I am one of those people that has occasionally marked the story of my life on my body. I'm not a crazy piercing/tattoo/modification person, but I do hit places in my life where it seems fitting. It's been a while and last year was one of those times. And so now I have a new tattoo. That brings me to two piercings and two tattoos. It'll be a long while before the next, if I ever do it again that is. It takes some extreme inner turmoil to make me record it so permanently, and I hope that doesn't happen often in my future. read more »

Last week I packed all of my belongings in a storage unit and left my house of 10 years. I've been paring down my possessions so that when I left I could comfortably fit all that remained in a 5x5 ft (1.5m) unit. I stuffed all of my clothes, a few important books, and electrical gadgets in a duffel bag and carry-on. That is what I will live out of for the foreseeable future. I've chosen to roam and I don't know when or where I'll stop. I have some preliminary plans to stay in Europe for most of the next eight months or so, but who knows where I'll be when. I'm in Dublin, Ireland right now, will be at DrupalCon San Francisco in April and intend to live in Copenhagen, Denmark this summer. That's about all I have sketched out. read more »

My year of a picture a day is drawing to a close soon. It has been a very hard year for me personally and looking back at my year in photos is fascinating. I'm so glad that I did this project. I didn't get one every single day (you can see the missed days in my 2009 archive) but I accomplished my main goal of documenting more of the events and people in my life, as well as just capturing what daily existence has been. I'm fine with the days that I missed and happy with the days I have captured. I have also marginally improved my photography, but more than anything I have discovered the joy of the snapshot, regardless of quality. As this horrid year winds down and the days grow shorter and darker, I've decided to finish the project, inspired by another Flickr group, by making December a month of gratitude. Every day will be a photo and reflection on something I am grateful for. read more »

This year I've been traveling a lot. My Dopplr report for the first half of 2009 says I spent 69 of 181 days on the road. From April 1 to July 31, I spent exactly 50% of my time away from home. It is all for a great cause, making Drupal documentation better, and it sounds exciting to be such a jet-setter, but it isn't really all that glamorous. Maybe if I was in my 20s again and single it would be a more exciting year, but popping in and out of home life and a relationship, spending long periods of time completely out of my element, often all alone and not speaking the local language, is just not as sexy an experience as it sounds. Working, presenting and moving around suck up most of my time, so I've had limited opportunity to even get to explore where I visit. read more »

At the beginning of the year I decided to join a "picture a day" group on Flickr, Project 366-1. I'm not a "photographer," nor do I aspire to be. I joined the group because it seemed like a fun way to get myself documenting the things around me. I view it as a visual diary, which should be quite fascinating to look back on. I'm now just over a third of the way in to the year, 126 days, and it is interesting to look back so far. In January I was pretty fired up so I kept on track. Keeping up with a picture every day has been hard at times. read more »

In the last month or so I had a period where I felt things going into a bit of a tailspin. It is a cyclical thing where life just feels overwhelming, out of control, meaningless even. I spent almost a week feeling down in the dumps and like I was letting everyone around me down. I didn't know what to do "about it" so I just sat with it, really poking at it for a few days. By the end of the week I had come to accept some things about myself and life. I'll forget them and eventually, around some other corner, I'll meet the dip in the road again. That's how it goes, but every time I ride the roller coaster I learn more about myself and navigating through life. The main thing that occurred to me that week was that I can not be what everyone thinks I am, including myself. I ended up letting go of a lot of notions I have about who I "am" and where my priorities really lie. I'm petty and giving, angry and joyful, ignorant and smart. And I suddenly felt OK with all of it. My life, and life in general, is much bigger than all of these things. read more »

I'm not much of a photographer. I'm more of a snapshotter. This year I'm going to snapshot my way through the year taking at least one picture a day. Why? Because I'm curious about what will show up. Thinking about my days from a visual perspective should give my mind a little bit of fun each day that moves me outside of my very text-based online world. I'm hoping it will encourage me to explore a bit more and take more chances to just stop and look around. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I guess I'll just have to see. read more »

A few weeks ago Virginia DeBolt interviewed me and the interview is now up on Blogher. This is part of Virginia's Women in Tech series, which kicked of with a great interview with Shelley Powers. The interview was fun and we talked about not just my obvious involvement with Drupal, but also making beer and my squirrelly path into the tech world. Thanks to Virginia for including me in her series - very cool stuff and I'm really looking forward to the others in the series.

Just because I find this kind of thing interesting to me, I'm posting up some stats from my site. I wanted a place to just sort of capture a snapshot and putting it on the blog seems to make sense. This is not a heavy traffic site; the average total hits on the site are about 1800 a month, though this month I will go over 3000. (I've been getting more traffic recently due posts about my becoming doc lead and being a featured speaker on the Drupalcon DC site.) I am not combing server logs or using anything like Google Analytics, I use a program called Mint. read more »

I've finally gotten some time to finish up my new theme for rocktreesky. Obviously it follows the naming of the site but it also just feels a lot more like home to me. I'm not the best at graphics but the new header is close enough to the picture in my mind that I'll be happy with it. Right now the tree is in winter display but spring is less than a week away so I will be updating the header to have a spring tree soon. I also plan to eventually create a night sky that will show when it is night time at home. read more »