Site Move and Redesign
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Personal, Projects, Work
The server that is currently hosting the SharePoint version of tylerbutler.com is being decommissioned. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given much notice about this so I have not been able to secure an alternative SharePoint-ready location at Microsoft to host the site. In the meantime I’ve used this opportunity to move the site over to WordPress, and I’ve refreshed the look and feel. Hopefully this will be temporary, since I intend to rebuild the site on the new version of SharePoint once it’s publicly available. But in the meantime, WordPress is serving my needs.
The main www address should be redirecting to blog.tylerbutler.com as soon as the DNS changes propogate. The main RSS feed should be switched over, but I have not yet moved the others. Regardless, though, you shouldn’t notice any differences since I’m using FeedBurner.
Tags: tylerbutler.com
And We’re Back! (With Comments!)
Posted by | Filed under Personal
Wow, it’s been awhile. Almost a year since my last post. It truly is hard to believe. It’s been a busy year so far, but I’ve finally got some time to start posting again. I’ve got some interesting SharePoint posts coming down the pipe, plus a new site design I’m working on. It’s still in its early stages, but hopefully it’ll shape up pretty soon so I can get a sample up.
One thing you’ll notice if you’ve been here before is that I’ve managed to move the site into the 21st century by adding comments. I toyed with a few different comment management add-ins and ended up going with Disqus. It seems like it’ll suit my needs for now, and it was pretty straightforward to get integrated. Just added some script and markup to my master page and post page layout in SharePoint Designer. I’m not sure how I feel about the comments being stored separately from the site content, but it’s what I’ve got for now. It will make migration difficult if page URL’s change, which they almost certainly are when I change the architecture of the site in the next redesign. C’est la vie, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Anyway, please go ahead and engage with me through the comments if you see something interesting on the site.
I should also note, for completeness, that SharePoint includes a blog template that supports comments. I, however, rolled my own site and didn’t use the blog template or features. There were lots of reasons for this that I won’t go into right now, but there are certainly some features that SharePoint blogs have that I also want, like comments and MetaWeblog support (which I added myself). For now, I’m stuck with what I’ve got. But like I said, there are some exciting new things coming with my site redesign. :-)
The Wealthy Man (Communication)
Posted by | Filed under Essays
Once upon a time, there was a very wealthy man. The man had so much money that he bought anything and everything he could buy, and still had more money than he could count. As he grew older and wiser, he realized he was very unhappy. So he gathered all of his friends and confidants and asked them for their advice.
During the course of the conversation, a friend mentioned that there was a University close by filled with struggling students. The man decided he would give money to any student that wanted some.
The next day, the man walked to the main section of the University campus and arranged to rent out a small room in the center of the main campus student building, where all the students could come to get their money from him. He then sat down on a chair in the small room and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
For months, he would visit the campus every day and wait in the small room for students to come and claim their money. But no one ever came. Eventually, he became a fixture on campus. Students would smile and wave at him as they passed by the small room; some would say hello and ask how he was. But no one ever asked for money.
One day, while he sat in the small room, the man was approached by a student who had always been very friendly to the man. She stopped by every day and said hello and told him about her classes. She was always bright and cheerful. On this day, however, her eyes were puffy and red, and she walked as though the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
"Sir, I just wanted to come by and say goodbye…"
"Oh? Why’s that?"
"Well, my mom’s been really sick – and she’s better now, but my family has a ton of hospital bills and I just can’t afford to stay here at school any longer."
"Why didn’t you say something before? I’ve been sitting here every day for months just waiting for someone to ask me for money, and no one ever has! Why didn’t you ask me before?" the man asked.
The girl looked up, her eyes glimmering with hope.
"Why didn’t you say something? How was I to know you were giving money away unless you said something? I would never have guess that’s why you sit here every day. But… can I have some money?"
The man smiled and pulled his checkbook from his pocket. "How much do you need?"
The next day, when the man arrived at the University, there was line of needy students outside the small room. The line reached out the doors of the building and wrapped all around campus.
The man asked every student why they had never come to him before, even though they needed money. "Because you didn’t tell me that’s why you were here," they said.
