Could it be that truckers and programmers have a lot in common?

The dream I had last night prompted me to reflect upon the nomadic life of truckers and how they actually share several commonalities with programmers through their professional lifestyle.

Let me start by giving a quick synopsis of the dream:

Progmatica, a language agnostic programming group that meets weekly at coffee shops in Portland, Maine, decided to hold their next meeting at Dysart’s Truck Stop in Bangor, Maine. The truckers were disgruntled with the group of “learn-ed men” that set up shop in their domain, but they were duly entertained and so they sat back and kept a curious but watchful eye on our group. We gobbled up greasy homefries and dined on delicious homemade cherry pie as we discussed Dimitri’s talk on Seaside from hackon last week.

The trucker crowd seemed to be interested in our conversation and several men wearing the plaid shirts that are so traditional in northern Maine approached our table. They ended up being jovial, comical, even well-educated guys. Throughout the day Casey (organizer of Progmatica) managed to convince these truckers to change professions. They became programmers and joined our ranks.

Progmatica went back to meeting in renegade coffee shops and over the next several years we kept in touch with the reformed truckers. We were sitting around sipping coffee and chatting about Scala one day when we noticed that the trucker devs were showing up to join us. We had hearty conversation, laughed loud and often, and enjoyed their company.

But as time passed the mood got more mellow and the ex-truckers started to shift nervously. After some silence, one spoke, “You know, had you told us that the life of a programmer is just as solitary and lonely as the life of a trucker, we might have continued to drive trucks.” Another piped in, “It’s not that we don’t like writing software. But we had this impression that it was going to be a lot more exciting than driving hundreds of miles on the open highway all alone. In fact, it’s been just about the same.”

They explained that sitting in front of a computer screen for 8-15 hours a day was not unlike staring out the windshield of a big truck all day. And that much like programmers have a need to descend into their “caves” to be productive, a trucker’s cab serves as his own cave. In response to the isolation and general loneliness of being on the road they enjoyed short conversations with other truckers over the CB Radio. This was about as much communication as they had with anyone as a programmer, they explained; short quips with other devs on twitter was their major social outlet as they worked.

When they needed to get out of their trucks to stretch, eat, and socialize they’d stop at the truck stop and meet up with their trucker buddies for some food and chatter. Similarly, when programmers tired of sitting in their cushy chairs they would sometimes head to the coffee shop in hopes of meeting some friends and for some refueling of caffeine. They said they were away from their wives and families just as often in both professions and spent just as much time alone; seeing as the pay was about the same, they couldn’t really see why they left one job for the other.

The original Progmatica group sat there, quite stunned at the reality of all this. And here ends the dream.

The dream is of course, pretty self-explanatory. The dream seemed to give me a negative feeling of both professions. But what is very intriguing to me is how both professions are more than just day jobs. They truly are lifestyles. A trucker wears certain clothes, uses certain trucker lingo, bonds and identifies with other truckers and even though their days are long and lonesome, they all share a certain camaraderie regarding the lifestyle; oftentimes that camaraderie and connectedness is what drives the trucker, even as he drives alone down his endless road.

The group of programmers that I know have many of these qualities as well. Being a developer is also a lifestyle. You don’t stop being a programmer at 5pm, though somedays I’m sure you wish you could. Often, you stay up all hours of the night trying to meet a deadline, trying to solve a problem, trying to write beautiful code. And, although you sit in your office truly alone in your space, somehow you feel connected. You know there are other developers that are up as late as you are, pounding energy drinks, listening to music, typing away in a room lit only by the stark light of your monitors. Developers certainly have their own lingo and easily identify and bond quickly with other developers. Most of us love to drink coffee, to eat at diners, and require being isolated in our caves in order to produce our best work.

I think there is a certain beauty to really living your work. What results from that is passion and bliss. While truckers and programmers are often misunderstood, I think most of them are damn happy people.

When Casey Rosenthal, organizer of the Maine Ruby User Group and hacker extraordinaire, asked me to recreate all of Matt Aimonetti’s slides for a CouchDB presentation, I was excited for the challenge. I had a lot of fun working with all 79 slides and replacing each racy photo with fps/frag-star related pictures. I think the frag star theme ended up working well throughout the whole presentation!

Casey did a great presentation on Couch DB with the slides at the RUG! Here are the slides in their entirety, enjoy!

