Firewallender // Cassie Wallender

… but long from forgotten. I need a t-shirt that says, “I went to Gnomedex 8.0 and all I got was 7 t-shirts… and about 50 amazing experiences.”

Photo by Robert Scoble, I’m near the center in pink.

Starting Wednesday night it was a mashup of meeting wonderful new people from all over the world, and spending time with some of the quality Seattleites that make me so happy to call this place home, despite the current summer downpour.

The talks were quite interesting and not exactly what I was expecting. It was more like TED than I thought it would be, and less technical. Probably my favourite talk was Eve Maler’s talk on feed-based Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). The ability to manage one’s own data in a dynamic and powerful way is something that’s certainly due, Eve had some great thoughts on how it might be accomplished.

There were many touching moments too, emphasizing the theme of “human circuitry”. Beth Kanter challenged us to use social media for good, and we raised enough money to send a Cambodian women to college in 90 minutes. Scott Maxwell, the Mars Rover Driver Team Lead, showed us the view of Earth from Mars. Turns out, Earth is tiny! But, he said, we should not look at it and say, “we’re insignificant” - we should look at it and say, “our problems are insignificant - and we have so much to explore and discover yet.”  Jon Malkin showed us innovative research on a “Vocal Joystick” that would assist those with limited motor skills by allowing them to command a computer or a robot with sounds. Seeing technology add to the human experience in such powerful ways was very moving.

And speaking of moving, another highlight was dancing on stage with Matt Harding: a truly silly but wonderful experience.

I took only about 45 pictures (one seen below), but there’s well over 1,500 up in the Flickr pool. Wow.

New friends: Steve Spalding, Duncan Riley, and Eric Rice at the Edgewater.

It makes me feel like I’m twelve years old, but I can’t help but have that magical mix of excitement for all that I’ve just experienced and the deep sadness that “camp” is over. The community was definitely the shining star of the event - everyone added to the conversation in such a genuine way. I miss my Gnomedex friends already, but at least I can say, we’ll always have Twitter. At least until the Fail Whale strikes again.

~ Cassie

P.S. Yes, there was a presentation on the history of the Lolcat. Yes, I made myself look very silly on YouTube (again) and got 10,000 views (yikes). And yes, we started that ridiculous rumor about the Adobe Yahoo acquisition. Epic.

I suppose I’m a sap, but I love this music video.

Thanks to my friend Sam (via iLike) for passing this along.

UPDATE: If you have iTunes, you can download this and one other Jack Conte song for free from Stanford’s iTunesU page, as well as a bunch of other free tunes by some talented Stanford alumni.

Thanks to the awesome Mr. Chris Pirillo, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Seattle Startup Weekend, I’m going to the Gnomedex 8.0 conference here in rainy Seattle later this month.

My roommate brought a shirt to my attention that I should wear to Gnomedex (mostly because she’s convinced I’m going to a convention that’s literally all about gnomes), and we found a couple of other priceless punny tshirt gems:

“Gnomeland Security”
“To Gnome is to love me”
“Hanging with my Gnomies”

Puns aside, I’m really excited from Gnomedex. I believe I know at least two others going: Andrew Hyde and Bruce Henry, if you are attending please let me know.

Update! Marina Martin is going! Yay!

Well, I can barely move… so that kind of keeps me from biking.  I’ve got some high-tech cyborg replacement skin over my knee, and I think I did twist my ankle.  My knee is periodically leaking… and I’m pretty sure that’s not good. Luckily, I generally heal like Wolverine.  Harmony said all I have in common with Wolverine is stubbornness, but I like to think it’s more.  I stayed home yesterday, aside from a necessary run to Fred Meyer for more hydrogen peroxide, but managed to limp in to work today.  I’m still eager to bike again as soon as possible.

It’s also a bummer because I was supposed to start climbing this week forward on Tuesday and Thursday mornings early (like 6:30am early) at the Stone Gardens Gym in Ballard with Harmony.  But, seeing as I barely get up the stairs, I doubt I’ll be Spider-Man-ing up any walls soon.

Wow, two Marvel Comics references in one post.  Nice.

