On yesterday’s show, San Diego Chargers special teams extraordinaire, Kassim Osgood, was a call-in guest and was interviewed by the team at KLAA.  Kassim has been on the Chargers since 2003, and was twice selected for the Pro Bowl (in 2007 and 2008) for his excellence at special teams.  Off the field, he is easily my favorite Chargers player to follow on Twitter.  Not only does he talk about football and give some new insight into the team operations, but he actually acts like a normal person on Twitter and tweets his feelings and opinions on things completely unrelated to football.  He even has a segment he does on Twitter called “the couch”, where he invites his followers to ask him questions and seek his advice.  Whenever he does that, it’s generally guaranteed to garner a few laughs from myself.

Mary too is a big Kassim fan, and add to it that John was going to be a part of his interview, she called me and told me I had to record the segment.  So, I did, and I cut it down to John’s NFL segment which includes Kassim’s interview.  Without further ado, I present yesterday’s show:

On a side note: today I became a contributing columnist for the best San Diego Chargers resource on the entire web, Bolts from the Blue.  It’s a fan–run blog, but don’t let that fool you, it’s easily the most in-depth site and well-run website I’ve come across.  The knowledge and level of expertise among the people who are a part of the site amazes me to this day and is a valuable resource for any Chargers fan.

This past Tuesday, November 10, 2009, I finally did what a lot of friends and family were hoping for and proposed to Jess, my girlfriend of over 2.5 years. Actually, it was 2 years, 8 months (to the day in fact).

What follows, is the story of how I went about becoming the happiest guy imaginable.

The Ring

I wanted to make sure I had the ring before I started anything. To me, this was one of the most important parts. Jess and I had already looked at rings together about a month prior, so I knew what she liked and what she would want. Using that knowledge, I picked out the ring I would give her: a Scott Kay palladium solitaire ring. I went to the jeweler to have the diamond set in the ring, and once I saw the ring with the diamond set in it, I began to really get excited.

Getting the Families On Board

Monday night, the night before the proposal, I went over to my parents and told them I intended to propose to Jess “tomorrow night”. Their faces lit up and were very excited. My dad stood up instantly and hugged me and said “congratulations”; my mom said, “well it’s about time”, obviously indicating this was something the family had been anticipating and anxiously awaiting.

I said “good bye” to my parents, went outside to my car, and sat in my car in my parents’ driveway and called Jess’s parents, who live about 90 minutes north of us. I started the conversation by saying, “I’m sorry for doing this over the phone, this is something I wanted to discuss with you yesterday when we were up there, but someone, who goes by the name of ‘Jessica’ did not want to leave the house and I couldn’t talk to you guys alone.” I informed them of my intentions to marry their daughter, and asked for their blessing. Her dad said, “that would be wonderful!” Her mom said, “you know I won’t be able to sleep tonight now, this is exciting!” I then asked if they would be willing to drive down to San Diego the following night, and they agreed (once again I had apologized for such short notice, but they were excited).

With blessings from both families secured, I went about enacting my plan.

Putting the Plan in Action

Jess had school Tuesday morning, and work Tuesday afternoon. She actually wasn’t originally supposed to work on Tuesday, but picked up a shift, which worked in her favor as it allowed me to do everything I needed to do. Since she would be home for a period of time around noon, I knew I couldn’t do anything with the house until she went to work or else I would tip her off.

I went to work for the morning, but then I told her I was leaving around 12:30 to have lunch with a co-worker. At 12:30, I headed up to Bed Bath and Beyond and picked up a bag of 100 tea lights and some champagne flutes (we had none). Then I went to the grocery store and picked up fixin’s for dinner, a bottle of her favorite champagne, a dozen roses, and two bags of rose petals.

I returned home around 1:30, narrowly missing Jess as she went to work just 10 minutes prior to my returning home. I set to work on getting everything done I needed to, starting with dinner. I browned the pot roast and got it cooking in the crock pot. I then thoroughly cleaned up the kitchen and front room.

