Writing Near Hills » Texas

Back To School

Bill Sullivan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:24:22 +0000

This past January, I started college again. It’s been going really well, but it takes time away from posting here.

Rivers are made of rain…

Bill Sullivan — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:05:35 +0000

…at least in Hyde Park. Usually, our river bed is very dry and is missing, well, a river. But, we’ve had so much rain lately, we currently have an actual running river. It really makes the neighborhood that much nicer.

It's rained so much, we actually have a running river.

A Nerdy First Trip to Dallas

Bill Sullivan — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:18:23 +0000

Next weekend, Kari and I are making our first trip to Dallas, and it’s going to be nerdy. We have, at this point, driven around Dallas on I-35 three times, but we’ve never been through the city itself and we certainly haven’t stopped there. This time, we are specifically targeting the city, and we’ve got three great events planned.

Our first task is to attend the Facebook Developer Garage – Dallas, which is being held in fairly-central Dallas. This will be exciting, as it might be the first developer gathering for a platform I already develop on. There seems to be two tracks, technical and marketing, and I’ll be in the tech track. The business side of Facebook development seems straightforward enough, but technology can usually use additional explanation.Another fun aspect of this event will be getting a chance to see central Dallas. The DFW metro area is pretty spread out and nothing else on this trip will be eve slightly central, so spending some time near downtown should be worthwhile.

On Saturday and Sunday, we’ll be attending WordCamp Dallas 2009 at UT-Dallas. Obviously, WordPress is a platform I use, but I’m not really doing any development with it. Hopefully, this event will help me move from user to developer, even if all I manage to do is tweak a theme or something similar. Also, it seems like there are few, if any, WordCamps in Austin, so I’m hoping this event will pull in more Austin WordPressers than Kari and I. When we get back, I hope to attend some more WordPress events here in Austin and I hope to have met a few people involved in the WordPress meetups around here.

On Sunday night, as we leave Dallas, we’re going to see the Texas Rangers host the San Diego Padres in Arlington, TX. We’ve never been to this ballpark, and it is a minor obsession of ours to visit new ballparks (we’ve only visited one this season, and it was Tulsa’s minor league team’s stadium)[update: Kari pointed out to me after this was posted that we also visited the Portland, OR minor league ballpark this summer], so this is a great way to finish up the trip. This last stop, I guess, isn’t very nerdy, but at least we approach it in a very nerdy way.

Letters To Cleo Lives!

Bill Sullivan — Sun, 24 May 2009 23:36:13 +0000

Letters To Cleo live at The Parish in Austin

After about 14 years since the last time I saw them, I got to see Letters To Cleo last Friday. That’s almost half my lifetime, which has got to be a record for time between shows for me, probably never to be broken. I’m hoping they head out on more frequent reunion tours for the next few decades, as I’d be happy to see them every few years for the rest of my life.

We also got a great picture with Kay Hanley and a signed poster for the show. I feel like every show we see in Austin is better than the last, and Letters was no exception.

Life in Texas

Bill Sullivan — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:52:52 +0000

We’re 9 months into our life in Texas and here are a few observations.

When it’s cold, it’s still pretty warm and when it’s hot, it’s awfully hot.
We bought a smaller house than our last one, but we think we could easily go even smaller in the future.
Living on a smaller lot, in tighter quarters, around more people can actually result in more, and more practical, personal freedom than living in the burbs or in the country.
The faster your internet connection, the more of your life it swallows up. My job, my tv, my movies, my books, my magazines, my software…they all either live on the net or come to me from it.
Central Austin is very different from outer Austin. Outer Austin is very different from the suburbs. Lord knows what it’s like after that. I saw too many anti-abortion billboards on the drive here to want to go back too often.

Life in Texas is good and getting better.