Ada came home with us a few weeks ago. We've been working on teaching her to sit and stay, but she didn't immediately understand what I was talking about.

All this blaming people is fun, isn't it? And I can see that it's really working out for you. But maybe it's time for another approach. I have a policy at work: everything is my fault (except on Wednesdays, then it's Malachi's fault because she was with her father at work one day and volunteered to give me a day off).

I think we can use that here. Please blame all your previous squabbles, inefficiencies, etc. on me and/or Malachi. Then fix them. I think you'll all feel better about it.

Love,
Rebecca Campbell

P.S. If you could try to use logic and reason as you go about fixing things, I'd really appreciate it.

I started a post a while ago about how Portland is becoming an inside joke. In any group gathering at this point, you are guaranteed to hear someone say "that is so Portland." Then, inevitably, someone else will say, "I love Portland."

Because we really do sit around talking about how awesome and funny Portland is. All the time. (But don't move here; you'll hate the rain.) I had started to come up with some oh-so-Portlandy examples for you, but then I saw this, which just says so much: The 30 most Portland things that have ever happened in Portland.

My "that's so Portland" list now seems a bit paltry and bicycle-centric in comparison, but here's what I had before I saw the other list:

• Moving by bike—it is always so fun to see a couch or bed being moved on one or more bike trailers.
• 24th and Meatballs—I haven't been, but the name alone prompted someone to say, "That's so Portland." Upon further investigation, it does seem pretty Portlandy. Vegan options available, and of course (of course!) you can get your meatballs delivered by bike.
• Hot tub rentals delivered by bike—seriously, we'll drag anything behind a bicycle.
• It's not all fun and games and bicycle delivery, though. Sometimes you have to sell your Morrissey shrine. (So sad the image is no longer available.)
• International Moustache Film Festival and Moustache Pageant—tickets are on sale now!

OK, so we don't have robot house maids yet, and you can't just push a button to get Thanksgiving dinner in 20 seconds. But you can already get a 3D printer to make things at home.

3D printing, you guys. It is so so cool!

Here's something that I think will be possible in the future: you are going out to a nice restaurant, but you've got no shoes to match your dress. You go to some web site (maybe Amazon or Zappos if they've adapted) and download a 3D model of some shoes. Your computer already has a 3D model of your foot, and some piece of software adjusts the model you've just downloaded to fit your foot. You click the print button and hop in the shower.

Many moons later, when your shoes wear out, you clean them up and toss them in a home recycling machine. Whatever material was used will be converted back to a raw material, ready to be printed again.

Of course, shoes are fun to think about, but think of the other things you can print. New sunglasses (frames at first, and lenses when the technology gets better), games and toys, photo frames. Jesse will be out in the garage printing engine parts. The possibilities are pretty limitless.

If we can get to the point where sustainable/recyclable materials are used (and I think we can (and by "we", I mean people who do this for a living)), imagine the environmental impact. How many stupid things did you buy on Amazon last year? Did you really need a 4' x 2' box with a mile of air-filled plastic to carry you a new lens cap for your camera? No, you didn't.

The home printers are mostly using plastic at this point. But there are metal, glass, and wood printers, too. Boeing is already printing airplane parts. I read that they hope to print whole aircraft wings in the future. How cool is that? The printed wings can be lighter because they won't need rivets or other connectors.

Another exciting thing is bio printing. As a skin graft recipient, I'm especially interested in the inkjet printers that make human skin. Scientists are working on emergency skin printers to treat burn victims or people in war zones. There are also people working to print human organs. That's right, instead of waiting for a donor to die and worrying about possible rejection from an organ transplant, your own cells will be used to print you a new heart.

I feel like we're already living in the future, but that's a whole different blog post. This 3D printing thing is just mind-bogglingly cool.

I just spent three days attending the Agile Open Northwest conference. It was the best conference I have ever been to. In fact, I haven't been to very many conferences because the few I've attended felt flat and didn't give me many takeaways.

The success of the conference was, I think, entirely due to the Open Space format. In a nutshell, you show up on the first day, and there are zero sessions planned. Every attendee can come up with a session idea (or in some cases 4 or 5 session ideas), announce it to the group, and make it happen.

One thing that made this a great experience was the options I had during each 1-hour time slot. I did not want to wind up in any sessions where the discussion was around semantics, or where someone had strong opinions about The One Way To Do Agile. Frankly, the agile community can be pretty pedantic, and I haven't read all the literature. My interest in agility is not academic, it's very practical: how do I identify and solve problems in my workplace? But this was the pervasive attitude among the attendees and only a few sessions suggested that I was not the target audience. There were many developers at the conference (even other female developers—they exist!), so there were even some sessions about coding or related topics.

Look, options!

I also surprised myself by hosting a session. The reason I signed up for the conference to begin with is that there are aspects of managing a software team that don't come naturally to me, and I have no pattern for how to approach these problems. I wanted to talk to my peers about some of these challenges and perhaps feel less alone, so that's how Managers Who Hate Managing came about. It was great to find out that I'm not alone in my struggles and talk to other people who are in similar boats.