With about 2 hours to go before she returned home from work, I began working on our bedroom. I started by cleaning everything up, and then made the bed. I cleaned off the dresser and night stands and Pledged it all so it was nice and clean. I finished everything up by vacuuming the entire condo; let’s just say the house had not been this clean in months.

I placed about 50 tea lights throughout the room: on the dresser, TV stand, night stands, anything I could. I put the dozen roses on her night stand, and two champagne flutes underneath the roses. I placed her favorite teddy bear, Rocky, which she’s had since she was five years-old on the center of the bed.

I opened the first bag of rose petals and dumped them on the bed. I originally was going to just randomly place them on the bed, but that didn’t look so good; instead, I shaped all the rose petals into the shape of a heart. Using the second bag of petals, I sprinkled them all over the dresser and night stands (wherever there wasn’t a candle basically). Finally, I poured the champagne into the flutes.

Then, the most important part: I placed the ring box on the bear so it looked like he was holding it.

The stage was set, I was all ready to go.

Waiting

Normally Jess leaves work around 5:30PM, but tonight she was running a bit late. I get a call at almost 5:50, she was just leaving. We had discussed dinner, and I said I had figured something out and that the chicken was thawing out (I can’t keep my lies straight, probably a good thing). I already had everything set up, the candles all lit, and at this point was just pacing back and forth in the house waiting for her to make the drive home. It felt like this was her longest drive home, I was just so anxious.

I saw her drive up and I went back into the bedroom where everything was set up, and waited.

The Proposal

She came inside and called out to me, “hi”, I answered from the bedroom, “Hi”.

She walked upstairs, saw the clean house, “Why is the house so clean? When did you get home to clean?”

“Oh, I got home about 4:30 and the house was bugging me so I cleaned.”

Walking into the kitchen because she smelled the pot roast, “wait, this isn’t chicken? Why aren’t we having chicken?”

“I told you I figured dinner out. Can you come back here?”

“Why? What are you doing back there?”

“Will you just come back here please?”

She walks into the bedroom and looks at me, “What’s going on? Why are you dressed so nicely?” I could see it in her face, she knew what was going on. She started to get excited and tear up a little.

I said, “I think this is something you’ve been waiting a while for, and was hoping it would happen soon.” I grabbed her hands and looked in her eyes, and began pouring my heart out to her, choking back the tears.

After professing my love for her, I took the ring box from Rocky and got down on one knee, opened the box and said, “Jessica, will you marry me?” Well actually, she didn’t let me finish, she shouted “OF COURSE!” before I could even finish asking her.

She was still staring me in the eyes and never once looked at the ring, I said, “okay well will you look at the ring?” She took a look and smiled even more. I put the ring on her finger (the perfect size mind you), stood up and she just attacked me with hugs and kisses. We hugged for such a long time, because it was such a momentous occasion, but also because she was admiring the shiny new diamond ring she had on her finger while hugging me.

We toasted to each other with the champagne I already had poured, and I then informed her that her family was already on the way down from Riverside, and they’d be having dinner with us at the condo. She started clapping and let out a giggle.

Sharing the Joy

She was so giddy and excited that she literally was jumping up and down and staring at her hand. With her still in her work clothes, I said, “Okay, time to change, we need to go see my parents.” She was just so excited to show it off, she just shouted, “OKAY!!”

We went to my parents and they popped another bottle of champagne and we toasted there, hugged and just shared in the happiness together. We left my parents around 7:00 so I could finish making dinner and we could meet her parents at the condo. The parents were anxious to meet each other, so we invited my parents over for dessert around 8:30. We would have had them over for dinner too, but we don’t have enough room to host that many people (yet).

Her parents got there around 7:20 (they hit traffic) and they gave us a gift. Jess asked, “Do you mind if I just open it?” I said, “Yes I mind. That’s ‘our’ gift, and our first one since becoming an engaged couple, so we can open it together.” They had gotten us a beautiful pair of Waterford crystal champagne flutes (these: http://bit.ly/2BYBSD ). Her mom said we could use them for the wedding itself, but that doesn’t mean we had to wait until the wedding to use them, we christened them right then with what else, MORE CHAMPAGNE!

