After two years and far too many visits to multiple RMV offices I now finally have a Massachusetts driver’s license. A CLASS D driver’s license. The forms I submitted as well as the California license they took from me both clearly specified that not only am I qualified and certified for, but was applying for a CLASS D AND M license. Of course it’s well beyond business hours now, so I’ll have to wait until Monday morning before I can even attempt to rectify this situation in a way that doesn’t involve me having to pay money to take tests I’ve already passed.

And here I was all ready to start maybe being possibly very slightly less hostile toward the Massachusetts state government in all its various and sundry forms.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to announce a big new project. Not because I haven’t had any, but because everything I’ve been working on lately has been so large that nothing is quite ready to go live yet. But finally, I get to announce a big project that I recently finished: the Becoming MOBOS video blog. As I’m sure many of you from the Boston area are aware, there is a new Mandarin Oriental that’s been under construction down by the Pru. They hired me to create an internal video blog for them. Unfortunately, since it’s internal, I can’t link to it, but the screenshot to the right links to a full-size, albeit redacted, image. It’s a WordPress based blog using a verstion of WPelements.com’s MassiveNews theme customized by your truly. I also used FlowPlayer to provide the Flash video playback capabilities. All in all, I think it turned out to be a pretty slick site.

That’s not the only news, however. In preparation for announcing the Becoming MOBOS site I’ve been doing a little work sprucing up my own website. So I also get to announce a new version of the dy/dx tech website (I also changed hosts for it, so you may need to wait for the DNS to propagate if you’re still seeing the old site). The overall look of the site is the same as before, but I’ve removed some rather pointless elements such as the Google Map that used to be on the front page. In it’s place is now a slideshow of screenshots from my portfolio, which I think is a much better use of the space. The majority of the changes, however, are under the hood. As you may recall, I redeveloped the site using Django a while ago. Since then I’ve spent a lot more time with Django and know a lot more about it, so I completely redeveloped the site (using the newforms-admin branch and was able to make a lot of improvements to the code, and basically leave it better positioned to integrate more features in the future. Among other things, I plan on migrating this blog to a Django-based solution and integrating it into the dy/dx tech website to some extent. I’ve been working heavily with Django for the past several months, and I just keep liking it more and more. It makes every part of my job so much more enjoyable and, in a lot of cases, faster. Be on the lookout for another project going live in the next couple weeks: this one will be Django-based and will be very public, and, I predict, very popular.

So as I mentioned, I was at the opening of the new Boston Apple Store on Boyleston St. last night. Unfortunately I was a little late showing up and didn’t get my free t-shirt.

As I mentioned, it’s an extremely nice location with some extremely cool design. The entire top floor (of three) is dedicated to support with a gigantic Genius Bar that is apparently able to support several thousand people per day, and a ton of iMacs lining the walls where you can get one on one help/tutoring (they call it their One-to-One program). Another cool new features they’re rolling out (or possible already had and I just haven’t been paying attention) is their personal shopping service. You can make an appointment to show up and have, essentially, a personal shopper to help you out with any questions or help you might need while shopping. Seems like a pretty cool idea, and I imagine it will be very useful for the parents who want to get their kid a new computer or something but really have no idea what they’re looking for.

All in all, I think this store is going to be a huge success. Especially positioned, as it is, directly across the street from the Prudential Center and the soon-to-be-opened Mandarin Oriental hotel. It will definitely be a little more pleasant to visit than the Cambridgeside location, though parking won’t be nearly as easy so you’ll probably start seeing more people with big iMac boxes on the T…

And in closing, these people weren’t on the guest list and therefore aren’t as cool as me:

(Yes, both pictures in this post were taken with my iPhone.)

I’m currently at the grand opening event of Apple’s new flagship retail store in Boston. I’ve only just gotten here, but so far I’ve hot to say that I’m impressed. It’s something like a cross between the 5th Ave. location in New York and the Miracle Mile location in Chicago. In short: three stories of beautiful, glassy architecture with a huge skylight topping it off and the iconic white Apple logo overlooking the Pru. Also, they’re giving me free beer and appetizers, so far so good. I’ll write more about itlater, for now I’ll just enjoy it, and play with the toys.