Running Routes
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Personal
Since I am now back in the US and can use my home computer, I was able to upload the GPS data from my Australia runs. Unfortunately I only managed to get out twice, which was bad for my body, but hey, I was on vacation. :-) If you’ve got Google Earth, you can view the routes by downloading these two KML files:
I’m honestly not sure why you’d want to look at the routes, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves… :-) Despite my relative inactivity, I only managed to gain 7 pounds. 0 would have been better, of course, but I should be able to shed them pretty quickly once I get back into the swing of things. Which should be made somewhat easier by the fact that my Xbox 360 is busted and has to be sent in for repair… :-(
Tags: weight loss
Melbourne
Posted by | Filed under Personal
Ahhhhh, I finally have a few minutes to write. :-) I am now in Drouin [map], about 100 km southeast of Melbourne. Last night I got together with Ben, Matt and AJ Holliday, Laura Linden, Christine Leach Croxford and her husband Dave, Eddie and Laura Matthies, and Christine and Rupert. We went to get pizza at some place on Lygon St. [map] in Melbourne, then went out for gelato afterwards. It was great to catch up with everyone, most of whom I haven’t seen since 2000. It’s still hard to believe that it’s been that long…
Earlier in the day, Christine and I went downtown for a bit and did some tourist stuff. We went up the Eureka Skydeck to get a view of the city. It was pretty cool; it’s so flat around here that you can see for miles and miles up the coastline. I got a bunch of photos but I’m not sure that any of them will come out.
We then rode the tram to Federation Square. There’s a Pixar history exhibit going on right now that I thought would be interesting to check out. By the time we got there, though, Christine only had a half hour before she had to go to her class at the University, so we just browsed the free art gallery. I’m not really into art personally, but it was interesting to see some of her favorite pieces and hear what she liked about them. Maybe I have discovered some latent appreciation for art? Nah… probably not. :-)
It’s hard to believe I only have a week left. I don’t think we have any hard plans other than maybe a trip down to Phillip Island, but we’ll see. Matt’s off of work all next week and his wife (also named Christine yeah, it’s confusing. :-) ) is off until the middle of next week, so I certainly won’t be alone. :-)
Onward to Drouin!
Posted by | Filed under Personal
I made it to Drouin, where Matt and Christine Holliday have just moved into their brand new house, about 3 hours ago. It is late – almost 3 am. But for some reason I am restless and can’t sleep. There is so much to write… Well, it’ll have to wait. Ben has already crashed and I should at least try to get some sleep. More later, I suppose.
Brisbane: The Final Days
Posted by | Filed under Personal
On Friday the 17th Nalissa and TJ (her sister) called and arranged to pick me up to take me to "the mountain." I didn’t quite understand what was going on – I had misunderstood the day before when Nalissa told me there was a dinner. It turned out we were going up to Mt. Tamborine, where the wedding was, and we were going to be there for two nights. Too bad I didn’t pack anything. :-) Ah well, it all worked out in the end. We spent the entire time just hanging out and talking, listening to music, and sleeping.
On Saturday was the wedding. I ended up helping to fold some of the "Order of Service" handouts, but I didn’t have to hang anything from the ceiling this time. :-) The wedding didn’t start until 3, so we went and grabbed some lunch at a fish and chips shop then went to get changed for the wedding. Well, everyone else got change – I just sat and waited since I only had what I was wearing. :-)
The wedding was fantastic. Amanda was stunningly beautiful. I mean, she’s always been an attractive girl, but you put some makeup on her, do her hair up all fancy-like, and slap on a beautiful white dress and she lights up the room. Gorgeous. The ceremony was very relaxed. Definitely had a lot of Amanda’s free-wheeling personality injected into it.
I wasn’t able to go to the reception, so after the ceremony I hitched a ride back to the chalet where the girls were staying and hung out until later that night when everyone else returned. Then it was another night of talking, laughing and general frivolity, PNG-style.
