A Year in Reading - 2013

You'll have to suffer through my &'s in my table.  I'm too lazy to fix the export from Access.  Yet one more year where my average rating decreased.  This year by 3/10 of a percent.  Ouch.  Maybe I am turning into a critical old man.  I'm impressed I read 1000 more pages than last year.  I thought I was really on the road to reading significantly less, particularly as I'd sort of made a commitment to read about 1500 pages a month (50 pages a day) and utterly failed (by over 5000 pages).  It could be argued those graphic novels don't count, but I didn't read them to make up the difference.  They were earlier in the year.  And I always have a few in my list so relatively, they count.

In retrospect, I'd rank Sweet Tooth lower (graphic novel).  Map of Sky lower (almost negative. Damn did I hate that book.  Particularly as Map of Time wasn't too bad - I feel mislead.  Deceived.  Duped.).  The Future is Japanese Higher (I still think about some of the stories).  Cryonic (my RAGBRAI book I purchased from The Vault in Iowa) lower.  Perhaps a negative .5 if Map of the Sky were a negative 1.  Law 101, Joe Hill's books (not graphic novels), Sacre' Bleu, Banks, Scalzi, Howey (I have a book left in the Silo Series - the writing isn't as solid in Shift, but the story was enjoyable), and Expanse were all highlights with The Expanse Series still being my favorite of the last year or so.  Hard scifi usually wins for me.  I'll also point out I really enjoyed Constellation Games, a recommendation from Mean Mr. Mustard.  More than the rating indicates.  He's never led me wrong (yet).

Scooter's Short List Current Year

DateRead	Title	Author	Rate
12/21/2013	Long War, The (Long Earth II)	Pratchett, Terry and Stephen Baxter	6.50
12/8/2013	How to Make a Zombie: The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control	Swain, Frank	8.00
12/7/2013	Goliath Stone, The	Niven, Larry & Matthew Joseph Harrington	2.00
12/1/2013	How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You	The Oatmeal	3.00
11/25/2013	Evil and the Mask	Nakamura, Fuminori	8.50
11/17/2013	Creeps, The	Connolly, John	5.00
9/1/2013	Shift Omnibus Edition (Shift 1-3) (Silo Saga)	Howey, Hugh	8.50
8/14/2013	Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse III)	Corey, James S. A.	9.00
8/7/2013	Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest	Martinez, A. Lee	8.25
8/7/2013	Half-Made World, The	Gilman, Felix	7.50
8/1/2013	Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play It	Ewalt, David M.	8.25
7/31/2013	Doctor Who the Wheel of Ice	Baxter, Stephen	7.50
7/21/2013	Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law	Feinman, Jay M.	9.75
7/14/2013	Cryonic: A Zombie Novel	Bradberry, Travis	2.00
6/1/2013	Sword of Shannara Trilogy, The	Brooks, Terry	6.00
5/30/2013	Nos4A2	Hill, Joe	8.25
4/30/2013	Sacre' Bleu: A Comedy D'Art	Moore, Christopher	9.25
3/22/2013	Map of the Sky, The	Palma, Felix J.	2.00
3/15/2013	Constellation Games	Richardson, Leonard	8.25
3/1/2013	Horns: A Novel	Hill, Joe	8.75
2/22/2013	Subterranean Scalzi Super Bundle	Scalzi, John	8.00
2/19/2013	Cipher, The	Koja, Kathe	7.50
2/15/2013	Locke & Key: Clockworks (5)	Hill, Joe & Gabriel Rodriguez	7.50
2/14/2013	Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows (3)	Hill, Joe & Gabriel Rodriguez	7.50
2/14/2013	Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom (4)	Hill, Joe & Gabriel Rodriguez	7.50
2/1/2013	Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods (1)	Lemire, Jeff	6.00
2/1/2013	Sweet Tooth: In Captivity (2)	Lemire, Jeff	6.00
1/31/2013	Blueprints of the Afterlife	Boudinot, Ryan	6.00
1/22/2013	Wearing the Cape	Harmon, Marion G.	5.00
1/21/2013	Map of Time, The	Palma, Felix J.	8.50
1/15/2013	Future is Japanese, The	Masumi Washington (Editor), Nick Mamatas (Editor)	7.50
1/8/2013	This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It	Wong, David	7.00
1/4/2013	The Hydrogen Sonata	Banks, Iain	8.75

