Fun in the garage wasn’t limited to just vehicles.  I’ve also made tandem bikes, a quadcycle, and a small junkyard sculpture.

Since coming back from our trip I’ve found myself restless and antsy - especially when the evening hours roll around and I’m done with the days work, am tired of looking at screens and don’t want to read a book.  I think I was driving the family nuts with my frustrated pacing and desire for something to go do.

I was missing an offline hobby.

So last week I hopped in the truck and made a visit to the local metal recycle yard where I grabbed a bunch of scrap metal in various shapes.  I had no preconceived notion of what I wanted to build - but rather just figured something would present itself from the bits I had gathered.

It didn’t take long to see a cat’s head in one of the shapes and car rim suggested the arched back of a angered cat.  With that idea the build was on. Some automotive “A-arms” provided easy legs, a box of nails supplied whiskers, eyebrows, claws, and a spiked tail.  1/2 of a garden rake became the mouth with fangs coming from the ends of some railroad spikes.  I found myself with help at times, with my son doing some of the welding (and even turning down friends at the door to do so).  My daughter dubbed it “Dumpster” and I added the junkyard zombie cat as that’s what came to mind as it came together,.

Enjoy!

I’ll talk about the practicalities involved in prepping for the trip, the realities of working from the road, the difficulties of coming back off the road, and how we’re planning to ditch our house and become full time technomads. 

The talk will be geared towards other IT workers, and our hope is to inspire you to realize you have the skillset to consider your own location-independent adventure.

The saddest part of the experience for me was that, due to our plans for an extended family RV roadtrip for 2011 we wouldn’t be around for the event.

But, here we are for 2012 - back from our trip and in West Michigan for the winter.  While we’d still rather be somewhere warmer one of the upsides was being here for StartupWeekend 2012. Showing up at The Factory Friday night I could immediately sense the event was starting to hit its stride.  Pre-printed name tags, business-plan related books and materials, and t-shirts were all ready for us.

The event’s growth was apparent both in the number of attendees but also the number of business-idea pitches.  We had 18 the first year and 32 this year.  The voting process netted 11 ideas and teams formed around them. 

I joined the team working on an idea for a website & app that addresses a life situation that seems uncomfortable to talk about - what happens to your stuff when you die.  While wills and trusts can be created to cover the big things, they don’t always cover the small items that aren’t valuable in dollars but still have emotional value.  The team pitching the idea already had a name for it - ThisGoesTo.  Our work for the weekend included some online and in-person surveys to validate the idea, refining the core description of the service, putting together a mockup of the app, and adding a beta signup to website.  We also modelled a revenue model, estimated startup costs, and defined the core audience for the business.

Startup Weekends culminate in a presentation of your work and the presentations are all reviewed by a panel of judges.  The audience for the presentations is mainly the other teams but also includes bankers, lawyers and venture capitalists. 

Oh and?  You get 5 minutes. 5 Minutes to communicate your idea, how you validated it, what it does, who will buy it, how much they’ll pay and demo anything you have working.  The 5 minutes is strictly enforced - if you are still talking you get cut off. 

I felt we were lucky to have a spot in the middle of the pack - it gave us some time to view presentations from other teams and make adjustments to ours.  We had a skit planned to start with and trimmed that down to make sure we had enough time to get through everything.  I ended up being the presenter and after seeing some other teams get cut off I really wanted to stick the landing.

The result?  We recieved an “honorable mention” from the judges - but don’t take their word for it.  The presentations were recorded and posted online by the good folks at DVS:

Here’s the Startup Weekend presentation for ThisGoesTo:

I’m quite pleased with our effort and result.  Thanks so much to everyone on the ThisGoesTo team, and especially Tyler Mikev who hopped in from another team to put together our iPad mockup - and who I neglected to thank while holding the mic.

Just like the first year, I’m amazed at the talent that shows up for a StartupWeekend and what can be accomplished over the course of 54 hours.  I had a great time and look forward to seeing where these startups go!

We have a website that cannot be completed by the current developers….is this something you would like to work on?

Over the years I’ve responded differently, from simple one-line “no thanks” to more involved responses declining the work.  I thought I’d write up a more detailed blog post both to record my thought process in responding and as way to have a link to send out in the future when these requests come in.

