Jerad Bitner

Jenney and I moved from Austin to Carolina Beach, North Carolina and the past three.5 months have been amazing! It's been like a working vacation. We were right on the beach, with beautiful views, and a personal walkway to the beach which was in a premo-spot. Not a ton of people, lots of waves, and lots of sunshine. We both worked hard, and played hard. It was great and I can honestly say I've lived my 'beach life' dream for at least a while. Chalk another dream up to 'accomplished'!

Today marks the start of ANOTHER adventure. We packed up our life once more and left beautiful Carolina Beach behind. Tonight we wait at Jenney's best friend's (and Maid of Honor's) house before our flight tomorrow for San Diego where we will be for a week, staying at her mother's house before we are wed on Saturday, September 25th. We're both so so so excited to see our friends and family and to celebrate what we've held true in our hearts for the last year; our commitment and love for each other.

I had a pretty in depth adventure in my dreams last night so I downloaded ommwriter to capture them in the wee morning hours as soon as I awoke. Ommwriter is pretty nice, the music and the interface really helped for this kind of writing and I think would inspire me to write more poetry. I'm still listening to the music as I type this up in my blog. Anyway, here are some notes on the things I remember from the dream. Should turn this into a short story.

- start out searching for lost people down a dark hallway
- hole in the wall
- go through to find a vampire playing pool, trying to make crazy shots, like off the table, off the wall
- knock off the cue ball from a precarious position
- pisses off the vampire and I run
- fall down a story, over a banister, into a pool of water
- notice the missing childrens possessions
- notice the missing children, wrapped up in cacoons made of the green weeds lining the bottom of the pool
- pull some of the cacoons to the surface
- free the children
- vampire comes and i set her on fire, first her hair, then with gasoline
- throw more gasoline up the stairway and onto her brothers
- light the trail and run
- i am vampire
- they search for me
- they find me, and we run from the mother, scatter
- i am alone, running through backyards, pissed

What an adventure! Jenney got a contract in Austin Texas for her next position doing traveling Occupational Therapy, so we packed up the new Subaru Forester (new to us) and started the long trek from Grand Junction, Colorado to Austin, Texas.

Now it hadn't snowed much at all in Colorado while we were there, but wouldn't it so happen that the day we decide to leave, a huge storm is forecasted to come through! So we set out as early Monday morning as we could (still had a little cleaning to do) and started on our way. It was too far outside of GJ that it started to flurry, and before we arrived in Ouray, we had passed through some areas with some pretty substantial snowfall. But Ouray there was not much of anything on the ground, and the highway pass through the Redridge Mountains was not closed. So even though there was a sign that commercial vehicles were required to have chains, we went against our better judgement and started up the mountain pass instead of staying in Ouray, at the hotspring hotel, like we should have.

Finally took the old personal blog from d5 to d6 and gave it a face lift. The new Acquia Slate theme is pretty slick, but I wanted to give it just a small bit of uniqueness, so I wrote a little custom function into the theme in order to pull up random photos from one of my Flickr sets. It was fast and fun, made easy with the Flickr module's API. Here's a couple quick steps I took:

The cold hard rain dripped down my face, erasing the warmth
  only remembrance remained.

So used to the shielding when heat returned
  unnoticed and without all the same.

Then brightness shined, a key was found
  to try that diligent construct; cold hard lock.

Will it fit; turn that intricate mechanism
  surrounding that which has rusted?

I hope.

A couple months ago (right after I made a big move) I started hearing thing about the financial crisis and banks going under. Talking with my friend who travels a lot, I came to hear that when America sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. Another friend of mine introduced me to a film called "Zeitgeist". With the uncertainty of living in a new area, trying to gain respect at a new job, and making new friends, I started worrying. Actually worrying is an understatement, but I'll not be dramatic.

However, after hearing about Lullabot's new venture, and especially Ed Sussman's blog post, "Why Start (Up) Now?" I gained a little hope. Then I got a twitter from Kevin Rose today where he talked about Paul Graham's post, "Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy". I must say that I'm feeling better. Again an understatement, but dramatics really aren't my thing.

Drupal, you've done it again... become the vector of change in my life by presenting me with opportunities that are seemingly too good to be true. Last year it was New York and Sony BMG. This year it's San Francisco and a start-up called ParentsClick Network. Just when I thought things couldn't get any better and that maybe I've hit the height of reaching my dreams in life, another one comes within my grasp, and giving in to my free spirit, I jump at the chance to make a dream a reality.

Ted Serbinski is a guy whose progress I've followed since that first Lullabot class in Rhode island, less than two years ago (1/15/07) when the world of Drupal really opened up to me. He was a Lullabot at the time, teaching theming and some jQuery. He left Lullabot later that year to start a journey into entrepreneurship (and MothersClick) that has started to pan out nicely. I've great respect for his coding skills and believe in his business sense. So when he approached me about a job working with him in San Francisco, a place I've always wanted to live, I was very excited.