This is my personal blog, and I spend a lot of time espousing my personal views, but not too much time talking about what’s happening in my life. It’s usually either because I feel there’s not enough going on worth writing about or because I’m so overwhelmed I lack the time to do so. Right now it’s the latter.

So, here’s the update…

Danielle is now roughly 7.5 months pregnant and looking every much as radiant and happy as you can expect from a 7.5 month woman pregnant in the 100 degree Concord heat. I’m actually very proud and impressed with how well she’s doing considering that she doesn’t really have a reputation for “going with the flow”. But her excitement over the impending birth of our first child goes way past the “I want this kid out of me” feeling you’d expect. Consider that she pushed against this idea of having kids for quite some time for various reasons. Given that we’ve talked about having kids sense we met, I knew that most of her pushback was for reasons other than her not actually wanting kids. I mean, she’s had a name for a daughter for years now and we always talk about how much fun it would be to take our kids to the zoo, park, whatever. But she’s genuinely excited about having this kid and is doing everything she can to educate herself so that he has the absolute best chance of good health and happiness once he pops out.

The nursery is about 90% complete, minus a shelf and some minor decorations. Danielle painted stars on the closet doors and clouds on the ceiling. Her father helped us out a lot with the manual labor, especially as I’ve been crammed behind this damn computer nonstop for weeks. We had the family shower this past weekend and everyone was amazingly gracious and generous in so many ways. This kid is going to spoiled.

As I mentioned previously, we’re having a son, which is very exciting. Before we found out his gender, I really didn’t care whther we had a boy or a girl. Now that I know we’re having a boy, I’m looking forward to the things that fathers and sons can do together – Boy Scouts, fishing, camping, dealing with all the growing up issues, watching Cal games together on Saturday afternoons… Yes, I can – and will, if it happens – do these things with a daughter, but there is a special father-son bond that forms during some of these times that I’m really looking forward to.

Our good friends Phil and Claudia had their daughter back in April. Claudia has come over to visit a couple of times since then and it’s given me the opportunity to find out what it will be like having a screaming child around while I’m trying to work. It was remarkably easy, actually. I’m told it’s different when it’s my kid, but no one has been consistent in exactly how. When I say I don;t mind the crying, folks tell me it will be different when it;s my kid. When I say I can’t stand crying children, people tell me it will be different when it’s my kid. So, which is it?

We have settled on Dustin Robert Zazueta as a name. No other name has really jumped out at us, and this one has a good back story – it came to Danielle in a dream early in her pregnancy. Reaction has been mixed, and even I find it a bit awkward to think of my son as a Dustin, but I’m sure it will eventually sink in and become natural.

Running my own business has become a tremendous challenge. With a kid on the way, I’m under more pressure than ever to perform. Right now, I’m the sole breadwinner and that’s a TON of pressure. Business is mostly OK, but turn-around time is atrocious. I work mostly with contractors and freelancers and have found most of them to be either flakey, diva-esque or both. My own lack of organization doesn;t help much. I’m completely buried in work at the moment and am scrambling to get as much off my plate as possible before Dustin arrives. One big project I’ve been working on promises to ease some of this burden and dramatically improve turn-around time, but I need to steal time from family and other client work to make any progress on it. I’ve learned a great deal in the last few months and have a clearer vision of our future, but I need to dig myself out of my current hole before I can fulfill that vision.

Lately I;ve become more involved in my church, which is a rather odd, out of character step for me. We began going a couple of years ago when Danielle was pregnant the first time. When we were told there was no heartbeat during an ultrasound, I prayed like I hadn’t in years and made a promise to start going to church, something Danielle had, in the past, told me she wanted. As soon as I said that, the doctor found a heartbeat. Not one to mess with a promise made to the big man, we started attending services that Sunday. We checked out one or two churches before fiunally finding St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal in Concord. The Episcopalian faith, at least as it’s promoted in our diocese, really gels with my personal and spiritual beliefs. We favor reason over blind faith and seek to better understand Christ’s teachings and apply them to modern times rather than focus solely on miracles and Biblical esoteria. We pray not for things but guidance, which to me is a huge difference as I strongly believe the old axiom that God helkps those who help themselves. My Buddhist beliefs – always more a philosophy than a religion – meld really well with the Episcopalian views of God, prayer and morality. That we’re accepting of women as equals and homosexuals as deserving the same rights and respect as heterosexuals is just iciing on the cake.

