Ken Martin’s Blog

In the midst of bringing the first public revision of flyGarmin to a close at work, a friend emailed me and asked if I could whip up an “instant web site” as his new startup company was about to get national attention. I had a week.

So I worked a normal busy day every day that week, and every night I came home and worked on the new site, kept company by my bride and my new John Adams DVDs. It went like this:

First weekend

Assess and install content management system (CMS) packages (Drupal, Joomla, etc.)

Monday

Meet and plan; project actually starts

Tuesday

Planning with pencil and paper… no touching the computer until I had a perfectly clear plan

Wednesday

Build the XHTML and CSS framework

Thursday

Fill in the templates images and colors

Friday

Final touches to template and custom javascript enhancements

Saturday

Install Drupal onto live server; convert template to Drupal; learn to hate Drupal; install Joomla onto live server; convert template to Joomla; learn to use Joomla

Sunday

Finish polishing Joomla template; add all content, images, and video

Live Monday AM!

It was quite a week, but we got a pretty nice site out of the deal. And the great part was that I was able to make it client-maintainable right from the beginning. Open source is the coolest. I know that folks who love Drupal really love it, and I can tell it’s really powerful, but it just wasn’t “jump-in” intuitive like Joomla.

Oh, the site… weathernation.net. :)

The EAA air show in Oshkosh in Wisconsin, that is. flyGarmin was going to be released to the public for the first time in conjunction with the beginning of the air show. Garmin had a Monday morning press conference announcing all sorts of stuff, and flyGarmin was on the list. I was pacing around the whole day like an expectant father. How’s the site doing now? How’s the site doing now? The image to the left is the display we had to show flyGarmin off to folks. I got to “work the booth” occassionally, and the feedback was fantastic. Folks would come up as though they were paid to be in an infomercial; “Tell me you’ve done something to make updating my databases easier” “Why yes we have!”

So I hung out in Oshkosh for a few days, gathering feedback, seeing the kinds of things people were showing off at the show.

On my last evening, I decided to run out and get a bite to eat for supper. I drove around downtown Oshkosh wondering what I should get, and then I saw this:

I was driving when I took that photo. Yes, it says zero MPH. And see how all of the P, R, N, D, 1, 2 lights are on? That’s called “limp mode.” It means the computer sees something wrong with your car, and the transmission has been essentially shut down. Yeah, hundreds of miles from home, the day before I’m finally heading back home, and the transmission had gone out.

And I really wanted to go home. I’d been away for days.

Well, I limped back to where I was staying. Emailed Helen… “pray please”. I searched the internet looking for ideas. I found some transmission shops nearby, so I could get there first thing in the morning.

The next morning, I went out and tried the “turn the ignition on-and-off five times fast” to get the computer error codes. No luck. I tried the “hold down trip reset while turning on the ignition” to get the error codes. No luck.

Then my car just started working perfectly fine. The engine light was still on, but I took it for a one mile drive, and then a 20 mile drive… all seemed fine. I met my last commitment and headed home. The trip home went perfectly; I got 29 MPG.

And the car has been fine ever since. The engine light even went off before I could hook up my code reader to see what had been going on. I took this as a Nehemiah 9:21 thing. :)

I know that may not mean anything to you, but that’s a big project I’ve been working on at work for the last many months. It’s been a fun, complicated project focussed on making it a lot easier for pilots who use Garmin equipment to keep their equipment up to date.

It let’s pilots enter their aircraft and equipment into their own account, and then offers simpler-than-ever ways to update their databases.

I’ve got an awesome group of guys that I work with in Minnetonka, and literally dozens of people from all over the US have contributed. It’s been a great project for a pilot wannabe like me. And there’s still lots to do. :)

Life is settling down. A big web site release looms. Wordpress 2.6 is installed, with whatever shiny goodness that brings. And I can blog from my iPhone. And I have things I want to talk about. Stay tuned…

We’re finally starting to outgrow our home of 13 years, and so we just put it on the market. You can see the listing here. Read the rest of this entry »

Ska music created entirely with old Atari game sounds. Seriously.

Found rooting through a trash bag by my side door when I got home. I was about six feet from this guy before he slowly eased back to hide under the picnic table.

