With the defeat of Proposition 8, homophobia trumps marriage equality in California. It’s a big defeat those of us in the LGBT community, but we must move forward and acknowledge the supporters of marriage equality. I think it’s also important to share some of the big company names who contributed to the No on Prop 8 campaign and send our business their way:
I know there are other businesses and individuals who contributed to the No on Prop 8 campaign and they deserve to be acknowledged for their efforts as well.
The end of an era has finally arrived after eight years of failed Bush policies. In just a couple short months, we will soon be free of dealing with W and welcome a Democratically controlled congress and white house… and it’s about time.
I say, “Welcome to the White House, President Obama”.
In California, the gay community has been dealt a hard blow with no thanks to the Mormon Church. Proposition 8 has passed and gay and lesbian couples will no longer be able to marry. The largest contributor to the Yes on Prop. 8 campaign, if you follow the trail of dirty money, is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. (Yes, that would be the same city I visited in June, 2007, where I walked around Temple Square with a big cup of Starbucks Coffee). Dan Savage at The Stranger posted a very interesting letter with a suggested response to the California vote.
I’m just about to fly home after spending the week at ZendCon in Santa Clara, California. It was my first trip to ZendCon and was glad to get the chance to interact with other PHP developers and other industry leaders. Nearly 700 attendees, including other PHP developers, managers and other professionals were on hand for the four day event. The hot topic for the conference seemed to center around the Zend Framework.
I had evaluated the Zend Framework about a year and a half ago, just shortly after it’s version 1.0 release. At that time, I was disappointed with the performance of the MySQL adaptor in the framework and decided not to use it as my MVC framework. But now Zend Framework has had some time to mature and I am again looking at using it for all my future development. Since it is very modular, I can choose which components to use and which components I can extend on my own. The other tool I plan on using is Zend Studio for Eclipse. I don’t currently use an IDE, and I think it is time that I start using one.
All in all, it was definitely a worthwhile convention. I hope to return for ZendCon 2009.
After a year of being in Spokane full-time, I’ve decided to re-establish a residence in Seattle so that I can be closer to my business partners and work with them in person more often. That’s not to say that I will be leaving Spokane behind. In fact, I will keep my primary residence in Spokane. I found a nice little furnished cottage to rent in the Greenlake neighborhood of Seattle. Yay! No more apartments. At some point, I plan to buy a house in Seattle or a live-aboard boat.
If you care about the environment and oil independence, you might want to think twice about supporting John McCain’s pick for VP, Sarah Palin. She supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:
We have just launched a new trivia game site, paydaytrivia.com. This new site is a trivia gaming site which allows a user to answer trivia questions to earn points, which can then be used to spin the wheel to win cash. These are some of the trivia games we have on the site:
My previous car, a 1999 Nissan Altima, had given me 9 years of reliable service, but it was time to upgrade to a newer car with all-wheel drive. Last winter’s storms had made it difficult to get around with a conventional front-wheel drive vehicle. Enter the 2008 Subaru Outback. Now I’m sure I’m going to hear ridiculous comments such as, “Isn’t that a lesbian car?” or “Why would a single guy own a station wagon?”, but the truth is this car is more suited to my lifestyle and living in the Pacific Northwest. It has the all-wheel drive, Vehicle Dynamics Control (VDC), lots of cargo room for camping gear, and roof racks for kayaks and bikes. Plus, it has leather seats and a moonroof.
I recently came across a problem. I was really in need of consulting with a qualified PHP/MySQL developer close to home to discuss a problem that I needed to solve. I only know of one in the area and it got me thinking about where these mid-career professionals might be. Did these qualified developers leave the area?
So I started thinking about salaries. The bulk of my work comes from Seattle, so for me personally this is not a concern, but what about the people here who work for a Spokane-based employer? I went to payscale.com to get some salary comparisons, not just between Seattle and Spokane, but also from cities closer in population to Spokane.
When I did a search on software developer salaries between Spokane, Boise and Seattle, I found that salaries are significantly lower for software developers in Spokane. This could be why there’s few qualified software developers in the area. (more…)
Last year, I published a list of all the Gay Pride events in the Pacific Northwest and I decided to make it a tradition for 2008. So here’s the list of this year’s celebrations around the Northwest:
