Mobile blogging again. I suspect most of my entries for the next few days will be mobile.

I had another ‘only in la’ day today. First I saw Puff daddy (or whatever his name is these days) at the Beverly center…where I was weak and bought leopard. I couldn’t help it, I was in the apple store annyway. Oh well

Then I went to the drugstore, where I discovered there is now an entire section for ‘rehab and recovery’ cards. That’s gotta be an LA thing, right? I can’t imagine Idaho or something having a desperate need for hundreds of “glad you beat the addiction” cards.

I will email in at some point during my trip tomorrow. Wish me luck!

I will be heading out to Connecticut on Wednesday to hang out with my family in the middle of nowhere.

I’m not too concerned about travel, not on the way there, anyway. The way home could be a different matter. I fly LAX to Dulles to Hartford going, and Hartford to O’Hare to LAX. It’s the O’Hare part that worries me, I have a 45 minute or so layover, plus that’s the one airport where I’ve been stuck on a runway forever…we’re talking six hours or so.

That experience was probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to me traveling, which on the one hand is saying something, on the other…it probably means I’ve been fairly lucky.

The flight was originally delayed due to the flight crew not being there. The flight they were on was late. Their flight got in about an hour late, and we were finally put on the plane.

The plane was something like 25th in line for takeoff. We waited, and waited, and waited….then they said something was wrong with the plane. But, they could fix it while we were on the runway, if we went back to the gate, everything would take longer.

So the plane was moved to an out of the way spot on the runway, and we waited some more. This was where the six hours comes in.

My flight was supposed to have left at 3pm. At 11:30 pm, we returned to the gate. They couldn’t fix the problem, and needed to use another plane. Believe it or not, there was a plane available, and that flight was going to leave at 12:30am.

We were all offered hotel rooms, meal tickets for the airport and rebooking on the first flight in the morning. I’d say maybe 80% of the people took the airline up on their offer, by then, everyone was just frustrated and tired and annoyed. Not angry, not anymore, just tired and in need of sleep.

I only wanted to get home and sleep in my own bed. I really didn’t want to wake up in the morning and have to go through all of this again. And I did finally make it home, on that second flight, at about 4am.

I’ve been stuck in London and Las Vegas overnight, once because of an obnoxious agent, once because of bad weather. I’ve had countless flights delayed or canceled…I even had an entire TRIP canceled by an airline because of weather.

But this…this was unbelievable. See, I finished my book about 3 hours in, and didn’t have anything else to read. I was talking to a friend on AIM (after 1/2 hr they gave up on the “no cellphones” thing), but my treo’s battery was nearly gone. I was going to die of boredom!!

Fortunately, a couple of really cool guys went around the plane and got me two more books. I can’t even remember what they were right now, but I read them cover to cover. I was also able to get into my luggage when the planes were switched, and grabbed another book out of there.

I travel with three books now, as well as my power cords for my cell phone. I’ve had moments since where I ended up going through all three books, and had to charge my battery in the middle of an airport.

Wednesday I’m going to be traveling all day. I leave here at noon, I land in Hartford around 11:30pm. But at least traveling means hours and hours to read a good book…or three. “Always be prepared,” right? I was a good Girl Scout. Is that really a surprise to anyone?

There has been a lot of whispering in the industry lately about whether or not we’re entering into, or already in a new bubble.

I worked for a small dot-com during the last bubble, and I loved it. I loved the startup atmosphere, the dedication everyone had, and the sheer fun that I had on a daily basis. We clearly had a solid idea – we were creating video podcasts ten years before the term existed – but we were fully lacking a business model. Without revenue, nothing can survive.

The world then was filled with small companies run by young people with amazing ideas. If you were over 30, you were probably too old. The power was truly in the hands of the young.

That aspect of the bubble has returned, in a large part thanks to open platforms, and the ability of independent developers to easily get their work in front of millions of users.

A large part of my job is talking to these developers, and for a little while, anyway, it surprised me how young many of them are. Until I realized it was the same thing happening all over again…with a twist.

