Last night, around 6pm EST, I started asking around Twitter to see what people were doing to help out with Gustav efforts. What I found were a lot of links to how people could find information about Gustav, but not very much in the way of active efforts to provide a means for disseminating actual requests for help.

As an example, Twitter is a pretty big echo chamber and a simple request can get lost, even in targeted searches. As I couldn’t find anything else and my cohort was having trouble finding an official means of SMS communication via the Red Cross, GustavTracker was born.

I don’t know if this is the right way to address this problem, but I’m trying to do what little my nimble keyboard fingers can. This morning, I also came across a Gustav Information Center Wiki and it seems they’re doing some similar work. I’m currently in the process of trying to collaborate with them.

In the end, I fear it’s simply too late to get the necessary information made available. However, if you would like to help, please pass on the information about GustavTracker for those in need of something that the web community might be able to assist with.

It should be noted that the Red Cross has the @safeandwell Twitter account that ties in to the official Red Cross Safe & Well List, but trying to find information relative to this channel was an exercise in futility.

Well it’s been far too long since I’ve posted here, so I thought I should let my vast world of blog subscribers know what I’m up to (Hi, Mom).

Living in Germany put a lot of different things in focus for me, as did the last time I spent an extended amount of time in a foreign place and ended up moving to Seattle. No, I’m not moving to Germany, although I did definitely consider it.

I’ve been a professional security consultant for over six years now. While I’ve loved doing that and all the great experiences I’ve had (awesome people, doing work for top companies), I’ve always felt something was missing. I’ve always felt that there was a little more I could contribute. Ever since three months into doing this job, I’ve wanted to change how some things are done. At the heart of everything I do is a little voice that’s always trying figure out the best and most efficient ways to get things done. A little voice that asks me how and why something works that led me to disassemble numerous watches as a child. This same voice (perhaps not of reason) convinced me that I should leave my job in July when I returned from Germany and pursue some of those things in life that I feel I can make better. I usually don’t post much about my professional life since this is a personal blog, but this time my personal life is very heavily affected as I will be trying to go into business for myself.

For numerous reasons this was not an easy decision to make, but I feel the time in my life has come when I need to make this change or risk wondering for too long what I’m doing with my life. One of the other reasons is simply having more control of my life, with the ability to make decisions on my personal and business goals and desires. This constantly makes me think of one person - my father. He still to this day talks of how he would never work for anybody but himself - the freedom it allows, both to be ornery and independent, is something that can’t be matched. I’ve always admired him and for very long as a child felt that I should somehow follow in his footsteps. I always felt an unexplainable bit of guilt at not carrying on his profession, but I feel that by going out on my own I am somehow fulfilling that desire to proudly carry on in his footsteps.

The effects of this decision can already be felt. On a bit of a whim, I attended Gnomedex 8.0 this weekend - a local Seattle Tech conference. Though only partially related to my professional life, I was often frustrated by a lack of a good means to provide feedback to speakers at conferences. I’m sorry, but filling out a paper form and mailing it in after the fact does not cut it in this day and age. Thus was born an all-nighter on Thursday preparing Rate My Talk, a new service allowing for instant speaker feedback through the use of a Twitter bot. In what I feel was I surprisingly successful beta launch, I pimped my service at Gnomedex to provide to useful feedback for Gnomedex speakers. Though I am far from a marketing person, people seemed to like it and though there’s still a lot of work to be done, the choice and capacity to do that is something I would very likely not be able to do were I not newly self-employed.

And that’s where I am. A little life reboot to keep things interesting. Now, excuse me while I decide what interesting thing I want to work on this afternoon.

