All posts by Ken Martin

Family

So we went on vacation – part one

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The last two weeks of August, we had a road trip. Our goal was to make it to South Carolina to visit my dad, and then down to Charleston for a couple of days. Two weeks… ahhhh… enough time to actually relax.

I’ve had all sorts of things I wanted to post, but wasn’t sure how to organize it, so I’m just going to start and see what happens.

I got to leave work the Friday before with that great “the desk is truly cleared” feeling. We had a little too much to do over that weekend, but we got things together pretty well, and Monday morning before 6am we were on the road, and were well into Wisconsin before the sun was actually up. Great start.

I’d loaded up the iPhone with History of Christianity I from Reformed Theological Seminary on iTunes U – awesome stuff – and that kept me occupied while everyone snoozed away the morning.

Our goal was to get to Loiusville, KY where we’d find a room for the night. We were making great time, until…

Helen had a plan. And as the morning progressed and emails were exchanged, we found that we had a stop to make. Near Chicago.

The Martins Invade Jellyfish Labs
The Martins Invade Jellyfish Labs

Yes, Jellyfish Labs, where Phil Vischer (creator of Big Idea… think Veggie Tales) is building a wiggly Jellyfish army with which he’ll rule the world. Actually, he’s building Jellytelly.com, a Christian, internet-based media network for kids. Excellent stuff, well done, and with a little humor for the grown-ups thrown in. (See jellyfishland.com, too.)

Post-Jelly Naptime
Post-Jelly Naptime
I expect Helen and the kids will want to write their own blog posts about it, so I won’t tell everything, but we had great time. Absurdly nice people and sneak peeks and puppet shows and I even got to squeeze in a little geek tech talk; something for everyone.

We left saying “That was so GREAT!” about a million times, and then everyone fell asleep again. (Well, except for me. Mostly.) And we made our way to Loiusville. We got there a bit later then we expected and got a couple of rooms at the Fairfield Inn on the north bank of the river, where the nice desk clerk worked hard to get us a good rate. I ran over to McDonald’s to get us some passable burgers and way too many fries (what was I thinking?) and off to bed. So ended day one.

Driving totals:
Ken: 700 miles
Helen: 0 miles

Family

Enjoyed the Star Wars exhibit, we did.

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We went to the Star Wars exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum a couple of weeks ago. Pretty cool stuff. They had some fun hands-on stuff; making maglev Lego cars and programming little robots.

My camera wasn’t capable of catching it, but the detail in those models is really incredible. It was also fun to see goofy little things like the cockpit of the medium-sized (post-episode IV) Millennium Falcon model had a big bent green LED as one of the mechanical “details”. Interestingly, Luke’s lightsaber wasn’t there. Here’s a few pictures:

Web

“Instant web site?”

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In the midst of bringing the first public revision of flyGarmin to a close at work, a friend emailed me and asked if I could whip up an “instant web site” as his new startup company was about to get national attention. I had a week.

So I worked a normal busy day every day that week, and every night I came home and worked on the new site, kept company by my bride and my new John Adams DVDs. It went like this:

First weekend
Assess and install content management system (CMS) packages (Drupal, Joomla, etc.)
Monday
Meet and plan; project actually starts
Tuesday
Planning with pencil and paper… no touching the computer until I had a perfectly clear plan
Wednesday
Build the XHTML and CSS framework
Thursday
Fill in the templates images and colors
Friday
Final touches to template and custom javascript enhancements
Saturday
Install Drupal onto live server; convert template to Drupal; learn to hate Drupal; install Joomla onto live server; convert template to Joomla; learn to use Joomla
Sunday
Finish polishing Joomla template; add all content, images, and video
Live Monday AM!

It was quite a week, but we got a pretty nice site out of the deal. And the great part was that I was able to make it client-maintainable right from the beginning. Open source is the coolest. I know that folks who love Drupal really love it, and I can tell it’s really powerful, but it just wasn’t “jump-in” intuitive like Joomla.

Oh, the site… weathernation.net. :)

Faith, General

So then I went to Oshkosh

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The EAA air show in Oshkosh in Wisconsin, that is. flyGarmin was going to be released to the public for the first time in conjunction with the beginning of the air show. Garmin had a Monday morning press conference announcing all sorts of stuff, and flyGarmin was on the list. I was pacing around the whole day like an expectant father. How’s the site doing now? How’s the site doing now? The image to the left is the display we had to show flyGarmin off to folks. I got to “work the booth” occassionally, and the feedback was fantastic. Folks would come up as though they were paid to be in an infomercial; “Tell me you’ve done something to make updating my databases easier” “Why yes we have!”

So I hung out in Oshkosh for a few days, gathering feedback, seeing the kinds of things people were showing off at the show.

On my last evening, I decided to run out and get a bite to eat for supper. I drove around downtown Oshkosh wondering what I should get, and then I saw this:


I was driving when I took that photo. Yes, it says zero MPH. And see how all of the P, R, N, D, 1, 2 lights are on? That’s called “limp mode.” It means the computer sees something wrong with your car, and the transmission has been essentially shut down. Yeah, hundreds of miles from home, the day before I’m finally heading back home, and the transmission had gone out.

And I really wanted to go home. I’d been away for days.

Well, I limped back to where I was staying. Emailed Helen… “pray please”. I searched the internet looking for ideas. I found some transmission shops nearby, so I could get there first thing in the morning.

The next morning, I went out and tried the “turn the ignition on-and-off five times fast” to get the computer error codes. No luck. I tried the “hold down trip reset while turning on the ignition” to get the error codes. No luck.

Then my car just started working perfectly fine. The engine light was still on, but I took it for a one mile drive, and then a 20 mile drive… all seemed fine. I met my last commitment and headed home. The trip home went perfectly; I got 29 MPG.

And the car has been fine ever since. The engine light even went off before I could hook up my code reader to see what had been going on. I took this as a Nehemiah 9:21 thing. :)

General

flyGarmin launches

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flyGarmin home pageI know that may not mean anything to you, but that’s a big project I’ve been working on at work for the last many months. It’s been a fun, complicated project focussed on making it a lot easier for pilots who use Garmin equipment to keep their equipment up to date.

It let’s pilots enter their aircraft and equipment into their own account, and then offers simpler-than-ever ways to update their databases.

I’ve got an awesome group of guys that I work with in Minnetonka, and literally dozens of people from all over the US have contributed. It’s been a great project for a pilot wannabe like me. And there’s still lots to do. :)