Yes, there are VC’s throwing money at application developers. There are multiple multi-million dollar funds with grants available just for them. But there’s one big difference between the funds now and those in the 90’s. I strongly suspect these funds are only going to give money to developers already making money. After all – you really don’t need funding to get an application up and running.

There are multiple sites that will help you build an application. There are even more sites that will host an application for you. There is an amazing amount of documentation and tutorials online for whatever language you’re writing in (I’m learning Ruby at the moment, and have found the online help better than any book I have). And it’s all free.

Anyone who has an idea and wants to create it can. If the idea’s good enough, and the developer has just the right amount of smarts to get it in front of the right people (which truly isn’t that difficult these days), the VC’s will come running. A teenager in school doesn’t need millions in funding, or to generate millions in revenue a year. But a couple hundred thousand? That’s certainly possible now.

This isn’t a bubble. This is just a shift in power. It’s not only the young jumping on this trend, of course, it’s also little baby companies. A “company” consisting of one person programming in their living room after work, or five friends with a good idea setting up shop just to see if they can make it work. It astonishes me how many of my friends have left larger companies to go start their own…and how many of them are successful. Of course, I love to think it’s because I just have awesome friends (had to be said ), but it truly is much easier to turn a good idea into a solid business these days. You don’t need millions in funding to get started, which means you don’t need the big guys.

Got an idea? Do it. You can do it all for free these days. If it doesn’t work out, you probably lose a few weeks of your life to the computer. But you also could end up changing your life.

This is just awesome to watch, and I’m so excited to see how it all plays out.

I live in West Hollywood, which is a pretty cool neighborhood to live in. I’m walking distance to the Grove shopping center, five minutes to the Beverly Center, and a little over 10 minutes from work….if there isn’t any traffic. In reality it tends to take me about 20 minutes to get to work, and 30 – 60 minutes to get home.

My neighborhood is very busy, lots of resturants and shopping, and traffic is obviously a problem.

On Wednesday, signs began going up warning of excessive traffic on Sunday – the Grove was going to be closing at four. I pretty much can’t leave my apartment if there’s going to be “excessive traffic” – god only knows what they consider “excessive,” considering what typical is (especially now that there are writers picketing outside CBS, and news crews all over the WGA office) – I finally got around to looking up what was going on today.

The Grove is having their tree-lighting ceremony, and apparently, it’s a big deal. The Goo Goo Dolls are performing, as well as Patti Labelle and a whole slew of other folks. Being able to walk to Nordstrom has always been nice, but this happening across the street is going to be sweet!

Guess I’m NOT stuck at home tomorrow night. I mean, with the traffic and all, it’s not like I can do anything else. Why not go?

I never thought it would happen, but, I’m really starting to settle in to LA. Go fig!

It seems like I’m posting an entry via a different method every day now. Currently I’m using Flock, which I haven’t checked out since it was in its infancy. It’s come a long way…

Speaking of random websites. I’ve become an avid user of the most wonderful “use this if you’re a lazy dope” website ever. You send it contact information for someone, it sends you back an .ics. Tell it you have an appointment, you get back a .cal file. It’ll then email, sms, whatever you to remind you of stuff.

I’m so lazy when it comes to creating actual “contacts” in Outlook, which doesn’t matter unless you’re trying to pull up people on your blackberry – your “universal address book,” or whatever it’s called on the PC doesn’t exist. So the contacts AS contacts in Outlook is important.

Anyway, if you’re lazy like me, check Sandy out – she just came out of private beta. Really simple, and so perfect for me. I have some tweaks I’d love to make to the site, but for now? I likey.

Wanted to know what my day was like? Here it is. Those of you who have been reading my blog the longest will probably get the biggest kick out of this, since 5-6 years ago I did these entries allll the time. I haven’t in years, though, so take this in good fun, and please believe me, I don’t do this often.

Here we go – dayblogging. Lifeblogging. Twigging. Or as I like to call it, timed ramblings.