Why is everything that disrupts parking labelled an ‘emergency’ around here? When it snows enough to disrupt parking it’s a ’snow emergency’. When they’re forbidding parking so that they can paint lines on the street it’s an ‘emergency’. Last night we walked into Porter Square for dinner and passed no fewer than two different ‘emergencies’: ‘Emergency! We’re painting lines on the street! Please file calmly, but quickly to the nearest exit!’, ‘Emergency! We’ve torn up the sidewalk! Please …walk around it!’.

Seriously, people, these are not emergencies… Ok, there’s a vague case for the ’snow emergency’, but there is absolutely no excuse for labeling an event that has been planned for weeks if not months as an emergency.

Ridiculous fifth-grade name aside, I suppose this is a big day. Not for me, however. This morning I drove Jessi over to our polling place to vote in the primaries before work. I suspected it wouldn’t really work, but I decided to go in and see about voting myself. My name was in the rolls, but rather than the familiar D, R, G, W, or, apparently, U next to my name there was a very cryptic and unknown symbol: L

‘L, what’s L?’, said the woman checking people off in the book. ‘Do you know what L is?’ The gentleman next to her mused, ‘L? Liberal? That’s Democrat, right?’. My clarification that L stood for Libertarian didn’t really clear things up very much, and they ended up having to make a phone call to …someone who told them that there was no Libertarian ballot and that I wasn’t eligible to vote. I figured this was probably the case as I hadn’t heard anything from either the state or national party about primaries, but it was disappointing none the less, especially as we have a local, George Phillies of Worcester, in the running for the LP presidential nomination. Phillies also happens to be my favorite candidate for President being not only a Libertarian, but a science fiction author and college professor as well. With any luck he’ll get the nomination and I’ll actually get a candidate that I want to vote for this time around (in ‘04 none of the candidates I liked got their respective nominations: Dean, Nolan, McCain; I’m not longer a McCain supporter however so his likely nomination this year doesn’t really help things). Oh well, at least I won’t be barred from voting in November.

Which brings me to another topic I’ve been meaning to discuss: a particular ballot question. Come November there will be a rather important question on the ballot, the question of whether or not to end the Massachusetts state income tax. If you check out their website it sounds like they actually have a decent chance of passing this. It was on the ballot before in ‘02 and just barely failed with only 45.3% of the vote. That was with very little publicity and the media presenting it as a cause that couldn’t possibly succeed. However with that strong a showing in ‘02, no one can claim this time around that it has no chance. It very clearly has a chance, and therefore media reaction to it has been a little more positive this year. They’re also investing a lot more in publicity to spread awareness, so I think there’s a very good chance this might pass in November.

That said, I don’t want it to, I think we should keep the income tax. Well, that’s not entirely true either, I don’t want the income tax, but I think that repealing it right now is the wrong thing to do. This is Massachusetts, after all, and with a democratic legislature and Deval Patrick in the Governor’s office I find it unlikely that, even given an $11b drop in tax revenue, the state is going to put the brakes on any spending. Instead they’ll just look for different ways to bring in money like increasing the sales tax, increasing fees, and just generally taxing more things. One area where spending is probably likely to fall, however, is local aid. A lot of the cities and towns of Massachusetts are already suffering from anemic income and getting very little help from the state. This clearly isn’t going to improve if we stop giving the state part of our paychecks. So how are those municipalities going to keep making ends meet? Easy, they’ll keep doing what they always do and raise property taxes. I pay enough in property taxes as it is (about three times more each quarter than Jessi’s mom in Illinois pays in a year), and I find property taxes to be by far the more egregious kind of tax.

Think about what it means to have to pay property tax. Essentially, it means that you can never actually own property. In all but name, the State owns your property and you merely rent it from them. Don’t believe me? Try not paying your property taxes and see what happens: the same thing that happens if you stop paying your rent. You have to pay for the privilege of living on your own land! I say that rather than repealing the income tax, by far the better thing to do would be to repeal property taxes. This would a) strengthen the right of people to own property, b) reduce the cost of living significantly by lowering rent as well, and therefore c) reduce the prices of goods and services by lowering the costs for the providers and sellers.

Now, maybe repealing the income tax would actually be successful. Maybe next year we’d get a budget that was $11b lighter (wasn’t that one of Patrick’s campaign promises anyway?). Maybe Massachusetts will implement something like the FairTax on a state level, and prove one and for all that either it can work or it can’t. Probably not, but one can hope. Regardless, I think our first priority should be repealing property taxes. I would much rather see that happen, and I think it’s a revenue loss that could be more easily and quickly accommodated (rent assistance payouts, for example, would suddenly become much lower which would free up more money for local aid to compensate). But we’ll see what happens in November. I may even vote in favor of repealing the income tax just on principle; if it passes and our legislature and governor surprise me by taking it in stride there could still be some good that comes of it.