Who Fired Whom?
As the potential late-comer to the project, unfinished projects are little mysteries waiting to be solved, and you’re asking me to put on my trenchcoat. 

You are only telling me one side of the story and using vague words that make me suspicious.  Are the current developers unable to complete the site because they don’t have the technical savvy? Or the developer doing most of the work took a new job?  Did their salesperson over-promise? 

Then there is the other side of the coin - what if the current developers have stopped working on the project because you stopped paying them?  Or you were a horrible client with shifting expectations and schedules?  Did you not, as a potential client looking to spend thousands of dollars, do your due diligence in finding a development partner capable of building what you needed?  To be a bit crass, why are you coming to me now in “salvage a failure” mode but not when the project was new?

All of this is probably answerable with a few uncomfortable phone calls to both parties, but maybe not. Will you be totally upfront about these issues or gloss over them in hopes of getting me signed on? Either way, will you compensate me for the time spent researching the project history?

Increased Costs
Speaking of getting paid - does the project have any budget left? Or has the current developer soaked up all the profit leaving the nit-picky (and time consuming) details undone that are tough for me to quote or you to pay for by the hour? 

Don’t forget the reverse-engineering time. A web project is not a web project. Different developers have different methodologies and any half-baked site that’s getting turned over to a new developer is going to need to be reverse-engineered by the new guy. If your current developers did a great job documenting what they did this might be easy, but if they aren’t able to complete the work what are the odds of them doing a good job with documentation? More likely I would have to go through everything line by line to get a sense of the build approach. That time also needs to be compensated, so are you prepared for spending more than you initially budgeted to get this project done even though the scope hasn’t changed?

Possible Junk
What if the existing work sucks? I’ve logged into some sites that were horribly built and not even close to something I’d feel comfortable delivering to a client or having my name associated with. Are you prepared to pay me several hours time to both investigate the failure situation and reverse-engineer the site only to come back and tell you it’s a lost cause?

High Risk, Little Reward
Projects in failure mode are risky. People involved in trying to salvage them are tense - someone expected this thing to be done by now and it’s not. Trust has already been broken so the second guy is going to have to work harder to earn it. The project now has baggage - the initial developer will continue to be the elephant in the room during the rest of the project development. Budgets are usually thin and it’s hard to justify spending even more money on something that’s already a failure. The second guy isn’t responsible for the project being in failure mode but is expected to take on the stress of getting it done - a virtual super-hero flying in to scoop up the fallen heroine and fly her to safety just before the earth cracks wide open.

Ultimately the risk is only worth it if either the reward is greater than taking on a project in non-failure mode or the potential second developer doesn’t have any other less risky and stressful projects to do. I’ve never needed the work that badly and haven’t been able to bring myself to charge significantly higher rates to a client in this position. But that doesn’t give (possibly innocent) clients in this position a way out of this mess.

Any Advice?
How about you other developers?  Have you taken on a project in failure mode? How did it go? Are there ways to surmount the challenges as the newcomer to the project? Or did it end as it began? Would you do it again?

Oops, I did it again.

The big news in 2006 was getting the site out of Flash and onto a CMS so the owner of the Villa could manage the content himself.  After 5+ years, however, the design was showing it’s age and the site wasn’t performing as well in search engines as it used to.  Earlier this year we set out on a redesign effort to address both of those issues.

For the visual design I enlisted the help of Erwin Heiser of Stookstudio. Erwin is an old ExpressionEngine friend and I felt his clean, elegant and international style was a good fit for this project.  For better input on a search strategy I enlisted the help of the East Lansing, MI based NetVantage Marketing.  The folks there helped with getting some baseline analytics in place and doing some keyword research that I used to put the overall architecture & strategy together.  New photography was a key aspect of this effort and the client sourced a local provider in Italy for that work - with great results.  The imagery really carries the site from a visual perspective.

Part of the overall strategy was also launching some one-page sites based on the targeted keywords that the initial research drove out, so along with the main site launching we also put live:

TheVillaBellini.com
WeddingsLakeComo.com
Luxury-Italian-Villas.com
LakeComoVillaRentals.com

All of these domains are run out of one installation of ExpressionEngine using the Multi-Site Manager for separating out content on the back end. This whole multi-site approach is arguably a bit experimental.  We’ll track where traffic goes and make changes to the overall approach based on success or failure in any one area. 