9:30 am – G’morning, just got in to the office, time to get coffee, then jump on the first conference call of the day.

10:15 – uh. Fire alarm went off. Made for an interesting moment during the call: “Sorry, I can’t hear a word you’re saying, have to go.” No reason for the alarm, and it turned off after a few minutes. But still interesting.

11am – First scrum of the day down, two conference calls down. Word is the fire alarm was a “test of the system.”In the middle of the morning with no warning? Ookie.

11:15 – I’ve been stood up by my 11am. Love her, though, so all’s ok, I’ll take the spare time, I’m sure we’ll catch up later.

11:35 – Caught up with my 11am. She was still running an hour behind from the time change. How cute.

12:06 – Second scrum down, one more to go. Actually, I’m not sure if we’re having it. Verrrry quiet in the office today, lots of engineering folks (and a big chunk of the api team I’m on) up in the Bay Area for OAuth/Open Social talks. Can’t complain about quiet.

12:15 – Neat, there is now a couch in one of our war rooms.

12:30 – Under headphones, writing specs. 1/2 hr until my next meeting. The guy who looks like my ex just walked by. I wish he wasn’t a nice guy…it’s always weird talking to him. I have not, on the other hand, seen the Cute Boy yet. I did hear his voice this morning, or at least, I thought I did.

3:45 – Two more meetings down, one more to go. To do list is growing.

4:25 – Meetings done for the day! In case you were counting, that was 5 meetings, plus 3 scrums for the day. Phew. Now that I can breathe…going to get more coffee (I’m 100% running on coffee right now, I never made it upstairs to grab lunch), then work.

5:00 – Reading documentation and writing specs.

5:15 – Ooh, new music playing on the ipod! I have a tendency to not really pay attention to the music I listen to when I’m working, even so far as the point where I discover that I’ve memorized lyrics to songs I didn’t know I’d heard. Right now I’m listening to the “new” Adema album, and I swear I have never heard this song before (and I like it!). But this is hardly new, I’ve had the album since it came out a couple months ago, and listened to it a billion times. And sure enough, I know the lyrics. But I didn’t know I knew the song.

5:30 – Seriously, I’ve heard this album before? I’m such a dope sometimes. Sounds slightly like old school Poison, although I’m not sure Adema would love the comparison.

5:49 – It’s always fun when developer documentation refers to an undefined parameter. DUDE! I’m not a programmer, I’m trying to learn this. Don’t say I can use parameters and not tell me what it does, unless you want me wreaking havoc trying to figure out how much I can do with it.

6:35 – Email answered, spec *thiiiiis* close to done, and I’m absolutely freezing. Time to go home, I can finish the spec there. Never saw the Cute Boy. Oh well.

7:21 – Home! Stopped on the way home and was followed around the store by some guy. The marriage proposal was ok, not being able to lose him in the store was not. I even went to the “feminine products” section, thinking he wouldn’t keep asking me out if I picked up a box of tampons. But nope, didn’t get rid of him until I paid and walked out (and then only because he was stuck at the other cash register!). Lovely.

Day’s over, time for me to go feed the cats and get some exercise, finish the spec, then I have a date with Tom Baker. He is very much creeping me out in all of the episodes I’ve seen so far, but I’m working my way through it.

I have to admit, I had fun with the blogging today, it’s been a long time since I’ve written like this. I doubt anyone really “misses” those entries of mine, but they sure were fun to write.

Mobile blogging this one…

I think tomorrow I’m going to write an old-school style LiveJournal
entry like I used to do waaay back in the day. Ya know:

9am – at work.
10am – at work.
11am – Hate people.
12pm – hungry
1pm – still hungry
2pm – lunch
3pm – love people
4pm – god, he’s so cute…
5pm – god, he’s so not…

I remember keeping a notepad window up all day at work so I could do
that, date stamp little one-liners about what my day was like, then just
publish the whole thing as one big blog entry at the end of the day.
Kinda like twitter-blogging. Twigging!