I guess my own personal Bike-o-Rama August started on August 1st, but I didn’t know it then.  That Friday, I took my Little bike riding.  I’m trying to emphasize non-consumer-focused activities, and bike riding is one of our favourites together. We biked from Sandpoint past Matthew’s Beach and back.  It was then I decided that the rest of August would be dedicated to seeing how much I could make my bike my main form of transportation. I’ve taken the bike to work before, but starting Monday, I would be seriously commuting by bike.

Saturday, I rode from my place to the University District to get some lights and a gear problem looked at.  I rode to Gasworks park to meet my friends Erica and Eva, and a bike festival was going on in the park. Not seriously, I took that as a good omen of my newly determined hardcore hobby.  Turns out, Eva just got a bike too, and needed a bike buddy!  Perfect.  After a bit, Erica went to go sailboating (as people are want to do in these parts) and Eva and I fetched her bike from Phinney Ridge and headed downtown to meet up with other friends for The Dark Knight at The Big Picture.  After that, I rode from Belltown to Justin’s place in lower Queen Anne, and even ran into (not literally) Andy along the way.  Biking is great!  All was well.  I was feeling really prepped for Monday’s commute.

So, along rolls Monday.  My ride into work is swell. I scoff at a hipster on a fixie along my way (internally, anyhow). I feel like a hardcore bike commuter.  I got up Pine Street!  Booyah!

(Warning: graphic description of DOOM)

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Yes, loathe.

I bought a roundtrip U.S. Airways ticket from Seattle to Phoenix over the Independence Day weekend. My roundtrip ticket was $235, and I was ecstatic to see my friend Connie who lives there.

Sadly, I missed my SEA to PHX flight, but before I did I called U.S. Airways to reschedule my flight. I told the lady at U.S. Airways that I needed to schedule a later flight to PHX, and she said for a $100 rescheduling fee I could go later in the day. I was fine with that, it was my own fault I was rescheduling, no problem. She said the next flight would be 13 hours later. I did some quick math - that would be 1/6th of my precious time with Connie. Time I could not waste. I told the lady on the phone that I would book a one way flight with another airline down to PHX, because I wanted to get down there that morning. She was understanding, and quite pleasant, and all in all it was a fine phone call. But, the U.S. Airways attendant at this point failed to mention some important policies.

So, I booked a one way down to Phoenix, flew in only an hour and a half later than originally planned, and had a wonderful weekend with my friend. Then came the trouble.

At the end of my weekend in Phoenix, I called U.S. Airways again on my way to the airport. I tried to confirm my flight on the phone, and lo and behold - this lady from U.S. Airways informs me I no longer have a ticket to Seattle. They canceled my ticket home. Without letting me know, without contacting me, they took what I had paid for and left me stranded in the desert. I asked her why they canceled the ticket I had paid for without notice. She said, well, I should have called to let them know I was taking a one way on another airline to Phoenix. I said, I did. I called on Friday morning before my original flight out, and the U.S. Airlines representative I talked to didn’t said it was fine when I ran the one-way ticket idea by her.

This lady had no sympathy however (she made that obvious). My ticket was canceled, I was stuck in Phoenix. She told me it would be $150 to reschedule PLUS $147 additional because the ticket cost had gone up. I clarified with her that it would cost me another $297 dollars to get on the seat I had already bought, the seat which was originally one half of my $235 roundtrip ticket, the seat which I had not canceled and in fact had called the airline about before I even started my trip. Yes, she insisted, it would be $297.

In my mind, I quickly realized that 1.) U.S. Airways had failed me as a customer, 2.) I could fly one-way home to Seattle for cheaper than $297. So I said to her, “No thank you, I think I’d prefer to just find a flight home with another airline.” And then the coup de grâce: instead of saying “Thanks for donating $235 to U.S. Airways, I’m sorry I could not help you but have a nice day,” this lady hung up on me! She hung up on me! I have never been so rudely treated by any customer service representative in my life. I was not yelling at her, I accepted the policy though I was frustrated, I simply told her I didn’t want to give them another three hundred dollars and she hung up on me.

Now, I manage a tech support team - which is basically geeky customer service. I know customer service, and I know you never hang up on a customer. I saw neither end of my flight, and the lady hung up on me. Way to pour salt in my wound, U.S. Airways.

