So, without further ado, seven things you may not know about me...

• My actual college degree is in comparative religion. I ended up in the Religion department at the University of Puget Sound (yes, the initials are UPS, which can easily cause confusion with brown, parcel-bearing trucks), due to a line of questioning that occurred during an Artificial Intelligence course I was taking. The instructor was asking if there would be any ethical barrier to unplugging an AI -- i.e., since it would be capable of thought, would this be equivalent to "killing" it? My initial response was, "No," because humans consist of more than thought... and then I started wondering a bit about that. My emphasis in religion was in Eastern religions. I have a minor in Mathematics (CS at UPS was actually CS/Mathematics).
• I have an FCC Commercial Radio Operator's License. My parents were volunteer DJs at KGLT while I was growing up, and I did my first radio announcing at... get this... the ripe age of 11. I finally got my license before starting college so that I could be a DJ at the university station... and ended up as the General Manager of KUPS my last two years.
• I had long hair -- down to my butt at times -- for around ten years. Which likely comes as a huge shock to those of you who have met me at conferences. Ironically, I cut it off just prior to moving to Vermont as part of an effort to increase the success of my job hunt.
• Before I started my programming career, I was a graphics technician. The job immediately prior to my first programming position was with a small book publisher that specialized in bird hunting and flyfishing guidebooks, for which I created maps, scanned and processed images for books, and did book and catalog layout.
• My first Object Oriented Programming was in Perl. If you've ever done OOP in Perl, you'll likely agree with the following statement: OOP in any other language is easy by comparison. I mean, come on, a syntax where the very definition of an object requires that you "bless" a "thingy"? Truly; this is from the "bless" documentation:

  bless REF: This function tells the thingy referenced by REF that it is now an object in the CLASSNAME package. If CLASSNAME is omitted, the current package is used. Because a bless is often the last thing in a constructor, it returns the reference for convenience. Always use the two-argument version if a derived class might inherit the function doing the blessing. See perltoot and perlobj for more about the blessing (and blessings) of objects.

  This made OOP in PHP look easy.
• I hold the degree of shodan in Aikido, though I haven't trained in several years, due to time and travel constraints. I love the movement and flow of Aikido, and always found it very meditative. I also liked working with weapons, especially the bokken (wooden sword). This is why when I say, "don't make me get my clue bat out," you should take heed; I know from experience that white oak leaves a mark.
• I could have been Cal. When Zend first interviewed me, it was for the position of Editor-in-Chief of DevZone. After my in-house interview, I had reservations -- I didn't feel experienced or connected enough, and was worried I'd botch it. Fortunately for me, and probably the PHP community in general, they decided to hire me as a PHP developer instead.

So, that's seven things (and quite a bit more, really) about me. And now it's time to tag some others:

• Cal Evans is an obvious choice for me. Besides having worked together for some years, he's a great friend.
• Stefan Koopmanschap, who took a train to Amsterdam just to have dinner and a beer with me.
• Sean Coates, whom I met in an airport on the way back from ZendCon two years ago, who lives less than two hours away, and whom I haven't seen since that ZendCon.
• Lorna Jane Mitchell, with whom I'll be doing a tutorial session on Subversion at php|tek, and who will be clearly flustered by being tagged.
• Ivo Jansch, whom I met almost two years ago, and somebody I admire and respect greatly.
• Ligaya Turmelle, one of my co-authors for "The PHP Anthology," the woman who got me to volunteer as a phpwomen Booth Babe, and now MySQL guru.
• Rob Allen, who has made my job easier by publishing tutorials and now a book on Zend Framework, and who in real-life is a mild-mannered Clark Kent I'd gladly raise a pint with any day.

And here are the rules I'm supposed to pass on to the above bloggers:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Here's the short version:

• One trip to Belgium and The Netherlands.
• Two trips to Israel.
• Two trips to Atlanta, GA (not counting the return trip from Europe, when I was stranded for a day due to storms in the Northeast).
• Three different user groups attended, with three presentations.
• One major Zend Framework release
• One PEAR release.
• One podcast.
• One webinar.
• One book published.
• One conference attended.

What follows is my month-by-month breakdown:

January

I finished up the last of my three chapters for The PHP Anthology, 2nd Edition, and promptly used my advance to buy the family a Wii.

I was also introduced to Ivo Jansch through work, and had him wow me with one of the ibuildings products.