So, how involved am I? Well, I sing and play guitar every Sunday for the 9am contemporary service (that means I’m up at 7am for an 8am practice just about every Sunday – seriously!) and am starting the first men’s fellowship group the church has seen in about a decade. I wanted to join a men’s support group to have peers to discuss some of the issues and whatnot I’m going through and find spiritual and personal support. Since no such group seemed to exist around me, I chose to start one. Playing the guitar Sunday mornings is literally the highlight of my week.Both of these activities, though, take more precious time that I simply don’t have, but I’ve made time for them because they bring me that much joy.

I tell everyone that, right now, my life is dominated by business and baby, and that’s a fact. Once the kid is here, it’ll no doubt get worse, but I’m as prepared for it as I can get. I know everything is about to be tossed into further turmoil, and ti does terrify me on some level, but I also know I can handle it. I can handle anything so long as I keep my head and continue moving forward. This is my core belief above all others, one I can’t wait to instill in my son.

So, yeah, yeah, kudos to McCain for making the historic decision of choosing a woman to be his running mate. Because of this, we’re guaranteed in November to have either the first female vice president or the first black president. Rah rah.

But the melanin and ovaries are just a sideshow. In November, we won’t be electing either a black president or a female vice president, we’ll be electing an administration that will lead this country through the next four to eight years. Given the current economic, political, social and international climates, this period of time may be among the more challenging in our history. Is the combination of speculator-driven sky-high oil and a failing housing market enough to cast us into a pit of economic depression? Will our continued presence in the Middle East embolden further attacks on this nation? And, will the very threat of those attacks further erode our civil rights and sense of freedom and safety?

Obama has constantly had to fight off questions regarding his apparent lack of experience, though I argue that eight years in the state legislature and three in the senate, while unorthodox for a presidential candidate, does provide enough political history to judge him by. That he chose Joe Biden to be his running mate – a man with a solid record of strong foreign policy experience and proven commitment to his convictions – only goes further to prove that the dems have a strong man on their ticket.

McCain has been nothing but a disappointment to me, and his choice for running mate further lowers my esteem for him. You’ll recall there was a time when I considered crossing party lines to support him. I’m glad I didn’t. Palin has an extremely thin record of public service, having been elected governor just over a year ago for a state that ranks 47th in population. Her name had been tossed in the air once or twice as a potential running mate, but in every occasion she was dismissed as a long shot – not enough national exposure, not enough experience.

Given the so-called “Party Unity My Ass”, or PUMA (I despise this term, by the way), contingent still crying in their cereal about Hillary’s loss and given the McCain team’s recent attempts to exploit those crazy few who have become “Hillary Supporters for McCain”, chosing Palin as his VP seems to be an unbelievably shallow and gimmicky gesture. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, but she rose to prominence because of her many years of not only standing by her husband’s side, but fighting for her political beliefs as an active member of his administration. Her work in the Senate has also been strong and her record proves her as a political powerhouse.  Palin’s record, what little there is, is staunchly conservative (she is anti-abortion, pro big oil and anti-environment). Her political beliefs could not be more different than Hillary’s. I find it hard to believe that there are enough PUMAs out there who, in supporting Hillary, initially defended strongly liberal values but are willing to throw them completely aside because the opposition hired a chick.

If indeed this is McCain’s strategy, it’s clear to me now that he cares less about what’s best for this country and more about winning. He stands smiling next to the man who, just four years ago, used his cronies to question John McCain’s patriotism and, especially, his bravery during the time he was a POW. The same man whose administration allowed and promoted some of the same kinds of torture McCain endured at the hands of the Vietcong. McCain turned his back on his pledge to keep our coastlines free of the threats posed by excessive oil drilling and has turned away from promoting real sustainable alternative energy in favor of helping the oil companies, the GOP’s biggest financial supporters. Palin, whose husband works for BP and whose state benefits tremendously from our addiction to oil, won’t just be in the oil industry’s pockets – she’ll be their full time representative in the Whitehouse, much in the way Bush and Cheney have been for the past eight years. And every so-called PUMA who has now turned coat to vote for McCain and his female sidekick have proven that they care less about their political ideals and the future of this country than they do about some twisted sense of gender equality.

My greatest concern about Palin is that she’s not looking at the VP job as an opportunity to put her country first. She seems to believe that her job as VP will still have her representing Alaska’s interests and not those of the nation as a whole. I make this judgement based on this quote from an interview she did with CNBC’s Larry Ludlow:

“[I'm not sure I want the vice presidential job] until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day. I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here.” (emphasis mine)

Biden has made no bones about his pride in being from Delaware and what it means to his state that he is the vice presidential nominee for the Democrats. But at no time has he said he would put Delaware’s needs first in the way Palin has intimated she would for Alaska.