Thanks to everyone involved - nice to get this live before year-end!

The site design is by Grand Rapids, Michigan based Visual Hero and the front-end code was done by Andy of Ford Interactive out of the Sacramento, California area.

The project was an interesting one for a number of reasons:

EE1 - EE2 Upgrade
The previous version of the site was built in ExpressionEngine 1 by another agency. This meant that not only did I have the challenge of an upgrade, it had to be done to a site that I didn’t build initially so wasn’t as familiar with.  I won’t lie - the process was tedious and did take a couple of attempts.  I kept notes during the process and plan to write an article on Train-ee outlining my approach.

New IA
The driving purpose for the redesign was that MorganFranklin had changed the way they thought about and described their business.  This necessitated an information architecture change on the site which in turn meant that the content structure in the existing EE backend no longer had a close relationship to the front-end.  Further compounding the challenge here was that site had a decent amount of content and based on the project timeline the goal was to do as little content re-working as possible.

The solution?  An add-on!  (I’ll pause here while the collective EE community recovers from shock).  In this case the Taxonomy Module from developer Iain Urquhart successfully bridged the gap between backend content structure and front-end navigation structure while giving the client a new sense of control over their navigation.

New Template Code
While the content stayed relatively stable I re-worked the entire site from a template code perspective in an effort to be more DRY.  I still want to do a more detailed benchmarking report (and some things may still change for performance reasons) but the number of templates went from 113 to 41 and the number of channels from 17 to 11.

Built on the Fly (but not like that)
As you may or may not know, I spent the last year travelling the US by RV and I worked on this site during that trip.  Near as I can tell this is a “21-state website” getting worked on from Georgia to the west coast, then up to Washington and back across the plains to Michigan. 

Thanks to Visual Hero and Ford Interactive for their part in the project, and thanks to MorganFranklin for being flexible and working with a mobile developer!

This is something new for me.  I don’t think over the ten-odd years I have been blogging I have ever blogged about clothes.  But over the last couple of months clothes have been a large topic of thinking and conversation between MsBoyink and I.  We’ve been focusing so much on clothes because we’re tired of thinking about what to wear.

We’ve discovered that there are two main ways to think about your wardrobe at a high level and what to wear on a daily level:

• Don’t think about your wardrobe - let it grow organically.  Decide what to wear on a daily basis based on what’s available and goes together
• Look at your wardrobe as a system, developing a common base and color scheme.  Spend almost no time on a daily basis because the core pieces are the same and it all goes together

I have always taken the (lazy) #1 approach to my wardrobe.  It consisted of items bought or received piece by piece.  I had a drawer full of t-shirts in a wide array of colors, blue jeans, and the odd pair of khakis.  Up top I had a collection of button-up shirts that I liked on an individual basis, but that could only be worn with certain t-shirts. Many days this was fine - especially if I had no meetings or public outings planned.  But weeks where I would be teaching or at a conference it meant I had to plan what I could wear daily in advance by finding and creating pairings.  Wearing the wrong t-shirt early in the week meant I’d be shorthanded later or have to wear the same t-shirt twice.

Then I ran across this article by a person I had sat four feet away from on a daily basis for over a year. Go read that.  I never noticed her basic wardrobe didn’t change. Her reasoning not only makes sense to me but the idea of not having to think so much about clothes on a daily basis sounded freeing.

So I’ve set out to create my own personal uniform.  I’m almost there and am quite pleased with the results so far.  Here’s my journey:

The Gray T-Shirt
Let me back up a moment.  I need to make the context of this wardrobe approach clear.  If you aren’t familiar with my story, over a year ago I set out on an year long family RV road trip adventure.  We’re currently back in our home town, but have decided that one year wasn’t enough so after a few months of decision making and work projects we’ll be setting out again indefinitely.  What this means from a clothing perspective is that I need a wardrobe that can accommodate a wide variety of temperatures and social settings.

I needed to start with a t-shirt, one color that would work for everything.  In the past I would have considered white but what we found on our travels is that it’s impossible to keep white white.  That’s due to both being more active and outdoors, but also due to doing laundry in places with less than ideal water.  Our whites all look pretty bad at this point.