See, this is why I love Twitter. One of my gripes with Firefox is that it automatically assumes any RSS or atom feed I enter into the address bar is one that I want to subscribe to using some sort of feed reader like Google Reader. While this is true 90% of the time, there is that occasional instance where I actually want to see the plain text of the feed. I posed my question to the Twittersphere and merely moments later, somebody replied with just the right solution:

I gave it a shot and it worked perfectly, but the only problem was that it required a few too many keystrokes for my liking. With that in mind, I whipped up a quick bookmarklet to take care of it for me. Here’s the source in, conveniently enough, less than 140 characters.

javascript:(function(){s=location.href;location.href='view-source:'+unescape(s.substr(s.indexOf("feedurl")+8));})();void(0);

You can also just drag this View Feed Source link to your bookmarks.

Thanks, @popthestack!

Well I’m back off to Germany again. I’ve been super-busy (and sick, blech) so I haven’t had much time to do things like call my family lately (sorry) or be of much use otherwise. Hopefully I’ll have some time to catch up once I get to Germany.

Until then, auf wiedersehen!

Since German does not have the th-sound (as in thin), the proper pronunciation of the first syllable of the name is more or less like English wrote, while -burg is similar to “buak.” Source: Wikipedia.

This town not only brings you back hundreds of years, but it makes you feel like a little kid at the same time. I don’t know too many children that don’t get excited by the idea of knights and castles and such imaginations run rampant while wandering the cobble-stone-lined streets of this town.

Take yourself back 500 years - the sleepy guard on the lookout tower right at dusk. Fog rolling over the German hills and seeping through the forest. A light registers in the distance, then two. Then five-thousand more crest the hill as you run to the tower bell and start alerting the forces. Imagine that you can feel all of that standing on the lookout tower in Rothenburg and the only difference is that the two lights are vehicles far in the distance and the five-thousand are a neighboring town turning their lights on as dusk settles over the countryside.

That’s the magic of this town.

But perhaps it was the fact that you enter through a small door in a 30-foot high wall into a town straight out of medieval times. Perhaps it was the way I walked forward, turned left, and saw a guard tower that I almost broke into a run to get to. Perhaps it was the darkened hallways of the castle walls that made me feel like a soldier stealthily bypassing the defenses of the town. Perhaps it’s the extent that one can explore this town, parts of which are from 1250, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been changed since its creation.

Ultimately, it’s the weight of many generations of history that are readily apparent even to the casual observer. I’ve already mentioned the castle walls and the lookout tower for the little boy in all of us. But take a step into St. Jacob’s church and immediately you are humbled by the beauty of this creation for God. Two altars, carved by a famous wood carver are unspeakably amazing creations of art. Hours along could be spent gazing at the detail that has been painstakingly carved such as to nearly bring the scenes to life. Differences in architectural styles can be seen as you gaze upwards to the ribbed arches and you see how masons began to realize the strength of arches and widen the windows as a result.

The Christmas Market is also a draw for many towns in Germany at this time of year, Rothenburg not excluded. Gluhwein (mulled wine) is an important stable of all these markets and I couldn’t help but grin as I stood there sipping my gluhwein listening to carolers in some distant corner of a building. Passersby could obviously see the child-like glint in my eye as more than one person gave me the smile that says “I can tell you’re having a great time, are completely content, and it’s so evident…I must smile with you”. Or they could have just been poking fun at an obviously out of place American. I forgot to mention I was carrying an umbrella with “Deutschland” written all over because I didn’t have one of my own and had to pick up one at one of the many touristy shops.

I will admit, the city is very touristy, but that in no way diminished its charm or spectacle for me. If anything, the desire to maintain authenticity (iron signs still have to be approved to hang outside businesses, at least on one street) furthers the experience.

The Medieval Crime Museum was also fairly interesting - I didn’t quite realize how well-established the protocol for torture originally was. Again, as a child that was interested in crime, criminals and medieval times, this town and its associated history could easily have kept me preoccupied for more than the time I allowed myself.

I also chose to drive to Rothenburg, approximately an hour-long drive from where I’m staying. Had it not been raining steadily, I probably would have been hanging my head out the window like a dog checking out the beautiful German countryside and quaint little towns. I admittedly did stop a couple times just because the architecture is so unique and intriguing to me. The German road system is fairly easy to follow if you’ve planned your trip out ahead of time and you don’t deviate too much.

