Firewallender // Cassie Wallender

Hey, you’re invited! It’s free, it’s fun, it’s nerdy nirvana! Join us. I helped organize this year, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an epic turnout so invite your friends. ;-)

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. It is an international network of user generated non-traditional social conferences— open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. Oh and super fun!! REGISTER HERE (free!)

Follow @barcampseattle on Twitter and use #bcs09 in your tweets.

Sat Jun 13, 10am-5pm and Sun Jun 14 10am-1pm
(Also there’s a Friday night cocktail party at Office Nomads featuring Tara Hunt… in fact, here’s a more detailed breakdown of the schedule and parties)

Adobe Conference Center
801 North 34th Street
Seattle, WA 98103

To be clear, I’m more concerned about my bricked iPhone than the likelihood of having to deal with N1H1, considering that regular flu is way worse (36,000 people die every year from regular flu season in the U.S.A.). This is not so much a pandemic as a pan(dem)ic.

But any flu in Seattle specifically might be harsh as Vitamin D deficiency has recently been linked to an increase in colds and flu’s.  Good to know; Seattle folk are not exactly known for their quality time with sunshine.  1.) We don’t have it.  2.) I’m not sure we’d want it - we’re all inside on our computers.  The chicken and the egg question comes to mind: does Seattle breed geeks or do geeks gravitate toward Seattle?  Maybe both. On this note, I might go for a walk this afternoon and give up on the phone recovery for a bit.

Speaking of walking, I actually saw a man walking down the street wearing a surgical mask today.  Why are people panicking so much? Is it the Twitter paranoia seeping into real life?

At least at the end of the day, this madness will help to prep us for the eventual zombie outbreak.  ;-)

Luckily, the Phoenix airport has free wifi, otherwise I might be upset. As it is, I can sit here and get work done, it doesn’t matter to me too much whether I’m in PHX or in a coffeeshop in D.C. The fact is though, US Airways oversold the last three flights from PHX to DCA, and needed 6-8 volunteers to stay behind on each flight. By letting them bounce me to the next flight twice, I’ve “earned” 2 round trip tickets to anywhere, a night in a hotel, and $30 in food vouchers by just being willing to sit around the airport and wait for the next flight.

It is understandable that they oversell some flights that people tend to bail on when it comes time to show up, but if the DC flights are constantly needing people to volunteer to stay behind, it seems that US Airways would make more money in the long run if they did not oversell this flight. It must be expensive for them, I know they’re pretty much paying for my trip.

They’re asking for volunteers again, but I need to get to DC by tonight, so it’s off I go. If I didn’t have places to be and people to see though, I wonder how many times I could volunteer and earn flight vouchers. Someone in the US Airlines management needs to reevaluate how they are doing this.

On a personal note, my time with Connie (a dear college friend, for those who don’t know her) was awesome! :-)

And I’m off! Epic Visit-a-Thon 2009!, originally uploaded by firewallender.

April 10-13th: See Connie in Phoenix, AZ
April 13th - 15th: See Rachel in Washington, D.C.
April 15th - 21st: See Rory in Washington, D.C.
April 21st: Back to Seattle via Chicago

Weeeeeeeeeee! 9 minutes until I board the plane to Phoenix! :-D

You can follow me on Twitter.

With a hat tip to the Calling John Galt blog, I have to bring this powerful visualization to your attention:

We’re enslaving the next generation to pay for our insatiable appetite to spend beyond our means. Tell your friends, repost this video, contact your representatives and promise to stop voting for those who abide by this behavior.  Take a stand.

Here’s a plan @brucephenry, @geekgiant, and I hatched on Twitter. We noticed there’s quite a few Seattle Geeks who love to go shooting, and thusly determined we should all go shooting together. So here’s the plan:

WHERE: Wades Eastside Guns and Outdoor Range
13570 Bel-Red Road, Bellevue, WA 98005
WHEN: Tuesday, March 10th at 7pm, until we abandon ship for beer (Wades closes at 10pm)
COST: Lane rental is $15 for the first person, $10 for each additional on the lane up to three people. Gun rental is as little as $8, or bring your own. Targets are $.25 - $1 each, depending on size.
WHY: Who doesn’t like to blow stuff up? All geeks are welcome, whether Republicans, Democrats, marksmen, n00bs, or anything in between.

So before you leave for Austin, come get your cowboy on with us. Please RSVP with a comment so I know how many people to plan for. Also, please use the #SGS1 hashtag on Twitter to pass the word along, and feel free to bring a friend!

UPDATE: SGS1 has come and gone, and it was a lot of fun! 13 people showed up, and we had a blast.

If you’ve be interested in giving Seattle Geek Shootout another go, please leave a comment. I’ve be happy to organize another one, perhaps on a Monday, when the range is a little less crowded.

*Technically, this book comes out February 18th, but if your preorder things on Amazon (like moi) sometimes you get them a few days early and get to write a preview in your blog. Win!

SSW2 was, in a word: awesome.

Here’s a little video from Q13 Fox (I make an itsy bitsy appearance about halfway through), but I’d also recommend reading Anthony Steven’s reflections on the weekend (as usual, he does an excellent job!).

I’ll be posting details about my team’s project soon later, must recover a bit first. Soooo tired. And happy. :-) Seattle rocks.

A few songs for your enjoyment, compliments of DJ Firewallender.  ;-)

Well, tonight I’m off to Seattle Startup Weekend 2. I’m completely exhausted but am hoping to get through the weekend on coffee, extroversion, and adrenaline alone. The last one was a blast, so I’m looking forward to this weekend a lot.

Let me know if you enjoy the playlist, I might do more in the future. I just realized the last song doesn’t fit at all, oh well.