My second choice was black, but when we’re out hiking on sunny warm days in places like Arizona black doesn’t work so well. Navy would have the same problem.

So it was down to gray - light enough to be comfortable in the sun but dark enough to hide dirt & water stains.  I looked around online thinking I would buy a week’s worth of t-shirts from a high-quality supplier like Lands End or Woolrich, only to find that reviews of their latest products were poor (and many of those reviews from people who’d been buying the same t-shirts for years).  I liked the look of these American Apparel “Military Surplus Tees” but I ended up in a pinch. I was packing for a conference, the laundry wasn’t caught up, and all my t-shirt options were bright colors and didn’t work for the shirts I wanted to wear. I went out and found that the local Target had just placed a fresh display of Jerzee t-shirts and they had seven gray ones in my size for $5/ea. Sold.

Dickies Carpenter Pants
With the basic t-shirts selected it was easier to choose pants.  I’ve been a life-long wearer of Levis but haven’t been as happy with the quality of my last couple of pair.  It seems like they are about 1/2 the thickness they used to be and just don’t hold up as well.  I also wanted something just a bit dressier than basic jeans while staying as comfortable.

I came across the Dickies line being sold at Wal-Mart and found the Relaxed Fit Carpenter Jean in the olive color that would work well with the gray t-shirt.  I bought one pair as an experiment and after a couple of weeks and a couple of washings liked how they felt & fit, so bought another pair.  Actually this proved out an advantage of a standardized wardrobe - I couldn’t find another pair in my size in the olive color locally so just ordered them online.

Sketcher Shoes
Shoes have been a puzzle.  For the last few months I’ve had exactly one pair of shoes - some Keen sandals.  I love them but even with dark socks I don’t feel quite comfortable wearing them to client meetings.  I had thought to buy some shiny black shoes to dress the look up a bit, but then I tried on pair of Skecher Browsers and found them to be the perfect middle-ground shoe, casual enough to wear with just a t-shirt and dressy enough to wear with a button up shirt or more.

Topping It Off
So gray t-shirts, olive carpenter pants, and a pair of Skechers form the basis of my new “uniform”.  But maybe it’s not actually a uniform, because from there I can wear any number of short or long sleeve button up shirts that are either solid or plaids with navy, white, black or grey colors. I also have a couple of navy Henley-style pullovers that will work in this system. 

Beyond the Basics
I plan to buy two more pair of pants in the same olive color.  One a more traditional dress pant for times when I have to meet with corporate clients on their turf.  The second a pair of out-door hiking style pants with zip-off legs which will also add a pair of shorts to the mix.  I might still have a sport-coat that will go with this color scheme - if it didn’t get purged in our pre-trip preparations.  If it’s gone I probably won’t rush to replace it but know I could throw one in the mix if need be.

Coats needed to be considered - I’ve a lightweight black nylon fall coat that will work for mild temps, and a Lands’ End Squall Jacket in navy for colder temps. Nothing new needed there.

The Results
Here’s a couple of pictures from a recent conference where I was “in uniform”:

I love it.

On a daily basis I can grab the basics while I’m still half asleep.  Up top I can grab anything that makes sense based on the weather for the day.  Packing for trips is way easier - I just count the number of days I’ll be gone and toss in enough t-shirts and shirts without worrying about pairings or sequences.  Laundry is easier because it all can go in the same load.  Purging my existing wardrobe was easy - items either worked with the new scheme or they didn’t.  Christmas gift recommendations can be very specific down to item and color.

This particular quote from the article I linked to above has stuck with me:

But the truth is, most people pay more attention to what they are wearing — and whether it’s appropriate, fitting, tucked correctly, accessorized appropriately, or not — and not to what you are wearing. My clothes are not nearly as interesting as the reason my clients want to meet with me — which is them and their business, driving their success. And that’s as it should be.

If I can’t remember what other people wore the day before, why should I worry what they think about my clothes?

I’m not a fashionista.  I don’t need to make statements with my clothes.  I just want to look “put together” and professional enough that I feel comfortable and don’t look out of place in different social settings.  And now I can do that almost without thinking about it.