McCain is pandering with his VP choice, and it makes me sad that a man who once had the repuation for standing up and fighting for what he believes, even when it went against his party’s positions, and reaching across the aisle to find bi-partisan solutions to the troubles plaguing our nation has allowed his party to erode his values solely to attain the highest office in the land. The Republican Party is the party of convenient opinion and lack of conviction. It’s the party of “Anything to Win It.” They will sell their souls to get another four years, just as McCain has sold his. There are no conservative values left to defend, only petty bickering, pandering and gimmickry.

I have a long diatribe prepared mentally against how poorly the Obama camp blew all the good will and publicity garnered by their text messaging stunt, but I’m going to drop it. I’m just too excited about an Obama/Biden ticket.

Biden has a tremendous back story – a son in the military, the loss of his first wife and child days after entering the Senate, a rather impressive career of standing his ground on tough issues – and he will bring great balance and gravitas to the Obama campaign. I’m actually excited about this ticket, genuinely, giddily excited. I can not wait to vote in November.

With the rumors that McCain has chosen Mitt Romney as his running mate, I’m so completely, totally on the Obama side now that I can’t imagine why I ever liked McCain to begin with. Between McCain’s cuddling up to Bush in recent months after criticizing his handling of the war in Iraq and Romney’s backpedaling on gay marriage and reproductive rights issues, the Republican ticket is shaping up to be the “2008 Lack of Convictions Tour.” It’s all pandering to their base when, really, they should be focused on the stronger, more difficult middle. Not that I’m interested in four to eight more years of “compassionate convservatism” in this country, but Romney seems like a strategic dud to me.

Of course, I would like to see Biden intelligently address his past criticisms of Obama if for no other reason than to make those questions go away, and he’ll need to rein in his mouth a bit. But, honestly, Biden’s a true statesman and a true boon to this nation. My real hope is that Obama and Biden will work more closely together in the Whitehouse than did Clinton and Gore and that they’ll do so in a more progressive way as opposed to the way Bush and Cheney have worked together.

But, first things first… let’s get these two into the Whitehouse!

At TechKnowMe, we design, develop, maintain and market websites for small businesses. Most websites, at least under the hood, have pretty much the same requirements, so it’s usually more efficient to build the site on top of an existing platform. Since our clients tend to be extremely budget conscious, we favor open source software wherever we can in order to reduce support, licensing and upgrade costs. This approach usually saves time and money and makes the resulting site easier to maintain when new people are hired to work on it as the learning curve is typically less steep.

Unless, of course, you pick the wrong platform.

If the platform is poorly coded, documented, uses esoteric templating styles or has no support from its community of users (or, worse, doesn’t support their community of users), you’ll have an uphill battle in trying to implement it. I know – I’m currently working with such a system now because I chose poorly. I’m too far into the project to turn back, so I’m committed to muddling through, but I’ve learned a great many lessons from mistakes that I have no intention of repeating. What follows is a checklist that can be used to evaluate just about any open source project for quality and long-term stability, based on my experiences both recent and past. Just about all of these tips, aside from the ones suggesting you look at the source code, can be used to evaluate closed-source, commercial products as well.

1. Perform a Google search using the name of the project. In the results, look at the number, quality and content of blog and forum posts from various sites. If there are a lot of blog posts, that is usually a stronger indication of support as it means the project was important enough for someone to blog about it. If there are a lot of forum posts, read through them to see if they’re asking for help and, if so, whether they are receiving quality answers solving their problems. What is the general tone of both posts – positive or negative?  Remember that developers and geeks like to argue over esoteria, so read carefully through the negative posts to ensure the negative comments are not about features of the product that will negatively impact your implementation.
2. Visit the project’s web site. If the project has no website other than a page on SourceForge, that’s a big strike against it. The site should have detailed documentation as well as some form of user-created documentation, whether in the form of a wiki or a set of support forums. Read the documentation and make sure it’s written so that you understand it and can easily follow along with it. Read through the forum postings and make a rough estimate of the ration of questions to solutions. If the board is full of unanswered or un-addressed questions, that’s a red flag and typically means either the community is not supporting each other or the projects host is not supporting the community. Also look at the lag time between questions asked and when they were answered. How active are the boards? When were the last 10 messages posted? If there hasn’t been much activity in at least the last week, that’s a major red flag.
3. One of the biggest advantages of open source software is the fact that the source code that defines the software is completely free to review by anyone. Even if you have no intention of modifying the source code, Take a look at it in your favorite IDE or text editor. Look especially for liberally peppered comments that clearly describe the what and why of the code it’s commenting. If you don’t see any comments or very few comments, that’s a major red flag – it will prevent independent coders from being able to easily extend the code or continue to support it should the project hosts abandon it. Comments in code are also a good indication of a programmer’s level of expertise and commitment to the community of people who will maintain it. Code without comments is only good for a one or two-person programming team, not for a community of developers.
4. Look at the quality of the code. Even if it’s not in a language with which you’re familiar, is it written in such a way that you get the gist of what’s going on? Are variable names clear? Are functions well-structured? Does it use established programming practices and methodologies? If it’s object-oriented, does it make proper use of objects, methods, encapsulation and inheritance? If the code is difficult to follow and does not adhere to established standards – even older standards – it will probably not be well supported by a community of developers and is, thus, a red flag.
5. Do a Google search for tutorials that discuss customizing the look and feel of the project, if you’ll be doing any customization. The best documentation should appear in the project’s documentation section on their home website, but several people may have written their own customization guides to explain some of the more intricate or specific facets of customization. A lot of results means a well-supported project. Few results is a red flag.