February

Mid-month, my boss at Zend, Boaz, got the go-ahead to use the ibuildings WDE platform to build our new website CMS; part of the plan would include training at the ibuildings home office in Vlissingen, NL... which meant I had to get my passport pronto.

Towards the end of the month, I was invited to BostonPHP to present building a simple Zend Framework CRUD application, along with Chuck Hagenbuch of the HORDE project. While there, Nate Abele heckled me, and then joined Chuck and myself for an impromptu framework panel; a good time was had by all.

March

I flew to Brussels, Belgium, where I met my supervisor, Boaz, so we could go to Vlissingen. We spent the day in Brussels, walking around and visiting such sites as the Cathedral of St. Michael, La Grand Place, and the Mannekin Pis.

Our visit to ibuildings was very productive, and I was very impressed by the team there; everybody was very knowledgeable and skilled. I presented a Zend Framework overview, as well as an abbreviated version of the Best Practices talk I'd given with Mike Naberezny at the 2006 ZendCon; the latter ignited a ton of questions and enthusiasm.

On returning home, I had a ton of work to do on the zend.com CMS, and this continued in spurts through November. The job was made much easier by the ibuildings WDE product.

I closed out a ton of MVC issues in the Zend Framework, and we released the first beta version late in the month.

April

At the beginning of the month, our landlord threw us for a loop and announced he was going to sell our apartment... meaning that we either had to step up our plans to purchase a home, or start looking for a new rental. Ultimately, we ended up looking for a rental, due to time constraints. The next two months would be highlighted with the look for a new place as well as countless showings of our apartment to potential buyers.

Mid-month, we packed up the family and flew down to Atlanta, GA, to visit my wife's family. While there, we were able to go to the Atlanta Zoo and see Mei Lan, their baby panda -- way cute!

May

Mid-month, we found a new place in Richmond, VT -- a small village about 10 minutes from Burlington, near where we originally lived when we first moved to Vermont.

During the first RC for Zend Framework, released at the end of the month, I introduced the ViewRenderer, a feature for auto-rendering views based on the current controller and action name -- a feature common to many frameworks. However, it ostensibly broke a ton of existing applications by being enabled by default -- not one of my more popular decisions. Since the 1.0.0 release, I've heard little grumbling about it, and it's now often cited as an ease-of-use feature -- go figure.

June

The first week of June, I flew to Tel Aviv, Israel, to start training people on the new CMS, as well as to work with our entire ebiz team to finalize the work plan for completing the CMS. It was, needless to say, my first time to Israel or the Middle East, and I was constantly confronted with culture shock. Europe was an easy transition to make, but Israel was completely foreign to me -- everything from the way people drove, to the architecture, to the food was different. Unfortunately, I arrived a day late due to a flight cancellation, and missed the tour of Jerusalem my supervisor had planned for all of us. However, he took me to the city of Yafa, an Arabic city where the Israeli's originally tried to settle before building Tel Aviv to the north. The architecture was amazing, as were the winding, narrow streets of the old city.

I was also told during this trip that Andi had requested transferring me full-time to the Zend Framework team. I would spend the next week or two weighing my options, and ultimately decided to do so.

A week after I returned, we moved into our new rental in Richmond. The kids love the new place, which has a bedroom for each of them, a yard, and porches on each entrance.

Somehow, I also found time to record my first (and so far only) PHP Abstract podcast.

July

We released Zend Framework 1.0.0 at the beginning of the month, marking our first stable release. While many still view it as incomplete, the overwhelming feedback has been positive, and we've had over 2 million downloads to date.

I accepted the transfer to the Zend Framework team, but the condition was made that I would stay part-time on the ebiz team until the new site was launched. This meant that the next 5 months were spent splitting my time between the two projects, often working late and on weekends to get work done.

Towards the end of the month, we took a long weekend camping in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. The weather was unseasonably wet, but we persevered and had a great time. 5 days of offline time was definitely needed!

I also finally released the first stable version of File_Fortune on PEAR, over a year since I'd first proposed it. The package interfaces with mod_fortune files, allowing both the ability to read and write such files, with full binary compatability.

August

Not much to report in August, except work, work, and more work.

September

My ebiz supervisor, Boaz, flew me to Tel Aviv for a second time, this time to perform a "brain dump" for the rest of the team before I transitioned fully out of the team, and also to help setup our new data center and release procedures. This time, Boaz took me to Jerusalem himself during my last full day in the country. If you've never been to the city, you should definitely put it on your list of things to do before you die. With my degree in religion, the place was full of meaning for me, but it would be putting it lightly to say that religion is palpable in the air there. We visited the Wailing Wall, the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and listened to the muezzins sing the call to prayer for the muslims. The tour was simply amazing.