Anyway, we had dinner and had just finished cleaning up when my parents arrived. What better occasion for the parents to meet, right? They hit it off and got along well. We all sat around talking for about an hour, while Jess’s and my phones were lighting up with calls, texts, emails, and Facebook notifications. At one point I had 8 unread texts, 19 unread emails, and phone calls kept coming in.

Unwinding

The parents all left around 10:00, and Jess and I unwound in front of our computers; both of us answering and addressing all the Facebook posts and comments we received.

Jess later told me that everything I had done was all she could have ever wished for, she could not ask for anything better. She loves her ring and she loves the way I proposed. And anyone she tells the story to just has the same response, “awwwww”, which is all she wanted from me for a proposal. Her favorite part was that I used Rocky as part of the proposal and he was holding the ring, she thought that was the cutest thing ever.

The funny thing is, she doesn’t remember anything I said to her during the actual proposal, she was too busy going “OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG” in her head to comprehend what I was saying.

We went to bed just before 11:00 and both just collapsed; it had been a whirlwind of a day. One happy day neither of us will ever forget.

And now the fun that is planning a wedding begins …

Feel free to take a look at Design Eye and drop a line.

And another one with texture:

SPARTA

Since I last blogged towards the end of April, some things have changed in our project. The last I mentioned, we had decided to use Cappuccino for our latest web app project. Well, unfortunately, we decided against Cappuccino upon further review. It was determined that we needed a little more flexibility than Cappuccino can provide us at the time. We haven’t removed Cappuccino from any future consideration, we just decided to go with a more “traditional” implementation for this particular web app.

That said, SPARTA work has been somewhat quiet lately. We’ve just been making continual progress on each of our projects. Now that the sale of the company to Cobham has been completed, things have quieted down considerably.

creanium.net

The last few months have seen creanium.net mature quite a bit. As you saw at the beginning of April, I got business cards made up. I’ve handed out quite a few since I got them, so I’m glad I ordered them.

I’ve registered the company with the IRS and County of San Diego, so I’m legally allowed to do business as “creanium.net Web Design”. I even opened a business checking account, I’m moving up in the world!

I’ve picked up quite a few new projects in the past few months. I’ll do separate posts in a bit about each of the projects I have done.

Personally

It’s been a pretty busy number of months personally. At the end of April, Jess and I drove up to northern California to celebrate Reagan’s first birthday!

Brian’s Bachelor Party and Wedding

At the beginning of June, a bunch of us guys went on a 4-day, 3-night Bachelor Party cruise in honor of my old roommate and best friend, Brian. We sailed on the Carnival Elation from San Diego. We were supposed to dock in Ensanada, but because of Swine Flu concerns, we went to Catalina Island instead. To sum it up, we had a blast! I’m still working on getting the photos posted.

Brian got married at the end of June and I had the honor and pleasure of being his Best Man. It was a beautiful and fun beach wedding in Dana Point. Photos have been posted so feel free to take a look!

This was the first of five weddings we have been invited to this year, so the fun was just beginning.

Minnesota

July gave us no reprieve from the busyness. We spent the 4th of July up in Riverside with Jess’s family and then watched the fireworks at Mt. Rubidoux.

In mid–July the whole family (Jess included) headed to Minnesota for my cousin Danika’s wedding (2nd of 5). As expected, we all had a great time out there and it didn’t last nearly as long as it should have. I could have used another 2 or 3 days out there. The wedding was a ton of fun and it was great being up in Minnesota again. Oh, and Jess’s highlight of the entire trip? The hour we spent at the Mall of America right before our flight home.

August

That brings us to August, which I cannot believe is just about half over already. This is probably our busiest month by far. It started off on the 1st with us celebrating Keira’s 3rd birthday with the annual party at my parent’s house. As always, it was a ton of fun with all the kids.