The other day I got a call from a recruiter. Apparently Apple wants to hire me to work at the Genius Bar at the new Boyleston Apple Store. Presumably they found me through my Apple certification, and I certainly have the resume for the job. Being a Genius isn’t really that bad a gig. You get something like $20/hour, benefits, and, of course, you get to play with toys all day. Of course this isn’t exactly the direction I’m looking to go in professionally. I have no particular desire to work retail. And I certainly have no particular desire to do nothing but fix people’s computers for $20 and hour when I already do that for more money on the side of a more lucrative business. I might consider a job managing the Genius Bar, but retail tech support seems like a bit of a backwards step at this point.

On top of that I think I may be on the cusp of moving my business to the next stage. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve transitioned my business into being primarily about web development and services. My business model has been to partner with web developers who need someone to do the programming for them. This strategy has been working very well, and for the past few months I’ve been much busier on average than I had been previously. Now, I think, things may be about to really take off.

I’m about to start a very big project, my biggest so far. Because of that, I’m basically going to be completely booked for the next two to three months while I work on this. But, with my business model being as successful as it has been lately, I can be pretty sure that during this time there will be a number of other opportunities that arise (in fact I already know of a few that will be coming up soon). This is exactly the position I’ve been working towards since I started this whole experiment just about 18 months ago: having more work coming in than I can handle myself. This means I’m finally at the point where I can seriously consider hiring more people. Of course at this point I’m really only looking for a contractor or two. Someone who can put in a few hours a month for me doing the work I don’t have time for myself.

Having gotten to that point there’s a clear path forward. While I work on this big new project, I’d only hire contractors as I need them for the work I don’t have time for myself. Once it’s done and I have a little more leeway to think about other things I can continue to take advantage of them to reduce my own work load and let me spend more time on finding new business. At some point after that I should be able to have enough business coming in that I can afford to hire a developer full-time and focus primarily on sales myself. And, of course, if that goes well I can hire someone to do sales full-time, and then I’ll really be getting somewhere. The obvious ‘end-point’ of this strategy is for me to be managing a company that employs a full-time sales staff as well as a full-time development staff. Maybe even bringing in my own design team, although I think I’d prefer to maintain my partnerships with a large network of designers. At any rate, I think I’m finally approaching the point where I can truly consider this whole venture to be ’successful’.

In the meantime, I guess I should start looking for some contractors. Any LAMP developers out there who might be interested in a little freelance work? I’m mostly looking for PHP developers, but those working with Python, ASP, Ruby and others are welcome as well. Also, I’d favor the Boston area at this point, but am definitely interested in expanding geographically as well. Feel free to send me resumés at josh@dydxtech.com.

Never fear, my fellow Americans, our borders are secure! So secure, in fact, that a law abiding US citizen traveling home from a friendly nation with which we have very good relations can barely get into the country. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like. I had a great business-related post all planned out for when I got back, but now I feel inclined to post about this instead.

As you should know if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve just come back from Jamaica where I was for my uncle’s wedding. I’ve been to Jamaica tons of times; I started going from before my memory starts, and there are pictures of me there in diapers. I’ve had plenty of annoying trips going through customs and immigration (usually in Miami), but this time definitely takes the cake.

There aren’t, apparently, any direct flights from Boston to Montego Bay, so instead I flew JetBlue to Ft. Lauderdale where I caught an Air Jamaica flight to Montego Bay. Coming back I simply reversed the trip.

As an interesting aside, when I was buying my tickets I discovered this:

Apparently the USSR is still alive and well, but you can only get there through Jamaica.

Anyway, back to the point. My schedule gave me an hour and a half between my two flights in Ft. Lauderdale. I have never had immigration take that long (except maybe going into Manchester this past spring…), even going into China has always been a breeze when I’ve done it, so I figured I’d be fine.

