In a short while, I’ll be leaving Atlanta, and heading west to Alabama for WordCamp Birmingham 2009. I’m giving a presentation on Saturday morning about Jumping Into WordPress Plugin Programming. Of course, my presentation still isn’t done, so I’ll be burning the midnight oil tonight, finishing up my notes, gathering up my bookmarks, and turning it all into a slideshow. [...]
Dougal, Mitch, and Donna
As mentioned previously, I gave a presentation last weekend at WordCamp Birmingham 2008 on “The Future of WordPress”. My section on “The Past of WordPress” ran a little longer than I had planned, but a lot of people told me that they liked that overview, so I guess it was alright. [...]
If you have been thinking about attending WordCamp Birmingham 2008, but haven’t committed yet, now is the time. There are only a couple of hours left to sign up. Registration is only $25, and that includes lunch and a tee shirt — talk about a bargain! Register now!
If you haven’t already heard, WordCamp Birmingham is coming up on September 27 & 28, 2008. And for those of you not in the States, that’s Birmingham, Alabama, not England. [...]
Many of you are probably currently familiar with hearing about the tornado that hit Enterprise, Alabama yesterday. What you might not realize is that my wife and I both graduated from the high school that was leveled in that storm system. Seeing the devastation in our old home town has been very surreal for both of us.
Our niece, who is a senior this year, was at the high school when the tornado hit, and suffered some cuts and scratches. Her car was also damaged, but unlike many others we’ve seen on the news, her parents think it should still be drivable. [...]
I have a lot of family in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. Fortunately, my closest relatives — my mother, father, step-father, grandmother, plus some aunts, uncles, and first cousins — were not in the most heavily affected areas. Granny was visiting one of my aunts in New York. Her flight home was canceled twice, so she returned on Wednesday instead of Monday, but at least she has a home to return to. My mom rode things out at her house in Fairhope, with not much worse than power outages and downed tree limbs. [...]
I’m a redneck.
Not because I was born in Alabama and spent most of my life there. And not because I now live in Georgia. And definitely not in the sense of chawin’ tobaccy and watching NASCAR.
I’m a redneck because I spent most of hottest portion of Sunday out in the hot sun. I finally got around to starting a project of refinishing some old dressers for our kids — a project that Susan has been asking me to get done for quite some time now. We first had to clear a bunch of boxes out of our garage in order to get to said dressers. But the garage is packed to the gills with stuff, so the actual work had to take place in our driveway.
As a result, I now have a quite prominent farmer’s tan (hey, wow, no Wikipedia entry yet!). [...]
On December 11, 1919, the citizens of Enterprise, Alabama erected a monument to the boll weevil, the pest that devastated their fields but forced residents to end their dependence on cotton and to pursue mixed farming and manufacturing. A beetle measuring an average length of six millimeters, the insect entered the United States via Mexico in the 1890s and reached southeastern Alabama in 1915. [...]
It’s once again time for the National Peanut Festival, held in Dothan, Alabama.
Wow. Their web site really sucks. I was going to say some other things about the Peanut Festival, but that page threw off my groove. Nevermind. Move along, nothing to see here.
WordCamp Birmingham 2009 Recap
As mentioned previously, I gave a presentation on Jumping into WordPress Plugin Development. [...]