I Have a Blog?

So I touched my blog for what appears to be the first time in 18 months. I had a few draft posts sitting around that I pushed out, including one from December of 2009 apologizing for not blogging lately. (It's only three posts below this one.) The same reasons still apply and then some. My short thoughts and interesting links show up on Twitter and/or Facebook or sometimes my Google Reader feed. Anything much longer tends to just get filed away for later, never to be seen again.

We've been busy.

Work keeps kicking into higher gears - but in a good way. Among a lot of other things, in the past year we've hosted two technical conferences here in Tampa with many of our developers and other technical staff from around the world. We were also acquired earlier this year.

Our First LEGO League team TechnoForce had a very successful run over two seasons. We made it to the second round (regionals) in our second year, but didn't make it to the state level. I really need to write up a couple of posts about all the lessons we've learned along the way. Unfortunately, TechnoForce has now dissolved as a team and we'll be focusing our efforts on other things. We may be returning to First LEGO League though, especially as our son gets old enough for it.

We joined Cub Scouts - Lutz Pack 86 - and had a very active first year. Lots of group camping, Pinewood Derby, and other activities. I have a couple blog posts in mind about what we've learned as parents new to the Cub Scouts.

For Van Dyke Church's annual Sports Camp last summer (2010), I coached chess. Despite considering coaching soccer or football a couple times, I've always wound up doing non-sports activities for kids that just don't want to (or can't) do a sport. I've done robotics and science olympiad before, but chess was the most like a sport so far. I got to teach almost all of the kids something and they still wanted to play even at the end of the camp. I wrote a few related posts over on Gifted Homeschooling about teaching chess. This summer I'll be coaching a LEGO engineering activity.

We helped host TEDxYouth@TampaBay. I mostly handled video. It was a little rough but I learned a lot in a hurry about producing live and recorded video. You can see all of our speakers on this YouTube list.

We continue to homeschool. This is our first year using Florida Virtual School which has been a different sort of challenge - less burden on us to teach but a whole lot of supervising a student that doesn't want to follow someone else's schedule. We continue to be active in our homeschool co-op, THINK Day.

I also finally picked up a more serious camera - a Canon T2i. I'm still learning a lot about making it work right - shooting a lot with the 50mm 1.4 lens - which absolutely blows me away with it's ability to gobble up available light and turn out a reasonable photograph. I'm now always quite behind in processing photos from different events with the kids (I often shoot over a thousand photos a weekend), but someday I'll get back to updating my Flickr account with some good shots.

More Secure Browsing

For most of the past year, my primary web browser has been Google Chrome with all plugins disabled. I selectively enable plugins for a few sites I trust, or I can enable it on the fly for a single session on a site. I haven't had a single virus / trojan hit since switching over. It's also eliminated a lot of my frustration with Flash ads and auto-playing Quicktime audio.

Google Chrome isn't necessarily immune to any security threats, but it's survived three straight years of pwn2own without falling - a pretty good track record. But if you browse with all those common plugins enabled, you're asking for trouble. On any given week, there seems to be a new severe zero-day Adobe attack.

Anyone that feels like they're more secure because they browse with Flashblock should try this (or any number of websites that show how Flashblock doesn't prevent Flash plugin hacks): http://hackademix.net/2008/06/08/block-rick/

Disney World Time-Saving Tips

We just finished another year of having annual passes at Disney World. Back in March we had a whirlwind trip of three parks (Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, and Magic Kingdom) on a single busy spring break day. How did we squeeze it all in? Here are some of our simpler tips we usually give people.

The number one tip I can give people is to understand the FastPass system. When we first hit a park, one of us runs off to the longest wait ride to get FastPasses for everyone. On a busy day you should always be holding FastPasses for something. As a family with young kids, even if you miss your FastPass window, the cast member is often willing to let you use them anyways if you ask nicely. As soon as we got to Animal Kingdom that morning, the family headed for Expedition Everest while I got Kilimanjaro Safaris FastPasses. In a little over an hour, we were able to ride both, despite not even arriving at the park until 30 minutes after it opened.