Scott's Summary

DateRead By Year	Sum Of Pages	Avg Of Pages	AvgOfRate	Min Of Pages	Max Of Pages	Count Of BOOKSCOT
1994	15144	378.6	6.05	89	914	40
1995	13961	349.025	7.075	55	990	40
1996	18248	331.781818181818	7.21818181818182	7	985	55
1997	7997	333.208333333333	6.85416666666667	54	929	24
1998	9639	459	7.16666666666667	160	780	21
1999	7551	444.176470588235	8	159	835	17
2000	3770	418.888888888889	7.72222222222222	222	774	9
2001	16308	429.157894736842	7.38815789473684	184	1009	38
2002	10455	387.222222222222	7.61111111111111	123	783	27
2003	13203	400.090909090909	7.93181818181818	83	870	33
2004	12479	297.119047619048	7.88095238095238	8	815	42
2005	12890	322.25	7.6	103	1083	40
2006	16616	353.531914893617	7.6436170212766	114	845	47
2007	14219	236.983333333333	7.49166666666667	1	759	60
2008	19524	253.558441558442	7.38961038961039	60	593	77
2009	14273	223.015625	7.6953125	32	582	64
2010	7841	326.708333333333	7.30208333333333	136	1072	24
2011	14004	269.307692307692	7.85096153846154	96	656	52
2012	11735	366.71875	7.2890625	40	954	32
2013	12882	390.363636363636	6.93939393939394	125	1200	33

Minnesota State Fair 2013

Almost caught up. Not that I'll be out of things to write about. I'll just be caught up on the picture heavy bits.  I suppose I could chunk things a little more efficiently, but I like to bundle my tasks for efficiency.

The State Fair marks sort of one year of being back on my bicycle.  I was on it before the end of September last year, but it was my first longer ride, and I remember how much it work me out - physically and mentally - in 2012.  It was within two weeks of the fair this year, or about 54 weeks of total tracking, that I hit 3000 miles of bicycling on RunKeeper.  Very close to 3000 miles in a year.  If only RAGBRAI had been 20 miles longer, I think I would have made it.  I set the new goal to 3500 miles in a year.  That might be wishful thinking. I was motivated to get my leg back in shape over the last year (and a half).  I might be trending toward lazy.  If I do, I'll just use Adam's excuse that I'm focusing on strength building and flexibility rather than long distance cycling.

Here's my favorite sight on reaching the fair.  The helmeted bear at the bike pen.  Hey.  Hey bear!  NICE HELMET!  Don't judge me.  You don't know whether the bear is Malaysian or not from this angle.



As usual, my first stop was at the Minnesota Farmer's Union, the place I learned to drink Americanos.  It was a bit too crowded to hang out this year, despite being there before things were even really open (maybe that's why), so I didn't sit and read.  Instead I went off and tried to cover most of the non-ride related fairgrounds before my wife and daughter showed up.  Usually they come pretty late, so I have time to loiter, but this time they wanted to see the Channel 9 news weatherman, so my alone time was limited.

Note the guy in the yellow shirt at the farmers' union.


Here he is in close up.  His shirt scares me.  It's scary with the caption.  It'd be terrifying without it.  Like he was a kidnapper or serial killer.


They don't really have boots for sale.  It should say "coffee".


I went to the Hamline cafeteria for breakfast.  It was good.  But it amazes me that the Chris Cakes folks on RAGBRAI can serve unlimited pancakes at the speed of pouring to thousands of passing cyclists, and the MN State Fair cafeterias have food they're keeping in warmers, there's generally a wait, and it's limited to a pancake or two.