We’re considering a change in our church that would change our church government to an “elder-based” system. The Bible doesn’t say a whole lot about how to organize a local church, but it seem pretty plain that elders were the group saddled with leadership. We currently have a fairly common set-up where leadership authority and responsibility are split between three “branches”.

We’ve been looking at this topic for a couple of years. A vote was planned for next Sunday. We had “one last” Question-Answer meeting last night. It was interesting.

Because of newly raised questions and concerns, we began the meeting noting that there would actually be no vote next Sunday. That was to me a sad way to start the meeting, but there we were.

The really valuable thing which came from the meeting was the clear message that the message hasn’t been clear enough. People want to know how moving to an elder-based system would be different. Much of what was being asked has already been worked through, but no materials reflecting that were provided, so I think it’s fair and right that folks want to “hold the horses” until they see some of the details and goals better.

But there were parts of the meeting that - I’m not sure how to say it - grieved me.

There were folks that don’t want to change things, which isn’t surprising or even bad. What was surprising were some of the reasons and arguments. No one had a Biblical challenge to the idea, such as saying they don’t believe it’s correct to pursue an elder-based system based on this or that Scriptural concept or passage.

The “arguments” offered stuck me as being exactly the kinds of things that an individual might express if they were presented the idea that they may not be following Scripture. (For those friends of mine who read this and are not Christian, this may all seem very odd, but there’s just a basic idea that if you’re a Christian, you generally give ascent to the concept that the Bible is authoritative and applicable.) Here is some of what I heard (paraphrased the best I can remember), and thoughts I had afterwards, or that I thought it would not be kind or appropriate to express at the moment. I’d already spoken far more in that meeting than I’d wanted to. Also, these are solely my thoughts, not representing anyone else. And I might be too grumpy. You are forewarned.

Read the rest of this entry »

That’s what I wondered yesterday morning when I opened the my car door and was greeted by the above. I was already running late and not feeling great. It had snowed, so I had to clear that. And now this. This was a dreadful start to the day. My inner Eeyore was in full swing.

But nothing looked damaged or missing.

Then I thought, “William.” It would be a perfect little three-year-old thing to climb into Papa’s car and patiently, proudly fill it with scoop after scoop of dirty snow. Great.

Then I saw it. Inside the console was a Diet Dr. Pepper with the top blown clean off. I hadn’t been in that car for days, and apparently I’d left a little treat for myself. And after a few days of below freezing weather… boom!

The console was, as far as I can remember, closed. It must have been quite the event.

The gospel of Mark has an interesting little structure. A whole bunch of the verses start with και, which is often translated “and” but can be, and often is, left untranslated since it’s just there to keep the story going from point to point. So, it’s something like “…and then they did this, and then they did that, and then they did the next thing…” Occasionally you’ll see και ευθεως, which is “and immediately”. Overall, in Mark you get the sense of a very fast moving narrative.

Well, I thought I’d give my week’s highlights in Markian prose:

Last week I went out of town
και I needed to get back for a funeral
και the winds were high so taking a small plane back began to look iffy
και ευθεως we decided I should fly commercial
και there was a flurry activity getting me on the flight
και I got back that evening
και I showed up at church in the nick of time to set up for the funeral
και I went home and slept
και ευθεως in the morning I was back at church doing sound checks
και the funeral was lovely
και so was the rest of the afternoon
και we were all getting hungry so we grabbed a bite to eat
και, despite reassurances, my Spidey-Sense noted peanut oil, so I didn’t eat the fried food
και we took the kids to get our Christmas tree (a week later than usual)
και I lost my company iPhone somewhere
και ευθεως we called the restaurant and they found nothing
και ευθεως I searched in the dark tree lot and I found nothing
και I reconciled myself to buying a replacement
και we left the tree lot
και we realized that in our distraction we’d not paid for our Christmas tree
και ευθεως we went back to the tree farm
και taking one more look for my iPhone, a teen came up and asked “Is this yours?”
και I could tell it pained him to return it
και ευθεως we went home
και after a jam-packed Friday at work, the weekend came
και we awoke to snow
και the yard wasn’t ready for snow, so I got the yard ready
και one then another kid got something like the stomach flu
και ευθεως I did, too
και I spent 18 hours in bed
και I missed church (which is rare)
και Helen got it later on Sunday
και I’m tired

It’s been a fast moving narrative.