The next day we got up and packed up the two houses where we were all staying, then went out and grabbed some breakfast. Some people had to catch flights out, so everyone sort of left when they needed to. Nalissa, TJ and I headed out to Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast for a drive just to see what we could see. The day was pretty crappy so it wasn’t that nice but the beaches were still beautiful.
When we got back to Brisbane, I called up the Story Bridge Climb people to see if there were still some climbs available that day since I was leaving the next day and wouldn’t get a chance to do the climb otherwise. Luckily, they had spots available for the 4:00 twilight climb.
The climb was kind of crappy because of the weather, but it was still a fun experience. The best part was really getting ready. We had a whole bunch of gear to put on and stuff, so it felt like a much grander expedition than it actually was. We were even equipped with a Bone Vibrating Radio Transducer. How cool is that?
The climb itself was not strenuous at all. I was actually hoping for something slightly more difficult. I guess the 200 floors in 40 minutes 6 days a week at the gym has gotten me prepared for much more challenging stair climbs. The guide was really entertaining, though, so it was a great experience. I’d definitely recommend it to people.
Yesterday I flew into Melbourne. Christine Barber (now Ludwell) and her husband Rupert picked me up at the airport. They had a potluck dinner with friends that night so I joined them for that. They have internet access here so I am catching up on posting some stuff to the site and getting emails sent. I really have no clue how to holiday without the internet. :-)
Brisbane: Day 3
Posted by | Filed under Personal
Headed out to the Lone Pine Koala sanctuary today. I managed to figure out the bus system well enough to get out there, but I definitely wouldn’t consider myself a bus expert by any means yet. We’ll see how I fare with the ferries later today…
Anyway, the koala sanctuary was much cooler than I had envisioned. They didn’t just have koalas, but also snakes, kangaroos, Australian lizards, and a rockin’ sheep herding demonstration with very well-trained dogs. I managed to get a ton of pictures but will have to wait to upload them. Hopefully some of them came out. The coolest thing was probably the kangaroo area. There were just a bunch ofkangaroos sitting around and you could just go up and walk among them and sit with them. I felt like a regular Jane Goodall. :-) The feeling didn’t last long though, due to the screaming kids and overzealous parents trying to make them pose to get good pictures. But very cool nonetheless.
After returning from that I grabbed some lunch and checked my voicemail. Amanda left a message with more details for the evening, so I called her back and made arrangements to meet up with them. My hostel is actually in an awesome place – I was able to walk over to Fortitude Valley where they were getting together in about 15 mins. :-)
There were quite a few PNG people there – Peter Callister, Mark Matthies, Craig Lloyd and his wife of course (who seems lovely, though I didn’t get a chance to talk with her much) and Amanda and her fiancé. Then Nalissa (can’t remember her last name right now, class of ‘99) and her older sister (class of ‘97) were also there. Plus Ben of course. We just sat around for the first few minutes chatting and catching up, then a few people left and the rest of us headed to another club and the casino. Craig is a lucky guy – he won $115 on his first spin of the big wheel at the casino. Then won again at Roulette, and ended the night up $80 I think.
By the time I got home, I was pretty tired, so I crashed. This morning I slept in and haven’t even showered yet. I guess I should do that and head into town for a bit. :-) Tonight there is some dinner or something so Nalissa is supposed to call me with the details. Hopefully I will have heard back from Cingular about unlocking my phone so I can actually start to keep it on all the time… :-)
Brisbane: Day 2
Posted by | Filed under Personal
Today started out on a positive note that belied the actual hellish day that awaited me… I woke up rather early, but went back to sleep several times because… well, because I could. It’s vacation. :-) Once I finally did get up I had myself some delicious Nutri-grain cereal and wet out for a jog. My Bodylink GPS seems to work out here so I was able to get speed and distance and will get maps of my runs once I get back home. Pretty cool. The area out here is quite hilly, so I didn’t get as far as I’d have liked. Only a couple of miles, but every little bit helps. I need to be vigilant to work off the Magnums and all the food Elizabeth forced down my throat last week. (Yeah, she forced me to eat. :-) )
After a shower I decided to head back down to Queen street to hop on the net and do a whole mess of things. The first order of business was to try and find cheaper internet access. Unfortunately, Telstra’s stranglehold on this county’s telecommunications is as strong as ever (more on that later), so the best I could do was buy a special phone card that gets me on for 20 c per minute, which is still preposterous but less than $8 for 30 min. There’s supposedly free access over at close by mall, but since today was a public holiday here the mall was closed. I will test it out tomorrow.
