Mike and I went to the Future of Web Apps Summit, put on by Carson Systems yesterday. We arrived with enough time to find good seats, but too late for breakfast. I saw Cal almost immediately, and went up to say hello to him. Tom, who was speaking yesterday, was with him. The two of them are always so funny together: like two schoolboys at recess.

Elina showed up later, and we caught up on tons of stuff. Fabulous to see her and Cal again.

At one point during the day, I had to go outside to talk to Will about progress with task items. I took the opportunity to walk around the Palace of Fine Arts, (lovely walk) and happened upon Messina and Matt talking outside during the break. As I passed them, I said hello, and commented to Messina he looked upset. He mentioned that he was concerned that all the speakers were male. All of them but one were white.

I admittedly hadn't thought about it until that point, but realized that he was completely correct. The white male domination of my industry has become so widespread I don't notice it anymore.

How sad.

And how I wish I had something to say to a crowd, that I might present at a conference.

I finally convinced Kris to go to a dermatologist to have various spots on his body checked out. by convincing, I mean, I made a doctor appointment for him, reminded him about it, woke him up in the morning, and went to the appointment with him. He had a couple spot on his chest and one on his back that I was a bit concerned about, so I went to point them out to the doctor. Doyle and Mike suggested I circle the suspious spots in permanent marker, add a note, and send Kris to the doctor by himself, so that I could save time. I ignored them.

We arrived at 9:05 am, five minutes late for his appointment, only to discover that his appointment was at 9:30 am. D'oh. "I could have slept another thirty minutes, Kris complained. Yeah, yeah.

The doctor looked all over Kris, at his various moles and freckles, from his hair to his feet, before she asked which spots I was concerned about. I pointed them out, one at a time: one she said was scar tissue, one was a cyst, and one was just a large freckle-mole with hairs growing out of it. She expressed concern about a particular mole on his thigh, but it was one that was there for as long as I've been seeing Kris naked, so she wasn't concerned much.

When she left, I commented to Kris that I really didn't believe her, that I wanted to take pictures of the spots for later comparison, and maybe have them removed, just in case. He was a little surprised and asked why I didn't believe her. "Because the dermatologist who originally looked at mine told me it was just a skin tag."

Just a skin tag.

I went in to have the spot next to my eye, which was growing slowly, and annoyed me. She told me it was just a skin tag, and that I would probably have to pay for its removal out of pocket. She said the removal would include a biopsy, and my insurance company probably wouldn't pay for that either, was I really sure I wanted to have it removed?

I'm a huge fan of fixing things that bother me. I paid for orthodontia when I was 29, to have braces for the second time in my life, because one tooth was out of place.

One tooth.

No one could see the out-of-place tooth, but I could feel it and it bothered me. So, I had it fixed. Same thing with this skin tag. It bothered me. It hurt when I pressed on it. I thought it was a wart next to my eye, caused by rubbing my eyes after dealing with a wart on my foot years ago. Reasonable thinking? Probably not. But the supposed skin tag annoyed me, and I wanted it gone.

Two weeks later, I was receiving voice mail messages from my doctor, would I please call her back. I called her back, sat down, and found out I had skin cancer. A small localized tumour, but because of the location, I needed surgery to have it removed.

Insurance ended up covering the removal of that "skin tag," and I became suspicious of every bump on my body. And Kris'.

Given the initial mis-diagnosis of my growth (I need to give it a name so that I can refer to it more easily, suggestions?), I was suspicious of Kris' glowing diagnosis. Part of me wants to accept the scar tissue as just scar tissue from some internal injury that has surfaced. It's the same part of me that thought my eye bump was a wart.

The other part of me screams HE HAS NEVER HAD AN INJURY IN THAT SPOT, much less an open, scar causing injury THAT KEEPS GROWING. That's the part that says, I don't care about the $700 cost, cut it off now.

I know that I'm more paranoid than I should be. I know that Kris isn't paranoid at all. Somehow, between the two of us, we'll find a middle we can both live with.

Mike received a phone call yesterday at work. From the conversation, I gathered the person on the other end of the line was looking for Drupal developers, and had been referred to our company.

The first call Mike pushed off: our time was booked, we couldn't take on another client at the moment. The second call was more insistent, but Mike still pushed them off. The third call started causing Mike stress. He looked at me and asked me if I wanted to take on another client.

I've been pushing off adding clients, in favor of actively reducing my client load. I've found the optimal number of clients for me is two. Any more than two and I start thrashing, spinning my wheels and accomplishing nothing. With my new insistence on transparency, my work on my own projects and on me, my time seems pretty full, but I thought, sure, I could help a bit.

I called the original recruiter. I talked to the company's CTO. I chatted with the company's lead developer, whom I had met a month ago for a different reason. The work sounds interesting.