View on Slideshare:

Or download the pdf:

Perform Like a frAg Star Slides

Recently, a friend of mine emailed to let me know her sister-in-law was curious about Wicca and Paganism. She asked if she could send her my email so that she could ask me some questions. Since I think my response to her sister-in-law really exemplifies my honest feelings about religion, I’ve decided to make it into a blog post ~

Hi Stacey,

Good to hear from you, Huyen let me know you were having some thoughts about Wicca/Paganism and I’m glad to be able to share my own experiences with you. I read your email as well as your blog post and I feel as though we have a lot in common as far as religion goes!

I was raised in a very strict christian group, called The Way Ministry. It has since been termed a cult, and I believe it probably was although I tend to see all organized religions as large cults at this point. Like you, I never really fully accepted what I was taught, but I went through the motions and didn’t know any better. I never outwardly questioned the beliefs because they used enough fear tactics to keep us from using our own brains.

When I graduated high school and went off to college my spiritual life was thrown into flux. I was in the honors program at USM and we covered a lot of religious history, philosophy, etc. I spent a lot of time in philosophical discussions with other students that would go late into the night, sometimes into the mornings. I consider that time in my life to be the “awakening.” I was finally thinking, I was finally looking at the world, at history, at my own life in a very objective way.

I remember subscribing to agnostic ideals early on in my freshman year. And even 10 years later, after years of being a pagan I still consider my core beliefs to be agnostic. I truly believe that not I, nor anyone else can ever know the answers about heaven, hell, god, gods, goddesses, life after death, reincarnation, etc. All I can do is try and strip away all the dogma that’s been forced upon me and try and live my life in a sacred, meaningful and spiritual way. The best way for me to do that is through paganism. It just fits my personality.

I did dabble in Wicca for a couple of years, and in fact that was where I started down the pagan path. I found some local groups that held open circles and practiced with them casually; I read a lot of books, I met a lot of pagan folk. I enjoyed the energy of working with others but mostly I cherished working alone. When doing rituals or celebrating the festivals I would love to be at home, baking, preparing, cleaning my tools, burning incense, listening to pagan music. I loved casting circles in my home, doing cleansing rituals, meditations, etc. It was an incredibly magical experience. I didn’t feel anything as spiritual and powerful when working within a group. I still went to group rituals on occasion for the social aspect though and it kept me tied to the community.

The best pagan experience I ever had was a class I took in the Reclaiming tradition. Some pagan folk hosted it at their home in the Maine woods; it was a weekend class. It was two days of intensive meditation & visualization work, singing, drumming, ritual, sharing meals, etc. One morning I was awoken by the sound of a guy playing a harp and signing a beautiful welsh song. It was everything I had imagined that being a pagan would be. 

I’ve always felt that religion is just a means for control/manipulation. Wicca, of course doesn’t have the usual power scheme of most organized religions, so I think it’s a much safer sort of religion. With that being said, there are a lot people in covens that tend to be just as dogmatic and power hungry as the leaders in christian religions. 

I think that Wicca and paganism tend to draw an odd crowd. There are a lot of rebellious teens, adults with “problems” (like addictions, mental disorders, etc) and even predators. Because of the way Wicca is portrayed by the media and by people in general, a lot of weird people end up being attracted to it. Now, with that said, there are of course lots of wonderful people that are Wiccan and pagan! But you have to keep an eye out for the odd ones. Don’t be dismayed by the people that seem to be in it for all the wrong reasons. I try to remind myself that we are all on a very personal quest and I think that even the wack-jobs will find what they are looking for someday.

After practicing Wicca for a couple of years, I realized it didn’t feel right to me. I really do hate dogma. I don’t want to be told what to believe, what to call gods and goddesses, or even told that I have to believe in a god and a goddess. While I do think that there is certainly a strong force in the universe, I like to think of it is as an energy source that animates all things. I don’t think of it as masculine or feminine, but rather, genderless. Sometimes it’s nice to call it a god or a goddess just to make it easier to understand, but for the most part I never felt comfortable just replacing the christian God with a Wiccan God/Goddess.

My questioning of religion in general went far beyond christianity and right into the very core of what makes humans desire to name a god/goddess and create them in our own image. The intricate similarities between all the religions of the world make me think that each culture creates its own ideas and stories about that which they cannot explain, like death, life after death, how did we get here, why are we here, etc. And then some power hungry jerk comes along and decides to capitalize upon a peoples weakness by using their guiding set of morals and stories as a means of control.