Your threshold of red flags may vary along with your tolerance and willingness to work through any problems you may encounter on a project.

Are there any tips I missed? How do you evaluate open source projects? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.

Danielle discovered a new web toy, the somewhat desperately named MakeMeBabies.com. So we proceeded to find the best photos we could of ourselves (we need to take more photos, apparently) and see what we come up with. And now, I weep for our almost-child.

Picture 1 – “Have Your Consdered a Term Life Policy with Farmer’s Insurance?”

If you can get past the toupee (really? A toupee?) this one looks kinda cute.

Picture 2 – Home Alone

The good news is that we can probably make some money off him for a while pimping him out to Hollywood. That is, until he sues us, gets emancipated and starts pimping himself out on Hollywood Boulevard.

Picture 3 – Gay Pirate (Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That)

With two gay uncles, one on either side of the family, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a distinct possibility our son may also be gay, and I’m more or less OK with that. However, I don’t think we should be setting him up for it so early. Setting him for a life of piracy, in the other hand, I fully support.

Picture 4 – My Son, The Duck

Remember when you were in your early 20s and you saw some parent with their kid dressed up as some kind of animal on a non-costume oriented day and you told your partner, “I will never do that to my child!” Danielle has already registered for an outfit that would dress our son up as – and I swear I’m not making this up – a jalapeno pepper. I’m so sorry, son.

Picture 5 – Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

It’s astounding, time is fleeting. Madness takes control. I suppose I should be happy the MakeMeBabies.com generator doesn’t apply fishnets and mascara.

Cory Doctorow released his latest short story on the Tor Books site recently. I’m still reading it – I’m stealing time in order to do so – but, so far, I find it wildly compelling. Like, dangerously compelling. Like, I really, REALLY like the idea of joining a monastic order focused entirely on programming and little else. The vivid description of life on the “campus” reminds me vaguely of those heady days at Intuit when I was surrounded by the kinds of techies who programmed for fun and just happened to also get paid for it. I could walk down the hall to the engineering department with any number of weird technical questions and know I’d have someone with far more experience and knowledge than myself patiently walk me through a solution. When my skills improved, I took great joy in bringing them actual challenges that would require us to recruit a few other minds to find the solution together. I spent a lot of time complaining about things when I was there, but that was all youthful arrogance. Even then, though, I loved the comradery and, more importantly, the true meeting of minds whenever something needed to get done.

I have never been able to recapture that since leaving Intuit, except for a brief period during the final days at MightyWords. In fact, I’ve worked in a technical vacuum for so long I’ve practically trained myself to completely distrust anyone else’s technical knowledge. It’s gotten tot he point where you really need to work to earn my trust in that area, and precious few have.

On a related note, Danielle and I went looking for office space yesterday. We’re not quite able to afford it, but we’re seeking financing at the moment so that we can. When I was going through the New Venture Training class and putting together my business plan, I saw very clearly that my biggest challenge would be finding competant, reliable people to help me get the job done. That has turned out to be an incredibly prescient observation. The problem with my industry is that it’s full of freelancers advertising on Craig’s List who promise to be able to get the job done but, more often then not, grow frustrated working with the client and drop the ball before everything is finished. It’s been my goal to act as the go-between – to absorb the frustration most freelancers have working directly with non-technical clients while absorbing the frustration most clients have working with freelancers. This has been a slightly greater challenge than I anticipated as it turns out that most freelancers I’ve worked with have turned out by their very nature to be flakey. I think part of it may be that I’m not paying them what they think they’re worth, but, truth be told, most freelancers have an exceptionally inflated sense of what their skills are actually worth. It alarms me that people with only a passing knowledge of PHP or any other web programming language – who still have the audacity to call themselves “web developers” – feel they can command triple-digit hourly rates. For that amount of money, you’d better know the language pretty well AND produce readable, maintainable working code.