All in all, I couldn't be more pleased with the conference. I learned about some crazy ass things like mob programming (which we'll be trying at my office), and heard hundreds of ideas for improvements that people have made to their own work environments. Who knew that a conference I feared would be useless would give me new excitement about my job—even the parts I hate?

Slipshod, her shoe slipped
Oh, the ferns, the ferns! she cried
And toppled away

I recently read a quote by Joseph Campbell on imperfection, and it really struck a chord with me.

"Aren't children lovable because they're falling down all the time and have little bodies with the heads too big? Didn't Walt Disney know all about this when he did the seven dwarfs? And these funny little dogs that people have—they're lovable because they're so imperfect."

As so many things do lately, this reminded me of Theo, who was possibly the best cat ever. We lost him quite suddenly to cancer last fall. But Theo was the embodiment of lovable imperfections: he had crossed eyes and a very talkative nature, including ridiculously long meows as he announced his entry into the room. He was (as affectionately as humanly possible) our jerk faced cat, and we miss him terribly.

For quite some time now, I've had this brilliant idea to put up a page with the most popular blog posts. Finally, I did just that, and made an interesting discovery: this blog peaked in 2004-2006. That's right, friends, over the last 6 years, you've been witnessing (or not, since readership is also way down) the decline of this here web site.

While that's a little bit sad, it's also understandable. As the number of blog posts has declined, so have the number of visitors, and therefore comments. And this has all happened as I've gotten busier. So I don't actually feel bad about it, just curious to see where, if anywhere, this blog will go in the future. I'm not ready to give it up, though I've contemplated that over the last couple of years.

Anyhow, the new page is here, and you can also get to it from the links on the right. Enjoy your walk down memory lane; I know I did!

While doing all this, I got curious about the numbers of posts and comments on this blog over the years. For those of you who love statistics (who doesn't?), I've included those numbers here. Note that the blog posts before July of 2005 were hand-coded, so I couldn't easily get the numbers on those. And prior to 2003, there were no comments.

Year    # of posts      # of comments
2003                    557
2004                    967
2005	55              733
2006	116             614
2007	73              291
2008	43              135
2009	46              114
2010	34              70
2011	26              46
2012	14              14

I think we can all agree that my blogging activity for 2012 was pretty pathetic. I bet I can do better than that in 2013, but only because a) it's such a low bar, and b) this is already the 3rd post of the year. I'm already 1/5 of the way there!

Speaking of good intentions... I wrote this before the holidays and never got around to editing and posting it. Oops. A belated merry merry to you all!

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As the bus lumbered toward me, I leaned out a bit to make sure the driver would see me in the morning darkness. Alas, there was standing room only, so I asked if the bus right behind her, which I could see parked at the previous stop, had fewer passengers.

"It broke down," she said. "But this is the fun bus, anyway."

"Oh, is this the party bus?"

"Yeah, it's the party bus."

Mostly, it was a regular bus ride, with people retreating into their own thoughts. Every passenger under 40 had headphones on or was texting/tweeting/reading on their phones.

And then.

"OK, passengers, we're almost to the bridge, and you know what that means. Time for the bridge song!"

I didn't know there was a bridge song, I thought. Is there some song about all the Portland bridges that I don't know about? No, but there should be.

"Today's song is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I know you all know it. Ready?"

As the bus pulled onto the bridge, the driver began to sing. Alone. She changed a verse to "Nobody else is singing, even though you know the words." She stopped singing.

"Isn't anybody going to sing with me?" She expressed disbelief, and was about to give the whole thing up when, behold, a Christmas miracle!

"I'll help you!" said an older man with—and I am not making this up—a red cowboy hat and a big white beard. It was Santa's skinny cowboy brother, here to save the day. It was just like a movie. He even said, "I'll help you" like he was in a movie.

However, it wasn't a movie. There was no director, and nobody with a clipboard that said Take 2. So the old man sang too fast and the bus driver couldn't keep pace with him. But he was jolly! And he ad-libbed a bit, calling those mean other reindeer "naughty." He danced in the aisle, and slowly, everyone on the bus began to sing with him. Well, not really. But four or five people sang quietly or just moved their mouths. A lot of people smiled, then clapped when the song was over.

"You guys are a lot better at clapping than you are at singing," said the driver.

It was perfect. I really, really heart Portland.

I've just signed up for a free class at Coursera. The topic is The Modern World: Global History since 1760.

I first learned about Coursera a few months ago. I got all excited about it, and immediately signed up for a course on statistics. I also immediately re-learned a lesson about poor timing—alas, the perfect time to sign up for a college-level course is not when you're in Sweden for work. So I unregistered, but I'm happy to be giving it another try, this time for a class that Jesse and I chose together.

One thing I find attractive is Coursera's philosophy that education isn't over when you are handed a piece of paper. Perhaps it's because I never got that piece of paper, or perhaps it's because I'm a programmer, which is not a terrific field for resting on one's laurels. Anyhow, this notion of a world where people are constantly learning sounds pretty groovy to me.

I'd say I'll let you know how it goes, but that would be a lie. At best, it would be an expression of honest intention, but not one I can guarantee that I'll follow through on. I can guarantee that I'll think about it a lot, though!