You need to understand which rides have long wait times and really plan your day if you want to ride those. There are even smartphone applications now that show you actual or projected wait times for different rides. Soarin' and Toy Story Mania run out of FastPasses very early on busy days. On a busy spring break day, we just weren't willing to spend the 60-90+ minutes in line to ride either of those again. If this was a rare Disney World trip for us, we'd have planned to attack one of those rides first thing when we arrived at the park.

Avoid the crowds. Look at the Disney World Crowd Calendar (from the authors of the excellent Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World book) and see which parks are the most crowded on which days. On a really busy day, a big park like Epcot or Animal Kingdom will handle the crowds better than Magic Kingdom or especially Hollywood Studios. We did a couple of short-wait rides / shows in Hollywood Studios that day but it was so crowded that even walking around was hard with so many people. So we abandoned it and went over to Magic Kingdom. (Be aware that Magic Kingdom can and does become full enough that they close it and don't allow additional guests in.)

Don't follow the herd. Just shifting your meals so that you eat lunch earlier or later than most people can save you  a lot of time and frustration. One of the things we've done with great success is take advantage of the parades, especially in Magic Kingdom. The ride wait times plummet during the parades and we're often able to walk right onto rides that still say 30+ minute wait times just by getting there right before a parade starts. You do need to be aware of the parade routes and not get trapped. Tomorrowland in Magic Kingdom is a great spot to be because the parade doesn't come through there.

Use Extra Magic Hours. You only have access to these if you're staying in a Disney resort on-property (not a nearby hotel). You get access to a park 1 hour before or 3 hours after the normal operating hours. In general most of the popular rides are still running but some things do close. The morning hour rarely seems worth it but the evening hours are a great time to get in some extra ride time. If you aren't going to use those extra hours, be aware that the parks with Extra Magic Hours that day are the most crowded ones, so you're better off going somewhere else.

Have a plan. Don't waste time wandering back and forth across the park on a whim. Don't miss things that you really meant to see. We like to have a rough plan of our "must see" items for the day and make sure to work those in if we can. If you really want to plan, get a book like

Don't go into "commando" mode. Don't be that parent dragging an exhausted, sunburned, and hungry kid across the park just to meet Ariel or ride the tea cups. Relax and enjoy your time. You can't do it all in a day. We've been to Disney World probably 50 times since our kids were born and there are still things we haven't done. It gives us something for the next time.

2009 in Review

Wow, the second half of 2009 has just flown by. I'm obviously not blogging here as much as I used to, partly due to migrating the more personal stuff to Facebook and short stuff to Twitter.

Here's a recap of my year, based on my tweets:

• Bucs fire Gruden and Allen - Didn't like them, so I'm happy
• Steelers win the Super Bowl - Yes!
• N.Y. Times has a great visualization of tweets during the game
• Florida State Fair had "chocolate covered" bacon - it sucked
• Bill Reiss became the first Silverlight MVP
• Bucs cut Brooks, Dunn, June, Galloway, Hilliard - I give up on Bucs
• The St. Pete Times won a Pulitzer for The Girl in the Window
• We joined a chess club over the summer
• Cancer sucks
• Our family spent a lot of time on our First Lego League team
• I got to see my brother graduate from UF
• Facebook "punked" Techcrunch with a fake "Fax this photo" feature
• I'm still really impressed by Dropbox

In other news, we rejoined Disney's annual pass program this year. Their birthday program really hooked us. Still would rather be vacationing somewhere "real" but Disney World is still an amazingly well-run resort. It's getting old for us but it's still a decent vacation value.

Our peanut/legume/soy-allergic daughter has experimented with eating gluten-free with some good success. That really deserves a longer write-up than this. Maybe soon.

Work is about as good as can be, given the economy. We're certainly doing better than a lot of companies.

Finally, five-ish things from 2009 you really should read:

1. Get Excited and Make Things
2. Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
3. There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.
   
4. How I Did It: From $7 and Hour to Coaching Major League Baseball MVPs
5. The Great American Bubble Machine / Obama's Big Sellout

More Free WiFi - Barnes and Noble

Barnes and Noble just added free wifi for many of their stores, including all of the Tampa locations. I'd love to see Borders follow suit, but not very hopeful.

Besides all the local Panera Breads, I know of free wifi at Atlanta Bread, and most Hillsborough County library locations. I think the Tampa Ale House in Carrollwood and Bar Louie at International Plaza still have free wifi as well.