Happy 4th of July!!! We’ll be streaming live all weekend. Come join in the fun and watch the fireworks over Lake Union. This stream has a pretty clear view of the fireworks barge.
The hashtag for this party/event is #july4eastlake and we’ll also entertain the Friendfeed crew in this new group I just created: http://friendfeed.com/july4eastlake
Everything is falling into place for the 3nd Annual Eastlake Associates Tenant Appreciation BBQ & Fireworks Extravaganza. Here are the details.
When: July 4, 2008, 12pm – ???
Where: 2218 Franklin Ave East, Seattle, WA 98102 USA (Lake Union)
What: A party of course. BBQ, drinks, food, & FUN!
Food: Assorted burgers, hot dogs, skirt steak (for carne asada), salmon, chips, dips, cherries,. Don’t see anything you like, then bring you’re own.
Drinks: BYOB – I’ll have some beer, wine, soda, but highly suggest you bring your own if you’re going to be hitting the sauce hard this weekend.
What to expect:
* Great people, food, drinks, etc. You’ve heard of “block party”. This more like “neighborhood party”. There are pretty much parties at every house for a 10 square block area. Riley hosts the infamous party down on Minor St. – this year I think they have water slides planned and I’m sure they’ll be doing other assorted craziness.
* Fireworks – all day, all night. For the big event, those brave enough can climb the ladder and get on top of my roof for an UNABATED view of Lake Union, the fireworks barge, and Gasworks park. It’s insane …the view. I’ll be streaming it live on UStream and also recording some HD video.
* Tons of traffic. If you want to come early, it is highly suggested. Street parking fills up by about 2pm. I have no off street parking available, so if you can use public transit or ride a bike, that’s the best way to get around.
* They close the streets to through traffic for like 10 square blocks around my neighborhood so don’t count on being able to take the side streets.
* If you are planning to stay and watch the fireworks, plan on staying LATE. If you thought it was bad getting into Eastlake, wait till you try to get OUT. There’s no rush, so if you are planning on driving down and then driving back, expect to get out no earlier than 1am.
I think that’s about it. If you are in Seattle and in the Eastlake neighborhood, I highly recommend you stop by and at least say hello. Great old article on Eastlake Community / neighborhood – http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19910425&slug=1279531
Call me on my mobile @ 206.227.8535 if you have any questions or get lost.
Happy 4th Everyone! Despite what everyone else around the world thinks of US, I am still DAMN proud to be an AMERICAN.
Last Thursday at 1:26pm Pacific Standard Time, I received an email from my boss, who had just gotten off the phone with an exec from HQ asking if our team could possibly pull of a small miracle and build a demonstration that showcases the value of our company’s products and solutions for a VIP press and media event at the CeBIT conference.
Meeting this challenge required 4 near sleepless nights, working through the entire weekend and around the clock with a virtual team distributed around the globe. While it was a pretty intense and tiring effort, we were able to put together an impressive demo showcase and I’m happy to report that the entire management team was quite pleased with our execution and delivery.
The demo showcase we built was delivered earlier today by Software AG CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich to German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a VIP press & media event at the CEBIT conference in Hanover, Germany.
Here are some pictures from the event. You can see one of demo pages we built being shown on a 60″ Flat Panel touchscreen monitor that was used to “deliver” the demonstration.
Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO Software AG, meets international leaders at CeBIT 2009
Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO Software AG, meets international leaders at CeBIT 2009
Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO Software AG, meets international leaders at CEBIT 2009.
Now that this mini-project / event is over, I’m going to try and catch up on some much needed sleep. It was a privilege and honor to work with such dedicated colleagues around the globe, with a near impossible deadline, to pull this off. Now I can add a new line to my list of accomplishments on my resulme: “Built a demo for the Terminator!”
OMFG. I can’t muster the energy right now to capture the energy, passion, class, & inspiration that is Gnomedex. Until I come down off cloud 9, here’s where my attention’s currently at.
As I continue to juggle what is roughly the equivalent of three full time jobs, I’m starting to run up against that magic barrier that is the space – time continuum. I’m going through a significant amount of change right now at my day job, am having to go through an eviction process with one of my tenants (night job), and I’m still feverishly trying to get Infinitely Meta and YTranslate off the ground. Needless to say it consumes nearly every waking hour of my life. I’m not complaining, as I am already hyper-efficient in managing all of the things I CHOOSE to spend my precious time on.
