me talking out loud

I have been mostly out of touch with the PHP world since April when I was hired by MySQL. I admit it - I have let things slip while I settled into the new job and the hoopla of the new house - figuring that not much will change in the 6 months or so while I am gone. How wrong I was.

The last couple of days I have had a few startling revelations on how much has changed. The big one the keyed me to it was watching the ##php channel on freenode and going to look up an answer from the manual to a question… Only to find the manual had been completely reorganized and I had no clue where to go to find what I was looking for. I asked a couple of friends when the manual changed - and they told me “a while ago”… clue X 4 moment!

Go to check out the PHPWomen site - and we are almost at 400 registered members, with lots of introductions in the forums… I normally would try to say hello to everyone that introduces themselves and feel bad for not doing it. To those I have missed - my apologies. Sheesh - I have not even looked over the articles for the contest till today.

Next - I *really* looked at the people who were chit chatting in #phpc on freenode… and there are way too many that I have no clue who they are! Me - the local busy body - the one who for the most part knew everyone in there (I know - sounds egotistical - but true). Outrageous!

Heck - I have not gone to the last couple of PHP User group meetings or met with any of my PHP friends just to hang out or read phpdeveloper.org in months! I am seriously slacking! Someone slap me please.

Finally took my tests (yep took both instead of doing the upgrade from Core) for the Certified MySQL Developer cert and I have to say - Dang that was hard. I passed them both thankfully though. The first test is on the basics and wasn’t too bad - did pretty well though I would have been happier if my score was higher. The second test though - man did it kick my buttocks. It covers Joins, stored procedures, triggers, views and all that good stuff. And stupid, arrogant me didn’t study much for it since I do so much of it at work - and oh boy did it show.

Anyway - at least I got a nice breakdown of my test with percentages on the various part to help me work a bit on my soft areas. That is nice. I have to admit to being a bit embarrassed by some of my scores so I won’t be posting them.

Now I just have to wait for official word that I passed, so I can see what the logo looks like and put it up. Yeah - it is all about the pretty picture.

Hmm - now time to start working on my CMDBA cert… *sigh* - no rest for the wicked.

If you follow the MySQL world, you have probably heard of the plight of Andrii Nikitin and his son Ivan. But for those in the PHP world who may not have, I ask you to please help.

Andrii Nikitin is a MySQL support engineer in the Ukraine and his son desperately needs a bone marrow transplant operation. Unfortunately where he is, they do not have the facilities to handle it - so he must go outside his country to get Ivan the medical help he needs. This, of course, will be very expensive. Estimated costs are 150000 - 250000 EUR.

MySQL and all of it’s employees are working to help Andrii raise the money he needs. Many of us (myself included) have given money to help him. Will you join us? If every person that has used MySQL over the years gave just a single dollar to help Andrii, he would have the money to get Ivan the medical treatment he needs to survive.

For more information on Andrii Nikitin and Ivan or to donate via Paypal please go here

Today I will hopefully take the last step to being a true grown up - buying a house. Only took me more the *grumble* years to do it. While all of these things are not *needed* perse to be a grown up. To me they are stepping stones along the way. Let me know if I missed anything on my checklist for it.

1) pass 18yrs old
2) have a car that runs regularly
3) have a career rather then a job
4) married
5) kids
6) buy a house
7) owing more then you make in a year

it has been a crazy week. Started out pretty good - but then my mom got sick. Very sick. She is doing well now but I have to admit to being a bit of a basket case for a while, until I knew more. Add to that missing almost 2 days of work (because I wanted to be ready to go to her if needed) that I chose to make up rather then use my vacation (moving to the house we are buying - need the vacation time then) and Kayla coming out… and it has been none stop. Sad to say - but I need the move just to relax.

Yep - I have finally ready for my trip to the MySQL User Conference in Santa Clara. MySQL and Oreilly have been incredibly generous in providing us the opportunity to attend their conference, giving us an exhibition booth and a free pass to all the sessions. With out them - we couldn’t have gone.

