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Recently I’ve been discussing with friends what I usually do on the weekend.  My weekend isn’t completely work and it isn’t completely play, but I guess my favorites are the ones where I do a bit of both and just see where it goes.

First, I’ll go over what’s not my ideal weekend.  I guess I’m not that outdoorsy of a person that I want to be outdoors the whole weekend.  I do know people who almost need to be outdoors to relax and they seem to love to have a weekend away from everything at the cabin.  But I definitely find that to be a waste of my weekend – there’s just too much downtime with nothing to do, unless there’s a good book to read, although I can’t really read a good book for more than a couple hours at a time.

You see, to be in the web programming industry, you need to be constantly learning.  I often spend an hour or two reading up on blogs from friends mixed with blogs about industry news and trends and occasionally pick up a heavier programming book.  I also work a bit on a web programming project for myself or maybe another learning/improvement project related to administrating my server or getting things set up more robustly.  (Maybe one of these weeks I’ll get Git set up on my computer.)

Of course, the weekend needs a bit of fun.  First of all, whenever projects are going on, there is plenty of great music to listen to at a reasonable (or loud) volume.  If learning or working on a project is not going well, I’ll take a break and watch a show on Hulu or from a podcast I subscribe to.  Also, most Friday nights and at least a couple hours of Saturday and Sunday have to be some sort of activity hanging out with friends or family.

Of course, this type of weekend is not as fun as spending the weekend in Chicago, going to a MuteMath concert or a cookout at the parent’s house, but it is definitely a favorite mode of a weekend.  I feel like I have accomplished some of my personal projects and had fun in the process.  Of course, I expect your weekend to be a bunch different.  What’s your favorite way to spend time out of the office?

Today’s feature is a shirt that is seldom worn. It doesn’t sport a cool band name or even some geeky phrase, but it does show the skyline of one of my favorite cities: Chicago.

In April 2003 the University of St. Thomas Liturgical Choir went to Chicago for an extended weekend and it was lots of fun. Actually, we had so much fun, this touristy shirt was an afterthought purchased while loading up the bus to leave. It was purchased from the hotel gift/convenience store of the Holiday Inn we stayed at.

Despite the last-minute purchase, I do enjoy the shirt. It’s got a nice look at the Chicago skyline and looks great. I think the reason I don’t wear it too often is because it’s a bit small and the lettering is embroidered into the shirt and therefore the way the shirt bunches up around it feels odd while wearing it.

Although, speaking of Chicago, I’m planning on going to Chicago at least once this September. Over Labor Day weekend, my parents and I are going to hang out in the parks downtown and meet up with my sisters who live a couple hours away. Also, I’m seriously considering a September 16th trip to Chicago to catch one of the final U.S. tour dates of my all-time favorite band, delirious?.

During these trips, I hope to catch up with some of the things that I’ve yet to experience in Chicago or want to experience again. First, The R!OT and others have said that I have to get some authentic Chicago pizza, and most say Giordano’s is the place, so hopefully we’ll be able to do that. Last year, while in town for the Music Builds tour, we also found some fun Chicago places that we liked. My favorite was Epic Burger, a classy new burger joint that also had really good fries for a pretty good price. My sisters fell in love with Argo Tea, a very nice downtown tea shop as well, and although I don’t really drink tea, it just smelled nice in there. Of course, my family loves walking down by the water and hanging out in the myriad of park spaces along the water, especially Millennium Park and more.

Well, it seems that, unless I’m doing a T-shirt post, I have to start these blog posts with a disclaimer.  So I’ll do that.  DrupalCon DC is the first large conference I’ve ever really been to, so I suppose lots of things impress me.  It’s been a great show to learn about Drupal so far, and I can’t wait to get down ‘n’ dirty with Drupal coding tomorrow!

First, the folks at Development Seed, who put on the conference, did an amazing job at the graphics for the conference as well as the website functionality.  First, there’s the DrupalCon DC website, which even won a design mention from Smashing Magazine.  It’s a great background and great artwork that immediately brings a DC feel.  They translated this graphic design to the posters in the lobby, like this one:

Also, the booklet with the map of the conference rooms and session schedule had another version of this graphic:

I also love how the booklets even have the Metro underneath the ground, because that’s also one of my favorite parts of DC in the first place.

The DrupalCon DC swag was also really fun.  First, there’s the badge that verifies you paid for the conference and lists your name, which looks like a coffee cup:

And, finaly, the DrupalCon DC bag seems to be a pretty nice, reusable grocery bag with a sarcastic-looking design of a recycling bin on the side.  I like it, though, because it’s not just a crappy messenger bag or something similar that will either break or you’ll just throw it out.