So when all the dogma is stripped away, I am pagan. I simply celebrate the earth festivals for their significance (eostara and beltane which celebrate new life upon the fertile earth, samhain to celebrate everything the earth has given us through its harvest to sustain us, etc). I leave the gods and goddesses out of it.

Am I still spiritual? Very much so. Since I believe in energy (in the theoretical physics way), I believe that anything I put out into the universe will find its way back to me one way or another. So, I treat the earth with great respect, I try to be kind to others, I try to buy local produce to support sustainable agriculture, I teach my children about the sacredness of all life. When I walk outside at night I look up at the moon and feel comforted. I know the moon’s energy plays a vital role upon our planet, and especially upon me as a woman. I look at the sun in the morning and think of how it’s warmth creates new life on our planet and gives us energy.

And the most spiritual part of it is the underlying awareness that I know nothing. For so many years there was a religion I subscribed to that made me feel as though the most important thing was to be right, to have an answer. To be able to feel entirely comfortable with the reality that I know nothing is incredibly satisfying and fulfilling on a deep, spiritual level. It allows me to stop trying to make sense of things and connect dots. Instead, I can just live, cherish my life, and love my family without second-guessing my beliefs or chosen path.

I decided long ago that I don’t need an organized religion to give me a set of morals to live by. I believe that through the love and care of our parents when we are children and by others around us we learn to live honestly and to love truthfully. It doesn’t matter that a bible instructs someone to act in a certain way. What matters is that we are shown how to act by those that love us. And that is how I parent my two little ones. I focus my attention on love, attention, and nurturing guidance rather than fear and harsh discipline.

In summary, I think you have been brave to step out of the mold you were raised in and allow yourself to start asking the questions that you’ve probably wanted to ask for years. Wicca and paganism are incredibly self-empowering paths. There is no middle man between you and your idea of god. There is only you, your own beliefs, and a very old tradition of general ritual practices, like circle casting, calling of the four elements, etc. Both Wicca and paganism celebrate the feminine aspect of life, which is, of course, a gaping void in most organized religions.

I also want to point out that it’s easy to get caught up in buying all sorts of ritual items. It has happened to me! Remember that the purpose of the tools are to help you create a mental shift. The tools themselves don’t have any power. But us humans tend to need symbols of energy and we easily identify with the ritual tools like the athame, the wand, the chalice, etc. In the end, the tools I loved the most were the ones I made myself or found in a special way. The wand I still use is a branch that came off a willow tree in my yard. I took some time to carve it and although it doesn’t look like a fancy $100 wand, I’ve never felt as comfortable with any other wand in my hand.

Here are some resources that might be helpful to you along the way!

For the kids, Starhawk has written a children’s book “Circle Round”, songs, and is an amazing female pagan activist. She has also written a lot of great books, The Spiral Dance being my personal favorite.

Lorelei Greenwood sings beautiful pagan songs and chants.

http://www.geocities.com/firebornspirit/chants.html

(Her chants are powerful, and fun to sing in the car! We all Come from the Goddess is a good classic, as well as We Are a Circle, and Kindle a Fire)

Laura Powers also sings beautiful pagan songs!

http://www.laurapowers.com/

Scott Cunningham’s book, “Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner” is probably the best, easy to follow book for learning the basics of circle casting, your rituals tools, etc.

Witchvox.com is a great website. It is chock full of articles and there are links to your local section so you can see what sort of groups are in your area. They usually advertise their open circles on witchvox.

The Pagan Pride festivals will start happening mid-summer, so if you have some time, venture out to one near you. You’ll be able to meet lots of pagans/wiccans and there are open rituals, dancing, drumming, the works. It’s great fun!

Well I finally have something to write about. I guess it takes some porn and a solid rift in the Ruby/Rails community to jostle me out of my mommy bubble. I’ve spent the last two days reading about Matt Aimonetti’s talk at GoGaRuCo and the reactions from Ruby developers and drama queens alike and I must say I’m underwhelmed at their reactions. It’s a good mix of the typical “Oh my god I’m a girl and I’m so offended, like, didn’t feminism cure us of this?” and, “Man, I’m a guy and that shit ain’t cool. I’m offended.”

I want to whine about two terms that are trolling around: “offended” and “professional”.

First of all, I have a hard time believing any man in that audience was offended at the sight of hot chicks. They might have been caught off guard, bemused, or confused at the boldness of the speaker, but they were not offended, not even chivalrously. And I’m sure most people there had a good chuckle at Matt’s attempt at humour. 