Anyway - for those that will be there, make sure to stop by our booth and pick yourself up a PHPWomen sticker (for your laptop, car, bag or anywhere else you can think of). Or if you just want to talk about what we are and what we are doing or the weather - that is great too. Come out and meet me!

I am pleased and proud to say that come Monday - I will be working for MySQL (*sigh* - Ok Sun). I will be working for a Dream Company of mine - doing a Dream Job. Life does not get better then that.

So to everyone who kept telling me I would get the job when I swore there was no way (you know who you are) - feel free to tell me “I told you so” next time we talk - and first beer is on me when we meet.

I have recently been asked to do some coding in C - a language I haven’t looked at (never mind code in) in over 5 years. I don’t even remember how the heck to set up the environment anymore. Anyway - got me to thinking how much has happened since that time… so many things - large and small - have happened… Where does the time go?

I have to admit to not writing much lately on the blog - mostly because I haven’t been doing anything interesting. Visiting family, making new friends, catching up on my personal reading (no tech books - well ok only a few - Mostly High Performance MySQL with a dash of Flex 2), relaxing from the move and the craziness of the last year… basically trying to feel human again rather then a wound up ball of stress that is ready to explode - Man have I needed this break. This has got to be the longest stretch I have ever done where I intentionally tried to stay away from the computer and anything related to work to regain my personal internal balance. And it has been much more difficult then I thought it would be (still ended up doing stuff for PHPWomen and going to PHP User Group meetings… ). Wonder if I fulfill the definition of a junky.

As much as I love my work and the people… sometimes you have to step back and remember that life does go on - even when the computer is turned off. I mostly managed to do it.

Unfortunately my time to stop and relax is coming to an end soon. And I have to say I will miss it even as I revel in my ability to get back into to the game.

Well we have finally done it. We have moved into a house. Not our final house - but a rental one. It is so nice to have my bed to sleep in.

Anyway - we decided to wait before buying a house so that things (life and money mostly) can settle down and we can take our time finding the house to buy. You know - pay attention to the little things like school districts and home owner associations and zip codes (parts of Yulee are under the Fernandina zip code)… little things.

Now if I am lucky I will be able to get the house semi-organized within the next week so that at least I know where most things are (even if they aren’t in their final resting spot) and get rid of most of the boxes and wrapping paper surrounding everything. Oh joy.

Well #phpc on freenode is at it again. This time we have cooked up a scheme to have a road trip to this springs |tek. Davey Shafik and I live pretty close together (he in the Tampa, FL area and I in the Jacksonville, FL area). So being the cheap people we are (conferences get VERY expensive very fast) agreed to carpool it to Chicago so we can both get there for the plane fair of one (it is about a 19 hour drive).

Somehow the conference comes up on the #phpc channel - who is going, who is thinking of going and who is speaking at the conference. We comment that we are car pooling it up - and poof! We have more people wanting to get in on it. At it’s height we had potentially 8 people going with us - though most ended up backing out. As it stands now, we are down to 4 (Davey, Ben Ramsey, Elizabeth Naramore and I) last I heard. It is pretty cool since we will picking up fresh meat drivers people as we go north so no one person will have to do all the driving.

I figure by the end of the road trip up and back… we will have become closer friends then we are now or will be ready to kill each other. Not quite sure which is more likely One thing is definite - we will have gotten to know each other well and isn’t that the goal of the community.

Well we made the flight and the drives (though I was hallucinating by the end of the first day - was kinda fun), picked up the dogs and dropped them off at my dad’s and finally made it to Georgia. All is going well except we have no home - but that will take time to find and organize. Luckily we have a room at the TVQ (Temporary Visitors Quarters) on the Kings Bay base - and I have to say - it isn’t to shabby for $30/night.