I think right now I need to continue to focus, not lose track of what is most important, and constantly assess and re-assess my priorities in how I spend those 24 hours each and every day.
Tomorrow I have a VERY special meeting with one of my advisors who is going to give me a personal tour of what he is working on. I’ll take lots of pics, ask questions, and blog it when I get back. Then it’s off to the Tweetup and finally the Gnomedex 2008 kickoff.
Hopefully this torrential rain will let up soon. Currently looking strikingly similar to the Pineapple Express weather pattern that we had back in 1997. Time will tell. Personally, I don’t mind the rain. What I do mind are the CRAPPY Seattle drivers who seem to not know how to drive in it.
OK. I’ve just spent the past hour or so updating my profile on Linked In summarizing the past 8 years of my professional career. It was over 2000 characters, which is the limit, so I cut and paste it into this post as well. I know I’ve probably got to clean it up a bit to polish, but please bare with me, as I dust off the cobwebs of my 8+ year tenure in the enterprise software space.
*****below is pasted from linked in profile *
8 year veteran in the enterprise software space with experience in pre-sales (Systems Engineer), Product Management, Standards & Evangelism (Standards & Technology Liaison).
Current role: Senior Systems Engineer, Business Process Management & Composite Applications. I’m one of 4 navy seal like SEs that make up the “Solution Center” team at Software AG. We are a “swat team” that can be deployed across the globe (virtually) to support pre- and post- sales activities. We support regional sales reps and SEs with the delivery of customized VMware-based demonstrations that showcase the breadth and depth of the Software AG Product Suite. My area of focus and expertise is in Business Process Management, Human Workflow, and Composite Applications. I’m fluent in most BPMS lingo, can crank out JSF-based webapps, and know enough Java to be dangerous. When I’m not building custom solutions, I’m supporting colleagues in the field and across the organization with a wide range of support duties that range from leading training sessions, generating content (whitepapers, tutorials, webexes), traveling on site to conduct on site demos / proof of concepts, online training & mentoring, remote web conferencing (webex). I also own and manage the 5 core business processes that govern what we do as a team (Solution Center).
Senior Product Manager – for about 5 years I was the product manager for an enteprise portal technology suite, first called DataChannel Server, later renamed Netegrity Interaction Server, then changed to webMethods Portal, then webMethods Access, then My webMethods Server, then webMethods Composite Application Framework. Whew. Lots of names, 3 major re-architectures, 4 major releases, countless minor releases, and god knows how many service packs, hot fixes, and feature roll-ups I’ve been through. I acted as PM for the Portal technology from roughly 2001-2006. In 2006, I transitioned out of Product Management into the Sales Organization where I currently serve as a Senior Systems Engineer.
Standards & Technology Liaison – I was originally hired by DataChannel, Inc in May of 2000 to serve in this exciting new role. I reported directly to DataChannel’s CTO Norbert Mikula, where my primary responsibilities were to participate and sit on relevant standards bodies, seek out speaking opportunities at industry conferences, and generally oversee DataChannel’s strategy with respect to leveraging emerging Web standards in our products and services. I was DataChannel’s Advisory Committee Representative to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), sat on the OASIS XML.org Advisory Committee, was co-chair and co-editor of the ebXML Technical Architecture Standard, and particiapted in some capacity to the following standards efforts: SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, SAML, webDAV, XML Schema, SSTC, RosettaNet, ebXML, BPML, BPMI, and a few others that escape me now. When DataChannel was about to be acquired by Netegrity, I realized that my role as standards guy were probably targets for elimination, so I started building demos that showcased what our portal technology could do. I did that for about 6 months and then moved into my role as product manager for Netegrity’s Portal technology initiatives, which were done under the brand “Netegrity Interaction Server” and later “PortalMinder”.
This effectively sums up the past 8 years of job experience for me. I’ve only been hired once, back on May 8, 2000, but I’ve now officially worked for four different official business entities. I’m thankful to be working (albeit indirectly now) with the same core team of Java devs for 8+ years and that is the only thing that keeps me going during challenging times.
Just a quick post to bump my last one, as it’s been a while. Just got back from San Francisco after an amazing week of fun, work, and great conversation. Met a TON of GREAT new people and made a lot of new friends. Here’s a quick list of amazing things I got to do while visiting friends and meeting new ones over the past week:
Streaming the iPhone launch from Apple Store on Stockton St.
Buying new iPod Touch, upgrading to 2.0, loading Pandora and other apps from the AppStore
Discovering my new addiction at the Blue Bottle Cafe. Siphon Pot coffee is unbelievable. Check out my Flickr pics.
