** update ** We terminated our relationship with this architect. Read see story comments of story Home Addition - floor plan for for additional information. **

Dan and Kristen have been talking to a local architect, Martin Gold. With housing prices what they are, it seems to make more sense to add to our existing house (and build on the sweat equity we have already put into this structure).

These are 3D renderings of the first set of drawings (courtesy of m_gold design and consulting, mgold@mgold.org):

Mom and Dad are now the proud owners of this very spacious RV.

I have officially become part of Stubbie's bar history! Here is a picture of the plaque mounted on the wall of the bar, which I earned by drinking 100 beers.



What did I learn from the experience? I really like India Pale Ales!


Stubbie Shirt Pub web site:
http://www.stubbieshirtpub.com/

NOTE: They are closed Sunday and Monday despite what the web site says.

After OSCON we had time to enjoy the area around Portland.

Henry's was our favorite bar. Service was great and just look at the beer selection!





Here are pictures of the Chinese Garden:

In July, I attended the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon.

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2006/

The conference was great and I was lucky enough to attend with three other people that I know from the University of Florida. All of us had different interests, so we often attended different content tracks and were able to share the most interesting items that we learned about. Here is a picture of the Portland Convention Center:



I am particularly excited about one project named Cosmo, managed by the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF). Cosmo is a calendar and sharing server that is completely standards-compliant (for example, iCal, WebDAV, and CalDAV). Cosmo should be a boon for sites not wanting to run Microsoft Exchange but wanting to share calendar information between people. This project should be especially useful to sites with multiple desktop computing platforms. Be warned, the Cosmo project is still early in the development process. As stated on the Cosmo web site, "This software is still experimental. Do NOT trust your data to Cosmo 0.4."

http://cosmo.osafoundation.org/

I'll be watching this one closely.

Ward's grocery in Gainesville has a very good selection of beer. This made beverage shopping for my birthday party very easy, indeed!