A few days after I returned, I flew down to New York City for a special meeting of NYPHP, where Mark de Visser presented on various Zend products and initiatives, and I gave a Zend Framework overview.

A week after the NYPHP presentation, I did a zend.com webinar on the Zend Framework MVC layer.

October

October was the month of ZendCon. I presented a full-day tutorial on best practices and unit testing with Sebastian Bergmann and Mike Naberezny; despite the length and subject matter, we were SRO for most of the day.

I also did a main-stage presentation on Zend Framework's MVC components, directly following Terry Chay -- an intimidating situation at best. From the feedback I've seen, the presentation was well-received, and I had somewhere between 120 and 150 attendees -- phenomenal! (Even more amazing was how many people were familiar with MVC in general!)

One great thing about the conference was the fact that I got to network with a number of framework developers, both Zend Framework and otherwise, including Nate Abele of CakePHP as well as Paul M. Jones of the Solar framework. Many good conversations were had.

Late in the month, The PHP Anthology, 2nd Edition, my first published book as an author, was finally released!

November

I spent much of the month working on Zend_Layout, a much requested component that simplifies and automates Two Step Views in Zend Framework. I also started work implementing Zend_View Enhanced, a set of view helpers for making complex views with Zend_View possible.

I also started playing with Twitter a bit, and came up with a Zend_Service_Twitter proposal for interacting with the Twitter API via PHP.

And finally, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we finally launched the new Zend.com site, which was well-received in the blogosphere.

December

A goal I've had for some time has been to form a PHP user group in the Burlington area. A friend of mine pointed out to me sometime this fall that there's actually already a Google Group formed; he and the original founder started planning a meeting for early December. I spoke at this inaugural meeting, presenting Zend Framework's MVC layer yet again; a good time was had by all, and a lot of enthusiasm for future meetings was generated.

I finished up Zend_Layout and Zend_View Enhanced with the help of Ralph Schindler, and got a new proposal up for Zend_Form, just in time for my holidays to begin -- 11 days with family and with little to no internet connectivity during a trip to Atlanta, GA for one of only a handful of Christmases I've spent without snow.

Summary

This year was incredibly busy -- three cross-seas trips, one cross-continent trip, a move, and several trips along the Eastern Seaboard; three user group presentations, and eight presentations over the course of the year; one conference; one move; one PEAR release; one podcast; one webinar; one book; and countless hours of programming.

My goals for the coming year? I'm too tired to even think about it ;-).

I was approached by Daniel Kushner in late July regarding another position at Zend, and was flown out at the beginning of August. While I felt the interview went well, I harbored some doubts; work got fairly busy shortly thereafter, and then, of course, Liam was born, and the interview went completely out of my head. Until about three days after Liam's birthday, when Daniel contacted me again about the PHP Developer position.

Work started yesterday, and I was flown to Zend's offices in Cupertino, CA, for orientation and to sit down with both Daniel and others to prepare for the projects on which I will be working. Thankfully, the job will not require that I move, and I will be working out of the 'home office' in Vermont when I return later this week.

The decision to leave NGA was difficult, but the opportunity to work with Zend is just too good to miss. I am honored to be selected by them, and hope this is the beginning of many good things to come.

Thanks go to my bosses at NGA for giving me the opportunity to attend php|Tropics, to Marco Tabini for offering the ZCE exam as part of the php|Tropics conference fee, and to my wife, Jen, and daughter, Maeve, for putting up with me while I studied... and being good sports about having to stay home while I went to Cancun. Hopefully next time I can take you along!

However, unlike our previous two moves, which were interstate, this time we stayed in the same state. The same county, even. What made (makes; we're still finishing up as I write this) this one so jarring is the fact that we're going from the rural mountainside to the fourth floor of a new apartment/condo building adjoining an interstate spur.

Why would we do this?

First, some history. In case you haven't been reading the blog, Jen and I are having another baby. And our one-and-only car died a few months ago (which we've since replaced). And we were living in West Bolton, a good half-hour by car to Burlington, where we work and often play -- which means that we've been having a long commute each day (50 minutes, minimum, each way). And we've been spending far more on our rent and utilities than we'd like; we haven't been able to save at all.