Was it “professional?” “Professional” is one of those words that is thrown around by people in big empty suits that are afraid of lawyers, and by people that want to be wearing big empty suits and wish they were in a position to fear lawyers.

When you pack up for a weekend at a fringy Ruby event you expect to be getting comfy with a raw, fringy crowd. You expect to hack in hotel lobbies, play Werewolf in the hallways, drink lots of scotch and Bawls, check to see if there are any hot dev chicks around and eat some tasty treats.

You don’t go to a Ruby conference wearing a big black suit, carrying a briefcase. You don’t go expecting to be bored to tears by a talk on J2EE. You don’t meet for drinks after presentations with potential business partners. No. No. No. You fucking hack, talk shit, play games and eat.

So big fucking deal if Matt Aimonetti showed you some chicks in thongs to make a somewhat amusing point. YES, Matt’s slides gave me major douche chills. It was odd and I didn’t quite like it. But I was not offended, nor did I care how professional/unprofessional it was. 

Also, I’m annoyed with all this banter about how Ruby & Rails will never be taken seriously if people put porn in their presentations. If anyone cared whether or not Rails would be taken seriously we would all be boycotting RailsConf Las Vegas. Anyone who goes to that sellout of a conference has no right reaming on Aimonetti for his porn. At least in his case, “the people voted for it.” 

I definitely think Matt was misguided. Where I think he went wrong was in assuming that the audience would get something valuable out of his talk after he distracted them with hot bodies. Generally hot chicks and processing data on an intellectual level don’t really go together that well.

Using hot chicks to grab the attention of your audience is just elementary. It’s the cheap and easy way to draw an analogy and get a laugh. In this case, I can see the correlation between the images and the message he was trying to deliver, but he could have been more clever by being less transparent. The whole thing seems more like a risky high school presentation (teehee!) than a thoughtful Ruby presentation.

Besides, porn is something we watch when we are alone; when we can convince ourselves that we’re normal, as we’re watching hot, wet, slippery bodies bump each other. Porn isn’t something we like to share with other people, strangers notably. 

But seriously, porn just doesn’t belong in a Ruby presentation. A Java presentation, maybe. They need something to invigorate and distract them from their tired reality. But Rubyists are already pretty damn happy people. We don’t need our presenter to try and make us feel good. Matz already has us covered. 

Matt might have had a better chance at wowing his audience and drawing them in had he used gaming references for flavor instead of bare skin. Know your audience, Matt! Hackers are geeks! Maybe then you’d have earned some geek cred, instead of creep cred. Ouch.

I’ve done a little reworking of his slides to show you how his presentation could have gone better:

I don’t think the Ruby community needs to submit to supporting PC rhetoric. Leave that to folks that wear the suits. Matt was misguided and a bit trigger happy, but what’s really wrong with his slides is his inability to connect with developers in a meaningful and fun way. We don’t like to share sexual experiences with our peers, especially on large projector screens. We like code and video games, maybe even a good ol’ game of Fluxx. It’s not a matter of offensiveness or professionalism, it comes down to not being a douche bag.

All of this focus on a Rails Maturity Model has me wondering, what about Rails or Ruby Conservation? How do we take what has been so good about this language that we are all so passionate about and ensure that it doesn’t get side-swiped by the brooding enterprise transition? 

I went to my first Ruby User Group this evening and I’m still floating. I left thinking, “this is what the Ruby community is all about!” I feel like I’m finally getting it. This little community rocks! I get why Rubyists were outraged over RailsConf moving to Las Vegas. I get why Zed was so fucking pissed off in his ghetto rant. I get why Giles calls out Chad Fowler. I never really understood the understated awesomeness of the Ruby/Rails community until I actually sat at a user group and then had drinks with fellow Rubyists.

I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to sit in a .NET or a Java User Group. Do they even have those? I can picture it, though it pains me: lots of men in business suits, wielding expensive pens and dumb heavy Dell laptops. They talk in loud, booming voices, each trying to exert his own self-importance. They pretend to be interested as they listen some verbose mucky muck presentation, then they sit around in the office talking about their development environments and their enterprise software.

Tonight I sat in a room for 2 hours and I watched, I learned, I laughed. I had more fun than I’ve had in a long time. I watched an awesome guy wearings jeans and a t-shirt do a very informed presentation on state machines; he was even able to incorporate Batman into his slides! Then I saw a web designer give a whimsically animated presentation on Proce55or. And finally, a soft-spoken math guy showed us benchmark testing he wrote to compare Ruby 1.8 and 1.9.  Ruby itself affords its community a level of intimate camaraderie that many languages cannot offer. It’s natural to get excited about and attached to a language that is actually fun to use. It’s worth promoting, it’s worth preserving.

