Something I have been meaning to do for a while is to switch away from Wordpress. While it is quite a nice collaborative tool and has some great options for WYSIWIG editing and content, it’s also far too big a hammer to use given my modest content and collaboration needs. I don’t have guest posters, I don’t get a lot of comments, and when I do get some interactions they would often work better in another medium (Twitter for example). I don’t have a lot of dynamic content and running Wordpress myself is not something I am particularly expert in.

I had been considering several options, but when I saw Steve’s work with Hugo I was sold (this was early days in the project and it was still pretty awesome). The big stumbling block was what to do with my old content and that stalled me out for a while. Around the same time as I contemplated the switch, I finally obtained the comerford.net domain - I had watched it for some time while someone sat on it, not using it, for years. I even tried making an offer for it (at what I considered a reasonable price) but got nothing, so I decided to wait for it to expire, which it eventually did.

This post took a while to write – when I started, it was my last day in MongoDB and finishing it I am over a week into my new role in Riot Games.  It was a bittersweet moment – I was very excited to move on to my new adventure in Riot Games, but I was sad to leave a company that has been such a great place to work for the last three years.  I decided to write this post partially as a record of what I enjoyed most, partly as a list of some of my accomplishments – memory fades and I have very much enjoyed reading similar posts from several years ago.  I often wish I had written more in fact.

So, here it is, some random reflection on three great years, in no particular order.  Due to the length, I’ll insert a jump, so click through if you would like to read on.

While this site may not be my main outlet for ranting and rambling or even status updates at this point, it used to have a semi-decent page rank, so I’ll use it to let people know about a worthy cause/quest undertaken by a friend of mine, Reed. Reed lives in Washington DC and after becoming unemployed for the first time in his life (something I will have to deal with myself soon enough), he decided to give away $10 a day every day for a year to people and record it all while he did it.

Well, it’s the end of an era – Facebook, Twitter and Flickr have completely sated my need to publish things to the web. I may come back and resurrect the blog at some point, or I may try something completely different but it seems certain given my infrequent updates that the blog will be neglected for the foreseeable future, unless something changes drastically. Speaking of which, my Aol. days are now drawing to a close.

So, I bid adieu to the US office Friday (*sniff*) – was a bit sad to pack everything up and clear out my office, but now comes the hard part – I have to sell everything we are not taking home. The sofa, coffee table, patio furniture and, of course, the car all have to go. Rather than doing that of course I procrastinated and did other things instead, like upload the inaugural photos and videos I took, and wrote this post Share this: <div class="sd-content"> <ul> <li class="share-facebook"> <a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-226" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://comerford.

It has been quite a few months since I posted last and there has been plenty going on. The lask of updates was partly due to crazy work load and partly due to a gag order on blogging about the fact that I have to return to Ireland by March. Until all the appropriate people knew that we were going home, we didn’t want them to find out via a blog.

Since I ended up working from home today I was able to meet Jen in DC at a reasonable hour and so we went in to check out the new Kogod Courtyard in DC. It is quite impressive – I can’t wait to see that roof when it snows Here’s one with some nice lighting and (conveniently), the name of the place (click for full size): As usual, the full set can be found on Flickr.

It has been a busy week and it is a long way from over. We started out with the arrival of Matt and Ruth on Friday morning, threw a barbecue at our place on Saturday after we got back from the National Museum of Health and Medicine (very cool – though a bit tricky to get to), then hit Dog the Bounty Hunter (funny as hell) at the Lisner auditorium on Monday night (with associated drinking in Froggy Bottom and Galaxy Hut).

Ryan and I went to see Muse in the Patriot Center – I got the ticket due to my sacrifice of my spot at the 9.30 club for the Smashing Pumpkins – Ryan is a far bigger fan of them than I am so I gave up my ticket to him. It was my first time seeing Muse, and my first trip to the Patriot Center which is bigger than I thought.

Jen and I hit indebleu on Saturday night for a sligtly more upscale dinner than usual. The food was excellent – we had the duck meatballs to start followed by the New York Strip (me) and the quail (Jenny). Jen was too full for dessert so that meant I had the very tasty l’opera dish to myself. So, only two minor gripes – first, though the wine list is long it is apparently not stocked very well, both of my choices were unavailable and so we went with a recommendation.

