Recently I was in Orlando for a trade show.

It wasn’t as great as Orlando could have been…

I mean I was staying in the Disney Dolphin resort, and the weather was awesome, but all I saw was a hotel room, the trade show floor, and a few in-hotel restaurants.

But I did have one really memorable moment.

And I don’t mean a “I’ll always remember that moment at the trade show” type moment.. I mean “At the trade show I remembered that great moment”" type moment.

It sounds more complex than it is.

They say smell is the sense most strongly tied to memory.

I believe it.

The trade show had ended and we were all packing up.

The crew of the Dolphin was taking down the hotel’s stuff, and had some of the big loading bay doors open.

A warm breeze wafted in scented with a subtle mix of sea salt and orange. I’m sure the natives didn’t think twice about it, but that’s an experience you don’t get everyday in Indiana and I noticed it right away.

A flood of memories came back to me.

First the balloon ride Jana and I took when we first went to Florida together.

I really REALLY loved that trip.

I get all nostalgic thinking about it. We weren’t engaged or anything, heck we hadn’t even been dating all THAT long. But we had a BLAST. One of the highpoints was our hot air balloon ride.

We got up at dawn and lifted off from a hazy field as the sun came up.

I’d planned the outing for her… not expecting to get such a kick out of it, but it was really amazing. We swooped down over the orange groves and you could smell the oranges on the air.

Of course that trip was fun for a lot of reasons.

We walked the board walk, laid around clear water beach, and toured the Disney parks at length.

Really an awesome time.

And it all came back to me in about a tenth of a second.
Then (in the following tenth of a second) another memory came back.
This one much older.

Space Camp!!

Yeah space camp… like the movie.
But we never really made it into space.

When I was a kid Dave and I went to Space Academy (camp for the slightly older kids).
We were geeks.
We still are geeks.

But it was also a great time.

I met great people, and got to see/learn/do things that most people (of any age) will never get to do.

I mean think of this… both years I was there I was fortunate enough to be the commander of the shuttle that our team had for our simulations.

(and even though this isn’t an awards show I have to say that I was even MORE fortunate to have a really stellar team to work with. The pilot, the CAPCOM on ‘the ground’ all were great.)

Anyway… as a precursor to the BIG mission that concluded each year I was given a schematic of all the controls in the shuttle cockpit, along with a brief description of what they were for.

Same for the CRTS that would display various menu options.

More time was spent on the controls / menus that I would be needing in my mission of course. And as logic would dictate a very large part of my mission was successfully getting off the planet… and back onto it.

I can honestly say that if for some reason I ever find myself on a space shuttle, and the crew is incapacitated… I could land it.

Absolutely.

As long as the radio worked and I could talk to someone down there … I could land it.

How many of you can say that?!

But I digress.
We were talking about memories.

So in an instant I remembered the dorm I stayed in.

The full size shuttle in the center of the campus.
All the great people I met:

- Dave (Hilarious guy.. wonder what he’s up to)

- Crispy (My top notch Pilot)

- Jessie (The girl I had a crush on)

- And The Canadian (I can picture her .. but her name eludes me. When I’m home I’ll see if I can find a letter.)

The cafeteria…

Climbing into the flight deck.

Meeting all the “real life” astronauts.

It was a lot of fun.
And I hadn’t thought of it in a long, long time.

The flood of memory was interesting, and it made me think.
Will I remember these things so vividly when I’m 70?
Will the people I met remember me when they catch a familiar breeze?

Does it work the same for bad memories?

Does my Dad ever get flooded with memories of his buddies in VietNam on some random summer afternoon?

I guess time will tell.

I hope though that I can always remember those things so well.
Hopefully at home as well as in Florida.

Wow this is a long Blog.
Generally not the best idea to make huge Blogs… but hey I’m feeling nostalgic.

Some other time I’ll tell you about riding bikes up the ramp at the empty YMCA building during my childhood .

Well the site made some steps last night.

The two mini-banners (geoURL and XML feeds) are starting to come around.
The geoURL data is hindered as the geoURL.org site is down.

There is another service starting up (geoURL.info) that is hoping to pick up the slack, but they aren’t as large yet.

Hopefully both will be viable soon, as it’s a neat feature.

The XML data is finally making an appearance.
(Big thanks to “iamtgo3″ from ipdg3.com for helping me figure out a syntax problem.)

I’ve got several RSS 2.0 feeds at the moment.

More feature rich XML feeds will follow… someday. But I’ve not taken the time to plan out what to put in them and how to layout the files.

For now please feel free to use the RSS feeds, and let me know if you need any help.

Well happy Friday Gang!
(Gosh I’d make a swell third grade teacher!)

Anyway I wanted to make a REAL quick Blog to show two neat pieces of web gadgetry.

The first is … for lack of a better description… a zip code navigator.

It’s pretty neat, this guy has mapped the US zip codes and graphically narrows down the location on a map as you type it in.

If you click “zoom” before you start it’s pretty cool too!

Play around with it HERE.

The second is a name navigator.

It’s true name is the name voyager and it graphically maps the popularity of names over time.

Very cool in it’s own right.

Check out your name HERE.

Well those should give you some quality goof off time today.

Enjoy your weekend!

Ok ok ok…

I realize there are few things that need to be done to REALLY finish off the new changes around here.

Rest assured they are coming.

Soon your email will be hidden if you so choose (via your profile setup)

Soon your signatures will show up with your posts.

Soon you will be able to edit any comments you made so that you can easily fix type-os.

Well… that last one is a maybe.

I like making fun of all of your type-os…

Well it’s Wednesday.

I’m very tired at the moment.

