Simeon Says

I got sucked into the vortex that YouTube tonight, and I decided I should try my hand at video blogging. So I logged in and fired up the ole webcam and … Somehow talking to my self on the computer didnt seem so fun anymore.

I watch these videos and I really want to contribute. The problem is I am a performer, I really get going when I interact with people. And sitting here by myself, that is just not happening. So what do you do? My first thought is to get a buddy on video chat and try to record our conversation. But from my few podcast attempts I realized that there may not be enough interaction in that either. So what do I do? Set up a room at my house and have tech buddies over to BS so I can feel comfortable enough to actually say something funny?

Is pretending you have a crowd a trait that can be learned? I just dont know. I just need my buddy Randy from Bend to come around. He always gets my fired up. I need a poster board cut out of Randy that I can shoot the shit with. Hmmm…. I think i am gonna have to run that by him and see what he thinks :) To bad he is not answering his IM right now. That would save me some trouble. Now what will I do. I think I am going to try to record the content of this post as a vlog.

We will see how that goes :)

This has been a very special week for me, and I think I am just now ready to recap and share the array of emotions I have felt.

As some of you may know I had a birthday on Monday. Its one of those special milestones as I have now cracked the shell on adulthood. On Monday I had the pleasure of turning 30 years old. 30 is a milestone year much like 18 and 21 in that it is often seen as the end of youth. There is no more justifying the 20-something attitude of “I’ll deal with that when i am older”, and as such many view it as the end of something special. Although many people asked me about this feeling it is just not how i see this milestone. I see 30 as the turning point that will bring all the wonderful goals I have been working towards. I spent my 20’s learning and working to establish myself in my career. I see my 30’s as the time where I can enjoy that hard work and start to leverage it to build the future where I dont have to count hours, and fight to pay bills. I see my 30’s as the opportunity to build the life I dream of for me and my family.

Speaking of family, this is a very important part of my special week. As I posted here when it happened, I became a Dad in December of last year. This month my little Ana turned 6 months old, and has now started to eat real food. But this weekend marked the event of my very first fathers day. My wife Carrie and I did not start our family on accident. We waited while we got our lives set up and then tried with all our might to get pregnant when the time came. It took about 9 months before we got the good news, and we have been excited about every day since. I have many nieces and nephews, and I have always had friends with kids. I love kids and was very excited to be a dad. People will always regale you with the horror stories associated with becoming parents. All the terrible things you could never imagine happening (unless you had ever been around kids). The things that surprised me about becoming a dad was how much my day changed. I used to get up in the morning and check blogs and news before I showered and then hurry to work to get whatever great code I had in my head out onto the computer. Then I would come home in hopes of grabbing some game time and hanging out with my wife. As a dad, i get up early so I can have just a couple minutes to watch Ana as she sleeps. I am still excited to work, but about half way through the day I really wish I could just go home and cuddle and play with her. When the whistle blows I rush home and do just that. Carrie and I used to spend our dinners and evening in front of the tv with laptops. Now we spend it in the kitchen having dinner and enjoying being a family. My quality of life and general happiness level have gone up more than I could ever have imagined.

Last week Carie showed me this video and I shared it with everyone at my B-Day party. Because I think its such a wonderful song that really points out all the good and the bad (and funny ) in being parents. But in the end its all about how much joy we have just doing the job. The last line of the song is about how he’s had it better than his dad, which at my party made mine spit beer :) So in honor of my first fathers day and turning 30 please take a couple minute to enjoy this video.

And if you want to catch up on how my little Ana is doing feel free to hit my wifes blog. She has an Ana category which has lots of pictures of her so its a quick way to get an update.

I need some help. I have started going to the gym again and I need to have a new workout soundtrack. What music gets you fired up? Makes you wanna dance? Makes you wanna code?