My potential solution to this problem is to create a space where freelancers doing work for us can drop in and take advantage of a truly collaborative environment, hence the seeking of office space. By creating such a space, I feel they’ll be more committed to getting the work done, have access to better resources when they run in to trouble and have a stronger sense of responsibility for the work they produce. My dream is to set up a conference room with a table consisting of several electrical outlets in the middle, secured wireless access and a well-stocked mini-fridge. I’d ultimately like at least one full time “Jack of all trades” type person – a clone of myself from 2001 would be perfect – who could handle a majority of the quick and dirty work while also batting cleanup on major projects. The rest would be local freelancers who could drop in at their leisure during business hours and work together on our various projects. After reading Doctorow’s story, I have a clearer vision of the perfect version of this setup. I’m dying for the kind of technical collaborative environment I once had. Owning my own company means I can build it if I want, but it requires the money and perseverance. I have the latter and am working on the former.

The space we looked at needs work. A lot of work. The cost of leasing it isn’t too bad, and I bet I could get a better deal if I bargain them down. It’s not perfect, but it could be a decent stepping stone between working out of my den and relying on remote workers and finally building the company of my dreams. Growth is good.

I discovered two things in the last two days that finally has me believing the television’s days may be numbered:

1. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog released the final two episodes, which were both hilarious and sad and shockingly good.

2. I just watched all ten episodes of “The Guild“, a web-only serial that should start filming its second season sometime this month.

In both cases, the writing was sharp, the production either looked reasonably professional or made excellent use of the budget aesthetic, and I was compelled again and again to click the “Next” button. Both shows will also be available on DVD with some extras, and I’m giving serious consideration to purchasing them if for no other reason than to show my support.

I heard about both shows from various sites I read on a daily basis, so I’m not obviously alone in discovering these. Further, both were weeks or months old by the time I found them, but still out there waiting for new audiences. As the word about them spreads, they’ll no doubt gain even more popularity. I’m tempted to say this will lead to more “real” work for the actors, producers and writers involved, “real” meaning television or movies… but I wonder if that’s even a good idea.

I’ve been boggling over how they paid for the production of both shows. In the case of Dr. Horrible, it was Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame’s production company that no doubt footed the bill. In The Guild’s case… well, maybe they all did it on spec. Either way, I’m guessing that reaching profitability on each project, modest as it may be, will be far easier than the tradition television process of developing a show, shooting the pilot, seeking a network, seeking approval, seeking sponsors, shooting the remaining episodes and hoping to God they survive the season.

YouTube and Hulu make it easier and cheaper to gain syndication for a show without paying a bundle or taking too many huge risks. The result is that YouTube is full of a lot of crap, yes, but it’s also full of the kind of talent that regularly gets swept aside in favor of what a few people with narrow vision consider a better risk. Felicia Day, writer and star of the Guild (and Penny in Dr. Horrible – Not a coincidence that I stumbled across both at the same time), proved herself a sharp and witty writer as well as a capable enough actress to actually carry a series, albeit a short one. In the years that’s she’s been an actress, I’ve never seen her in anything but supporting roles, and I was completely unaware of her writing talents.

One caveat about this, though, is that both shows – and a majority of the shows I find online – are definitely geared to a more geeky audience. Not everyone watching The Guild is going to get all of the gamer references, but it has built a strong following amongst those who do. The geek audience is a rather narrow one, but it is the dominant one online, no doubt, and a rather lucrative niche to exploit. It makes me wonder, though, whether this means these kinds of shows truly will replace television. After all, TV is a mostly passive medium that allows a viewer to partake in the entertainment with very little effort. Online, I need to know where to look for such programs as well as how to view them. And, while YouTube isn’t exactly a DOS 3.1 FLY player in terms of complexity, I know of many people who still find it intimidating, a fact that sort of filters the available audience.

Regardless, as we become less intimidated with this technology, we may see more videos like these flourish and gain popularity. Considering how much they flatten the distribution network, thus bringing the producers closer to the audience and, therefore, closer to the money, it may some time soon become the only lucrative way to make money in the entertainment biz as an artist. It seemed like a pipedream a few years ago, but it really looks likely to me now. I find that very exciting.