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New Job, for now…

After Labor Day this year, within 3 days I was interviewed, hired and started my first day of work as Technology Support Specialist III for Sheldon High School in Eugene. The school runs mostly Windows 7 with some XP computers, and everything is managed on 3 different versions of Windows server. Needless to say this will be a learning experience for me.

Also, as has been in the news this week, the 4J district and Unions are fighting over whether to add back furlough days as work days, which due to budget shortfalls, would mean they would have to lay off over 100 workers (mix of classified and certified). They of course let the newest hires go first, so we’ll see if this lasts past December 17. 🙂

Thrift Store Finds: $5 Slalom Shin Guards

Scott Slalom Shin Guards
Scott Slalom Shin Guards

It’s been a long time since my high school alpine ski racing days, but it seems like I get a chance to bash some gates every now and then. I always regret it though when my shins/knees get bruised up, and my snow pants get torn sometimes. This past Friday, I found a pair of “like new” Scott shin guards at Value Village on Centennial Blvd.. Only cost me $5! They aren’t brand new, show some signs of being packed around or possibly worn, but they don’t look like they’ve hit a gate yet.

Can’t wait to get the chance to break them in… I love bashing slalom gates!

WordCamp Portland 2009 Recap

This past weekend (Sept 19-20) and Portland, Oregon were the setting for the likes of

  • Matt Mullenweg and Jane Wells of Automattic
  • Scott Porad from the icancheezburger network
  • Tyler Sticka, designer at Waggener Edstrom
  • Will Norris, one of the core developers of Shibboleth and author of the OpenID plugin for WordPress
  • viper007bond, one of the most prolific WordPress plugin developers
  • Aaron Hockley, founder of the Portland WordPress Users Group
  • Justin Kistner, senior manager of social media at WebTrends (and designer of some of the sites I currently manage)
  • Rick Turoczy, from Silicon Florist, a blog about web startups in the Portland area
  • and countless others

These folks and others, along with awesome food from Whiffies Pies, Windmer Beer, Zupans, Resers, Coconut Bliss ice cream, Cup Cake Jones— and the awesome folks at WebTrends for providing the venue for the event— made for an AMAZING WordCamp.

Also a big thanks to my buddy Tristan for letting me crash at his apartment Saturday night and helping me find my way around town. Tristan’s former roommate from Eugene, Aaron was also there. They both live and do freelance web development in Portland, so it was also a great networking opportunity for them.

This is a fairly long post, so continue after the break if you will 🙂

Continue reading WordCamp Portland 2009 Recap