But I’m at a new intersection in life where the jump now makes sense.  If you’ve followed our Family Adventure at all you’ll know that we decided to either sell or rent out our sticks and bricks house and continue travelling full time.  While the immediate plan is to stay with our current fifth-wheel trailer and truck in the US, we aren’t discounting the idea of non-US travel as well.  So extreme portability/mobility is now paramount, and I will be selling my newer Windows 7 desktop with it’s (much missed) dual 22” monitors. I also need to replace my laptop - a Gateway 14” unit that’s been supremely reliable but is hitting the 3-4 year old mark. While it’s still functioning I’d like to be proactive in replacing it.

So if I have to consolidate down to one reliable and highly portable machine on which to work from I can justify looking at Macs.  While my world is mostly browser-based I’m seeing a number of development-related applications only available for Macs that I’d like to try. I was most interested in a netbook-approach as I’m tired of having to use hotpads under laptops to actually be able to sit with them on my lap - which I usually do as most tables are the wrong height ergonomically.  A visit to an Apple store on our trip convinced me the Airs looked to be the best solution (with confirmation from other developers on Twitter that is..).

So that purchase is imminent - as soon as we have time to dig out and sell off some stuff from the house so I don’t have to put it on the credit card.

Along with the new laptop I also want to downsize my laptop bag.  My current one has been a workhorse - in use for at least a dozen years.  But it’s big and bulky with far too many pockets for stuff to get lost in.  With this mobile lifestyle we end up putting computers in trailer storage compartments, under chairs in the living area, in the truck toolbox, and carrying them on public transit.  Having a bag that’s as small and nimble as the laptop itself to conserve space and weight is important.  To that end I did some research on bags yesterday and below are the ones that I liked:

Brenthaven Slimpack - $89
This one wasn’t suggested by anyone on Twitter but came up in an open Google search. I like the overall aesthetic - it’s clean and smooth and doesn’t look like it just stepped off a mountain trail.  The side-entry zipper for the laptop and attached rain poncho features are especially nice.  Downsides are large front flap that I’d have to fold under it when it’s under my chair, and the size - that it will fit a 15” laptop means it’s not quite as trim as it could be for a 13”.  If they made one specifically for the 13” air it would be a serious contender.

Booq Squeeze - $129
Booq was mentioned by a few current Mac users on Twitter and it’s easy to see why.  The design is fun and funky with the curved profile and bright inside colors.  The zippered side openings would work nicely for when the bag is under my chair (I’m always having to dig out cords, headphones, etc).  It’s upside is also it’s downside - there are too many pockets which just just give me more places to lose stuff.  The size is also an issue - if the bag fits a 17” laptop there is surely more room in it than I need.  Again, if there were a 13” - specific one I’d be more serious about it.

incase Compact Backpack - $79.95
It’s trim, simple, and clean.  Price isn’t bad - one of the more inexpensive ones in this list.  But, it’s bigger than I need and it just doesn’t have a look that excites me.

MacCase Flight Jacket - $220
When you Google “13” macbook air backpack” this one comes up a lot, and it’s easy to see why.  Of all the bags I’ve looked at this one is the most classic and distinctive with it’s “bomber jacket” aesthetic.  It appears to have about the right combination of pockets and carrying capacity, and the optional shoulder straps to turn it into a backpack are key.  The biggest downside is price (with the optional straps) it’s the most expensive of the offerings listed here. I’d also be concerned with theft, and what happens if the bag is exposed to a heavy rainstorm. Still, I’m not ruling it out.

Tom Bihn Ristretto - $120
I had really ruled out messenger bags - we have one for MsBoyink’s laptop and it just hasn’t been as handy as my backpack.  Carrying it for long distances is harder, and wearing it while on a bike is out of the question.  What has me looking at this one is that first, it’s designed for the 13” Macs so the overall size is nice and tidy.  It also has an removable waist strap that I think would make biking or heavy walking while wearing the bag tolerable.  I like the idea of a non-black bag, and it looks to have the right amount of extra storage.  It’s high on my list of possibilities. 

I’ve probably spent far too much time laptop and bag shopping already, but if you know of any options not listed here for a 13”-specific bag, preferably backpack-style, with a fun/simple/clean look and not too many pockets let me know!