Yesterday Jana and I went to Rochester.

(Ted and Dave were also there)

Mom was having surgery and we wanted to be around if needed.

Everything went well and Mom is doing fine. So even though I’m back at work, and worn out from the driving… It’s a great day here!

We may head back to Rochester in the coming week or so for up to a week.

That way Dad can go to work, and there will be some back up there to help out. Mom isn’t going to feel up to doing much.

Tonight I have a thing with my co-workers to say goodbye to two team members who are moving on, and leaving the company.

It’s a shame to see them go.

Two very valuable people who (whether they know it or not) taught me a great deal. I’ll be sad to see them go.

Tonight I think to celebrate how well Mom is doing I’ll sit up in the office, watch 24, have a cigar, futz around on the computer, and get to bed early.

Sounds divine!

Have I mentioned how much I love Tivo?

Seriously this device is the best thing EVER.

I just got the latest update and WOW I’m loving it even more.

Now I can pull recorded programs from my Tivos onto my computer!

The theory here is that you could put them on a laptop and take them with you when traveling. I’ve not used it for that obviously, as I’m moving them onto my desktop, but the service is still paying off.

See I don’t have a cable or Satellite TV connection in my office at home. And I wasn’t real jazzed about installing one. But this service lets me plug in the old monitor and play my Tivo’d shows on it as I use my main monitor as normal.

So now I can watch 24, and all my other favorite shows, while smoking a cigar (my office is the only indoor room where this is permitted), and working on my website.

BRILLIANT!

The down side…

I’ll be spending an even greater percentage of my life in that room now.

The upside…

I’ll be spending an even greater percentage of my life in that room now.

Hey what can I say…

I like cigars, computers, and TV.

Now that room is the only place I can enjoy all three.

I highly suggest that those of you with a Tivo Series 2 machine, a local lan or wi-fi connection, and the “networked Tivo” service check this new “Tivo To go” feature out.

Just in time to help lighten the load of a brand new work week…

DougMeade.com is back, and better than ever!

First things first…the obvious.
I’ve launched a brand new theme. Heck a brand new layout for that matter.

It’s not flashy or glitzy, but it’s well over due.

It signals a return to my roots as a web designer. I’ve always been a disciple of the “less is more” camp.

Sure sure.. it’s nice to deviate from time to time and see how fancy and intricate you can get something… but in the end I always get called back to a clean, easy to use, easy to read design.

There’s beauty in simplicity when done right.

I hope you agree that this change is for the better.

On the functional side I’ve taken steps to ensure that the site is 100% at resolutions as low as 800×600.

Though please… people… 800×600 sucks.

Push it up a bit.

Go ahead it’ll be fine.

Worried about font size?

Don’t. The site switched from pixel specific sizing to “em” sizing.

In short… ctrl plus your scroll wheel will adjust the site’s fonts for you.

Some other cool features…

You can sign up and register with the site.

Then you will be remembered on all the forms here, and your name, URL, etc will be displayed when you comment.

Posting updates to existing news stories is now possible.

(For Example)

And yadda yadda yadda…

Leave me a comment and let me know how you like the new design.

For the record there’s a lot more to this than a new design, you can read all about THAT here.

Well Wiba (my pet web development project) has taken a drastic turn.

For the better I think.

Originally I thought Wiba would be a complete content management system.

Something like a .NET for php. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was both over kill, and redundant.

There are many great applications out there that do a good percentage of what I need.

Any good developer will tell you that if it’s been written once, doing so again is pretty stupid.

So now Wiba will we re-worked to be something more like a templating system.

Basically I want a system that will enable me to create sites for people that know nothing about web development, HTML, php, CSS, or any of the other acronyms out there. Many good applications exist for doing 70% of that.

Wiba 2.0 will focus on making use of those third party applications and still allow the site owner to point and click their way through site layout, design, and style decisions.

When its time to update the content.. that’ll be easy too.

This will of course take some time.

It is a complete re-work after all, but you’re seeing the first steps of that process here today!

DougMeade.com is now running on the first steps of this re-work.

You’ve probably noticed the new theme the site has taken, but that’s a tiny fraction of the changes that have been made.

(You can learn more about the new theme in the following Blog)

You’ll notice some subtile things at first:

1) You can register with the site now.2) Forms will remember your info once you register with the site.

3) The return of Eaton Web rankings, and web ring info.

But going forward there will be host of changes:

1) Polls2) Blog Trackback

3) RSS / XML feeds

4) The long anticipated return of the photo album.

That’s not to say we didn’t sacrifice anything…

1) The Blogger ping is no longer functioning on Blog updates.2) The PermaLinks for the Blogs changed (turns out they weren’t so Perma huh?!)

But rest assured, those things are being addressed, and the end product will be a stronger, more robust web application.

(Believe me it already is)

Stay tuned for more.

Jana has been dealing with a very nasty knee injury lately.

Lots of Vicodin, and one MRI later we have received the good news that she won’t be needing surgery.

She does however have some rather grueling physical therapy to do.

She’s getting it done and being a trooper.

Also…

Jana’s Car is fixed.

It had a laundry list of things to be done.

We got the major things done and skipped the rest… in case another un expected expense popped up.

And it did…

Our Garage door broke.

We’re having that looked at.

More money I assume will be donated to Indianapolis Economy.

When it rains it pours.

On the upside my “I’d rather be dead than do this diet” diet is in it’s second week.

I officially lost six pounds last week, though I have a feeling it may have been closer to four.

At any rate they say the first week is always “water”…

Getting ready for a business trip to Sunny Orlando.

Will do what I can to take a few pics when I go in a couple weeks.

… um …..

I guess that’s about it.