Still, Hamline is so far ahead of the Salem Lutheran Church dicks (yes, dicks) who stopped me at the door last year and told me breakfast ended with the guy in front of me.  I'm still mad.  See that Lutheran dudes?  I'm not eating at your cafeteria!!!  I walked over there just to not eat there.  And I walked back later for a chocolate shake at the Kiwanis booth and didn't eat there AGAIN.  I think you should be surprised I didn't haul my Hamline breakfast over there to eat outside the doors.


This picture is for Adam.  When we were on RAGBRAI there were signs on the side of the road telling us Pain is Weakness Leaving Your Body.  I reminded Adam of it constantly.  He wasn't reassured by the thought. I think he preferred to be weak.


The Channel 9 news area.  I showed up just as Keith Marler, the local meteorologist, got off the golf cart. I very much enjoy getting the weather from him in the morning before work.  Kyle might tell you I also like Kelsey Soby (here, enjoy almost 3 minutes of her dancing) and her traffic reports, which is true.  But as you can see in the dancing video, Keith is a good sport and joins in the dancing frequently. I like the part around 2:11 where he's dancing to ABBA with Thor's hammer.  I was worried Eryn would miss him, but she showed up in time to catch Keith and Tom Butler and have her picture taken with each of them.  Tom was incredibly nice.  Very pleasant guy to talk to and was wonderful with kids.


All these cat pictures are for Ming.  The fair is full of cat-related art.  Cat needlepoint.


Cat needlepoint with bonus yarn.


And cat tiles, which Kyle pointed out to me first.  I find the one of the cat giving the other cat a massage on the beach particular strange.  Why?  What makes you think, I'd like to make a tile, and I've got this picture of massaging cats in my head.  Not massaging them myself.  Massaging each other.  What sort of freak do you take me for?


In the arts building.  The Minnesota Wheelmen exhibit.  A neat array of bicycles including gearless (driven by a screw of sorts), and the next one...


..with a suspension seat.  I'm not sure how comfortable that would really be.  What if it sags?  But it's got the cut out center a hundred years ahead of the newfangled open centered seats.  The headlight is interesting too.  No wires.  So it's probably powered by burning something like oil (whale or otherwise).


Pretty cool Wizard of Oz pinball machine (alt) over at the games area: "Each Oz pinball machine is the size of a casket built for a member of the Lollipop Guild. On this day in early fall, millions of dollars of parts—LED lights and emerald-green legs and a forest’s worth of anthropomorphic plastic trees—are sitting in cardboard boxes, waiting to be fished out by arcade-world craftsmen. On one assembly line, they’ll put together the machine’s heart, adding rails, rollover buttons, and magnets to the yellow-brick-road-laden playfield. They’ll also add the brains, stuffing the PC board, power supply, and other electronics inside the Wizard of Oz’s exterior shell."


All of that is great - but Toto escaping pisses me off greatly.  Every time I thought I was doing a good job Toto would run away and I'd have to save him and I'm pretty sure it takes a lot of practice to become a well versed Toto-saving Dorothy.


Me as a corndog! If you're not willing to be an idiot, I'm not sure the MN State Fair is really for you.  People would probably say the same thing about me for my limited food intake.  I had a chocolate shake, a real breakfast, previously pictured, a medium fry I ate half of, some honey-sunflower seed ice cream, and a lot of cider ice pops, on top of 50 miles of bicycling.  I didn't even make up the calories I burned.


Eryn loves the midway.  It's my least favorite part of the fair.  I like all the Minnesota-centric stuff.  This ride attempted to capture at least a little bit of Minnesota with this wonderful air brushed Prince art.


See...Minnesota-centric stuff.  I went to the rooster crowing contest while my family was at the midway.  That's right, for over thirty minutes I stood behind this guy who recorded whether his chicken was getting in the most crows.  I missed being a counter by moments, so I adopted the last chicken to get a counter, the little one in the lower left corner.


