Jerad Bitner

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.

The mountains were amazing! Sheer cliff walls and narrow roads all covered in freshly fallen snow… and it kept getting deeper the higher we went. We were listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack on our way up, but when I went around a bend and the back of the car slid just the slightest bit, we turned off the majestic but suspenseful music.

We continued up the mountain pass at a whopping 15MPH and when we came to Silverton we decided to keep going. There were some plows on the road, and there were other vehicles traveling, so we thought we could chance it. We made it almost to Durango when I made a slip in judgement, and was going 20MPH instead of 15MPH coming up on a turn, and the vehicle started to slide as I applied the brakes. We slid off the road, still going quite slow, and took out the front passenger side headlight on a tree. The car bounced to the left and the back end of the car then hit the same spot taking out some of the plastic of the rear brake light and bending up my rear bike wheel which was hitched to the bike rack on the back of the car.

The car stalled, I cursed and pounded the steering wheel, Jenney remained quiet.

I got out of the car to inspect the damage, bent the front side panel back down into place, and got back in the car, kicking the snow from my feet. the car took a couple tries to start, but the engine sounded fine. The damage was completely superficial and since we had all wheel drive, the Subaru pulled right out of the snow bank.

We headed the rest of the way to Durango barely going over 15MPH the rest of the way. Talk about trepidation! When we got to Durango, we stopped at a gas station to get some gas, and I asked the cashier if she had heard the forecast. She said they were due to have about 13inches. I asked if there was a way out of Durango that did not involve mountains. She said she didn’t know of any. So we drove around town a little while and decided to bunker down at the Adobe hotel, which offerred us an ‘early snow rate’ of $40/night.

While we were settling in there, Jenney checked her messages and called back her recruiter who informed her that her contract in Austin had been cancelled! Talk about a depressing day. Stressful snowstorm trek through the precarious mountain pass, damage to our new car, stuck in a snow storm in a town we had not planned on being in and new next to nothing about, and now we were on our way to a job that did not exists.

We stayed in Durango for two nights and checked out the town. Walking through the snow was an adventure for Jenney. Coming from San Diego and being a Cali girl most of her life, she had never experienced a foot of snow before and it was very endearing how her face would light up and she made a snow ball, or a little snow man, or fell backwards in the snow to make a snow angel. She also found that it took a bit of skill to actually walk in the snow ;)

On Wednesday the sun came out and we decided to try our luck getting the heck out of Dodge… err.. Durango. What we found was that the roads weren’t so bad and the mountains were no where near as bad as the ones we had come in through, so we probably could have pushed through. But, better safe then sorry - and we didn’t want to push our luck any more than we already had. So we are glad we waited.

We made it so Santa Fe, New Mexico and decided to stay there for the evening. We still had a headlight out (garages in Durango didn’t have the parts available) so we decided no driving at night. We found a wonderful bed and breakfast on Manhattan St. and after getting settled, wandered around town for a while. Nice town, found some good beer, but the highlight was the fireplace and bed at the bed and breakfast. We awoke the next morning so refreshed and much less stressed from the ordeal through the mountains and Durango.

We headed out around 9am, after breakfast, and got all the way to Post, Texas where we decided on another bed and breakfast. It was only a fraction more than a local chain motel and much cleaner and homey. It was a historical building and I cold work in comfort and we slept quite well.

In the morning we got up early and were on the road by 7:30am, making it to Austin by about 1:30pm. We found a hotel as our basecamp to start the apartment hunt and after two days of exploring Austin and searching for temporary housing, we’re now staying in some guy’s camper that he keeps in his driveway. It’s clean, safe, and cheap. A much cheaper home base for now until we figure out what is going on with Jenney’s job and where we’re going to actually be for the next few months.

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:

1. Edited the page-front.tpl.php and inserted a little logic to give the #preface-wrapper a different background-image property.