The following weekend was booked. Gaile’s (my sister-in-law) parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with a party down at Michael and Gaile’s. But because we already had plans to attend a wedding that night (our 3rd of 5), we could only stay at the party for about 2 hours before heading downtown to Jess’s friend Stephanie’s wedding.

That wedding was a ton of fun, well probably too much fun for my own good if you catch my drift.

My mom celebrated her 60th birthday this past Tuesday. We hosted the immediate family (well minus Mary) for a great birthday dinner in my mom’s honor. And we’re headed to my parents’ tomorrow for more celebrating.

Weight Loss

Around the middle of June, I realized that I had had enough and the excuses weren’t working anymore and I needed to start losing weight again. So I started eating better and using My Food Diary again, and then began riding my bike again and hitting the gym. So far I’ve been able to stay on top of it for the most part and I’ve lost nearly 20 pounds. Given my history, that’s quite an accomplishment in itself.

Now

So now you’re all caught up on my happening in the last few months. I may have left a few things out, not on purpose, just there’s been so much going on that I may have forgotten a few things.

I have a few articles for which I have ideas, I just need to write them out. So look for more articles in the coming days and weeks as I get them knocked out.

Right now, the only way to use 0.7b is to download and build it from source. Since I develop on a MacBook Pro using Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), these instructions will be based on that. These instructions also assume you are familiar with the Terminal application.

Prerequisites

You will need the following:

• Git
• Ruby, Rubygems and Rails – If you’re using OS X Leopard, the default install that comes with the OS is sufficient. (Cappuccino will not compile on Ruby 1.9, make sure you’re using Ruby 1.8)

Installing Needed Gems

Cappuccino 0.7b requires the plist Ruby Gem. The installer is supposed to automatically install it for you, but it can be flakey, so just for safety’s sake, install the plist gem by running the following command:

sudo gem install plist

Getting the Source Code

Once you have Git and Ruby installed, you need to get the source from the Cappuccino project on GitHub. I keep all my source code in /usr/local/src/ (for more info on why, Hivelogic has an article about this very subject).

Let’s go into the src directory and check out the source code

cd /usr/local/src/
git clone git://github.com/280north/cappuccino.git

This will download all the source and create a directory name cappuccino. Let’s go into that directory and select the 0.7b branch as the active target.

cd cappuccino
git checkout -b 0.7b origin/0.7b

This sets 0.7b as the current target.

Building the Cappuccino Code

Now, let’s go ahead and build the code

rake release

This should have built Cappuccino 0.7b. You may have experienced the following error while trying to build the code:

subrake missing: ojunit

If so, don’t panic. It’s just looking for additional software, build by the Cappuccino team, that isn’t provided in the Cappuccino source by default.

Just run the following commands:

cd Tools
git clone git://github.com/280north/ojunit.git
cd ..

Then run

rake release

again and you should have happy compiled code.

Installing the Cappuccino Code

Now, to install the Cappuccino tools, you just run the following command:

sudo rake install

This will install all the Cappuccino binaries in /usr/local/bin/. This should already be in your PATH, so you should be able to run the Cappuccino binaries.

Using capp

Building and installing the Cappuccino code created some new useful tools for you. One of them is the capp application that generates all the Cappuccino frameworks and shell code for you. It can also be used to upgrade the frameworks in your existing application.

Creating a new Cappuccino Application

You can use the capp application to create a new Cappuccino application for you. From within any directory you want your new cappuccino application created, just issue the following command:

capp Application Name [options]

If, for instance, you want to create a new app called “HelloWorld” to be placed on your desktop, then you can easily enter the following command:

capp ~/Desktop/HelloWorld

This will create, quite literally, a Hello World application. You can use this as the basis for your app and build on top of it.

Upgrading an Existing Cappuccino Application

If you already have developed (or are developing) a Cappuccino application and you just want to see how your application will function in the latest beta, the easiest method is to create a dummy application with capp using the instructions above, and then just replacing the Frameworks folder in your application’s folder with the new one created by capp.