While I was at Starbucks a guy saw the Microsoft Asset tag sticker on my laptop and sat down and introduced himself. He works in the local MS office, and he invited me down sometime this week after the holiday. I might see if they have free net access for visiting Redmond employees. :-)
The other order of business was figuring out how to meet up with my wantoks here in Brisbane, and arrange housing either with them or elsewhere, since tonight was my last night booked with the Kookaburra. Amanda had sent me a text message the night before, so I finally had her number, but since I want to limit use of the cell phone because I can’t charge it, I decided to buy a phone card to give her a call. I got one that has great rates, but none of the numbers would work on the Telstra pay phones. Eventually I used the toll-free number they listed, but the rates on that are apparently horrendous because I used up nearly half the card’s value with a 10 min local Australia call. Sheesh. It turns out that the numbers are local, but not toll-free, which means if you’re using a pay phone you have to pay on top of the calling card to actually get connected. Yeah, Telstra always gets their cut. Since the pay phones do not give change and you tend to wind up with only $2 or $1 coins, I decided to buy a third phone card for use on the pay phones to save cash. Yup, I now have three phone cards, each for a unique purpose, plus a cell phone I can’t really use. I should be a writer for Seinfeld.
After talking to Amanda it sounded like things were pretty insane with her wedding coming up on Saturday. The last thing I want to do is be a pain in the butt when they’re trying to plan something like that, so I decided I’d just try to extend my stay at the Kookaburra. It was tough to rearrange their schedule, but it finally worked out where I only have to move rooms once and can stay until the 20th. Huzzah!
Next order of business was changing my flights. It has become clear that I have absolutely no reason to go to Sydney. So I called up Qantas and rescheduled my flights from Brisbane to go direct to Melbourne and skip Sydney altogether. Too bad it cost me $175 to do it… Oh well, I probably would have spent at least that much on housing while in Sydney, so I am probably still coming out ahead.
Right after I got off the phone with Qantas the Kookaburra woman knocked on the door and said my credit card was rejected for payment for the net few days of my stay. Crap. That led to the discovery that I neglected to get my other credit cards and put them in my wallet, which I intended to do prior to my leaving the states. I always manage to forget at least one thing when I go on a trip… sometimes they’re unimportant, sometimes they’re not…
Anyway, the rest of the day was spent trying to get my sole card reactivated. The numbers on the back of the card didn’t work – all I got were busy signals or disconnects. So I tried to find new numbers on the net, but none of those worked either. Finally I wrote Bethaney and asked her to call on my behalf. After I sent the mail I decided to try one last number for WaMu banking, even though it was a credit card, not a debit card. I figured they could transfer me, and that’s what they did. I finally got everything reactivated, so I should be good for now. But that meant I needed to go back and write Bethaney to tell her not to worry about it. So I walked the half-kilometer back to the Starbucks to write Bethaney, then finally came back to the Kookaburra.
Oh, I forgot dinner. I went to this steakhouse called sSs. It was OK, but not worth the money. I dropped $60 and frankly, it wasn’t that good. Service was horrible – they were short-staffed it seemed, probably due to the holiday. I had to pay a 10% holiday surcharge, too. Yeah, I’m definitely not in the States anymore. Each and every soda refill cost me too. Note to self- drink water.
