Brandon Live!

I just received an e-mail from Karen Anderson, the assistant organizer for the Seattle Weblogger Meetups, delivering the news that Anita Rowland (who organized those meet-ups) died of cancer today.

She is the second blogger I remember from geek dinners at Crossroads Mall to pass away in less than a week.  Robert Scoble even linked to a rather saddening photo from one of those dinners with both Marc and Anita in it.

You didn’t have to even meet Anita to know her name and that she was a pillar of the Seattle blogging community.  I only wish I’d taken better advantage of her monthly meet-ups. 

My thoughts and sympathies are with her husband Jack, Riley, and the rest of her family.

Check it out at Seattle PI:  Seattle drivers take bad to a new level.

Of course, I’ve known this since I moved here.  And you probably know it if you read this blog.  But it’s nice to more public acknowledgement of the problem.

Our screening of Uganda Rising at the UW HUB Auditorium is tonight! 

We also have released the new Tusubira website early this morning.  There are still a few updates to be made to it, but we wanted to share the new design in time for tonight’s event (made possible by a few sleepless nights by yours truly!).

Next Friday, February 16, our non-profit organization (Tusubira) is hosting a screening of the documentary Uganda Rising at the University of Washington’s HUB auditorium.  Please come and support our efforts in Uganda!

I think this says it all….

If you live in the Pacific North West or know somebody who does, you probably heard that last Thursday some wind came and knocked down all our trees.  We will soon reach the 4-day mark for not having power at my house.  Fortunately, the Starbucks down the street from me regained electricity late Saturday night, so coffee and WiFi has eased the wait.

On Friday morning we awoke to find a great deal of what can only be called “tree remains” throughout our yard, driveway, and street.  Fortunately nothing of significance hit out house - except for the large fence that faced our southern neighbor.  The wind decided it looked suspiciously like a sail - though fortunately our house (specifically, the outside wall of my bedroom) prevented it from getting very far.  This led to our neighbors dogs escaping their usual confines and into our backyard, where they managed to trap themselves (awaking my housemate and me to the sound of their whimpering).  Overall we made out very well, faring far better than some unfortunate others.  If any of my readers or their loved ones are in the PNW, I hope they too made it out unscathed.

Check out the photos on Flickr!

Last night Chris Pirillo and Latthana “Ponzi” Indharasophang were wed at a beautiful ceremony in Bellevue.  The wedding even had some very “Chris & Ponzi” touches - featuring automated blogging of their vows as they were reading them.  Better yet, in a feat of unmatched geek-ery, they read their vows from “origami” UMPCs!  

      

Photo Credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

Sadly the New York weather that visited Seattle earlier this week seems to be all but gone.  In fact it looks like the last remnants are gathering in my backyard for one last party before being washed away by the Seattle rain (you didn’t think the Sun would have anything to do with it - did you?)

It was fun while it lasted, though.  My friend Jon (who went to school with me in Rochester) and I drove around on Tuesday enjoying the white-covered trees and blasting Christmas carols through my car’s XM radio.  This violated my no-christmas-music-until-december rule, but it was an opportunity that likely won’t present itself again.  Without snow, it never feels like Christmas.

So now that I’ve managed to bring snow and ice to Seattle, my next trick will be to replace the word “pop” with the proper term, “soda.”  If I succeed there, who knows what ambitious feat I could set my sights on.  Maybe I could even teach the people of Seattle how to drive.

It’s early work, but we’ve got big plans!

New website for a project I’m working on.

First up, I made a couple of posts this week to our FindMyStuff Team Blog.  The second of which is about our support for searching over sources that output OpenSearch RSS.  Check it out.

Second, I’m about to head off to Gnomedex 6.0.  I’m running on less sleep than planned, so caffiene will have to get me through the day.  Hopefully I’ll get online during the event, but no promises.