But.

Always a but.

I don't really have time to take on more work. I could help them out. I could work for them for a week, a month, a few months. And after those weeks, months, I'd be a bit richer. Given the recent money issues, taking the work was tempting. Very tempting.

In the end, I couldn't do it. I'm saddened by the fact I'll be missing out on working with a lead Drupal developer (which was the biggest draw to the project, actually). But, I couldn't go into a project where it feels like everyone is already stressed, and pressed for time and in a near panic. I'm finally down to two clients, why add the stress by adding another one?

What are your personal memories of September 11th?

It's four in the morning, and I'm woken by the sound of someone outside, going through the trash bins in the neighborhood. Tuesday morning, a good four hours until I need to wake up and all I can think about is how annoyed I am at the sure to be homeless person who is rummaging through my recyclables, pulling out the ones with the California deposit.

This annoys me, and I call the police. The non-emergency line has a pleasant voice. I give my details, my address, what I'm hearing, yes, they will send a car out to talk to the person, do I know which direction he's heading?

I stumble back to bed.

Four hours later, the alarm goes off. Jumbled words blare from the speaker. Unintelligible words. Without thinking, without worry, Kris reaches over and smacks the snooze button. Nothing registers for him. I hear a few words.

Four minutes later, the second alarm goes off. It is silenced just as quickly as the first.

Five minutes later, the snooze ends and the first alarm and Kris reflexively reaches to end the noise again.

"Wait," I ask. "See what's going on. That's not normal talk."

He rolls over and looks at me. What wasn't normal about the alarm, his eyes question, but he rolls out of bed anyway, and stumbles to the livingroom to turn on CNN. We have cable because he needs his ESPN. We have a television because he needs his baseball. I wanted neither, but he prevailed on that topic.

Kris returns five minutes later.

"You need to get up. New York is on fire."

I ask him what he means, as I struggle to wake fully. What is on fire? What happened? What's going on?

He doesn't know. It's bad. It's in New York. I need to wake up now.

I wake up.

At the end of the day, I wonder what the homeless person with my cans and bottles is doing. Did he know the enormity of the day? How could I have been so small, calling the police on a person doing what he needed to survive? What a petty act of mine, having the police talk to someone for taking cans, when five thousand people died so horrifically.

The images of the jumpers.

The homeless person stealing cans and bottles.

Yeah, so there are a lot of blogging services out there. Mom and I tried Blogger three, maybe four years ago, but neither of us quite caught on. Eventually, I figured the whole blogging thing out. Clearly.

Recently, I signed up for the Vox service, mostly so that I could put Walt in my neighborhood (not that I'm stalking him or something). One of the neat features they do on Vox is the Question of the Day. Each day, a question is posted on the site, with an easy link to answer the question. Sometimes the questions really suck (what's your first name and what's the story behind it?), but some are interesting.

I need to figure out how to import those posts here.

Until then, I can copy the posts here:

What are your personal memories of September 11th?

It's four in the morning, and I'm woken by the sound of someone outside, going through the trash bins in the neighborhood.  Tuesday morning, a good four hours until I need to wake up and all I can think about is how annoyed I am at the sure to be homeless person who is rummaging through my recyclables, pulling out the ones with the California deposit.

This annoyed, and I call the police.  The non-emergency line has a pleasant voice.  I give my details, my address, what I'm hearing, yes, they will send a car out to talk to the person, do I know which direction he's heading?

I stumble back to bed.

Four hours later, the alarm goes off.  Jumbled words blare from the speaker.  Unintelligible words.  Without thinking, without worry, Kris reaches over than smacks the snooze button.  Nothing registers for him.  I hear a few words.

Four minutes later, the second alarm goes off.  It is silenced just as quickly as the first.

Five minutes later, the snooze ends and the first alarm and Kris reflexively reaches to end the noise again.

"Wait," I ask.  "See what's going on.  That's not normal talk."

He rolls over and looks at me.  What wasn't normal about the alarm, his eyes question, but he rolls out of bed anyway, and stumbles to the livingroom to turn on CNN.  We have cable because he needs his ESPN.  We have a television because he needs his baseball.  I wanted neither, but he prevailed on that topic.

Kris returns five minutes later.

"You need to get up.  New York is on fire."

I ask him what he means, as I struggle to wake fully.  What is on fire?  What happened?  What's going on?

He doesn't know.  It's bad.  It's in New York.  I need to wake up now.

I wake up.

At the end of the day, I wonder what the homeless person with my cans and bottles is doing.  Did he know the enormity of the day?  How could I have been so small, calling the police on a person doing what he   needed to survive?  What a petty act of mine, having the police talk to someone for taking cans, when five thousand people died so horrifically.

The images of the jumpers.

The homeless person stealing cans and bottles.