I feel like my holiday hasn’t even started. I’m almost more stressed out here than I was in Redmond. Hopefully tomorrow will be more relaxed. Amanda says there is a PNG bung tomorrow night. She’s supposed to call me with the details tomorrow. But that would be on the cell phone that I can’t use, so who knows what’ll happen… :-)
Brisbane: Day 1
Posted by | Filed under Personal
Boy, am I tired. But it’s only 6:30 so I’m going to tough it out a few more hours before I crash. It’s been a good day though. I spent most of the morning on Queen Street getting some things taken care of. I started at a Telstra shop to get a pre-paid cell phone set up. I brought my old unlocked tri-band GSM Siemens SL-55 with me, so all I needed to get was a SIM card. I had confirmed with a Telstra guy over chat prior to the trip that I could just get the SIM card and pre-paid service for $25 with $25 worth of credit. Not a bad deal, though the rates over here per call are quite high in my opinion. It’s tough to calculate, too, since it is all based on actual dollar/cent amounts rather than minutes like it typically is in the US.
After getting that straightened out I headed across the street to the Starbucks to make use of the internet connection there. I had scoped out the plans online prior to the trip and was going to get the ~$35 monthly access package. Unfortunately that seems to have been discontinued but is still listed on the website for some reason. Annoying, especially since the only other option for me is per-connection pricing with a credit card, and that’s $5 per 15 minutes or $8 for 30. Not a good deal at all. Tomorrow I will try to scope out some other options. Kiosks aren’t much cheaper and don’t give me the flexibility to write stuff offline and send/post it when I’m connected.
I am definitely starting to feel disconnected, too. I have the phone but I can’t charge it… Yeah, you read that right. Apparently my power supply for the phone only accepts 110v input (unlike my laptop). I thought for sure I checked everything but it looks like I missed that. I have my Windows Mobile phone with me but that is unfortunately locked, and might not even be tri-band, though I think it is. Anyway, another thing to do tomorrow is check to see if I can find a relatively cheap 240 -> 110 transformer. We used these all the time in PNG but I have no idea where to get one. And even if I do, it’s probably more money than I’ll want to spend. The other option is to see if I can contact Cingular from here and unlock my phone. Not sure if I can even do that, but worth a shot I guess. Otherwise the $25 I spent on a cell phone won’t be money well-spent.
I checked my email at Starbucks hoping to hear from either Ben or Amanda Lloyd, but nothing. I thought for sure I had Amanda’s number, but I don’t, so I have no way of getting hold of Ben or the Lloyds. <sigh> I tried the phonebook but none of the names listed look correct. I might break down and give them a try tomorrow. I did call Matt Holliday and talked to him for a bit, but he didn’t have the Lloyd’s number. Hopefully if Ben gets in touch with him he’ll give Ben my number. I also emailed Amanda but haven’t heard anything yet. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed. I have lodging here at the Kookaburra for tonight and tomorrow night, so I have some time to work with.
Speaking of the Kookaburra Inn, I am pleased with my accommodations. It’s a bit on the pricey side for a hostel ($48 a night), but I do get my own lockable room with fridge (for cooling Solo and bottled Lemon Lime & Bitters!) and sink. The problem is I only booked two nights in the hopes I’d be able to arrange wantok accommodations once I arrived. I have talked to them about extending stay, and they’re open to it, but it’s Ekka time in Brisbane (some agricultural festival that is apparently very HUGE) so places to stay are just tough to come by. Yet another thing to follow up on tomorrow.
It sucks that I haven’t had much time to DO anything yet. I walked around the Queen Street mall area today to familiarize myself a bit with everything, and I got a few pamphlets on the bus system and dining opportunities. I also got a flyer for some Koala preserve that looks relatively interesting. It’s supposed to be bus-accessible so I might take an afternoon and check it out.
The bus system looks sufficiently complicated that I will get lost several times. I’ve yet to find a bus system in any city that makes sense to me though. Trains I can handle – buses just confuse the crap out of me. Maybe after a good night’s sleep I’ll be able to tackle it and figure it out. I know where to get on a bus – there’re stops all over – but who knows if I’ll ever actually get to where I want to go. :-)
Well, it’s now 7 and I think I am going to cook up some Maggi noodles and enjoy them with some Chicken Twisties and Solo. Mmmmm, it’s good to be "home." :-) For desert I have several varieties of Arnott’s biscuits. Then for brekky tomorrow some real Nutri-Grain cereal and Paul’s Slim Milk. Absolutely delicious.
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