Another fun item is that, before the show’s keynotes, the large projection screens show Twitter messages from people about #drupalcon.  Here’s one of my Tweet’s on the screen – my Tweet is about 2 feet tall:

And yes, although I didn’t really attend any of the parties, many folks were getting creative in the party invites or other swag that they gave out.  My favorite is for tonight’s party put on by Lullaobot, which is a real floppy disk and emulates an old pin printer’s look:

I happen to work in an office next to one of the nation’s largest malls, the Mall of America. It’s nice because I can shop there if I need to pick up something, and I can do it during my lunch break. (Plus, there’s a never-ending collection of restaurants and food courts to eat at.) However, this experience from last year is still why I really dislike shopping at malls.

So, last year I was getting my sister a Christmas present, and she specifically asked for a scarf and a hat from a major clothing retailer. I wanted to keep the present at $20 to $25, mostly because that’s what we usually do in our family. So, I went into their store and could not find what she wanted. After a while, I found a matching scarf and hat that was similar and I thought she’d like. However, the hat was around $25 and the scarf around $20.

This brings me to the first thing. My idea of fashion clothing for myself is a $20 pair of cargo pants from Kohl’s and a $20 T-shirt from a rock band I like. Everything else, actually including the pants, is purchased on a “That looks decent and the price is right” basis. I think my last had was around $8, and well, I guess I’d buy a scarf if The Day After Tomorrow happened. I guess I see very little reason to go to a fancy name-brand store when you can get the same thing at a discount clothing retailer for half the price.

Anyways, because I only have an hour lunch break, it actually took me a couple days of lunch breaks pondering over what I wanted to get her. I thought about getting the scarf or the hat by itself, but that seemed to be a bit of a cop-out. Finally, a day or two before Christmas, I decided I should just pony up the $45. It might be expensive, but it’s my sister and she’s worth it.

When I get up to the counter, the woman rings me up and tells me the total is $26. WHAT??!! I kept my composure, but I totally felt like smashing her head into the checkout counter. Darn it, if I had known this stuff would only cost me $26, I would have bought it three days ago! I would have saved hours and hours of mulling over what to do! I tried to calmly pay my $26, and I left the store cursing under my breath.

On the way out, I noticed a poster by the front door that, in neat little letters, said “Holiday Sale. 40% off everything”. Ohh, so that’s it, is it? From now on, I’ll just stick to the discount stores where I pay the price on the tag.

Spending Thanksgiving in Shreveport, Louisiana was great. Plenty of my friends from all over the country were there, and the food and drinks were amazing throughout the weekend. Now I’m heading to visit more missionaries in Indianapolis this evening.

One of my favorite moments was when Nathan gave a quick reflection. (I can’t quote him because I don’t remember it exactly, but I will paraphrase.) Nathan said that American tradition is that we should give thanks, but often we do not give thanks to anyone in particular. We should be offering this thanks to someone. However, many things, such as the trees, the weather, the great life I have, etc., cannot be attributed to any person. However, these things should always be attributed to God. It was just a great reminder for me to be thankful and, more importantly, to be thankful to God for all he has given us.

Last week, at this time, I was having major problems with my laptop.  Sometime around 6pm on Sunday, my MacBook Pro suddenly decided it could not use DHCP anymore.  (DHCP, for the uninitiated, is the ability for your computer to just work when you join a network.  If you don’t have DHCP, you have to know a valid IP address, the gateway IP address, and IP addresses of working DNS servers to connect to the same network.  DHCP just asks the router to give this to you automatically.)

So, upon realizing it was my computer only, I tried testing it at the neighbor’s house (because our Internet connection is crappy, at best).  While over there, I had Collin check the router and he said the router was handing me all the usual DHCP information, but apparently my Apple MacBook Pro was just not recognizing it.  I went to bed early and hoped we could get it working tomorrow.

During lunch on Monday, I checked at work to make sure their network was giving my machine the same problem.  It was, so I signed up for a meeting with a “Genius” at the Apple Store.  After waiting for 25 minutes for the Genius Bar to get to my turn, I spent a half hour working with the “Genius” to figure it out.  Most of the stuff he wanted to do I had already tried, such as booting Mac OS X in safe mode and even resetting the power system.  He booted from a FireWire external drive and the networking worked there, so it was a software problem.  We tried deleting a number of network-related settings files, which magically recreate themselves with the default settings in case something has gone wrong.  But, still, the “Genius” hadn’t seen this problem before, and therefore he didn’t know of any good solution besides the dreaded “Archive and Install” procedure.

Why the “dreaded” Archive and Install?  Well, because the process of backing up all your system and user files and then installing Mac OS X anew took two and a half hours!  OK, so it only took an hour and a half, but there was another hour of running all those software updates to get my MacBook Pro up to date.  That’s a long time.  Windows doesn’t even take that long, I don’t think.