Post your comments here so I can get fired up too

This seems like a question that should be easy to answer, but whenever someone asks I find I always pause and have to consider how to answer. As with everyone out there I do a lot of things and depending on who asks the answer should be different. So I thought perhaps I should (for my own benefit) add a post that talks about my job and my involvement in the community.

By day I am the Director of IT for Business Transitions in Portland, OR. Titles are kind of a joke to me. I am “Director” because of the level in which my decisions affect the company. I report to the sole owner of the company and make recommendations on all of our technical decisions. I am responsible for all hardware (desktops, servers, printers, phones, etc.) and software development for the company. All employees of the IT department report to me. This is where the joke part comes in; there is only one (soon to be two) employees other than me in IT.

By night I run Simb Development, which is a Development and Hosting company that I mostly ignore. I am not really an entrepreneur and have no interest in “being my own boss.” The sole reason this company exists is to support friends and family who have technical needs. I had a friend who wanted to do web development and needed somewhere to host. I needed to host my own sites, so I got some dedicated servers and I offer hosting. I have friends that are designers and wanted to offer more robust services to their clients, so I sub-contract small jobs from these folks to help them better meet their clients needs. I am not currently accepting RFQ/P’s nor hosting customers :)

Beyond the things I get paid for, I am also heavily devoted to community involvement. I am the Adobe Developer User Group manager in Portland, Oregon. When I took over the group over two years ago we were a strictly ColdFusion group. But after Adobe’s merger with Macromedia, I felt it was important that we look at all the tools available to us. I am an Adobe Community Expert. The “Community Expert” (previously “Team Macromedia”) is a designation reserved for individuals who demonstrate a strong commitment to helping out in the community. I am also an Adobe Certified Instructor for Flex 1.5 and 2.0. I am an Adobe Certified Expert for ColdFusion. In addition to those Adobe centric programs, I am also a member of “Team Fusion” and “Team Fusebox” community led support projects. I also host the Subversion and Trac project repositories for Fusebox 5, Model-Glue Unity, Reactor, and CFEclipse. I have made small code contributions to those projects as well as the ColdSpring IoC/AOP Framework for ColdFusion.

Last year I had the opportunity to be involved with several conferences. I presented on three topics at CF.Objective last year. I also presented at CFUNITED in Washington D.C., and MAX ‘06 in Las Vegas.

Beyond the technical things I do, I am also a new dad and a loving husband. I absolutely dote on my wonderful family. I am the proud owner of two wonderful black labs and the keeper of the house which two cats proclaim dominion over.

Introducing Ana Diann Bateman

Saturday night December 9th at 10:48 PM my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Ana was born weighing 8 lbs 8 oz and measuring 21 inches in length. She is wonderfully healthy, and looks like a baby that might have been overdue, not 10 days early.

If you are interested please see the Baby Bateman RC1 post for information on the pre-labor portion of the adventure. When we arrived at the hospital my wife was inspected and we found out that she was 3 cm dilated. We were admitted and throughout the day we made steady progress towards the big 10 cm we were hoping for.

At about 9:20 saturday night we were informed that we hit 10 cm and it was time to start pushing. In the delivery room were myself, carrie, her mom and sister and her best friend heather. After just 1 hour and 22 minutes of pushing our little girl was born.

The hospital released us to come home last night around 8 pm. Both mom and baby girl are doing wonderfully and are glad to be home. I just finished my first day at home with new baby, and I have to say it has been amazing. I am including a couple more pictures to illustrate the parts I find most amazing.

I would like to thank everyone who commented on my previous posts, emailed and called to congratulate us and wish us luck. Being a web developer many of my closest friends are people out there on the web, some of whom I have never met in person. I also want to thank the folks who are not yet my friends who had to suffer through my personal information being pushed through the aggregators which subscribe to my site. I know this is off-topic but its also the most important thing in my life right now and that what this blog is about.

We are pleased to announce that Baby Bateman has gone Gold. We are confident that the growth of this new being is feature complete and the developmet cylce has been a success. We are excited about the imminent release of this new addition to our family, and should todays production go well we will be ready to release her to the public.