Again, feel free to check out the photos on flickr of Rothenburg.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family. For only the second time in my life, I am spending Thanksgiving away from home. The first time was when I was visiting a friend in Venice and the reason this time has to do with a combination of seeing my family back in October, and my recent travel to and from Germany. I got back from Germany Monday, am here in Seattle for Turkey Day, and then I leave again for Germany on Monday for a good couple weeks.

Germany was, simply put, awesome. Knowing absolutely no German was a bit of challenge, but most Germans actually know enough English to help me along so it wasn’t really too much of a problem. I would go through phases of confidence, however. Like the second day I was there and I had looked up a few German phrases on about.com and headed out into the streets saying “Morgen!” to passerby and anybody else I had a chance to. Unfortunately, with such confidence comes the assumption from others that I was able to actually speak German. And when they would reply to me as such, I just kind of stared back at them with a big dumb American expression on my face. Oh well.

Seeing as how I didn’t know German, I eventually started ignoring most signage. This became a problem when I wanted to eat breakfast at the hotel I was staying at. I was actually staying in a co-workers apartment as he was out of the country, so I wasn’t familiar with the hotel. Little did I realize that even though the room I was staying in was located in one building, the actual hotel was down the street. This wouldn’t have been so bad were it not for the fact that the building I was staying in was also a hotel. But when I walked down to their front desk to drop off my laundry, the poor girl was quite confused. I eventually showed me room key and she grinned and said she would take care of it for me. Not really understanding what had just happened, I walked across the hallway and sat down for breakfast. The girl, again looking confused, came up to me and told me that I could have a much nicer breakfast if I went to the hotel I was actually staying at. *oops*

The weekend before I came home, I went to Dresden to take part in an Expat Blogger Meetup. This was really fun as I got to spend time in Dresden, a fantastic city, with several Americans that were already pretty familiar with Germany. One of the other Expats even grew up in Connecticut originally! Dresden, and all of Europe, is so full of history I feel I could wander around aimlessly for quite a long time. Driving on the autobahn was also fun - it’s nice to be amongst other drivers that are considerate and know the rules of the road.

I’m off to a turkey here in Seattle for now. Feel free to check out my Dresden trip on Flickr.

So after approximately 21 hours of travel, I am sitting in my temporary accommodations in Germany. The trip was great, mostly because of the business class ticket that allowed me to eat non-stop and catch some good movies on the way over. I just wanted to say a quick hi that I’m excited to be here (this is my first trip to Germany) and I’m already having a great time. I went exploring a little bit tonight and got a little lost, but not really. My fantastic male sense of direction kept me tuned in at all times to where I was.

For now though, it’s time to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Thanks to the new Twitter Tracking, I came across a great blog called Sufficient Thrust that discusses various “life hacking” techniques. As somebody that’s always on the go but gets motivated at odd hours, the post about why I shouldn’t wake up early tomorrow peaked my interest. I frequently get motivated right around 11pm and keep kicking until 3am easily, so getting up early puts a pretty large shadow over my day.

Unfortunately, we do live in a 9-5 world and I often have clients where I need to be productive between those hours. So here are a few tips for forcing yourself to get work done. Note that everybody has different drivers, but these help me get through the day.

Don’t waste time
There’s all manner of things to distract you and when you’re not in the flow, you’ll take every opportunity to procrastinate. Try to ignore those distractions and focus on what you need to get done. If you don’t, you’ll find that 3 hours have passed and you haven’t accomplished a damn thing. Unfortunately, this post is a direct result of that procrastination…

Get yourself in the groove
I find that house music gets me in a very good groove. So when I need to be productive, I put on some giant headphones, crank the volume, and let the beat guide me to getting things done. There’s a podcast called Techtronic Sound that’s pretty good for this, but unfortunately there hasn’t been a new one in two months. Good tunes don’t always work, but it definitely helps drown out the other distractions in the office so I can focus on my work.