Scott’s new band, One Ton Wonton, played at TT Reynolds in Fairfax on Tuesday night and we went along to check them out. I’d missed their first gig due to my latest European trip, but this time there were no such conflicts. A good time was had by all, though judging by my head the next day perhaps I had a little too much of a good thing Pictures from the gig are over on Flickr, but here’s one of the shots of the band in action:

A random entry from this very blog about the iPhone made it into the Local Blog Log of The Express, which is the free Metro paper published in the area by the Washington Post (see this edition, page 40) and that means it appeared in actual print on actual paper…….. Jenny spotted it while reading The Express on the metro, which is pretty cool. I think that’s the first time anything I’ve written has been spotted in traditional media.

It’s a bit strange, but because of all my traveling recently it feels like an “easy” week just because I don’t have to get on a plane any time soon. I have a pretty important product launch on Saturday (ugh), I’m recovering from jet lag and I’m way behind where I would like to be with some personal projects. Somehow though it doesn’t seem so bad because I get to sleep in my own bed and not have to worry about whether I can get upgraded to business or get my money changed to the currency of the week Of course that could all change on Saturday if things don’t go well with the launch, but here’s hoping for smooth sailing….

Got home yesterday, went for a quick bite in King Street Blues with Jen and then hit the sack. 12 hours later I was ready (almost) to face a day in work, some coffee fixed that. I notice that the Captain has pictures up from the lake house a couple of weeks ago, including some “strange” ones in the hot tub, oh dear…. I haven’t quite finished with pictures from the trip, but the ones from Dublin were not that great – they are smack bang in the middle of the wettest June on record.

Just as things start to calm down and I think I might get back to having some free time along comes another business trip – with no visa stuff tacked on this time though. I’ll be hitting Paris, London and then Dublin before heading back stateside, and after a weekend in North Carolina that is a lot of miles in a couple of weeks. Still, will be good to get home again for free and since half of my college class and several old cow-orkers are living in London these days, that should be a nice stop too.

A friend of ours that we recently met has a thing for British/Irish music, well all music really, but he doesn’t get a lot of chances to talk about the British and Irish stuff with other Americans. So he was pretty happy when he found a couple of people that actually knew what he was talking about (most of the time at least). One of the bands he asked about was The Kooks – I hadn’t heard of them but Jen had and loved their stuff, so I picked up their debut album.

My blogging frequency has been poor recently (OK, non-existant), ironically because I have had so much going on. Therefore a bulleted list will have to suffice before I dive back into work and visa paperwork. Let’s see, we’ve had: St Patrick’s Day (OK, posted since then – but now pictures are up) Snow Patrol @ Bender Arena (with OK Go – a subsequent album purchase) The Adam & Joe Show 2007 A visit from James (one of the little brothers) More new job stuff (got a new Macbook – woooo!

My Aunt Jen sent me a message today that deserves to be quoted (with some grammar and spell checking applied): Have a lovely birthday, it’s mad how you’re catching up with me, only a year between us now !!!! Apparently we are aging on different calendars or something. As I draw closer to 30, Jen seems to stay rooted at 29, perhaps she switched to the hex system I proposed previously.

My St. Patrick’s day pictures remain un-uploaded due to the fact that I started a new job yesterday, moved offices and now have to sort out learning a whole new group and role from scratch. It’s the first time I’ve moved out of my “comfort zone” since I upped and moved to the US 3 years ago and it feels a little weird. Even then, the main challenge was new people, new country, new lifestyle rather than a completely different job.

Just days after being featured on AOL for the first time, now I get some Wonkette linkage – another first. Needless to say my traffic has seen a noticeable spike. Needless to say, I think this one deserves a wee screenshot also, though given the picture under my link I will understand if the men out there have trouble locating it Technorati Tags: Wonkette, hot brazilian girl, traffic, linkage Share this: <div class="sd-content"> <ul> <li class="share-facebook"> <a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-182" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://comerford.

Well, we missed out again – by a measly 4 points and the St. Patricks day luck of the Irish just came up short. A late Italian try sealed the deal for France and the Irish missed out on points difference to France for the second year running So, that’s it for this year, but the lads did well. Hopefully we are saving up our luck for the World Cup later in the year where we play Argentina, Georgia, Namibia and (of course) France in the group stage.

For anyone living under a rock, Saturday was Shamrockfest, and I had scored several free VIP passes (thanks Jamie) which meant we drank for free, had no beer line, got free pizza and got fancier rest rooms. The pictures of the day are up in a Flickr set here. A good time was had by all – it was a beautiful day and we rounded it off with a trip to Julia’s Empanadas (my first – what took me so long?

Made cooler by me – both by my presence in the shot (naturally) and by turning it Black & White. Why do some pictures just look so much nicer when you remove the color? Anyway, here is the shot (click for larger) taken on the escalator in Dupont Metro as we left the recent blogger meetup in search of more alcohol. Just for comparison, you can find the original here.