We got to thinking that this was not an ideal situation for us. We cannot afford another car (either the initial purchase or the ongoing expense of one), so we decided it was time to look for something closer to town. And then, as we did, we discovered that places were either not close enough to change the commute significantly, or we were going to be spending the same amount of money (or more) to live closer as we were to live up in the mountains -- and sometimes this was with less space.

We finally found several places we liked and which were in the price range we were targetting, and it came down to how we felt about our potential landlords, and they us. And the one that was cheapest, most convenient to our workplaces, and still somewhat reasonably sized... is the brand-new apartment on the city's edge we're currently occupying.

Our landlord is very nice, and a mortgage broker for a local bank; yet, this is actually his first rental property. He and his wife breed some sort of dog, and he was quite happy to have Cuervo move in. Additionally, when we came to visit the location, Maeve had her tiger, Talula, with her, and he liked the name so much that he suggested it to his wife for a puppy name. It just felt like a good fit.

Now, as I mentioned above, we've moved from the rural mountainside to the city: we've gone from complete quiet (apart from the peepers singing) and complete darkness (other than the blanket of stars in the sky) to a constant hum of traffic and lights that never shut off. But in the mountains, all we could see was the sky above and trees surrounding us; we couldn't even see the mountain on which we lived. The new apartment is on the top floor, looking west... which gives us an excellent view of the Adirondacks and a portion of Lake Champlain, as well as beautiful sunsets.

The new location poses some challenges. The place is significantly smaller than our place in West Bolton, and doesn't have a full basement for storage (obviously). Plus, we're adding to our family, yet we're reducing the number of rooms by one. And, for pete's sake, we're on the fourth floor -- what about when Cuervo needs to pee?

Well, now that we're mostly moved in, I can answer some of these questions. The move has been difficult, but a good experience. We've taken it as an opportunity to simplify. Which, in a nutshell, means, "throw out unnecessary shit." I discovered that I had four file cabinet drawers full of old papers that I had absolutely no use for, nor attachment to. We took several boxes of books to a local charity, and untold numbers of clothes and toys. We've now got just about everything over to the new place, except some stuff from the office and some storage from the basement... and I find myself wondering why we ever felt we needed all the things we got rid of.

Cuervo's settling in nicely, though she's having a little trouble understanding that she can't be as vocal. As it turns out, Cuervo's getting old. She's now seven, and in this first week of walks, I've discovered that in her little 'explores' up in West Bolton, she was likely walking for up to 10 minutes, and then sitting on her butt or outright laying down for a while before getting up to continue. She doesn't even pull incessantly on the leash anymore! She's certainly very healthy and in good shape, but she simply doesn't have quite the energy and enthusiasm I remember from walking her in years past. So, as it turns out, the move is probably a good thing for her, too -- we interact with her more, and also can keep a better eye on her general health.

I've also discovered that I like living near more people. Every day, I run into people, usually while walking Cuervo. I already know several people by name, which is several people more than I met all of last year. Additionally, the building was built on the edge of some property that contains four other apartment buildings, some of which are Section 8 -- which means that when Maeve goes down to play at the playground, she's meeting kids of many ethnicities and economic backgrounds. (We met a couple of girls whose family emigrated from Rwanda, for instance!)

The move has been trying in many ways, though. The sheer amount of stuff to do has alternately overwhelmed myself and then Jen, and we have found ourselves getting frustrated with each other quite often. However, the common experience of our 'simplifying' process has also drawn us together -- it's a goal we both share, and for which we must both sacrifice. Additionally, the new place has a layout that encourages staying connected: the kitchen, dining room, and living room all flow into each other, and the bedrooms open off this main room, meaning we're always within hearing distance -- and often sight -- of each other.

So, all in all, while difficult, I feel the move has been a very good one for the family as a whole. Now if only I could turn off the parking lot lights and passing traffic when I go to bed...

It's A BOY!!!!

I'm terribly excited, in case you can't tell. I'd had a dream shortly after we found out we were pregnant that we were at the doctor's for the ultrasound, and I'd seen quite clearly a little penis; I've been convinced since then that we would have a boy. It was amazing to have it confirmed -- so many emotions ran through me -- how will I be a father to a boy, how will I teach him to shave, will I need to learn about sports if he takes to them, IT'S A BOY!!!

We've been going through baby names since then. Before Maeve was born, we'd planned on calling a boy Aidan; a couple years ago, we though maybe Will would be a good name (Will is one of the principal characters in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy). However, one of my co-workers, has two boys -- Will and Aidan -- whom Maeve plays with, so those names are out.

