Well, I made it back home late last night. Thankfully, the border agents didn't grill me as hard as they normally do, otherwise I probably would have started with the smart ass responses. I gotta say, WordCamp Portland was a really amazing event, so major kudos to everyone involved in pulling it off. In fact, with each WordCamp I attend, I think that bar is getting progressively pushed higher and higher. For example, prior to my talk someone came and fitted me with a wireless microphone in addition to a normal microphone, the former being for the live stream. In addition, they exported all my ...

I woke up yesterday in Cascade Locks, Oregon and decided to hit the coast for a few hours. I bounced through Portland, grabbed a coffee and some breakfast, and had a really great, leisurely drive along a forested road towards Cannon Beach. I pulled in right around lunch time, and hunted around for a good place to grab some food. Thankfully I found a neat little brew pub, just a block from the water. I tasted a few of their beers, and also a nice plate of Halibut and Chips. Afterwards, I grabbed my camera and spent about an hour down on the beach. Cannon Beach is of course super beautiful. The ...

I'm current hanging out at the KOA in Cascade Locks, Oregon. It's fairly dead here tonight, mainly because most people left today to go back to their 9-5 routines. Thankfully the wireless works a lot better now that not everyone is using it. My friend Sean swung by tonight, so we had a few beers around the picnic table. It was good to catch up. Last time I saw him was probably about six or seven months ago down in Portland when I had a job interview. I briefly went into Portland this afternoon to do a bit of work and to unlock my iPhone 3GS. Once I had my phone unlocked, I went down to Best Buy ...

This morning I woke up and decided to make some plans. Strangely enough, that line from Shawshank Redemption kept going through my head -- "get busy living, or get busy dying. You god damn right." Anyways, it also didn't help matters that Dave and Lauren took off the other day, as well as Tanya and Gus. Even Dale left yesterday to go do some relaxing at a cottage. So Instead of just heading south without a plan (something I've done many times before and been burned for), I decided to call a few campgrounds first. Thankfully the little KOA right outside of Portland had one tenting spot ...

I'm pretty close to wrapping up a few projects here, so much so that I'm half packed already for my upcoming road trip. Until this afternoon, I hadn't really decided what I was going to do for a little break, but after talking to a few people, decided to hit the open road and see where it takes me. It's more of a working vacation to be honest, as I still have a few client projects to do, but I plan to do them from beside the pool at a KOA, or little coffee shops near the ocean somewhere. I've been up and down the West Coast quite a few times now, so it's a drive I'm familiar with. But every trip ...

So yesterday I was sitting on my patio trying to figure out when to take a vacation. I still have a few small client-related items to finish off, so I've been waiting around for that. While going over everything in my head though I remembered that because I work from a laptop, there's really no reason why I can't work remotely. All I need is an internet connection once and a while to check email, and I'm basically golden. With that in mind, I'm thinking about testing my Nexus pass out in the next few days and heading south. Pretty much every KOA nowadays has free Wi-Fi, so I could easily do a ...