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.

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.

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!).

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.

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

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.

New website for a project I’m working on.

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.

Technorati search

MindCamp wiki.

Gada.Be meta-search.

Invisible Children

There should be some great videos from the event popping up over the next few days.

Major props to Andru Edwards, Monica Edwards, Stuart Maxwell, all the other organizers, the “camp counselors,” and everyone else who contributed to this great event.  MindCamp once again demonstrated how great it is when you get 200 smart and interesting people together in one place and just let them talk with each other.

A quick summary of my experience at MC 2.0:

-I got a brief introduction to Dave Winer.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to talk to him about some cool OPML ideas that Steve Ickman and I have been bouncing around.
-My first session was called “Why does church suck?” and discussed how to make religion and spiritual communities appeal to today’s culture.
-I had some great conversations with Robert Scoble and Ryan Calafato (a speech writer for execs at Microsoft)
-Enjoyed some delicious food sponsored by Windows Live.  Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the caterer.
-Met lots of great new people from the Seattle area:  An SDET on the Windows Vista Shell team, a useability expert from Boeing, the guy responsible for the Wireless Networking UI in Vista and XP SP2, and dozens more.

I almost managed to make it through the night, but did spend an hour or so attempting to sleep.  When I got home this afternoon I realized I was definitely too exhausted to make my regularly scheduled swim session with my co-worker Paul, and instead opted for a good old-fashioned nap.

You can track the event at www.seattlemind.com – or better yet, check out the Wiki.

The first event was a really great experience and this one promises to be even better.  I already see a lot of familiar names on the attendee list, and this event is going to be even bigger than the last one.  So if you missed out last time, don’t let the opportunity pass you by again!

Now whining about this isn’t really going to make things better.  So instead, I’m going to post some guidelines that I think every Seattle area driver should really take to heart.

• Somewhere on your steering wheel, usually on the left-hand side, you’ll find a lever.  Moving this lever up or down will enable something called a “turn signal” or an “indicator.”  But those are really just fancy words for “flashy light on the side of your car.”  If you push up, the light on the right hand side will blink.  If you push down, the left one will.
• Using the “signal” mentioned above, you can actually tell other drivers what you’re thinking.  Like, “Hey, that’s my exit coming up.  I really need to get to that lane over there.”
• If you’re thinking, “Brandon, I know what turn signal is.  But why would I use it if I don’t see anybody in that lane?”  The answer here is quite simple:  Your use of the turn signal will provide extremely valuable information to the person you didn’t see.
• You turn signal doesn’t do any good if you only use it after you’re already halfway into your destination lane.
• If you see another car with a blinking light on the side of it, that does not mean you should:
       A)  Dash from behind him, into the lane he’s trying to get into. 
       B)  Close the gap that you left while you were accidentally not tailgating the person in front of you, because the worst thing you could possibly do would be to permit someone else to get where they’re going, you asshole.

Study hard, because next week there will be quiz!