Today was a busy day. We hit up the Housing office (only got lost twice trying to find it) to see if they have any referrals for the area we want to live in (they don’t). So we took a drive to the area to just look around the area and maybe for a realtor. Liked the area (on a clear drive it is only 20 minutes away from the base) and found a real estate company that seems nice. Got a number of potential places to cruise through the neighborhoods to see if we like them. Talked to the bank about getting a mortgage and need to call a number to get a pre-qualifying value so we have a better idea of how much we can spend. Took a base tour to see some of the base’s services (gas is 2.96 on base) only to find they aren’t many and they are much smaller then we are used to but that is OK since we will primarily getting stuff out in town.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so everything will be closed. Sounds like a wonderful time to just sit back and relax for the day. Friday is soon enough to run around some more.

Well we have finished moving out of the house and are now in the hotel - 2 days and a wake up left until we go. Only one problem - the hotels internet in the rooms is out… and with the dogs in the room - I can’t sit around the lobby all day (the lobby internet doesn’t allow irc either) … *sigh*. So I will primarily be offline for a while, least until the get the room internet back up (heavan only knows how long that will be) or we get to the states - whichever happens first.

Yep - in less then one week we will be back in the states. So many things to still get done before the end of the week but everything seems to be organized and scheduled…

1) house - final pack out (Tuesday), final cleaning (in progress), yard cleaned (due by Monday) and final mowing, carpets cleaned (todo this weekend);
2) appliances - picked up on Tuesday;
3) bags packed - mostly - due by Tuesday;
4) dogs - tickets (done), crates (done), flight itinerary (done)… need to contact continental cargo for info on how to turn them in at 4AM, heath certificates (Vet Tuesday 10:20), need to drop that off at Dept of Agriculture for Guam vet to sign - pick up in 24 hours;
5) hotel reservations (accepts dogs) for the few days between when we move out and fly out - done;
6) hotel reservations for when we get there - done - need to reconfirm;
7) car - rented and can be dropped off at the airport when we fly out;
8) family notified - some - need to complete this weekend;
9) landlord final walk through inspection - Sunday;
10) sell the last car - dependent on husband;
11) Our tickets - bought and paid for - have passports available - fly out Sat the 17th at 07:30

Hope that is everything… If not - I am so screwed.

As much as I loved going to Zend Con - I now have to shoot someone from it. Why you ask - simple. They gave me bronchitis (irrelevant that my immune system was depressed from the jet lag ). As many friends know I have been battling a cold since I got back from Zend Con. Last night (Friday evening) along with my now standard hacking cough and runny nose I gained a few other symptoms - an earache, sore throat, and an on again, off again fever. Husband made me go to the Emergency Room since my doctor’s office was closed only to get the diagnosis - bronchitis (same as his). Oh joy.

So now I am drugged to the gills on antibiotics, cough suppressants and decongestants… I hate taking drugs but hopefully I will sometimes soon be able to sleep the whole night through without waking up every couple hours to hack up a lung. I don’t believe I am going to say this but… please drugs - hurry up and work!

Finally, after almost a year, the book I helped write (The PHP Anthology, 2nd Edition) is now published and available through Sitepoint, Amazon and Bookpool.

I ARE PUBLISHED - WOOT!

Can you actually beleive they gave me a trading card this year at zend con?! crazy people. Looks nothing like I do now - back when I was young and cute - but hey a girl can remember. Anyway - here it is:

Now I definitely know it is time to leave Guam since my time here has come full cirlce.

The first week I arrived on Guam, it was trying to tell me something. My husband and I got into a car accident. Now that may not sound like much but considering the last car accident I was in was back when I was in high school (no I won’t say when - just that it was a LONG time ago), it was definitely a moment to remember.

So what happens today… less then a month before we leave Guam… yep - we got into another car accident. *sigh* - life coming full circle.

