social: May 2008 Archives

Rode my mountain bike to the coffee shop today with laptop in tow. Now, I've carried my laptop along to the coffee shop numerous times (in the car). And I've ridden there plenty of times. But this is the first time I've biked there *with* laptop.

Not sure why this feels like such a cool thing, but it does. Maybe it's the sense of freedom it brings, like backpacking. Liberating.

I was patting myself on the back, telling a friend how I'd rode there with a zero-carbon footprint .. to which he responded, "Yeah, if you don't consider all the jet-fuel they burned flying in that coffee you're drinking."

On a more technical note, I started studying PHP & MySQL this week. Been wanting to learn those technologies for some time. Now felt like the right time.

PHP has become a powerful scripting language, and also very popular (used by more than 20 million web domains). And since it's based on the C programming language, I might learn some of that in the process.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! ("5th of May") It's like our 4th of July, for Mexicans .. tho not technically their Independence day (as many presume). Rather it's when Mexico defeated the French (under Napoleon) in 1862 (during our Civil war) ..

.. some 41 years after Mexico's war of independence. Four thousand Mexican soldiers defeated twice as many French at the Battle of Puebla.

CdM is a big deal here in Southern California, and probably any place with a sizable Mexican population. Like St. Patrick's day, you don't have to be Mexican to celebrate. Good excuse to eat tacos and drink Mexican beer. Olé!

Been busy working on the new » Guide to Virtual Private Servers. Now I remember why I don't write more guides: they're lots of work.