Tomorrow, I twig. Today is just me talking about Twigging. Weak entry
for today, but I’m tired.

Fun whining tomorrow, I swear.

But ya know, it actually is.

Today’s entry is a little bit of “cheating” on my part, or at least what I consider “cheating.” I do not consider Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr, Pownce or any of the other bajillion status updates I make daily blogging. A blog entry consists of a fully formed thought, not a quick bitch or a link. My entry today? A bunch of the links I’ve shared on Pownce over the last week or two. Semi-cheating, I guess?

Anyway, like everyone else, I like to think I only share the good links, so, enjoy!

(Please note – these may not all be safe for work)

Nerd Handbook

Digg a Valley Girl

LOL Cat Bible (yes, I know I have a serious LOL Cat problem)

Right vs Left Brain test (didn’t work on me)

Facebook App Overload

Neat Picture

I bought the DVD’s of 21 Jump Street back when they came out, and have been slooowly working my way through them. I saw nearly all of the episodes when I was a kid, and it’s fun to see exactly what I do and don’t remember. For instance…I remembered that I had the almost-required crush on Johnny Depp, but I had no idea I’d dressed THAT badly. We lived in such a copycat period that I see kids on the show wearing identical outfits to those I owned. Down to the brands of clothing, the lace in the hair, the plastic hoop earrings, and the velcro Reeboks. Uuugh. I’m watching me on that show.

I own a fair number of television series on DVD at this point, but nearly all of them have some sort of science fiction spin to them. They’re not really grounded in our reality in one way or another. This is the first time I’ve watched something on DVD and had so many “god I remember that” moments that refer to either events in real life, trends of the period, or just stupid things going on in the culture. For example, the Very Special Episode, of which 21 Jump Street had many.

This is the first time I’m glad I bought a set of DVDs not just for the show itself, but for the memories it inspires. Someday, kids can watch this stupid show that I still adore, and see how wacky things were then. Bad kids didn’t shoot good kids, they gave them wedgies; you were told to Just Say No and expected to listen; the Big Bang was stirring up trouble in Bio class (oh wait, that’s still happening…); people were blockading public schools to keep kids with AIDS out – hell, AIDS was an instant death sentence; Bernie Goetz…there are a billion other examples from large to small that I can give from the show.

I’m not calling 21 Jump Street a historical reference or anything. But to a kid who grew up in the 80′s, it does capture a point in time. I will always tie the day the Gulf War started to 21 Jump Street in my head because the news cut into the show to put the President on the air. I remember everything else about that moment, but the fact that my brother and I were watching 21 Jump Street has always been the strongest association for me.

I think if I had caved in and bought the 90210 box set I might have written this entry about those, although that series was later. That’s part of why I didn’t buy them – I REALLY remember all of 90210. Every single time I catch an episode on TV I either remember the entire plot, or remember it was a later episode from the “bad seasons” where I only half paid attention. I don’t really care to rewatch 90210. I barely remembered 21 Jump Street, and I was the right age for them to have shown up in my classroom, so I bought that. I’m quite happy with my decision.

And as an added plus, Johnny Depp’s hotter than Luke Perry.

It’s all icky and gucky in LA today – overcast, cool, definately one of those “go to the mall/movies/sit on the couch all day” days.

And I love it. Not that I mind LA weather, you can’t complain about 70 and sunny every day, but I truly do miss seasons. Time doesn’t pass ‘normally’ for me without actual seasons – I assume it’s the result of growing up in New York. I was in my 20′s before I ever lived anywhere that didn’t have four true seasons a year.

People may be complaining about the weather today, but I love it. It makes it a little easier to believe that Thanksgiving’s in two weeks. TWO WEEKS!

Now, I think I’m going to go for a walk. While in NY this may have been a ‘stay inside’ day, here it’s so rare, I gotta get out and enjoy it. I remember running out in the rain when I lived in NorCal as well.

Sun is fun, but eternal sunshine just isn’t normal. It’s nice to see that every so often, Los Angeles has some element of normalcy to it, even if it is rare.