While it seemed that most of our friends here in Vermont went to either the Bahamas or Disney World over April break, we packed up the Odyssey for a 1500 mile road trip down through Pennsylvania visiting friends and family, spending time in Amish Country, Hershey and Pittsburgh. Trees were budding, flowers blooming, skies were blue...just a wonderful trip!
I went a little crazy and took 263 pictures. I'll get some of those online when I can. Below are six photos in order of experience capturing a bit of the trip. There were so many beautiful sites driving down through the New York Adirondack Mountains and even rural Pennsylvania, what there is left of it. I typed up a few blog posts on my travel
PocketPC and keyboard setup which I will also get online shortly. My first priority for the week is preparing for my Code Camp 5 talk on Community Server.
As for my first geek impressions back after being completely offline for a week, reading through my news feeds was like enjoying a heightened sense of taste for foods I haven't had for a while. There was so much great stuff to read, and that was primarily only in the Community Server area which is where I spent most of my time. (962 posts in other categories yet to read...)
Jaxon Rice released
a sweeeet little CS mod to display a delicious feed of interesting posts as a sidebar, for instance. I would probably display it as a separate page and use skmRSS instead of javascript, doing something similar to my
Netflix Queue page, but Jaxon is on a roll! A great mod!
Chris Lotter wrote a very thorough post on
21 Things he would change in Community Server 2.0, and Scott Watermasysk
responded to each of them! How great is that?
Dan The Man Bartels detailed
how to add a Content Page in CS 2.0, which he described as "ridiculously easy." I want to walk through the process, but also want to be able to detail how to add a blank page as well without using the add new article approach Dan is showing us here. I've done it quite a few times, and need to remember how I did it to demo for Code Camp along side Dan's Content Page guide.
And on the
Community Server Announcement Blog, a new skin was released (nice!), but better than that, we get our first look at Tags in CS 2.1. Tags are going to be FANTASTIC!
There were other non-Community Server posts that tasted extra good going down, like the excellent read on the Creating Passionate Users blog I discovered through a quick visit to Memeorandum on my return. The post was on
animals and the love of exercise. After reading it I actually strapped on my rollerblades and sought out some exercise love of my own.
Ending on a Happy-yet-Sad note, I smiled when seeing
Jason Hootenany Haley being so popular now that he had to bring in a guest blogger to keep up with the Interesting Finds (whose been doing a great job, btw.) The sad part is knowing that the "
I Love Jason Haley In A Totally Manly Non-Threatening Way. Serious. Totally Platonic" Fan Club is going to be adrift in angst and confusion without our Affectionateur at Code Camp 5 this weekend in Waltham.
Some Road Trip pics and its down to business for Code Camp 5: Code Frenzy!
Hershey Chocolate World
Hotel Hershey grounds
Roots Country Market in Lancaster County. (pronounced "rutz.")
Pittsburgh Zoo (a great zoo!) Wonderful aquarium, too.
I always loved to walk here when living in Pittsburgh, the Homestead Cemetery
Lake Erie heading north
Nearly back home. Crossing the Lake Champlain Essex-Colchester ferry
[tags: Community Server, Jason Haley, Road Trip, Hershey, Roots Auction]