I just finished working my way through campaign mode in Gears of War. I have really enjoyed this game. I always enjoy first person shooter style games but I very rarely finish the campaign portion of them. This games unique 3rd person camera and its emphasis on team play and “cover” system make it a must play.

Now granted I just finished the game on “Casual” mode (read easiest/”you are a sissy simeon” mode) but I did play it all the way through. I am half way through the first act on “Hard Core” which has proven to be much more difficult this far.

If you have a 360 or enjoy FPS games I cant recommend this game enough. Come online we can play together on Live. Add me to your friends list i am “sinMission” on xbox live.

See you in my sniper scope :)

My buddy nick has been waiting for a long time for the Wii to come out. Since long before it got that silly name. Well as anyone who was watching the Nintendo Wii was released this weekend and Nick got up at 3am to go get one.

Being supportive friends Barney and I got together sunday morning to go help nick break it in. Nick got the console, an extra controler and Wii Zelda. The console comes with Wii Sports. Wii sports is a combination game with tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing. If you have not followed along with the new Nintendo console let me explain very quickly that it is nothing like the consoles that came before it. The controller for the Wii (called the Wii-mote) is a 2 piece unit that allows you to have the main Wii-mote as well as a nun-chuck apparatus. These controlers have most of the buttons you would expect for a current day console, however they have something much more powerful…. Motion Actviated Control. Thats right you point and swing and move the controler to play the games. So as you can imagine to play tennis you hop around the room swinging one of the controlers and smacking the pretend ball back to your opponent.

All of that is fine and dandy. However something I would never have considered before today… I am so sore! We played the boxing game, and you litterally stand up and air box your opponent for 3 - 3 minute rounds. Its tough! and when you get done and you are all winded and tired you hand off to a friend who just got done laughing at you and then you laugh at them while they spend ten minutes trying to keep their arms in the air.

It was so much fun. Much more than I would have anticipated. And as soon as I can move my arms without wanting to cry I will be in for another game day!

But if you haven’t had a chance I definitely recommend getting out and playing a Wii. It will change your perspective on gaming.

Well maybe not “travel” as it were, but I am beginning to think time is not as constant as my physics teacher once told me.

Today is my 4 year anniversary with my wife Carrie. I really think these last 4 years have been the best of my life. We are running away for the weekend, gonna go hang out at the coast at a resort and spa called Salishan. As many of you know we have a baby on the way in December so this is our last get-a-way before many years of family vacations :) We are really excited, this will be the best vacation we have had since our honeymoon cruise. And I can hardly believe that was 4 years ago.

On the baby topic, I had a quite overwhelming weekend. I spent several hours at babies-r-us creating our baby registry. For a first time father that experience is a real eye opener. I think baby and I think about it in terms that prioritize needs like an adult. I think I need someplace for it to sleep, some clothes, some food, and diapers. But surprisingly those are not even things you put on a registry (so I am told). So we looked at all sorts of others stuff ( who knew Babbie’s needed their own dishwasher rack ) and I got to play with the scanner gun. I think at the end of the day my wife was very tired of me scanning her and running around like james bond, sneaking around corners and rolling down the aisle :)

But all and all it was a great day with my wife. I love spending time with her, more than anyone else in my life. I take that as a good sign that I picked the right girl. Although we have only been married for 4 years (only?) January will mark 9 years of us being a couple. I figure we are over the big hurdles ( baby excluded ) and I look forward to a long happy life with my wonderful wife.

Thanks for these wonderful years wifey. I love you! I look forward to the rest of our lives together.

I have often talked among my friends that the only cartoon I really miss was the jetsons. I enjoyed it as a youth and have not seen it around much on the cartoon networks.

So you can imagine my excitement to find this press release over on apples site.

All 24 episodes of the orignal season are available now. Click here to see the The Jetsons Season 1.