He was pretty noisy for the first ten minutes and was winning, but then he wore out and everyone surpassed him.  Early performer.  Got our hopes up and then they were gone, like the sunrise.


And I recorded it!  Twice!  Now you can enjoy all the sounds of roosters crowing in the poultry building.


In case a minute wasn't enough for you.


Ha...Polish, non-bearded, golden cock.  It was a building full of cocks.  And turkeys.  And geese.  And ducks.  At least I think there were ducks.  I didn't get further than the first three.


I took a picture of this because this plaque told me the giant slide is as old as I am.  Actually, it's a few months older than I am because it has an August birthday.


We met up with my brother and his family and my parents.  Drew didn't want to ride the slingshot with my nephew, so he asked Eryn and she was all on board.  It doesn't look scary here...


...but it does here.


More things that are better than the midway.  Lifesize mermaid art made from recycled materials.


Grace Jones made out of seeds.


A very pissed off cat made out of seeds (grains).


And grumpy cat made out of seeds.  There was a Captain Kirk with the Gorn done in seeds as well.  Nice.  The whole cat video extravaganza was at the State Fair this year.  I saw several older women standing around in grumpy cat and "humorous" cat t-shirts.


I like the corndog picture better.  This is over where the cider freezes were and the honey-sunflower ice cream.  We bumped into my wife's cousin over there and her family, so we hung out for a while and had freezes and watched the bee presentation.  Good time.  I think this picture is weird because that looks like it could be me (the body - the head obviously looks like me).  My old body - around age 21 or 22.  But semi-recognizable as about right proportionately.

RAGBRAI XLI 2013 - Perry to Des Moines, 49.9 miles and 1,308 feet of climb

I don't think I mentioned that when we were in Perry it rained.  Hairball was playing that night and we were thinking of going, but first we went and found some fruit and turkey and vegetables at the grocery store.  On the way back Adam asked some of the locals sitting in front of a house near the campgrounds, "Have you heard, is it going to rain?"  To which one of the women replied, "Why, are you a witch?"  Apparently Adam looks like he might melt.  We closed up our tents and then went in the community center where we'd paid the extra $2 so in addition to a shower, we had access to the pool, which we didn't use, all we could eat A/C, and any facility we could break into including the senior area with some tables.  We were still eating when people began rushing in from outside absolutely drenched.  The rain continued for quite a while and included some hail.  Nothing tent damaging and not even noticeable if you were inside eating strawberries and cucumbers.  Hairball was cancelled, so we didn't miss anything.  We'd have probably just gone to sleep anyway.

I also forgot my Day 1 quote that Adam enjoyed: "My pocket is really hot. Is that my phone?  Oh, no, it's just me."

It was also in Perry that we stopped for fast food, only two days into the ride.  We hit the McDonald's for lunch.  To give you an idea of why, it was so hot that we heard the rider who had been in our area of McDonald's right before us had passed out and had to be hauled away in an ambulance.  A chocolate shake was definitely in order.

So where were we?  Day 3.  Perry to Washington Township.  Washington Township to Minburn.  Minburn to Dallas Center.  Dallas Center to Van Meter.  Van Meter to West Des Moines.  West Des Moines to Des Moines proper.  A true city at over 200,000 residents.

A version of this was what greeted us most mornings because of the dew.  A lot of people cover their bikes with a tarp or some piece of cloth and a seat cover.  For the most part we just wiped down in the morning, hoped there wouldn't be excessive rust, and got pedaling.  But this is the result of the rain.  Everything had to be put away or ridden wet.


Chris Cakes at Washington Township.  This was the only real Chris Cakes place we stopped, sponsored by the local Lions.  Real in that there was someone in charge of the pancakes who had obviously made a lot of Chris Cakes.  The pancakes on the ground are the result of folks who are scared of pancakes and can't quite figure out how to catch them on their plate.  Admittedly, he was blazing fast with the flipping, but I caught all four.


Adam didn't have breakfast.  He chose to embrace the out aspect of PIPO (pancake in, pancake out) while he had access to indoor facilities.