I’ve just recently added a “Subscribe to Updates” section that will allow you to enter your email address and get emailed whenever I post a new blog entry. (Don’t worry, I am very anti-spam, so only I will have your email address, it will not be shared and I won’t be sending you any direct email). You can find it under Subscribe to Updates to the right in the sidebar.

As always if you use an RSS feed reader, you can subscribe to RSS updates by clicking the subscribe link in the sidebar in the “Stay up to Date” section.

So for many reasons, we’re replacing these Excel-based apps with a web-based system. As is typical with SPARTA, we’re the exception to every rule, so no Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) system really did everything we needed it to do. So now it falls on us to develop the web application. One decision we’ve made was to make the web version similar to the Excel-based versions to reduce the learning curve. Then as users get used to the web apps, we’ll gradually make changes and redesigns as we find necessary.

One of the apps is mostly just a report viewer, so it will be built using a traditional XHTML/JavaScript interface to mimic the Excel functionality. Of course, we will be offering methods to export the data so the users can use the data in a way they’re more comfortable, but we’ll take care of all the calculations and data persistence on the web server.

The second web app, of which I am in charge, is mostly just a data-capture application. It needs to do a lot more than the reporting app, so we decided to go down the path of creating a full-on web application. For that, we have decided on developing the app in Cappuccino.

Cappuccino is a JavaScript-based framework for developing web applications. For anyone familiar with programming for the Mac or iPhone, it’s touted as “Cocoa for the web”. Just like how Cocoa is built on the Objective-C language, Cappuccino uses its own Objective-J language. Where Objective-C is a superset of the C language, Objective-J is a superset of JavaScript. Which means even when coding in Objective-J, you still have access to all the regular built-in JavaScript functionality, much like C functionality is available to Objective-C applications.

In fact, the Cappuccino team has already ported many of the frameworks available in Cocoa to Cappuccino. So really, any seasoned Cocoa developer could easily create a Cappuccino application with minimal learning required. The Cappuccino team even points out that one iPhone developer was able to port a game he created for the iPhone from Cocoa to Cappuccino in just one hour.

They’ve also created an impressive web application, written entirely in Cappuccino and Objective-J, that is essentially a web-based version of PowerPoint called 280 Slides.

How is Cappuccino any different than any of the other JavaScript libraries like jQuery, MooTools, Script.aculo.us, etc? Well, they all use the same basic fundamental design: you build your site using HTML and CSS, then you plug in the library where necessary. Cappuccino apps require no knowledge of HTML or CSS; it builds the HTML and CSS for you in your application. So you spend more time developing the application, and less time worrying about design or attaching your JavaScript to your HTML.

We’ve had a chance to test out and develop a few test applications in Cappuccino and I’ve been very impressed so far with the results. We’re finally moving ahead on these applications, so as I use Cappuccino and Objective-J, I will likely be posting up some thoughts and maybe some tutorials as I see fit.

So, no more of that, thanks to uprinting.com

After reading it, I found Stage 3: Conscious Competence describes me to a “T”:

It’s been two years since Adrian picked up his first HTML book. It clearly has been a one-way ride, for all Adrian thinks about every day is how to improve at what he loves. A few months ago he picked up his first freelance jobs in a website, which he executes passionately despite how low the pay and how basic the task is, even to him.

Of one thing he’s convinced: the best way to learn is to persevere, try and fail, and try again. He always researches how to best execute a task, since it doesn’t come naturally to him. He has to try hard to produce secure code, so he audits it time after time. He fixes it time after time.

The other day he wrote 30 or 40 lines of code for a personal project of his. He can’t help but feel a little disappointed when, browsing the net a few days later, he sees an effortless and much more elegant execution in half as many lines. He wonders when he’ll be able to write solutions of that quality on his own, straightforwardly. However, after a bit of thought, he’s searching his files. He knows he has to rewrite that piece or he won’t sleep well that night. He won’t be copypasting it.

Adrian’s on his way to become an excellent professional, but he’s not giving himself titles, he can wait.

Adrian is consciously competent.