A baby’s sense of order

This morning, Benjamin and I had to get a blood test. I guess this makes us blood brothers.

Ready to go out

It’s been about 8 years since my last test. Now that Benjamin is one year old, his pediatrician wants him tested for lead as a precaution since housing in San Francisco can date back to when paint and pipes had lead.

When getting him ready for the visit, I got him dressed. He started repeating “sosh” when I was putting on his socks. I mistakenly thought the lab could get a sample from his foot, so I skipped putting on his shoes.

He saw me pick up his sandals, and ran at me yelling “shoosh!” But when I dropped them in his diaper bag, he wasn’t having it at all. He associates his “shoosh” with going out, thought this meant I was leaving without him, and started crying.

It took all of five seconds, but that was five seconds too long for my son.

Continue reading about adventures in blood testing after the jump

Confoo: PHP without PHP

confoo.ca Web Techno Conference

If you are attending confoo this year, I’ll be giving a talk at the beginning of the conference. Even if you aren’t a PHP developer, I think you’ll find the talk useful—as there is no language religion in it. I’ll be pleased if you attend.

It’s going to be a little different from my recent talks (less cussing). Believe it or not, there was a time I used to be a speaker who didn’t resort to scatalogy to get my point across. 🙂 In fact, George once told me that his favorite talk of mine was the first one I gave—nary a cuss word to be found because I was so nervous! This talk is an attempt to return to the more-focused application of philosophy that I had done starting out.

Since my session is in the beginning of the conference, and I’ll be there until I have to leave for SXSW, I’d appreciate it if you still came up to me and talked to me about anything on your mind. Don’t worry, like a terrier (terryer?), I’m all bark and no bite.

I’m trying to reset the way I approach web development and so this may very well be the only conference I’ll be speaking at this year. I’m sure any discussion you have will be worthwhile—even if it isn’t about my talk or web development. Confoo this year is going to be about so much more than PHP, and I’m very interested in new developments on the web, even if it is happening in the Rails community. ;-). Besides, PHP gets nowhere without stealing from our betters. 🙂

See you there!
Continue reading about the post presentation stuff after the jump