We were behind this guy at one point during the day.  The funny thing isn't just the muffin top and shirt, or the jeans shorts, or the sandals, or the lack of a helmet while 29,999 other people are wearing one.  The funny thing is he looks like Boss that I work with and bike with and geocache with.  Enough so that a good friend of his wife's who saw this photo today asked if it was him.  If you look up the hill, the guy that's off his bike is actually pushing a woman on a hand-driven recumbent up the hill while pushing his own bike as well.  It involved push, let her do 3 or 4 rotations while he pushed his own bike, go back to pushing her.  He didn't want to leave her behind at the top, presumably because she seemed developmentally disabled, so he coordinated all of it simultaneously.  Some definite dedication, and a caring human being.


Minburn.  Not so important for this sign and the cycles...


...but for this piece of raspberry pie ala mode.  The Methodist Church lady that made it (could have been a guy, but usually they're mid to older age women) layered an extremely thin layer of crust between each layer of raspberries.  It removed some of the tartness of the raspberries even without the ice cream.  A supremely well architected piece of pie.  And delicious.  I sat right there on the sidewalk and ate it, despite having seven pancakes not much earlier.


Dallas Center.  The meeting town.  This was near the color wars, a more localized version of the colored powder runs they have in these parts.  Later, there were a bunch of guys near our tent watching people walk past on the sidewalk (more about them later) and one of the color war guys walked past with green powder all over his head.  They asked him if he'd been in a fight with a leprechaun.  To which he good naturally replied that he'd thrown down with a pile of leprechauns and it had turned into a real orgy.  AND IT WAS GREAT!  That orgy was slightly to the right (viewer's right) in this picture.


In West Des Moines.  I stopped for a cup of coffee.  Excellent Americano, but the bathroom was out of order.  All I wanted was to make space for the coffee.  But I fully understand the desire to hang a sign on your precious bathroom to assure that half a dozen clenching RAGBRAI-ers don't overload its capacity.  This was an interesting store because the owner was taking old truck parts and turning them into sofas.  Great idea for trucks that might not be repairable.


In Des Moines, we decided to find a laundromat and wash clothes to avoid a last minute search later in the week.  No one really knew where to go, but the bus driver helped us narrow in on the safest laundromat he knew of based on our directions via smartphone.  This was the safest one.  In the Latino district with a couple of guys who didn't speak English.  They were pretty cool and loaned us two loads of laundry soap when it became obvious there wasn't any for sale and wouldn't even take payment.  It was a haul to get there, but there were plugs for recharging phones near the mural, so we managed to do multiple chores at once.


After washing clothes we headed downtown to find food at an Italian restaurant and then to the river to check out the booths and people and watch the bands.  Live, Sponge, and a couple of other sort of big name bands were playing.  We left before they were done because, for the most part, they were sort of boring.  The only exciting part was when the sprinklers on our hill went off and about a hundred people sprinted off the grass.


Here you can enjoy the not-so-exciting concert for yourself.


And some more of it.  The venue was cool.  It was a great place to sit in the shade and watch the river.  According to the Des Moines police, no riders were arrested this evening.


Back at camp.  A very patriotic tent.  I hope that rope was really long if he was doing the same thing in the high school football fields.


One of the many buses.  We were seeing new buses right up until the moment we pulled out of the luggage pick up on Day 7.  There are what seems to be an infinite number of teams.


Some teams, like The Donner Party, went with trailers instead.  I was worried about tenting right next to a team with that name.  There was another trailer on the ride that was half this size, but the side opened into a luxurious two bed bedroom with all sorts of amenities built into the walls.  Sort of a hard top tent.  It was beautiful.  Reminded me of those wooden boats the Kennedy's drove.


I think this was near the Dream Team.  A group of high school students Iowa picks to do the ride.


Big pole, little bike.