When I read that Rails was moving to Vegas it didn’t sit right with me. And I’m not even a legitimate Rails dev. Despite the organizer’s outright denial, it certainly is an omen that Rails is moving to the enterprise scene, and apparently they have no problem pairing that transition with “steaks and strippers.” And yes, realistically Ruby/Rails enterprise should make most devs happy because that ultimately means more job opportunities and probably higher salaries.

But, it’s bittersweet, because I have to wonder what the community will be like 5 years from now. Will it be this tight-knit and this organic? Will a total newb like myself receive tons of help and direction from people that I’ve never met, just because I share a passion for the same language? Will there be as much passion? Will there still be people working hard to offer fringe conferences like Ruby DCamp, and RubyFringe as alternatives to the Rails whore house that RailsConf is becoming?

It used to feel as though Ruby and Rails was led by the open community that it spawned, but now it seems that the future of Rails and Ruby lies in the hands of a scant few that appear to be empty suits.  I’m not naive enough to sit here and claim that Ruby shouldn’t go enterprise. It happens to all intrinsically good languages, in due time.

Ruby and Rails enterprising doesn’t have to be ghetto. RMM, for example is something that I think helps to setup a space for Rails in the enterprise world but at the same time declares it sacred. RMM will help improve the Ruby experience on the client side of things; anyone who has seen the horrific crimes that are committed against clients might agree that RMM might actually be a good idea. It allows a client to hold a few cards in their hand, and a balance of power isn’t a bad thing in a business transaction.

While there are people out there like Obie working to create a good space for Rails enterprise, we still need more people working to preserve the open, organic community space that attracted and kept so many of us here in the first place. 

So, thank you to the people that are working so hard to preserve the “niceness” of Ruby and Rails; like the guys that organize the user groups, plan the small local events, offer help to people on forums, contribute to open-source projects, and to people like Mike Gunderloy that invited me (despite my newbness) to work on his project in order for me to get some experience. And a big thank you to companies like Intridea and other small shops that let their Ruby developers, like my husband, work from their home offices or coffee shops. It’s all about being happy and doing things the right way. That’s what I love about Ruby, that’s what I love about Rails, and hell no I won’t be going to Vegas to witness the perversion of something beautiful.

Today, we lost our sweet kitty, Akira, “Aki.” He suffered a sever seizure and he stayed overnight at the Emegency Animal Clinic in Lewiston. We got a call at 5 this morning that Aki had gone into cardiac arrest and that they were not able to revive him with CPR.

We adopted him as a kitten only 4 years ago from the Harvest Hills Animal Shelter in Fryeburg, Maine. I adopted him along with our other kitty, Zelda Bella Luna, “Bella” and surprised Adam with the new kitties on his 24th birthday. He as working 2nd shift at Fairchild Semiconductor and came home to meet his new little felines and was very surprised!

Aki has always been a high energy, fun loving kitty. For the first couple of years it wasn’t unusual to come home and find him dangling from the tops of window curtains! He and Bella loved running through the house late at night after the humanoids were fast asleep, creating mischief and mayhem. I know Bella will miss him sorely, as she adjusts to being the only kitty in the house now.

It is hard to accept loss. It’s hard to imagine that the kitty that’s been with us through so many transitions won’t be here to see us through anymore in the future.

At a time when it’s so easy to focus on all the things we could have done better for our friend, I also try to remember the wonderful things we did for him to create a comfortable, happy life for him. Both he and Bella are indoor cats, but Aki was a natural hunter and loved the outdoors. People thought we were crazy, but we bought collars and leashes for the kitties and in warmer months we would take them outside for walks.

When Adam started working from home a year and a half ago, Aki was in kitty bliss. He became Adam’s work buddy and would sit, curled up Adam’s lap or on his desk for hours at a time. I think this loss will be hardest for Adam, who has lost not only his kitty, but his working companion.

There is an intense void that rips through our hearts and minds. We are left feeling a little lost and confused, and very sad. Aki has been a part of our life and our family and now we will no longer hear him running through the house, feel him brushing up against us for comfort, or see him lying in front of a sunny window, basking in the sun’s rays. The photos and memories will, of course, remind us of the way he filled our lives with the simple love that only animals can bring. He will be missed and remembered.