February 24th 2007, the English national anthem played in Croke Park and the most significant game in the Irish rugby calendar was played. I honestly believe that a lot of Irish people would prefer to beat England than win the 6 Nations outright (assuming mutual exclusivity – both would be gravy). This year, with the venue and the historical significance that number probably increased to something approaching 100% of Irish people – even those that don’t care about rugby.

Joe has often posted about getting behind in his picture posting, but I have always been fairly good about getting pictures up quickly, at least since I upgraded to a Flickr Pro account. However, I am over a week late getting the latest rugby pictures up, and since I cleaned up my camera over the weekend to make space on the memory card I’ll have to wait until I get home to upload this weekend’s activities.

Just picked up tickets for The Kooks at the 9.30 club on May 12th, which should be fun. We also have the Snow Patrol concert coming up in March in the Bender arena, another show I am looking forward to…. It’s been a while since I’ve been this active in terms of attending live shows – I think the Virgin festival last year was my first big show since Thievery Corporation the previous year.

It was quite a weekend, so much so in fact that I took Monday off to recover. We kicked off the festivities at David’s Martini party in Clarendon. Then there were a whole 6 hours or so of sleep before it was time to get up and head into Fadó’s in DC for the Ireland Vs Wales Six Nations match (pictures here) which Ireland won despite not playing terribly well.

Reed threw a birthday bash on Saturday in his place near Dupont. Since he is rarely in the country for more than a couple of weeks, this had to be fairly impromptu but there was still quite a good turnout. As usual, the pictures are up and are, of course also available on Flickr – Joe has yet to receive a new camera following the “accident” so he took a few of the shots and as a result I am actually in a few.

Drinking Liberally informs us that there is a march to end the war now scheduled for this weekend in DC. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Now, I’m not particularly political and my education on the US political process and climate is almost entirely due to The West Wing, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Still, I’d expect to have heard something before now……… Hopefully it will be successful, though I won’t be attending myself.

The 24 Vs Heroes question can be put off until next week. Instead of trying to pick between two of my favourite shows, I will be out and about with some people over from the UK. As a happy coincidence a former colleague that left to join another company is back in the picture as that company recently purchased part of my current one and he’s in town to discuss the details of the sale – nice.

My first appearance on YouTube is thanks to the Captain. I have already had solicitations with regards to future work. At least I’ll have something to fall back on if things go badly in my current job…. Unfortunately embedding YouTube video in the blog appears to screw it up – after several attempts I found out that the auto-posting feature from YouTube seems to work but any change I make (categorization, the title etc.

Last night I attended my first DCBlogs meetup in RFD in DC, thanks to an invite from Joe. Apparently I picked a good first meeting because the turnout was quite high – hopefully something that will continue. I met a quite a few interesting people and saw my first blog groupies, something I did not even know existed. Rather than cheating and looking at the members page on meetup I will try to recall people’s details from memory……

I was planning on replacing my aging Sony Cybershot DSC P5 before our trip to Savannah at the start of December – it’s big and bulky by today’s standards and 3.2 megapixels just doesn’t cut it these days. That being said, I remember when I got it back in 2002 and how everyone thought it was tiny and the picture quality was amazing…. Anyway, Jenny’s Dad loves his photography and so I asked him for advice on what to get in terms of a point-and-shoot camera with a view to getting a DSLR later if I think it is worthwhile.

Jen, Scott, Lon and I attended the annual Yuletide Madness party in the National Press Club Saturday night in DC. The pictures are in the usual places. Scott hooked us up with some VIP tickets (nice) and it was a good night for a good cause (I even shaved!) and there was much drinking going on Between this and the work party next Saturday it may be time to invest in a tux – the rental expenses are piling up….

Too tired to do a write up on it, but the pics are up at least – all the pics are to be found as a set in the gallery or in the usual spot on Flickr Technorati Tags: Pictures, New York, drinking, bars Share this: <div class="sd-content"> <ul> <li class="share-facebook"> <a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-facebook-145" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://comerford.cc/2006/11/21/nyc-trip/?share=facebook" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span></span><span class="sharing-screen-reader-text">Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)</span></a> </li> <li class="share-twitter"> <a rel="nofollow" data-shared="sharing-twitter-145" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon no-text" href="https://comerford.

Tomoko (as Maria Sharapova), Matt (as Andy Roddick), Kramer (as Winnie the Pooh), Dave (as Tom Hanks & Wilson from Castaway), Jenny (as a Witch) and I (as a sober Irishman) all attended the 7th Annual “Nightmare on M Street” pub crawl. We started in Rumors at around 6.30 (TK and Jenny Pictured above) and went to Mad Hatter, Ozio and MCCXXIII and were intending to go to Lucky Bar but by then the cenaless brasil lines were insane.