HOLY COW what a wild ride. I came to the conference thinking I would be kinda busy with the PHPWomen and Zend stuff I planned to do but it was crazier then I thought - and my severe jet lag did not help things. Luckily I still managed to make a number of the sessions but not nearly as many as I wanted - though I didn’t miss a single party

Hmm - now lets see what highlights I remember about the conference…
Day 1
opening keynote wasn’t bad but I slipped out a bit early to 1) find out where we would be setting up the PHPWomen’s booth and 2) try to sneak into Terry Chay’s talk early for a good seat (it ended up being in the room where the keynote was being given - D’uh). During this time Cal Evans (my sweetie) announces that it is my birthday in front of the ENTIRE assembly after the keynote… now everyone knows I am old . So all day I had people walking up to me telling me happy birthday. Oh and did I mention that I was sung Happy Birthday in the bar as well… if nothing else this birthday was memorable (fantastic too but we won’t mention that part).

Went to Terry Chay’s talk (fabulous) and then did a thing for Zend so missed Ben Ramsey’s talk (was bummed about that), the 3-4 sessions I was setting up the PHPWomen booth and handing out some advanced t-shirts to the women and some prominent PHP community members who we promised them to. Then went to Eli White’s talk and I am sad to say started falling asleep during it (jet lag really started kicking in). And after that was very busy handing out PHPWomen t-shirts to the conference attendees for the rest of the night from our booth (forgot to take a picture of all of us with the booth babes)… then on to the parties afterward. I ended up sleeping at night for the rest of the conference in Curt’s room rather then my own since I was sharing it with 3 other people and I admit it… I needed more quiet to recover then our room could provide. Thanks Curt!

Day 2
Slept late this day (jet lag still killing me) and missed breakfast and the keynote. Came down to find a sea of purple shirts… all for PHP Women. Whomever says the community doesn’t support it’s women needed to see this. We easily had the number of Zend t-shirts beat (3-1).

Went to Andrei’s unicode session and again had to run out early to do some more of the Zend thing. Missed most of lunch trying to find all the phpc’ers to make sure they had their PHPC shirts with nick iron ons for the next day. Make it to Joel Spolsky’s keynote (excellant by the way), Elizabeth Naramore’s session on e-commerce (very good) and Laura Thomson’s session (again very good). By now I am once more exhausted from jet lag and go to take a nap so I can be awake for Jay Pipes talk… and manage never to wake up for it. That was the one session I absolutely wanted to attend and I sleep through it… LOL - I kill myself some days.

Day 3
This is the day I pretty much played hookie on. slept late again (never did make it to bed before 2:30 on any given night) missing everything except the closing keynote. Granted I was around before then but nothing really caught my eye and I was too busy talking to all the wonderful people I had met during the conference.

All in all a wonderful time though I will never over book myself like that again. I should have considered how much the jet lag would affect me (I was literally on the opposite time schedule - night was day and day was night) but one must live and learn.

To all the wonderful people I met at the conference (old and new friends) I only want to say - WE HAVE GOT TO DO THIS AGAIN!

In the tradition of zero based indexes I am calling the tutorial day - Day 0. So my day started out pretty well with an awesome Belgian waffle for breakfast. Went to John Coggleshall’s tutorial “PHP Security Crash Course” and while not everything was new (thank goodness) I did learn a few things - Ex: like some of the databases allow multiple queries to be run with one query statement (Note mysqli). All in all, very informative though I have to admit that 6 hours of lecture (even with lunch in the middle of it and finally finding Curt in the sea of people) was harder then I remember it being from school. Will be sure to go back over the slides and notes I made later.

After that came the ZCE and speakers party at 6. I have to admit - I haven’t had that much fun in a long bit. Basically hung out with the #phpc crowd and all the new people I managed to meet. Played pool with Sara Golemon and managed to win a couple of games (she should be talking about that on her blog later - so I will stop there). My only question on that is - why was I always the one who had to ask people to move to make a shot?!

Anyway after that came lots of drinks (mostly non-alcoholic for me though I did have one daiquiri), some outstanding discussions, and lots of laughter and fun. All in all - a great Day 0.