My grandparents were all still alive and able to attend the event.  My Grandpa Boyink - tall, angular and stiff in his Sunday suit and relying on his cane for support after a life of manual laboring - would be the first to pass away two years later.  My Grandma Boyink, with her dark curls, permanent tanned complexion and penchant for jewelry with turquoise stones never seemed to quite find her place in the world without Grandpa and died a few years after him.  They had met while working at the same chicken farm, cleaning slaughtered birds. From that modest start they built a marriage that lasted 61 years.

My maternal grandparents lived at 1015 Colfax Street, Grand Haven, MI their whole married life - in a small story and a half house my Grandfather built after they married.  They took longer trips to the south in the winter time, but as vacations rather than relocating the entire season.  My Grandma Bosma I always remember sitting with a dress on, her legs crossed, with a Bible laying in her lap.  She dabbled in poetry and that was a small connection between us as I started writing odd bits in my career.  She was around for the birth of my son and the video I have of the subsequent visit where she holds him as an infant is a treasure to me - I never fail to tear up watching it.  She - whom I considered the strongest and healthiest of all of my grandparents - contracted pneumonia and passed away years before I expected her to. My Grandpa Bosma was adopted so we were never sure of his heritage or nationality.  His short stature was a source of merriment for us kids as we quickly topped him in height during our teen years and started calling him “Shorty”.  An industrial electrician (who wired up many a classic soda fountain in the 1950’s), he was also a life-long smoker and in spite of our constant nagging was the last man standing of all of my grandparents.  He lingered in a nursing home for a while after my grandmother passed and as I worked a short distance away I’d have Crissa and the kids meet me there for lunch once a week to visit him. If I recall the story correctly he met my Grandmother at the local grocery store where she was a checkout. Their marriage?  64 years.

My parents, retired and splitting time between a lakefront Michigan home in the summer and a house in Mission, Texas during the winter, just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. My in-laws, despite having married at ages 16 & 18 and coming from families rent apart by divorce on all sides are coming up on their 45th anniversary.

With age comes reflection, and I’ve been reflecting often about heritage and modeling of behavior.  I have a 14 year old son who needs to be navigated through the remaining teen years to adulthood and into the workforce.  It was through watching the men in my life - my hardworking, blue-collar grandparents and father - that I learned my own values and work ethic.  Because I have their personal and professional lives to contrast my own to I can so easily see how incredibly blessed I am to have a fulfilling job and to be able to choose what I do and whom I do it for.  I worry that without that same blue-collar foundation my son won’t have the same sensibilities when it comes to his work life - and indeed that is one of the reasons we are currently camp-hosting at an RV park in northern Washington.  Being here allows for some additional work opportunities and I’m actually glad to have the opportunity to model a different work environment for him - one that includes sweeping restrooms, wiping down showers, and carrying firewood for people.  I think it’s working - as I write this I’m watching him carrying a bucket and shovel around the campground digging up nasty “sticker weeds”, motivated to earn money in hopes of being able to fly a friend out to visit him next summer.

But this was supposed to be a post on marriage, not jobs.  If I can in anyway attribute any work-related success in my own life to what was modeled for me by my father, father-in-law, and grandfathers, I can only attribute any success in marriage to those same men.  If I define wealth as money or possessions, there is none of that in my family.  No family businesses, no large estates, no trust funds.  But if I define wealth as practicality, hard work ethics, and above all else modeling solid life-long commitment to God and their spouses, then I indeed have a most generous inheritance. 

But that’s only half of the story.  The other half is being married to a true help-meet, friend, and soul-mate.  She’s my navigator, my copy-editor, and my straight-man for jokes on the kids.  She still has that same beautiful smile and I still love to make her laugh.  After 20 years it’s still hard to believe how well-matched we are and I can only thank God for that.

Happy Anniversary MsBoyink!

Experienced User?
I’d like to know more about your use of the module, what problem you feel it solves, and how you educate your clients around it (vs the content that doesn’t use it).  Have you used 3rd party addons in conjunction with it and if so, which ones?  Have you run into issues with it that needed workarounds or additional addons to solve?

Confused Newbie?
Have you looked at the Pages Module and just don’t grok it?  What requirement led you to looking at it? Did you install it and experiment?  What didn’t make sense to you?

You can either reply with a comment here or by emailing me using my contact form

The finished article will appear on Train-ee with full attribution for quotes, etc.

Thanks!