First off – I hate pineapple on a pizza – it’s just plain wrong end of discussion – if it says so in a web comic then it must be true. In other news I’ve been doing a lot of picture uploading. In fact, I’ve used up 13% of my 2GB Flickr Pro limit this month. The latest pics are from Clarendon day which landed on Saturday 21st this year. The weather held up nicely, though it was a bit chilly toward the end.

I was looking through my logs and it seems that if you do a Google search for Jenny Comerford then this is the top link. Why does this matter you ask? Well, besides being the name of an aunt of mine on my Father’s side, that would also be the name Jenny would have should we get married and she decided to change her name (neither is very likely). Personally, I think the fact that it would finally give her an actual surname rather than the current collection of first names would be a good argument for it but I doubt she would agree.

Update (10/19/06): Joe informs me (see comments) that this “phone sex”/”menage-a-mobile phone” pic is now the most popular picture he’s ever put on Flickr (2300+ last time I looked) – by contrast the two phone version below has a paltry 23 views. There are some strange and twisted people out there From Four Courts on Saturday night (by Joe because my pictures were useless in low light), I thought I’d share the Issa Asad “highlight” of the evening.

This dark and slightly blurry pic stems from the fact that camera phones are useless in low light. The gig was excellent and I like Iota as a venue – nice and small – perfect for some of the more mellow tunes that were performed. Plus it’s 2 blocks from my house – that may be influencing my opinion somewhat. Probably best known for his work in The Frames, he is now touring the US with his new band The Swell Season – Engage The Crowd last night was their first gig.

As I mentioned in my previous post – I owe Caz a shout out. Why? Well she is the best Chicago Automotive Locksmith and also responsible for the delivery of a heavily (employee) discounted sound card to yours truly, namely the top of the line Creative X-Fi Elite Pro. Despite the stupid name, it is quite a nice sound card and fits in nicely with my new system.

Well, the festival (what I remember of it at least) was a blast. I threw up some pics from the phone here and I have to say, I’m thinking about going pro with Flickr – Gallery is good, but Flickr is soooo easy & convenient…. I know Joe beat me to the punch and has some much higher quality pics up already (part 1 no less!) so head on over there for even more entertainment.

Well, it has been a while – as usual following a flurry of activity on my part…… Just back from Ireland – I went for the oulfella’s 60th birthday party, here he is, in all his glory: Despite slips from various people, he had no idea I was going to show, so it was a nice surprise and it coincided nicely with Jen’s temporary exile from the US. Besides having to hide in my Grandmothers until he left for Wexford, and the craziness in Philadelphia on the way home (just after the arrests in Heathrow) it was a very successful trip.

Well, after keeping the updates semi-frequent for a long time, my output finally dropped off. To put an end to the Dolly mystery – it was the knave Dougherty that sent the card, he even sent me clues that unfortunately got swallowed by the mighty AOL SPAM filter….. In any case I have at least been doing something useful: I am now officially a Red Hat Certified Engineer (or RHCE). You can even verify that I’m not lying here The RH300 was very good but certainly crams a lot into 4 days and is not for someone new to System Administration or Linux.

So, the ShamrockFest (or the Shamrock Sham as Ryan appropriately called it) was a non-starter for most because an unbelievable amount of people showed up. The wait just to get in the gate was 2 hours and by all accounts it was another hour to get a beer. In any case we were scared off to the Four Courts instead where a good time was had by all (in our section at least – there may have been dirty looks from elsewhere).

As I suspected, the problem with the output to the TV was too many conversions of the signal, once I plugged in an actual DVI cable into the TV, the Mac Mini sprang to life on the TV. So I now have DVI-D running at 1280 x 720 @ 60hz (essentially 720p HDTV resolution). Just in case anyone is wondering about the quality of the Apple converter here, I can pretty much definitively say that it was not the problem – it worked just fine when I plugged it into my LCD multi monitors and, having built up a collection of DVI-VGA converters over the years, I tried a few more – all with the same result.

For those of you who don’t know, we tend to frequent the Washington Psychotronic Film Society’s (extremely weird) screenings in Dr. Dremo’s on Tuesday nights. They screen what are usually the worst films known to man. They are so bad, they are good (if you know what I mean) and occasionally they show some brilliant animated shorts. In addition to the fine films, you get a ticket (for $2) that puts you in the hat to win the door prizes.