Akira “Aki” 2004-2009

Video of Aki, taken a couple months ago:

Ok Ok, I know it’s a silly title for this blog post, considering that many people do see Rails and Ruby followers as cult members, and Matz and DHH as their leader and saviour. To be fair, DHH and Matz did pave the way for thousands of happy developers. But for the most part Rubyists and Rails developers are just enjoying challenging, fun and usually liberating coding careers. It doesn’t usually get all hokey and cultish, save for the hotel hallways and lobbies during seances, er, conferences.

I’m talking about all of this because of the #rmm (rails maturity model) proposed by Obie Fernandez, of Hashrocket. You can read about it here. Let me preface all of this by saying that I’ve met Obie briefly, have read about him extensively, and I think he’s BRILLIANT as fuck and he runs the best damn dev shop I’ve ever heard of. Hashrocket has it down. They’re like ENTP with flair. With that said, I’ll continue.

Obie grew up in a cult (ironically, so did I). He was a Jehovah’s Witness (as explained in his blog post, Becoming a Worldly Person). Anyone who looks at the way Obie runs Hashrocket can clearly tell that his background of growing up in an extremist religion has an influence over the way he runs a business in a very positive way. Hashrocket even has a gang symbol. And it’s fucking awesome. Best company logo EVAR. Two of their employees even had the gang symbol tattooed, that’s how intense this whole thing is.

But the point I want to make is that we should approach Obie’s plans for masterminding the Rails world with caution. Although I think he’s smart as hell and his ideas come from a truly good place, he is a bit of a cult icon and that in and of itself can be terrifying. I hate to be ruled, and I hate to follow. I would hate to be governed as a developer in such a way that I had to adhere to someone else’s set of coding standards just to be successful or on equal footing. Although many people agree on a set of “best practices,” most people can also agree that best practices are not always the best solution.

I was relieved to hear that DHH did not support Obie’s plan for a RMM and in his words, “I would not be supporting a “RMM”, which btw should rather be called “Hashrocket/Obie’s/People-who-agree-with-them-or-him’s Maturity Model for people using Rails”. 

There will always be inept developers in any language. But we have to trust that when a developer sucks someone will tell him so. And hopefully that someone will then offer some guidance, take some time out of his/her life to mentor a newer developer.

The Rails community is what drew many of us into the Rails world in the first place. There’s no better community to be in. So let’s keep it open. Let’s allow the evangelists and happy coders to do their community work and stop trying to look for a revolution. Rails WAS the revolution. Let’s just enjoy it. For fuck sake, you’re not coding in Java, just shut up and smile about it. Rails does not need a leader to step up and create a revolution. Unlike the global economy, Rails is not falling apart. We don’t need a saviour yet. But perhaps we can keep Obie in our back pocket for when we do, since he would make a damn good one.

Your app is a piece of shit.

It’s not going to change the world, or my life, or anyone else’s life. It’s a stupid little web app that is a rip-off (oh sorry, a re-hashing) of someone else’s failed ideas. You are not original and your software is not revolutionary. So stop writing job posts that go something like this:

Ruby ROCKSTARS Wanted

Want to change the world? Want to be part of an amazing team of rockstars that are working on the next social network that will revolutionize the way people use the web and connect with each other? Do you want to work for a well-funded (not profitable, highly likely to fall on its ass) startup? We offer a hip working environment with free soda (until our investors start to lose faith in our meaningless cause) and 30 inch apple cinema displays! If you are obsessive about testing and know how to get things done (we don’t stop until we drop) and you’ll work for equity, then we’ll take your soul. Promptly.

Here is what I have to say to you fucking idiots. Your app is a piece of shit. Want me to say it again? PIECE OF SHIT. It is so rare that anyone is inventive enough to come up with a truly original or really good idea. Which is why equity is a retard penalty. The only idea you should believe in enough to work for free for (or for low salary) is YOUR OWN IDEA.

The web app market is saturated. I feel soggy every time I use my computer. There are too many of them and most of them are fucking useless. Some of them might be kind of neat, or interesting for a few days but they are really very useless in the long run, unless you are a specialist and you need a specific app for a very specific application. We don’t need more social networking. We don’t need more twitters, facebooks, assbooks, myspaces, social gaming communities, cancer survivor networks, parenting networks, book lover networks, cat lover networks, youtubes, or googles.

Thousands of software devs have been having fun working for all these well-funded startups that eventually fail. But at what point will they realize that the world only needs so many stupid web applications? We keep waiting for the next best app, but when does the river run dry? There are only so many good ideas and I think we might be hitting the limiter for social networking-ish apps.