Luckily, a friend at Alaska Airlines saved my life and put me on a delightful flight home to sunny Seattle. I’m sharing this rant because I wanted to warn my friends about this policy, this airline’s lack of care for their customers, and because I’ve sent them a note regarding the debacle and used my blog to stage my rough draft.

UPDATE: U.S. Airways called me back, months later and after I complained again, and explained to me I still have a credit with them that expires 6/20/09. Credits, especially those that expire, are no good, I explained, unless you tell the person they have them.

I had an amazing weekend in Arizona with Connie, and she sums it up nicely at her new blog, which we worked on whilst I was down there (I have that effect on people).  We crammed so much into the weekend: we went to tour her work at the copper mine in the Superstition Mountains, hit up an Independence Day pool party, saw WALL·E, and went camping and hiking at the Grand Canyon. We also stopped at Montezuma’s Well and Montezuma’s Castle, two amazing national monuments that showcase ancient cliff dwellings.  There’s also a lot of driving/chatting/swimming/eating/dealing with airlines that happened in betwixt everything.

I’m still trying to process all the photographs taken that weekend, but I’ll toss them online shortly. I learned a few things this weekend: 1.) US Airways is in cohorts with Beelzebub (this is foreshadowing to a long, ranty post of its own), 2.) this country is even more massive and beautiful than I tend to usually appreciate, and 3.) Connie is a really important part of my life.  I hate missing people that you just click with, that type of person who you could just hang out with for days on end.  Connie’s always been like that for me, and even as we change I find we’re always encouraging of who we actually are - it’s easy to be myself around her.  I’m lucky to have such good friends.

I had a truly crazy weekend and I’m still a little weak in the knees from it all.  A good chunk of the limping though is from getting kicked by a gal in sharp heels at the Century Ballroom on Sunday night.  Swing is definitely a contact sport, and Lindy Hop is no exception.  As much as I love swing though, I’m pleasantly shocked to say it got majorly trumped by The Seattle Anti-Freeze this weekend: I’m sure you’ve heard of pub crawls, but we did a pub run.  An epic 8k pub run to seven bars with a ton of people.  Epic.

Things are going really well with the Big Brothers Big Sisters volunteering.  My “Little” is really fun to hang out with, she’s very smart and full of energy.  It’s also encouraging me to go on some fun little adventures.  For example, on Saturday we’re helping to restore a creek in Juanita while learning about the environment.

Also, on a bit of an overdue whim I’ve decided that over Independence Day I’ll be headed to hot, hot Arizona to visit my dear friend Connie. That’s fewer than two weeks away! It will be great just to have some quality one on one time like the good old days, but as a bonus we also have some fun plans: we’re going to the July 4th Tempe Town Festival, and then we’re going camping in the Grand Canyon. Camping in the Grand Canyon - how awesome is that?   Pretty awesome.  I am super excited for camping with Connie. I miss her.

Because it’s two hours from Seattle and twenty degrees hotter than Seattle was when you left. Because you drive down the street and see ginormous dot-com king companies lining the street, one after another. Because the party you throw in Atheron gets on ValleyWag. Because of all the good memories there.

But most of all, because stuff like this can be found on the street and end up in your Flickr friend’s photostream:

If can haz
Originally uploaded by Jamison

Sidenote:  I’m traveling right now, but in Spokane, Washington, not in the valley.  Just being in the hotel room here kind of reminded me of my last trip to San Francisco.  I’ll be back in Seattle on Saturday evening.

Wow… I had a simply amazing weekend. Usually I don’t like to write “here’s everything I did” type posts, but this deserves some documentation. Friday night, I hit up a bit of Camp Jitterbug (billed as “The Awesomest Lindy Hop Event Ever!”) for some swing dancing with my friend Shane - they had the first heat of the Jack & Jill Lindy Hop contest, which was so much fun to watch, plus plenty of room to dance in as it was at the UW Hub Ballroom.

Saturday morning I sort of randomly went canoeing with Kevin, a fellow BrightKite beta user who I ran into last week at Indy. I had a great time and have never seen more turtles, check this out:

Crazy, eh? I love exploring the area via canoe, in fact I think the highlight of our morning paddling adventure was attempting to find a way through the reeds. It was pretty hilarious, especially when the going got tough and we nearly tried walking across some not-so-stable marshy “land” that turned out to be not so much “land” as a floating mass of vegetation.

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