The shower line.  I can honestly say the only time we were ever in a line of this size was at the Community Center in Perry, and that was inside, there were chairs, there was A/C, and there was a big fan.  The Perry experience traumatized Adam.  He did not like the single temperature showers with about 100 naked guys in a space designed for 10.  And the Harlan shower had been hot water only, which was bad in a different way.  To be honest, we didn't even take a shower in Des Moines.  The 49.9 miles, 1308 foot climb, day didn't lend itself to much sweat.


More buses!


Our campsite for the evening.  That's Heather's tent to the right, through the wheel.  Heather was there with her dad, brother-in-law, and sister.  To the other side of us were the sidewalk-walker taunting guys who made fun of leprechaun man and anyone else walking past.  Mostly in a good natured way.  Heather was over talking to them for quite a while.  It is entirely appropriate to use the phrase, "Feeding the bears."


So later that night.  1:45 a.m. to be exact.  The guys came loudly crashing back into our area, yelling about the lake, how they got back from the lake (running), a variety of other things that had us worrying they were going to stumble over or tents or worse, puke on them, finally punctuated by "HEATHER! HEATHER!!!"  After a number of neighbors told them to shut up, it finally quieted down.

Which leads to the following story that happened two days later in Fairfield.  I may be paraphrasing, but it's very close.  I call the story, Heather's Midnight Stretching.

Me (with Adam, surprised after turning around at the water hose near the tents): Heather! We owe you a thank you!
Heather (with her sister, neither of who knows us): For the late night stretching? 
Heather’s Sister:
Adam: ….
Adam: ….
Me: Um…no. We were in the tent between you and the guys in Des Moines who came back drunk to yell about the lake and scream, “Heather!!!!!” at 1:45 in the morning. 
Heather’s sister: We’re so sorry about that. 
Me: It’s ok. It’s funny now. We were worried they’d fall on our tents at the time. 
Sister and Me: Have a good ride!

Minnebar 2013

Today I went up to Best Buy (there's an annoying name if your B key is malfunctioning) to attend Minnebar 2013.  If you're not familiar with Minnebar, it's a conference (free) with a tech and business intersection focus.  So there's a mix of start up presentations, tech presentations, and things that fall in between.  The presentations come in 50 minute chunks with about six to ten going on at any one time, so there's a lot of variety you get during the day.  If you hang in the tech community in Minnesota long enough, you start to recognize and know a lot of faces as well.

I attended the following (full list of all presentations here).  If you were around me this year, I think I would have recommended going to presentations I wasn't going to.  Probably what I deserve for not sticking to the more technical presentations for the most part.  Not that I'm not impressed with anyone who has the cahones to stand up in front of an audience and deliver a talk, even if just for practice.  Scary stuff.

