Yeargh!

I $%^& hate losing posts because of some stupid system bug. Which, of course, just happened. Unbelievably anNOYing. Argh. Of course, it was a brilliant post, too. the contents of which I've nominally forgotten.

Attended the first drupal session, which was originally "Theming system enhancements," but rapidly became, in the spirit of BarCamp, a self-directed discussion of theming goals as defined by the community. Adrian did his best to show us his goal for the theming system (being one of the lead developers on the Forms API, as well as the theming system). Many of the changes were exciting, some less so.

The best contribution to the discussion was made by Matt, when he mentioned that Wordpress was going through similar theming growing pains recently. He said the best decision they made was to identify their audience (those who know nothing and have no desire to learn anyhing (referring to HTML), those who know HTML and CSS, and those who know PHP), then design their themes and theming system for the desired user (the middle group, the HTML/CSS folks). Designing a system for one type of user is way easier than designing for all users. By a lot. Matt channeled Jason of 37signals and said, "Simplify your requirements."

They (Wordpress) tried the CSS Zen Garden approach, having only specific CSS classes that need to be overwritten, but everyone hated it (mostly because the content in a real site isn't well defined - CSS Zen Garden works because you can design to the pixel since the content is fixed, not so in a real life). So now they have theming functions, too.

I had more session insights, but they were on the last post. Which was eaten by the electron ether.

The next session is Actions and Workflow by John Van Dyk and the Bot in Lullabot. The idea here is to add a workflow engine into the drupal system, allowing complete configuration of process flow in creating, publishing, modifying, and approving content. Mike isn't convinced of the need, or the UI, given his experiences with simple state engines of "only" six states (which would have made John's proposed UI so complicated any user's eyes would cross upon loading the page). I'm not unconvinced, in that the proposed changes make actions role based (an author can write an article, and an editor can publish it, which would work very well for the UPA).

We'll see. He seemed interested about halfway through the session.

I'm having problems sitting for any length of time, my left leg being much worse than the right leg. Between the cut on my hand from a branch and the back of my knees, I'm being extra careful to wash my hands a lot.

In a remarkably mad dash to the airport, I managed to forget a whole bunch of things I normally bring along with me on trips. Probably not a bad thing, as I'm not heading to a third world country or anything similarly potentially tragic if I really needed what I forgot. Just another conference/workshop thingy in less than two weeks.

Mike and I took Caltrain to BART to SFO to fly out to Vancouver. We're here for the Open Source Content Management Systems Summit, which used to be a mini-Drupal conference, but merged and opened up to other OS CMSes.

That "opened up" part was a large reason why, yet again, I saw Matt in a random place (or rather, a not so random place like the Vancouver airport. Mike was getting money at an airport ATM when Matt walked up and said hello. We shared a taxi to our hotels, which were three blocks or so apart, so it worked out well. I think it was the most I've ever talked to Matt, and good to introduce Mike to him. Matt told us how he first experienced snow quite recently, which was totally awesome, though he did say he didn't go skiing in it.

So, conference starts tomorrow. Should be fun.

Gah.

The new theme looks like crap in IE. It looks good in Firefox, though. If you're using IE, why not let this (this! *snicker*) finally be the reason you switch to a real browser?

I give.

I'm changing my name from Kitt to Kit. Everyone who doesn't know me assumes I'm a guy, so let's just go with it. I am now my brother. By assuming his name, I can adopt Kit as a shortened version of his name, I can keep my name verbally the same, only changing my gender virtually.

I'll have to change my about page to read something like, "Hi, my name is Chris Hodsden. My friends call me Kit (think Kit Carson). This is my website."

Like anyone will notice the difference anyway.

Oh, hey, Mom, you have three boys now. Well, two with the same name. Like having four {Ch|K}ris's around won't be confusing or anything.

I guess this means I should really lose the pink now.

When I was around eleven years old (could have been ten, could have been twelve), I went over to the Klein's house to play for the afternoon. Nothing special about heading over, except that just before I went over, I made the decision to head over without shoes. It was summer. It was beautiful outside. We often ran around barefoot, so this wasn't a particularly important decision. But, I do remember consciously making the decision not to wear shoes.

Well, at some point in that afternoon, we all went running outside. I think we were running to the Gleason's house, which had been the Brickley's house when I lived in the neighborhood, but I'm not sure about exactly where we were going.

We all ran outside through the carport, around the side yard, and over the gravel driveway. Halfway across the driveway, I stopped running and started screaming. I then turned around and ran back into the house, dripping blood as I went. I had stepped on a broken bottle, the top part around the neck, as I was running over the gravel, and cut a serious chunk out of my foot.

Tragically, when I ran back into the house, I ran straight into the livingroom (the livingroom with the light tan carpeting), putting spots of blood where I stepped.

Mary looked at the cut, and recommended stitches. Poor Jenny had to clean up the blood spots. I resisted stitches, and struggled for the next month to let the cut heal, since I was inclined to run around and not stay off the foot.

If I had made the other choice that day, to wear shoes instead of going barefoot, I wouldn't have the scar on my foot that I have today. An inconsequential decision with larger ramifications than it should have.

Kinda like today's decision.

I had signed up mid last week for throwing practice today, and figured I'd head over with Kris and the girls, and just return home with the girls a little bit later. I was still feeling icky from the fever/flu thing that started on Friday, and figured a walk would be good, but full-on ultimate would be bad.

As I was getting ready, I put on shorts and debated whether or not to put on pants. I put on exercise pants probably 95% of the time I head out to play ultimate or go throw, so deciding not to put them on was deciding on the exception.

Kris was walking the dogs, and I was carrying the bag of discs, when the dogs fell behind. We kept walking and before the leashes went taut, Kris encourged the dogs to catch up. Normally, they run along the outside of the walk, but this time, Bella ran along the inside where I was walking, as Annie ran along the outside.

As Bella ran past, I started screaming. "Aaaaaaaaaah! Owwwwww! Owwwwww! Owwwwww!" Kris looked at me in puzzlement as I tried to run in front of him. Finally realizing what was going on, he dropped the leashes. Too late.

The leash had grabbed a significant chunk of skin from the back of my knees, where it gave me a fire-burn as it zinged along. If I had chose to wear pants, I wouldn't be propped up in the living room, neosporin slathered on the back of my legs, wondering how such inconsequential decisions truly affect our lives.