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Next Year in Jerus… I Mean Baltimore

Moving to Baltimore

Way too many things. Last month was the first month I haven’t posted here since July 2005. Probably wouldn’t have even noticed except for the missing link on the Archives page. Very busy with work. I am enjoying my projects, but wish I was working on them when there wasn’t so much else going on.

Our trip to Florida and Baltimore was nice. Good to see the families. Karen and I are moving to Baltimore next year, probably in March. Almost did it a few years ago, but the economy crashed and we got stuck here. Thanks to K’s sister offering to rent our house, we can now go for real. It is a huge move. I have lived in California for 20 years and K’s been here a long time too. I like Baltimore a lot, but do not have enough experience there to imagine what it will be like to live there. We will be near K’s parents and that will be good. They can use our help. I really like all of K’s friends there. It is very easy to hang out with them. It will be awesome to live near my friend Kim again. Will also be nice to be on the same coast as my family again!

There are so many things to do. Karen has to take her licensing test for being a social worker in Baltimore. We need to find a place to live. K needs to find a job. I need to get hooked up with the Baltimore web development community that I am assuming exists. There is tons of stuff I need to do for my business. Have not had the time, money, or brain to do what needs to be done. AND, we have to pack up our house and somehow manage to drive 4 cats across the country in a Corolla.

Part of my business plan is adding some work/business stuff here on LBnuke. This site has about 1000x more traffic than my business site. It is the site I like to work on and the site that people I know visit. Of course I will keep my business site. I don’t want to connect that site to this site. Too personal. When I have bits of free time, I have been adding little changes to this site. The theme is new. Same design as before, but wider and better organization of information. I will be working on it until at least the end of the summer. Got some great suggestions from Lou Anne at Be-Found!. If you need some SEO services, I would recommend her highly.

The summer is turning out to be busy as usual and things will only get busier as we get ready to move. I will miss it here, especially the weather! Baltimore will be a new adventure. I think I am ready for it.

June 11, 2010 • Random • Tags: , ,

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Perspectives of Autism from My Family

perspective

I have been different from other people for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I have had many different diagnoses, opinions, and treatments that were not quite right. My parents have tried to get me help since I was a little kid, but no one really knew what to do with me.

I was a smart but strange kid. I didn’t understand things, especially people. I didn’t fit in. I thought school was dumb. I thought a lot of things were dumb. Turns out a lot of them are, but many were not as black and white as I thought at the time. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began seeing shades of grey.

During my early years of school, I barely talked at all and spent a bunch of time in the principal’s office. My teachers and school psychologists thought I could be normal if I tried harder. If I would just be like the other kids, they would like me and wouldn’t be so mean to me. I just wasn’t “applying myself”.

It wasn’t until 5 years ago that I finally learned what is “wrong” with me. I have Asperger’s Syndrome. Autism. I sometimes wonder what would life have been like if we knew that when I was 3 instead of when I was 38? It is hard not to think of all the “if”s.

Would I have been a happy kid? Would I have finished college? Would I have never wanted to kill myself? Would my parents have had a happier and less frustrating life? Would they have had support and not had to figure everything out for themselves? No way to know and generally a bad place to take my brain.

For Autism Awareness Month, I would like to write about autism from the perspective of the people who are closest to me. They have been there for me through the best times and the worst. I think that acknowledging and documenting their experiences is an important part of increasing autism awareness and would like to thank them all very much for answering so honestly and thoughtfully.

I asked 5 questions each to my partner Karen and my parents Gloria and Ron (M&D). Here are their answers:
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April 25, 2010 • Autism / Asperger's • Tags: , ,

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First Annual Distraction Awards

First Annual Distraction Awards

I have been very distracted lately! Too many things going on and I can not focus on any of them. Luckily, I have had no problem focusing on distractions. I would like to give recognition to the distractions that have proven to be most entertaining in the ‘First (and possibly last) Annual Distraction Awards’.

Best Web Standards Video to a Bob Dylan Tune


More info and lyrics @ Molly.
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March 23, 2010 • Geekery, Random • Tags: , ,

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Temple Grandin on AWN Radio

Temple Grandin on AWN Radio

Temple Grandin will be on the AWN Radio show tomorrow morning to give the Autism Women’s Network her first exclusive interview following the Premiere of HBO’s Original Movie which premiered a few hours ago.

Radio show link is: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/autism-womens-network/2010/02/07/temple-grandin-gives-awn-first-interview-re-premie

Interview time: Feb 7th, 2010 at 9am PST – 10am MST – 11am CST– 12pm EST (USA)

Use the following link to calculate your time zone outside USA: http://www.worldtimeserver.com/meeting-planner.aspx

Me and K watched part of it a little while ago and it was really good. Gonna watch the rest of it now :)

February 6, 2010 • Autism / Asperger's • Tags:

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Computer History Museum

I have been at the She’s Geeky conference this weekend at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Got to go on a tour of the museum today. There are lots of old computers, some restorations, handheld video games, abaci, calculators, adding machines, and software.

The conference has been very fun. It is well named. Definitely have never been around that many girl geeks before! Tomorrow is the last day. There is a session about asperger’s which I would never have expected, but it was subtitled “the geek syndrome”, so guessing that is the connection. I am very curious. There is also one about Drupal called ‘Show me your back end’. Hopefully they are not both at the same time. Drupal will win. Some pix from the museum:
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January 30, 2010 • Geekery

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Happy Birthday to Me

Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler on the Roof

Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler on the Roof

Today I am 43 and having an awesome birthday. Last night K took me to see Fiddler on the Roof with Harvey Fierstein at the Golden Gate Theater in SF. It was awesome! I think it is possible that he was born to play Tevye. Perfect. I was really wishing my family was there too. We used to listen to the 8-track of Fiddler on the Roof in the car all the time when I was younger.

Not sure what I will do the rest of the day. Kind of happy not having a plan. It is nice getting to spend the day with K :D Going to She’s Geeky for the next 3 days at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. No idea what to expect, but I love the idea of it! Had to miss Design4Drupal at Stanford last weekend. Went to the first session and then found out I had to work. It would have been a great opportunity to learn from some of the best, but it will also be nice to have some money! Luckily, DrupalCon is in San Francisco this year, so I will still be able to get my fix.

Ok, back to my regularly scheduled birthday now :)

January 28, 2010 • Random • Tags: ,

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Autism Women’s Network

After 3 months of complete immersion, the Autism Women’s Network site is live and open to the public. I am still adding features and fixing the occasional bug here and there, but for the most part, it is done.

Autism Women's Network Website

Autism Women's Network Website

Building this site has been an amazing experience for me. I am happy to get to contribute something to the AWN, which is an awesome organization that “provides effective supports to autistic females of all ages through a sense of community, advocacy and resources”. This site is open to all supporters including men and non-autistic people.

The response has been amazing! After just 3 days, we have more than 150 registered users and over 1000 forum posts! I would like to extend a big thank you to all the beta testers and other people who have been helping to get this site up.

A large part of my obsession while working on this site has been in learning Drupal, an open source PHP/MySQL content management system and framework. I have been running a Drupal test site since 2003. About 2 times a year, I dust it off, update it, and try to love it. Usually, I end up hating it, but keep going back because of the large community that surrounds it. There could not be so much Drupal love without a reason.

I am now a Druciple. I will still use WordPress for as many sites as I can, but for larger projects, it is really nice to have the amazing power and endless flexibility of Drupal as part of my web dev arsenal. I look forward to continued work on this site and continued development with Drupal.

January 5, 2010 • Autism / Asperger's, Geekery • Tags: ,

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