I never need Acrobat pro. I use preview on the Mac for my basic PDF reading, it's lighter, so it's a no-brainer.

HOWEVER

today I had to review 20 PDFs, and make notes on them and even put some text in them so that I could send them off for review.

After suffering through so many stupid Adobe Updater times, when it brings my machine to a screaching high temp halt, Acrobat pro is broke.

WHAT?

I click a PDF to open in Acrobat and get this...

I've done nothing to or in acrobat, ever.

It's been updated plenty since I installed CS3, about every three weeks it seems, i have to go make a sandwhich while the stupid updater runs.

And after all that suffering, after giving up productive cycles.... I get this...

Weak sauce!!!!

Of course I get it while I'm in San Francisco for the week, so I don't have my install DVDs..

I wrapped up my stint with Ribbit right before leaving for 360|Flex Atlanta, so now that I', back in town I'm ready to get started on my next adventure.

I'm always open to Flex Dev projects, bring 'em on. I'm in Denver, but travel ain't no biggy :) But sorry, I'm not moving.

My ideal position, still is something where I can help a company build and support the community they exist in, be it the overall, worldwide community (flex developers, small biz owners, mac users, whatever)  or a community of their own (ie Ribbit and their API developer community).

I suppose it's one of those "Dream job" type deals, but hey! You never know. Some company out there is getting ready to launch an API, go public with a tool, etc and they might want some one to help build and nurture the community. Worth a shot :)

I'm looking for some ideas on what everyone would like to see in the Session Survey. Give me your ideas...

So I'm spending some of my down hours while I work on my next gig working on the session Survey App.

Our launch during the conference went ok, a few bugs, nothing too bad. Now it's time to clean up and enhance. I'm thinking we'll try to get it to a nice 1.0 place, and then put it up on RIAforge. I wanted to put a few more security measures, and user experience enhancements.

I also wanted to get anyone's input on what they'd like before it goes, Open Source.

I'm working on validating Attendee ID, so we can minimize crap data. Then I'll work on setting your ID into a shared Obj for persistence, maybe just us SQL Lite? I dunno.

I'm also going to improve the user feedback, when the app is working in "offline mode" maybe a cool status light or something? Also will make sure the save complete dialog shows up in both modes, not just 'online'

Besides those three things, what would ya'll want in a survey app for conferences?

If you're an attendee, let me know what you think of the app, no holds barred. I know it's rough, shoot! Tom and I worked on it off and on just the last week or two leading up to the Conference. You know the saying about the mechanic having the crappiest car.

I'm excited to get it buttoned up enough to put up on RIAforge, it'll be my first OS project... yippy! I'm really hoping others will jump in to help improve conferences of any type.  Part of the release will include the DB design, you'll need to create your own SQL lite DB for offline mode, with your own data, sorry, can't give out our attendee info.

Sadly I won't be there to celebrate!

Tom and I tried to figure out how to be in New York tomorrow (my birthday by the way) but it just couldn't be done. between consulting, and my birthday, and 360|Flex Atlanta a little over a week away, it just wasn't in the stars.

Tom and I are rather fanatical about running our business "the Cluetrain way" so the chance to get together with Doc and a bunch of other visionaries was hard to miss. We've heard that they'll be having a similar event or events out west so we'll be makin' sure we're there!

What's really a bummer, Jake McKee is one of those visionaries. Jake wrote blogfusion, which is what I was running johnwilker.com, red-omega, and my wife's blogs on.

If you're around New York tomorrow, register!

Interesting.

My first thought, will we now get better or worse management tools? I love Navicat, but something that ships with the DB (I know a basic one does, it's weak, we all know that)

I wonder how this will play to the OS Hippies, is Sun too mainstream? Is Sun strong enough to do anything positive for mySQL?

Should be interesting. The picture to the left, to me says 10 gagillion words... tee-shirt and dress shirt... Culture clash?

When i first heard about Plaxo and the whole "Global Address book" hoo ha, I didn't sign up. When a few friends and colleagues signed up and invited me, I passed. Why? I was waiting to see where they'd go. Finally just a few days ago, I got another invite. "Ok, it's been a year or so. they're still around, more people are using them, i'll sign up."

An always up to date address book is definitely a nice thing, when I think about my Blackberry, my Mac, Google, etc all being their own (more or less) little silo's. But now...?

No sooner have I mined my Gmail address book, my LinkedIn account, etc, than i see that TechCrunch is reporting, they're up for sale.

Great, just great.

  I'm sitting in SJC waiting for my flight back to Denver, thought I should catch up on blog writing and reading. I've been onsite at newly un-stealthed Ribbit, working with them on some really cool stuff. As I've said, it's a great project, great team, etc. I'm having a good time working on this project. Esria is a great group of guys to consult for (even if they are from canadia :P ), I'm really glad they were able to get me in on this project.