   <div id="preface-wrapper" class="clearfix" style="background-image: url();">
   

2. Wrote a custom function based off of the flickr_block.module's flickr_block_photoset_random() function. The function returns just the flickr farm url instead of running through the theme functions.

   function acquia_slate_flickr_block_photoset_random($nsid, $show_n, $size, $photoset_id) {
     // Get information about the photoset, including the owner.
     $info = flickr_photoset_get_info($photoset_id);
     if (!$info) {
       return;
     }
   
     // Get a list of "all" the photos in the photoset. This is cached.
     $response = flickr_request('flickr.photosets.getPhotos',
       array(
         'photoset_id' => $photoset_id,
         'per_page' => 500, // get as many images as possible
         'extras' => 'owner',
       )
     );
     if (!$response) {
       return;
     }
   
     // Randomly display $show_n of them
     $photos = $response['photoset']['photo'];
     shuffle($photos);
   
     $output = flickr_photo_img($photos[0], $size);
   
     return $output;
   }
   

3. Set the result of this new function, called with hardcoded arguments, to a theme variable within template.php's phptemplate_preprocess_page() function.

     // get a flickr image for the front page background
     $vars['flickr'] = acquia_slate_flickr_block_photoset_random($nsid, $show_n, $size, $photoset_id);
   

The one thing I couldn’t find was a block setting when looking at the flickr_block.module for the large size picture, which I needed. But looking at how the url is created within flickr.inc’s flickr_photo_img() function and comparing it with an actual large image on Flickr.com, I quickly saw that the size string is simply ‘b_d’ for large.

Fun stuff!

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.

The thought of having a startup has always appealed to me. I even have friends who have done them. And though I’ve always played it safe by working for corporations, I’ve always wanted to have my own business, startup or consulting, to call my own. It’s looking more and more like now is the time to get my nose to the grindstone. I’m not planning on quitting my job anytime soon, but now is the time to invest.

Dave and I have been in the middle of revitalizing DrupaLMAO (here’s a quick sneak peak) to incorporate the Drupal community into our show by getting feedback from them in the form of voting upon the content on the site (via the Drupal Planet). Hopefully this will help get the community’s involvement in the show as we’ll talk about the things that the readers care about. We’re coming out with a new episode any day now, it’s taped, waiting on our editor ;) and while we wait, we’re redesigning, rethinking and migrating to Drupal 6 (WIN!). Though this may not be startup material, it is nonetheless paramount to have a presence in the community… and it’s just damn good fun!

Another project I’m soon to have underway, came about from the fact that I get contacted by recruiters on a weekly basis looking for Drupal talent. Drupal hackers are in VERY HIGH DEMAND and there are many corporations out there now who are willing to pay top dollar for some of the best Drupal talent. While I may not be up there on the “high talent scale”, I keep a good relationship with these recruiters by offering advice on where to find Drupal talent, and how to go about it. They’re quite often taken by surprise at the amount of resources that are actually out there to help them find who or what they’re looking for, and some are a little discouraged by the advice I give. Especially when I tell them that they may be better off hiring one good Drupal developer who can teach a team of PHP developers how to use Drupal. Sounds like a good consulting strategy too ;) So after talking with endless recruiters, and regurgitating the same advice time and again, I’m convinced that there is a huge need to connect employers, recruiters and Drupal talent. There are no real good solutions out there that have the community backing them so in the next few weeks I’ll be on irc looking for ways to get this going. I’ve got a good idea in the front of my mind (rather then the back) but I want to build something that is going to have the community behind it and hopefully get d.o involved, not just another lame job board.

So if you’re out there looking down, thinking the end is neigh… think again. Read the posts mentioned above, and be inspired.

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.

After a week of vacation, taking time to think about my priorities while spending time with family and friends in PA, and then meeting with Ted’s business partner, Dietrich von Behren who is the Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer of MothersClick, I felt confident enough to make the jump and reach for a star on the other side of the country.

My last day at Sony BMG is August 7th, 2008. I’ll be heading back to PA to spend some more time with my family and friends and then back to Jersey to take care of getting rid of as much of my worldly possessions as possible. Then the week of the 18th Dave and I will be taking a cross country trip to San Francisco along RT 80. We’re still looking for good places to stop along the way, so if you have any suggestions that would be wonderful! I’m also still looking for a temporary place to crash in San Fran while I get the lay of the land and figure out where it makes sense to park myself for a year (read: sign a lease).

All in all, I’m very optimistic and I really feel this is the right move. Not only because I can live one of my dreams, but also to learn about starting a business, and everything that entails. Not to mention becoming a better programmer under the tutelage of a master! Wish me luck!