What ever happened to writing software that actually does things and fixes real problems? Do people do that anymore? We don’t need more reasons to waste away in front of our computer screens. We need reasons to stand up because we’ve been sitting down a lot and we’ve taken a political, social, economical, and spiritual beating. In the words of the great Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up; stand up for your rights…. life is your right.” Perhaps we wouldn’t be such a dumb, placated culture if we actually left our houses and talked to people in RL, YO.

I was in the laundry aisle at the grocery store, looking for my usual Arm & Hammer brand of laundry detergent, when I realized that they too were trying to trick me into paying twice as much for half the detergent. The oddly small bottle explains that it’s eco-friendly because the detergent is twice as concentrated, so they can pack just as big of a punch in a MUCH smaller bottle. I’m not so sure. I’m very concerned with sustainability and being a good steward of this beautiful planet, but I’ve also got a good eye for SCAM.

I saw this trend happening slowly over the course of the year; one by one, different brands changed their bottles and their “concentration”; for awhile you even had a choice of buying the old fashioned earth-hating sized container or the trendy new scam bottle. But the choice soon disappeared. Arm & Hammer was the last to convert at my particular store. I can no longer purchase a regular size bottle of laundry detergent, and I’m fucking pissed about it.

Why would I trust that they are doubling the concentration? And even if they are, most people (myself included) will go through the bottle twice as quickly anyways because we are conditioned to think that we need a certain amount of detergent to effectively clean our clothes. I find it hard to believe that every single laundry detergent making company decided to make the environment their top priority, and change their formula.

If I were an empty suit at a big corporation who got to make lousy decisions I’d think this whole idea was FABULOU$!!! Hey, let’s tell people the concentration is doubled, give them half as much, advertise it as earth-friendly, and charge twice as much! But we won’t really double the concentration, now will we? I mean, there is money to be made here, right? The economy is hurting right now, and my fourth wife needs her left tit blown up a bit more, it’s not quite proportionate. I could use some extra cash. And those oil guys think they’re the only ones that can play in the big leagues….

And most detergent consumers (er, everyone) might be a little dismayed about the industry-wide change, but the companies let us have a choice for a couple months to allow us to warm up to the idea. And now we’re all fucked. We’re paying assloads of money for midget soap.

As someone who actually is eco-conscious and not just earth trendy, I decided to find a way to make laundry detergent at home in great quantities. It’s my *silent* protest of stupidity and manipulative consumerism. Regardless of the size of their bottles, we’re all paying a very high price for something that is very easy to do ourselves. Rolling your own is CHEAP, EASY, and SAFE!

I scoured the web and found great instructions on The Simple Dollar’s site. After making several batches over the last few months I’ve settled with a recipe that works great for us, so I will share it with you!

Bair Clan Goop

1 Bar Fels Naptha Soap
1 Cup Washing Soda
1 Cup Borax
Lots of Hot Water

Shred the whole bar of Fels Naptha. Meanwhile, heat water in a pot to boiling. Add the shredded soap to boiling water, whisking slowly until all of the soap has melted into the water. Pour the soapy water into a 5 gallon bucket.

Add the washing soda and borax to the bucket. Whisk quickly to dissolve. Add extremely hot water to the rest of the bucket, stirring continually. When the bucket is full, cover it and let it sit for 24 hours.

When you open it, you’ll see that it has formed into a gelatinous, goopy mess! Just give it a stir and it will break up. You can use a funnel to pour it into old empty detergent bottles for easy use! One batch of this stuff lasts us about two months, and we do laundry frequently. It has also cleaned our clothes as well (and usually better) than store-bought detergent. Sometimes I add white vinegar and an essential oil (like lavender, eucalyptus, etc) to a downy ball and throw it in to freshen the clothes during the rinse cycle, but it’s not really necessary.

I should also mention that some websites recommend using Ivory soap in place of Fels Naptha, but I’ve tried this and nothing cleans as well as Fels Naptha. On our first iteration we actually used Irish Spring because had a bunch of it around. It sucked. Don’t even bother. The Ivory was ok, but Irish Spring (and other regular bar soaps, I assume) do not clean clothes, nor are they really meant to. Fels Naptha is actually meant for clothes.