Super secret meetings with some very big names that I can’t really talk about.
Rocked the Mechanicrawl, met Terry Lindell (uber-master of the Mark IV TDC).
Attended Gary Vaynerchuk’s party for taping of the WLTV 500th Episode (insane energy and good vibes at that event). Ran into old friends like Scott Beale (@laughingsquid) and an old college buddy – Brad Murphy – who is VP at Revision 3. Got to meet/talk to Kevin Rose and many other notables in the local tech scene.
Attended the Freshbooks Tweetup at 21st Amendment. Geeked out with fellow iPhone/Touch enthusiasts. Drank 9.2% IPA that was out of this world.
Attended Social Media Camp San Francisco. Met some AMAZING people at this event. Met Erica O’Grady. Hung out with @danielbru and the Qik guys. Got to meet @Corvida and a lot of other awesome people.
Attended Mashable SummerMash San Francisco. Met Pete Cashmore, ran into lots of friends & met new ones. Met Steven Fruchter, CEO of Stickam. Discussed some ideas / opps for collaboration.
Dinner with Yeshi Govindas Friedland and drinks with Brad Murphy. What happens when you get together with 2 college buddies who haven’t seen each other together since around 1996? A late night that ended at 2:45am this morning.
Upgraded to First Class on Virgin America flight from SFO -> SEA and had the absolute pleasure of meeting and talking with Actor Peter Coyote (wikipedia him). Overhead voicemail on ride from SEATAC (he offered to share his driver) from Matthew Modine.
That about sums it up. Tomorrow I attend a day long course by one of my true idols, Mr. Edward Tufte.
I have a crapload of stuff to do between now and next Weds, when I fly to Albany, NY and head up into the Adirondack Mountains to a little area where there is still no mobile phone coverage. There I will continue work on one of my engines. This is a VERY exciting time for me right now.
Thanks to all my new friends, followers, and supporters!
It’s Sunday morning and I’m still exhausted from July 4. The party was a HUGE success. Great people, great food & great drinks. Things got a little crazy just before the fireworks started up on the roof. This year, I got up on the roof early and setup a tripod with my Panasonic HD video recorder and my Quickcam Pro 9000 that I used to stream the Fireworks show on UStream.
I typically invite those who are brave enough to climb both ladders and view the fireworks from the roof of my 4-plex building as there are unabated views of the Fireworks barge and Lake Union from there. The view is spectacular and the Fireworks show this year was most excellent.
What I hadn’t expected was the mass migration of people from surrounding houses/parties to my roof! At one point, my brother in-law counted over 50 people on the roof. There was even a DOG! Someone even brought the KEG up. It was unreal. I was a bit nervous about the structural integrity of the roof, but I asked everyone to spread out and distribute the weight. I also asked folks to stay away from the edge and just be careful.
The fireworks show was most excellent and I’ll be importing and converting the HD video I shot as soon as possible. Until I get that up, here’s the raw video footage. There is probably some language and conversations that are NSFW, so apologies in advance. I claim no responsibiilty for the content (audio) portion of the video. Enjoy! We did.
The territorial battles in my reef tank continue today. Lots more Icky white specks on the Achilles Tang and Foxface. I see a new puncture wound on the Achilles as well. But all fish are alive and moving. My friend Thom the Ichthyogenius (more on that later) stopped by yesterday to pick up some fresh RO/DI mixed Salt Water (to 1.023 specific gravity) for a couple of his clients so I got to get his take on the situation.
My other buddy Jon also stopped by to check out my new Jade Green Elephant Ear Mushroom and the new Crocea Clam I introduced yesterday (see below).
After watching these fish go at it constantly pretty much non stop for the past week, its starting to become clear what is happening. Patterns are emerging and I’m hoping that I can get rid of the Ick and let this battle come to a eventual conclusion with a new pecking order in place.
Right now the Achilles tang is vying for top spot on the fish food chain in my tank. He has clearly marked his territory by pecking at a very specific area of live rock in my tank. This area happens to have been the Foxface’s old home. So the Achilles is basically trying to move in and claim the best cave/spot in my reef tank and the Foxface wants nothing to do with it.
Unfortunately both fish are pretty aggressive, and the battle is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I will continue to monitor the tank, feed a bit more (to distract them), and go out and get some cleaner shrimp to help with the Ick. Aside from that 40 gallon water changes every couple days is about as best I can do.