A little kick in the pants never hurt
I don’t like to do it, but a little caffeine can definitely help get you fired up when you have absolutely no desire whatsoever to be so. Mountain Dew and Caramel Macchiato’s are my poison of choice, but every once in a while I’ll put down a Rockstar.

Switch things up
Move to a different desk. Start writing notes using pen and paper. Go work in the Starbucks across the street. Anything to change up your routine to give you a little spark.

Be mean to people
People will try to disturb you. We can’t help it, we’re social creatures. But sometimes when you’re trying to get in the flow, you need to ignore, fend off, or otherwise try to prevent them from infringing on your flowness.

Set small, reachable goals and reward yourself
Give yourself small, easily attainable goals. Think increments of 1 hour. It’s good to get up and stretch anyway. Set a goal and a reward. For example: I can go get myself a coffee when I’m done writing these next 10 slides.

Ignore useless websites
There are more than enough useless websites out there to distract us each day. DO NOT GO TO THESE SITES. They suck your time and energy away quicker than you can blink!

Although definitely not foolproof, these are the things I try to do when I need to get in the flow.

Next article of Marina’s that you should read - The Secret to a Successful All-nighter

Hack on.

It was quite the marathon weekend, in more ways than one!

I flew into Chicago’s Midway airport at 1am Saturday morning. I was originally going to fly in at different time, but work situations changed and alas…there I was. So I hopped in my rental for the 4 hour drive to Toledo. Yea, I know - what was I thinking. I think it was worth it when I rolled up to the front desk at the hotel and the woman asked me “Checking out, sir?”. Uh, no…checking in, thanks. Just in time for breakfast? No thanks, just in time to pass out!

So that I did and woke up and went to the wedding, which was beautiful. And then there was a little downtime before the reception, which I was thankful for because I got to take a nap. Staying up working until 5am on Thursday and driving through the night on Friday finally caught up with me. Then we partied until the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday I headed back early to Chicago, only to be informed that the Chicago marathon was taking place. I tuned my radio into the AM station that was covering it just in time to hear the men’s photo finish (!!) and shortly thereafter, the women’s surprise finish. Unfortunately, the marathon was cut short due to the excessive heat in Chicago. I hung out with a few friends and then my cousin was generous enough to delay her trip back home to chill with me for a little while as well.

Then it was on a flight back home and I am about ready to crash, hard! It’s been quite the weekend.

On a nostalgic note, I was driving back from the reception and passed the hotel that I stayed at when I originally moved from Rochester to Chicago and stopped midway in Toledo - the Toledo Dreamplex. It looked like it was shut down and abandoned, but I can book a room next weekend through Expedia if I want to!

“Life goes by pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” — Ferris Bueller

It’s been two weeks since I last posted. What the heck have I been up to? Well let’s see. I worked most of the weekend of the 15th on a visualization project I’ve been working on at work. We had a little conference on the 20th where I presented the results of my work and research. I spent the days (and nights) leading up to the 20th also working on the presentation and supporting tool. It was worth it, though, as I think the presentation was pretty well received.

I then spent the weekend of the 22nd spending time with two awesome friends and standing at the groom’s side at their marriage. I, unfortunately, didn’t take many pictures but I posted a few pictures of my weekend in SLC on Flickr.

I was originally supposed to be in San Francisco this past week, but I got an email Friday morning (just before I left for Salt Lake) saying I was supposed to be at a client in Seattle at 9am on Monday morning. This made for an interesting Monday as I was leaving SLC at 7am. But I made it on time, and then spent the rest of the week pulling some long nights for that client.

I’ve been able to slow down a little bit this weekend but I’m still crazy busy. We had a company event Friday night that kept me out until the wee hours of the morning and I hung out with some friends last night. Today, I’m chilling in the coffee shop and trying to code but lacking some motivation. Later this week, I fly down to Dallas and then out to Toledo for a wedding this weekend. And then I’ve got a little family vacation coming up on the east coast as well. Me? Slow down? Not anytime soon. I’m enjoying myself, but don’t worry if you don’t see me posting for a while. ;o)