Try this a couple times, and tweak the formula until it meets your needs! You’ll save lots of money on detergent, you’ll consume less awful plastic, and you might even enjoy knowing that you can make something you never thought regular old consumers could make themselves

And while you’re at the store picking up supplies, grab yourself a spray bottle, white vinegar and some lemon essential oil. Fill the spray bottle 1/3 of the way with vinegar and add water to the rest. Add a couple drops of the oil and you have yourself an extremely powerful, versatile all-purpose anti-bacterial cleaner that cleans windows, counter tops, tables, stoves, toilets, mirrors, and more! If your kid finds it and decides to drink it she won’t die! Non-toxic, homemade cleaners are another way to fight the war against corporate consumerism propaganda

Before I became a parent I had a wonderful life that was all about me. I sought out fun and oh, the fun I had! I played board games, LOTS of video games, I drank beverages that actually had alcohol content, I danced around pagan fires in the dead of winter, and I had a habit of seeing live music. I read books! I planted flower gardens! I organized events! I had friends and we read each other’s tarot cards, we made herbal teas, and we traveled to fun places! I didn’t have a blog, I didn’t email much, and I certainly would not have had a use for Twitter, had it been around back then.

See, I even had time to color my hair and wear jewelry!

But that’s not my life anymore. Now I wake up early each day and I get my kids dressed. I try to feed them balanced meals throughout the day; we play with peg boards and make puzzles, we read stories, we dance in circles as we sing nursery rhymes, we paint, we color, we cook, we drive places, we do housework! It’s a much different life than I had before, but it’s an awesome life that I wouldn’t change.  I cherish every moment with my kids. In fact, I often get dreary eyed as I think about how empty my lap will feel when there are no kids to fill it, and how empty my home will be when there are no laughing voices filling its space. My friend Bryan shared something with me that his grampa told him before he passed away years ago: “I’d rather be up all night long hearing the voices of children than sitting alone in an empty, clean home.” I share that philosophy completely. 

Being a mommy is a crazy kind of fun!

I am trying to integrate some of my past hobbies into my new “adult” life as I search for balance as a mother and a regular humanoid. But what I keep finding is a lack of commonality between myself and others around me. I’ll find a super cool geek that doesn’t have kids, or find someone that has kids but the similarities end there. 

Of course I have grown in many ways since those days have come and gone. I’m not sure I’d get as much pleasure now from spending 100 hours of my time leveling up an Amazon in Diablo II. But there are more simple and similar pleasures like playing geeky board games and learning Ruby. Adam and I like to play Munchkin, Carcassonne, and Settlers of Catan pretty regularly. But those games are tough to play without more players. Our evenings together usually consist of programming on the couch together, listening to DJ Tiesto, or sitting out on the back porch on summer nights staring up at the stars above us, dreaming about life. 

Renae rocking out at Catan

We used to have a couple of friends with pretty common interests that we hung out with regularly. But now that I’m a parent and we’re in the middle of Maine, I can’t seem to find many friends in our area that enjoy gaming and geeking out. There’s more to me than coding and gaming, of course; I love watching independent films, Japanese films, anime, and laughing at the horrible videos on break.com. I like listening to different types of music. I care about sustainability and where my food and products come from. And I love coffee! Tell that to anyone in Maine and you’ll get this response “OMG, I LOVE coffee too!!! I go to Dunkin Donuts three times a day!”; to which I respond, “Ahhh….”; next topic. Being a pagan means I’m pretty drawn to the earth and her cycles, and I love celebrating the seasons and the natural rhythms of the earth. 

So, it’s pretty hard for me to find friends with common interests. Which is why most of my free time is spent in my dining room learning Ruby after the kids are in bed or reading Twitter! Adam asked me last week, “Why are you so addicted to Twitter?” Well, as a stay at home mommy without many local friends, it’s my only source of social interaction with people that are professionals, geeks, and parents. Today, I’ve been able to read about @MikeG1 griping about date parsing, @gilesgoatboy wishing he had more video games to play, and saw a picture of @SummerTulip’s piggie pancakes she made for her son. It’s this great eclectic mix of humans that I love to spy on because they are each like myself in some small way. It makes me feel connected to something that is like myself. The sum of twitter’s parts add up to a nice online friend. It sounds sad, but it can be hard to connect to anything in Auburn, Maine without getting the_hiv.

I know that my Twitter addiction needs to end someday. I spy an intervention sooner or later. But for now I’ll keep enjoying reading about the experiences of my twitter-folk friends and sharing my experiences with them. Twitter fills a niche in my life right now, and I’m thankful to be able to draw on a hand-selected community for wisdom, giggles, and inspiration!