So what’s the problem?  I believed the whole Apple hype that the Mac OS X experience was better than Windows Vista.  Yes, I got this issue fixed with only a day and a half of my free time taken away, but what would I have been out if I had a Windows problem?  With this kind of networking problem on Windows, all I’ve usually had to do is get a newer version of the hardware’s driver or slap the side of the tower and it would kick back into gear.  I would’ve had better ideas of how to fix it on Windows because of years of experience with it, but with Mac OS X I had to go see an “Genius” who really had no insight at all.

Is the romance with Apple over?  Far from it!  I’ve got an iPhone and everything on my laptop is working again.  I like the fact that there is someone I can go to and try to get help for my computer – there’s no such person on the PC world because the manufacturer and Microsoft just keep pointing fingers at each other.  After getting Mac OS X reinstalled, I only had to move my Applications and User folder back into the live system from the backup and I was up and running with the exact same preferences and settings as I had before.  On a Windows machine, most of my data is in my “Documents and Settings” area, but tons of my settings are scattered throughout the rest of the computer as well.

People talk about companies that need to be more open and public.  Companies should listen to their customers.  Apple makes cool products, but they always do it their way.  They never listen to their customers until a raging mob starts pounding down the doors at Cupertino.  They develop software for Windows but purposely leave out the features that would really make the application useful and keep those for Mac OS X.  And, for Windows, there’s a Knowledge Base article with five solutions to fix almost every problem – for Apple’s support website, they’ll just tell you to restart the computer and then go to see the “Genius” if it doesn’t work.

I’m not too mad at Apple – I just wish Apple would wake up to the world they live in and start acting like a real company.  I wish they’d really work to help their customers.  But, then again, maybe that’s what makes Apple cool and keeps people sleeping on the sidewalk for days in order to be the first to touch their product.

A couple days ago I posted my quick attempt at Drupal artwork. A commenter questioned my reference to most of our no-so-great skills in drawing under pressure, which all of us cover up via the computer. I responded by saying that the best sketch artist is Shawn, our manager. Shawn didn’t know this, but he proved my point this morning.

A number of months ago we all found these little wooden guys on our desk. Shawn took mine home last night and it came back as the Drupal man! I love it! Thanks Shawn!

This morning at work, we found small pumpkins on our desk. During our staff meeting, we were told to increase our humility by drawing on these pumpkins. After a couple minutes of thinking about it, I decided doing a pumpkin based on the Druplicon, the Drupal logo/mascot. My major disappointment was that the pumpkin did not have a small stalk at the top, but here it is:

Today’s shirt is one of my favorites – the ILikeAndy.com T-shirt.  Most say that my shirts are pretty unique, but this one is probably one of the most unique, mostly because it was a limited-run shirt from an independent artist.  It’s totally rock ‘n’ roll.

Andrew Osenga is an independent singer-songwriter and is the former leader of the band The Normals, everyone’s favorite band from Normal, Illinois.  He also currently plays as a member of Christian folk super-group Caedmon’s Call, who I like to think of as the Main Street Singers of Christian music.  (I won’t keep the A Might Wind analogies rolling, because I think it’s a bit too early to call Amy Grant and Gary Chapman the genre’s Mitch and Mickey.  Just to clarify, if you get all those references, you’re too much of a Christian music geek, just like me.)

The shirt has an interesting history.  Apparently, a couple years before the shirt was made, Andrew Osenga lost a toe while mowing the lawn.  That’s hardcore!  And he had enough spirit to make an awesome-looking, random, “vintage” T-shirt out of it.

Half the reason I purchased this shirt is because I love supporting independent artists and I’ve always liked Andy’s music.  But, the other half is because I love innovative Internet marketing, and buying a domain like ILikeAndy.com and pointing it to your site is fun marketing.  Whenever someone asks what the shirt is about, I always direct them to go to the site and check out his music – there’s tons of free Andrew Osenga on there, including the free Letters To The Editor EP.  So, seriously, check it out.

Since I have nothing exciting to post at the moment, why not just copy stuff from someone else’s blog? Here’s some from a great post by my friend, Joe:

Because that’s what this movie is about: WALL-E is the protector of EVE and the life she carries inside of her. It’s one of the most beautiful — and perhaps unexpected — metaphors for life, and the role of a husband to protect his wife and family, that I’ve ever seen.

This is just a tiny bit of a great article, so go read it already. Also, check out Joe’s blog for more great stuff about gaming, life, and cool movies. Who knows, you might even find Joe and I doing some sort of discussion podcast sometime in the future. I know, that sounds scary. I’d probably get bored listening to it myself.