I had twitter track 'ribbit', and watching the posts fly around yesterday was cool. So much excitement, so many people talking about ideas, implementations, speculations, etc. It was very neat to watch.

 It's kind of cool to be with them as they come out of stealth, never experienced that before. News crews coming by, people coming in off the street to talk about business opportunities, etc. it's very exciting, I'm thrilled for Chuckstar and the team. If you haven't done so, go sign up for the beta, the possibilities for Ribbit are endless. Screw that old, click to call (which launches Skype), or tools, that aren't developer friendly. I can see blogs with voicemail, 'Click to call' that does just that, no external tools or apps needed, you click, an your browser starts to ring, how freakin' cool! Go sign up!

In working with Ribbit, I'm getting a chance to really stretch and grow my abilities, something I've been craving since like... forever. I'm getting to get my hands dirty in the API that'll be released soon, building services and tools around it. it's very exciting!

Work on 360|Flex of course hasn't stopped, it never does. Tom and I announced our plans for giving something back to the community, a plan I'm very excited about, since giving what we can back in as many ways as we can, is a core tenet of 360Conferences. We're also looking into another really cool thing to announce, hoping we can announce it soon, I think it'll be a lot of fun. You'll just have to wait and see, it'll be cool though, it always is :)

I've been in San Jose this week at Ribbit, and am currently sitting in SJC, waiting for a delayed flight to DIA, just in time for some serious snowing that's going on in the Denver area today and tomorrow. Yippy! It'd be nice if it meant I got to go skiing, however it does not, so it isn't.

Nicole had a minor accident on her way to an airport in Wisconsin so I'm heading home (she made her flight!) to see her for the weekend. Then back to San Jose for another week.

I'm really enjoying Ribbit. It's only been a week, but the project is very cool, the people are great. Knowing two of them going in doesn't hurt either, Hey Chuckstar, hey Pete! Ribbit has some cool stuff cooking, including a cool "coming out party" Not in that way! If you haven't signed up, you should, it's cool stuff, I'm very excited to be a part of it, and look forward to the challenges ahead.

Oh yeah, if you're not coming to the party this coming Thursday, you should feel bad for yourself, I think it's gonna rock, and am STOKED that I'll be in town for it. Ain't no party like a SilVaFUG/Ribbit party cuz a SilVaFUG/Ribbit party don't stop!

Sorry for being so quiet, on all fronts. Between moving, leaving one project, flying to CA for another, I've been a bit busy the past few days.

Right now I'm in Mountain View working on a really cool project with some great guys, many of whom I've worked with before so that's a plus! The move went... well it went, mostly craptastically downhill very fast. The movers were two hours late, dropped our fridge (rendering it barely usable), Best Buy installer decided to be a dill hole and wouldn't help us stack or install our washer dryer. He pushed the washer into the closet but wouldn't touch the dryer, and stole the stainless steal braided hoses that we paid extra for. The builder mucked up the cabling so bad that our unit has no cable line, so we've had no cable, telephone, or internet since we moved, and might have it today. On top of all that one of the dogs, refuses to use the open staircase from the main floor to the bedroom level, which is also where the stairs to the deck are, which is where we're setting up a dog run... guess where he's using the rest room..

Moving and having to travel for work, is crazy hectic when done all the same week, I'll be glad when I'm back home setting up the home office, getting things done there.

On the plus side of travel, I had jack in the box for dinner last night :)

Flex and Evangelism?

Yup, that's right. My time at XylemCCI has come to end. Don't worry we're still friends, and won't be telling our friends they have to chose one of us over the other... (I'd win, but whatever, we're still friends)

So what am I looking for? It's pretty straight forward, really.

I'm a Flex Developer, I love building Flex apps, that's important and fun. However I also run a conference company, you might have heard of it. Community is important to me; building it, supporting it, doing what I can. Evangelism is important too. Supporting an API with examples, etc. That's a blast.

I'm looking for an organization that might want to get into supporting and building community, or already does, be that within Flex, around a product or API, etc, that also is looking for a Flex Developer.

I'm also looking for Consulting opportunities, but first preference is to Full Time opportunities. I think both sides get the most out of that arrangement.

Any questions? I'm at MAX until tomorrow night if you want to meet, and talk, otherwise leave a comment or fire off an email.

john DOT Wilker AT gmail DOT com (I hate having to do that, but jeez spammers suck).

Thanks to Lola for being my spell checker :)

Google is so fun to mash up. Well I assume it is, folks sure like making cool mashups with map data in them. Including my pal Tom (not this Tom). He created SalaryMap, so that people (IT Folks primarily, I think) could see what the salary playing field looked like.

It's a cool idea, and quite informative. Take a look, post your info, if you're up for it.