We've narrowed the names down to four, though: Nolan, Liam, Gavin, and Devin. Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Oh, did I mention -- it's a boy!!!!

For those not familiar with where I live, my family and I live in West Bolton, VT -- about 20 miles from Burlington, and at the base of Bolton Mountain. Our daily commute is 4 miles on a dirt road, another 3 to 4 miles on some twisty two-laners at 35mph to the interstate, and around 10 miles on the interstate into Burlington. Then there's all the miles in town getting Maeve to day-care, Jen or myself dropped off, and whomever has the car to work. And we only have one car.

So, you can imagine the crisis when, almost a month ago, our Toyota Rav4 died on the way in to work.

We started it up that day, and it had this funny knocking sound. I remembered a similar sound in my old pickup back in Montana... the one that died. I determined to get it into a shop that day to get it diagnosed. The noise came and went while we were on the backroads, and because it wasn't constant, I figured it couldn't be too serious.

And then we tried to get to highway speeds.... a few miles on the interstate, and it was evident we were in trouble. The Rav was having trouble maintaining 60mph on the way up French Hill -- when it normally was able to accelerate past 70mph. And the knocking sound was getting worse and louder.

We resolved to pull off at the first exit, at Tafts Corners in Williston. I pulled into the first gas station there, and as we tried to find a place to park the vehicle, a mechanic was flagging at us to stop the car. He came over to where we parked and said, "Sounds like you've blown your engine."

These, of course, were the absolute last words I wanted to hear.

To make a long story short, apparently a bearing was thrown when we started the engine that day, and because we decided to drive it, we basically destroyed the engine. The cost to replace it: around $6,000.

Now, we're not exactly what you'd call "financially secure". We've had a lot of transitions in the past five years, and except for the past year and a few months, haven't typically both been working at the same time. We've been in a perpetual cycle of having enough to pay the bills... but having to pay consistently late. And we haven't been able to do much, if anything, about our educational debt. In short, our credit sucks. Which means that $6,000 is a big deal.

Did I mention that, at the time of the incident, we still had 17 months left on our car payments?

And, on top of it, I've been in the middle of a huge project for work that's required a fair bit of overtime -- and very little wiggle room for personal time?

The timing could not have been worse, either professionally or financially.

We've been very fortunate, however. Jen's parents very graciously offerred to pay off our existing car loan -- which helped tremendously. It bought us both the time to figure things out, as well as eliminated one factor that may have barred our ability to borrow towards repairs or a new car. Additionally, a friend of Jen's turns out to be absolutely ruthless when it comes to dealing with car salespeople, and went to bat for us in working out a deal. If it hadn't been for her efforts -- and those of the salesperson, who also went to bat for us -- we would not have gotten more than a thousand or so for the vehicle; we ended up getting over $3,000 for it, as is. Finally, the finance guy at the dealership advocated for us tremendously so we could get a loan on a new vehicle, with the Rav as our trade in.

So, to conclude: We're now proud owners of a 2005 Toyota Matrix! (And now the mystery of the title is revealed... to all you Matrix fans out there...)

I'll try to get a photo of the car up soon... about the time we update the year-old photos on our site... :-)

So, we're going to Cancun in May!

This is incredibly exciting! I've never been to Mexico, nor even a resort, so I'll finally get to find out what my wife and friends have been talking about all these years. Plus, the conference is top-notch -- many of the presenters are well-known in the PHP community, and have blogs I've been following for the past year. (I only wish that Chris Shiflett's PHP Security series wasn't running head-to-head with the PHP5 OOP Extensions and PHP 5 Patterns sessions; I suspect Rob and I will have to do a divide-and-conquer that day.)

Drop me a line if you'll be attending -- I'm looking forward to meeting other PHP junkies!

Fortunately, I ran across a quick-and-dirty content management solution yesterday called Gunther. It does templating in Smarty, and uses a wiki-esque syntax for markup -- though page editing is limited to admin users only (something I was looking for). I decided to try it out, and within an hour or so had a working site ready to upload.

Cgiapp's new site can be found at cgiapp.sourceforge.net.

UPDATE

Shortly after I wrote this original post, I figured out what the strength of Gunther was -- and why I no longer needed it. Gunther was basically taking content entered from a form and then inserting that content (after some processing for wiki-like syntax) into a Smarty template. Which meant that I could do the same thing with Cgiapp and Text_Wiki. Within an hour, I wrote an application module in Cgiapp that did just that, and am proud to say that the Cgiapp website is 100% Cgiapp.