The first problem was that they were simply unorganized. The passport control area was designed have probably about 10 lines all feeding different desks. Instead, they had set it up as one single long line that snaked through the room (because it was way too small to accommodate even a single flight’s worth of travelers despite having obviously been renovated pretty recently). They didn’t even separate out the US passport holders from the rest, which would have completely solved my problem. 45 minutes later I was less than halfway through the line because, despite it being incredibly obvious to anyone that their setup wasn’t sufficient to accommodate even a modest number of people, only about half of the desks were actually staffed. About an hour later I finally made it through, picked up my bag, went through customs (very quickly, thankfully), then got on the shuttle to take me to the other terminal where I’d catch my next flight. At that point there was only about 30 minutes before my flight boarded which essentially meant that I couldn’t make it. First off, they won’t let you check in less than 30 minutes before the flight (and I hadn’t checked in online before, which turned out to be a good thing), and second it’s very rare to spend less than a half hour going through security. Fortunately, I had a solution. Since my flight hadn’t actually left yet and probably wasn’t even boarding yet I hadn’t technically missed it yet. That meant that, while I was on the (surprisingly long) shuttle ride between terminals I was able to go online with my iPhone and change my itinerary to a later flight. JetBlue is very good about changing itineraries, and they only charge you the difference in the ticket price (if any) plus about $25 service charge. So when I got off the shuttle, all I had to do was check into my next flight and go through security. Security, as I expected, probably took about 45 minutes to an hour because, again, they didn’t have enough people working causing a huge bottle neck so there was no way I could possibly have made my flight.

So I bought some books, and waited 4 hours for my flight. I ended up leaving just a little after I was supposed to arrive in Boston originally, and landed in Boston at around 10:30 at night. Fortunately, Jessi was there to pick me up so I didn’t have to deal with the vagaries of the T nor the exorbitance of a taxi.

Despite all that though, I had a great time in Jamaica. I got to spend time with my family that I rarely see, and meet some interesting new people. I also was able to get a few good pictures that I’ll be posting online once I figure out how to get them onto my computer (I used to just use the built-in card reader in my monitor which I no longer have, and I’m not sure where the cord for my camera got to).

So, that’s my border crossing rant. Stay tuned for that business-related post I promised earlier.

…my account of Blogtoberfest 2007.

As expected it was a lot of fun. There were a ton of people there, far too many to be able to actually have any sort of real conversation with even most of them. In addition to our illustrious host Jenny, I was able to meet a number of area bloggers for the first time including: Dana Zemack, Michael Krigsman, Jesse Baer, Andrea Mercado, and a few others whose names and/or URLs I sadly can’t remember. All in all, there were actually only three bloggers that whom I had met before: Jesse Legg, Steve Garfield, and Adam Gaffin. From the sound of things most of the people there were meeting a bunch of new people as well.

The highlight of the evening was probably the raffle. Everyone who attended put their name in a hat (well, bowl) for a chance to win a number of prizes including a beautiful print of Fenway Park shot by Jenny herself. As per usual, I didn’t win a thing, although both of the two people standing to my left at the time won things, as did at least two other people I had been talking to throughout the night. I’ll just try and claim credit for that.

Afterwards Jesse (Legg) and I made our ways back to Somerville via TC’s Lounge and the Newtowne Grill. A good night, I think, was had by all.

In other news, I think it’s safe to say that it’s officially starting to get almost kinda cold here. It looks like Monday will be the first day that the temperature doesn’t even break 50°, although overnight temperatures appear to be remaining strictly above freezing for the foreseeable future (at least according to the weather widget in my dashboard). I did, however, actually turn on the heat today for the first time in months. The furnace hasn’t actually kicked in yet as the residual heat from the day is still keeping us above the 65° I set the thermostat to, but it probably will within the next 30 minutes or so. I also bothered to take the time to figure out how to program a schedule into the thermostat. It’s a much more useful feature than I thought, letting me program in 4 distinct periods for weekdays (delineated by Sleep, Wake, Leave, and Return), and 2 periods for weekends (Sleep and Wake). This actually works out rather well since despite the fact that I work from home and so will want the heat to be on during the day, I prefer a much cooler temperature than Jessi does. Thanks to the programmed in schedule the condo will only be too warm before Jessi leaves for work in the morning and after she gets home at night leaving it nice and comfortable for me during the bulk of the day.

Well, I’m off to the Pour House for Blogtoberfest 2007. It’ll be a great chance to meet some more of my fellow area bloggers, as well as catch up with the ones I’ve met before. Expect a post summarizing the night …assuming anything interesting happens.