much less DO the laundry, I pulled out a pair of my skinny pants (not jeans, since I stopped wearing jeans about six years ago when I had the freaky, all over, hyper-allergic reaction and couldn't stand them any more), and put them on.

To my shock, they fit.

No, not the "hey, look, I can still zip of the zipper if I pull in my gut and hold my breath and pray I don't rip the seam when I bend over" type of fit.

Rather, they fit in the "hey, look, there's no bunching, no grabbing, no identation or bulge over the top of my waist because these pants fit perfectly" type of fit.

I haven't fit comformtably into this particular pair of pants since, since, since, well, ever. I actually bought them at the size I think I should be, not the size I actually am. Well, was.

But now they fit! YAY!

Can someone please tell me how to get my fridge to look like Dad and Linda's fridge?

I mean, LOOK at it. It's perfect. Everything is lined up. It's clean. There's no moldy cheese in there. There are no rotting vegetables, or the shortening bought for three pie crusts but only one was made and that one was enough because all butter crusts are better.

It even has ketchup in it, something my fridge has been lacking for years.

Speaking of fridges, I remember back in kindergarten having to circle all the items in a list of pictures that began with the letter R. I recall circling the rat (though, it could have been a mouse, now that I think about it), and the rake (that one was obvious). I didn't circle the refrigerator, and managed to get that one wrong.

I complained (yeah, I know you're surprised at that).

The teacher pointed to the the picture of the fridge and asked me what it was. When I said it's a "fridge", she paused, then marked it correct. She told me no, it was a REfrigeRATOR, but, for what I knew, I was correct.

Yeah. Damn fridge.

For the record, I no longer wonder where Sam gets his looks (and by that, I don't mean his "good looks," as he clearly gets those from his mom).

Fewer than twenty four hours in town means that everything is a whirlwind, including my too short visit with Jessica. She was out and about with a friend when I first texted her, yesterday, but was free after Dad and I had done our errands, arrived in down and visited the house. So, off we went.

I've been craving a Starbucks Signature hot chocolate A LOT lately, so I offered coffee or a hot chocolate and just sit and talk. Oh, yeah. Jessica stopped by to pick me up, suggested the local chocolate house where they had all sorts of chocolate this and chocolate that, including hot chocolate, and off we went.

Now, Jessica is going to be mad at me for saying this here, instead of saying it to her directly, but well, I have to say the chocolate from this chocolate house has to be the third most disgusting chocolate I've had since I ate that bag of year-old M&M's in junior high school. The chocolate is cheap, tasting of was instead of cocoa. Passing on the chocolate from this place isn't like passing on real chocolate, it's like passing on wax lips - not really hard.

However, I hadn't tried their hot chocolate, so I was still game for this place.

I ordered a hot chocolate and a slice of pumpkin cheesecake, because, really, who can resist pumpkin cheesecake (except Elina, of course)? I was unsurprised when the hot chocolate tasted like Swiss Miss hot chocolate made from water and missing the marshmellows, but happily surprised at the cheesecake. It was tast-TEE!

We chatted for a while, sitting in the front corner of the coffeehouse-like sitting area, before I realized I had been sitting in a completely defensive posture, pointing away from Jess. I knew the reason for the posture, but hadn't realized I was expressing it quite so rudely, so I dropped my arms and turned towards her, in order to engage her better. The conversation became less awkward, and flowed easier.

Right up until the dynamic completely changed with a call.

Gabby was in the area with her dad, and hey, he'd just drop her off now instead of actually dropping her off at home.

Now, I'm always happy to see Gab (well, except when she's being a butthead, but are eight year olds ever buttheads? wait, don't answer that), but our conversation was actually starting to open up when the storm of energy burst through the door, arms and legs flying in all directions. Our conversation turned stilted as Gabby's dad walked in, and that was the end of that conversation.

At one point, Jessica commented to me that, hey did you know you can't kiss your elbow? I commented back, yeah, well, you CAN lick the back of your knee.

Try it.