• The Crowdfunding Panel: very good panel discussion about various ways to raise money for your start up.  Equity (investors).  Gifts (Kickstarter).  Debt (get a loan).  The consensus of the panel was that a few fully involved investors are better than hundreds of little investors and that the primary benefit of social funding was that it gave you a very strong feeling that your product was something that would be accepted by a larger audience.
• Fundraising in Minnesota - it's increasing for the most part! I only got to watch ten or fifteen minutes because the room was so packed it was crazy.  I remember the room as the room where Justin Bacon presented his Lean Startup talk - lean being all the rage nowadays.  In the last presentation, one of the presenters stressed that there was too much emphasis on funding then prototype lately, and that it was worth revisiting the prototype and strong upfront work before funding model that, in his opinion, had better results.
• Make Lean UX - someone has to explain to me the preponderence of women in UX.  I bet there's an article out there.  I have never been to a tech presentation before where I had a woman sitting on both sides of me, in front of me, and behind me.  Maybe it's not a preponderance, but just significantly more than in other tech fields?  Because it's new and men haven't claimed it?  Creative aspect?  Just changing times?  Unfortunately, most of the women near me walked out.  Not because the presenter was a misogynist, but because he didn't cover any new or interesting ground.  Lean is about cutting the crap and getting to something important.  Contrary to his presentation style (sorry if you stumble over here Lean UX guy, but you seemed unpracticed for your talk).  I did push the buy button on the Lean UX book he recommended on Amazon however, so he pointed me at a resource I think I'll get something useful out of when it comes to talking with my own UX folks.
• Sorting Spaghetti: Structuring Large Javascript Applications - I have a bias.  I know the presenter.  Still, best presentation I attended today, both technically and sense of humor and preparedness.  He's an excellent developer with lots of concrete advice.  He honored the idea of unconference by fielding lots of questions and was capable of talking to all of them.  Glad he's back at my company benefiting our dev teams.  I always learn something talking to him, most of it applicable to my own code base which he helped design.  He also gave me the advice that I might want to use the Bones theme for WordPress while we were standing in the hallway, which may rank at the top of the bits of useful advice I received today.  His advice to strip the Twitter bootstrap buttons out of bootstrap might rank second.
• Blogging and Open Source: The Power Creating Free Content Has to Either Serve or Enslave You - I met this presenter (and his wife) at Riverplace last year.  He's a highly paid Javascript consultant with a datepicking jquery addin to his name (not just a popular one, but the popular one).  The presentation was primarily about how he hadn't monetized any of his work when he was younger - blog or add in - and felt disappointed about it now.  To me, that's part of the story of being young.  Lots of missed opportunities, so you just pick yourself up and hope you came through the experience with skills that will get you lots of money.  The people who capitalized; they seemed luckier rather than more prepared or more talented.  The most amusing bit was the woman who was in the room before me that started asking him about how to learn about javascript.  I had the strong feeling she hadn't bothered to kick up a browser and type in javascript and Twin Cities.  Let alone just javascript.  And ironic in the context of a speech about monetizing your technical knowledge at a free technical conference.
• Burning It Down -- Becoming an Agile Company - valid points about using scrum to overcome legacy development blues at a 50-strong company.  But nothing new if you've been doing agile for any amount of time.  It's fair to say "what do you know, you've only done agile at one company."  True, but I've had a few classes with folks who've been around the block.  I mentioned to one of the devs I knew at the conference that I'd just put a developer on my team in touch with his boss for a master's degree interview because he was one of the most knowledgeable large org agile experts I was aware of in the Twin Cities and elsewhere.  And a great former hairband member.
• Become a Better Designer With Side Projects - this presenter seemed sort of sad, but maybe he was just really nervous.  I do know he was adamant that he didn't want to learn Ruby on Rails.  His side projects made him happy, but he didn't really speak to what he was learning from them.  He talked about how he met experts, that it got him job offers, that people liked the sites...but I was looking for concrete design concepts he learned from them and how he applied them to projects, and how he picked the particular experts he interviewed.  What it was about them that was exciting.  And I would have liked to hear that excitement in his voice.  I think side projects are exciting.  Even the failed ones.  And the ones going nowhere quick, like perhaps a stick figure comic site.  They teach you things you didn't know and give you a playground to try out new tools like Twitter Cards, and Kickstarter projects (so you can experience the frustration of a few folks at that first crowdsourcing panel yourself), and Facebook integrations, and the validity of various web metrics, and first hand experience of what does and does not drive web traffic.

Anyway.  An enjoyable day despite the presentations not being stellar (and that's the point of conferences like Minnebar; if I think I can do better, I should just present).  Saw the husband of the coworker who sits outside my new office.  Saw a coworker who was on the community volunteer committee with me and went into consulting.  Saw Ryan, who I haven't seen in forever.  Saw Brock, but apparently looked right through him.  Saw Eric (not the usual Erik, but Eric), who I hired into my company many years ago and who is now contracting.  Met some of Erik's friends (and Erik was there).  Met a coworker I hadn't met before.  Talked to Brady, who left my company not so long ago. And others.  Given there about a thousand people there (or at least registered) there was a pretty good chance I'd meet at least one person I knew.  Meeting a dozen and catching up on jobs and projects was a pleasant surprise.