2002 - a year in review...

No doubt this has been a big year for a whole lotta people, but, since this is my (vanity) website and I'm putting in the hours required to construct this retrospective missive, I'll state right up front that this is pretty much the year from my perspective. If others would like to add corrections, embellishments, further disclosures, blackmail offers, and their own angles to anything contained below, I invite them to let me know. Thanks heaps.

So, yes, as I was saying, it's been a pretty big year! To describe exactly how big a year, I will construct a list of highlights, roughly chronological (based on an addled memory and help from friends), possibly exhausting but hardly exhaustive. Most of you who received emails from me over the past year in which I lower expectations for further correspondence by using the term "very busy" at least 3 times might wonder "what does he really mean by busy? Is it just a Dave-euphemism for lazy?" Well, frankly, that's a fair question, and one which I will address as follows. Not long ago, I returned to the Egressive offices on the heels of a fairly standard weekend to discover an email from a friend of mine saying something like "hi Dave, I had a good weekend, but the tramp I was supposed to go on got cancelled because of rain... What'd you get up to?" After a quick nap (on account of being all shagged out from the weekend), I responded something like this:

"I had a good w-end, thanks. Rained a bit, but in amongst it all, I managed to

1. visit the Maruia Springs hot pools, to soak and feed the hungry wee sandflies,
2. spend a night in a yurt beside a river,
3. have a dip in the Buller River next to the yurt(brrr), and Lake Rotoiti (brrr x 2),
4. slog through a swamp (taking a "short cut" during a walk around the lake),
5. see heaps of friends (80+ of them) in Nelson,
6. play heaps of ultimate in the sand, wind, rain, and sun,
7. cross dress in a sarong and lovely permed wig - sorry no pictures (I hope),
8. sing karaoke in front of quite a few drunk people I didn't know (still cross dressed) and even more I did know,
9. win $50 in a foosball tournament,
10. drink away the foosball winnings with teammates and anyone else who was near the bar at the time,
11. get a tan (under the burn),

    
    A little Ultimate - the NZ Open
    Dunedin, February 2002

12. sing and play some jangly guitar for/along with 27 of my ultimate playing friends in the wee hours of the morning in a room designed to sleep 4 or 5 in a pinch,
13. get sand EVERYWHERE,
14. visit briefly with my great formerly-danish-now-kiwi friends Sinnet and Joern,
15. win an ultimate tournament,
16. stand idly by while my friend, flatmate, and team captain, Penny, received a "ceremonial moistening" off Tahunanui Beach in recognition of her having been captain of the winning team for, count 'em, all three of the annual "Flat out on the Beach in Nelson" beach-ultimate tournaments held to date,
17. drive lots, much of it in the dark and some through driving snow,
18. make it back home before turning into pumpkin..."

Given that the account above is not entirely atypical of my day to day life, I think it's fair to say that I have a full, yes even busy, existence. But a bloody good one. I'm incredibly lucky to have a huge group of outstanding friends, true blue, and the support of a very loving - if somewhat distant - family. That support, combined with a fair bit of independence (I'm my own boss, I'm not married, have no kids as far as I know, and have neighbours who are very accommodating when it comes to feeding Bartholomew when Penny's not here to do it), means that I can try lots of new and interesting things. Here's a list of some of the new and/or noteworthy things I got up to this year, as they occur to me:

• Moved my company, Egressive, into a new office (i.e. one not in my house!) in a lovely old "heritage" building, Kenton Chambers, in central Christchurch. You'll find all sorts of venues for great asian food, great coffee nearby, and, on top of that, great views!

  
  The deck at #23...

• Helped to create a new company made up of a cluster of companies (including Egressive) in Kenton Chambers with 5 partners: the Effusion Group. The partners run Aphid Ltd., iOpen Technologies Ltd., and ZYPE. All focus on open source software and developing web site user interfaces that comply with open web standards.
• With my fellow Possum Brother, Jonny Farren, I recorded my first studio recording with instruments: "thrive". Anyone feeling adventurous can download and listen to all the songs (in mp3 or ogg formats) on the album (I've even provided the liner notes in Postscript format) by going back to my home page and scrolling down. Previously, I participated in another recording project, with my Seattle-based a cappella group Splunge, aptly titled "Conversation Killer", without instruments, the results of which can also be found on my home page, at the bottom.
• I hired Egressive's first long-term official employee, a young gun programmer, nerd's nerd, and general troublemaker, Damien "On-the-lamb" Bateman. So far, I have no regrets. In fact, working with him has been superb in every way.

• 
  The yurt on the Buller River, Murchison...

  I started to get serious about business: another company of which I am a director/shareholder, OpenStrategies, began to get serious: ramping up software and business model development, giving me hope that I will someday find my inner ruthless, filthly rich, back-stabbing, unprincipled corporate raider/mogul. Don't worry, we all have them. (joking) We are making serious plans to go international with our flagship product, OpenStrategyTM in the coming year. All without compromising our high ideals. It's an exciting (and exhausting) time for me and my co-directors.
• In May-June I made a trip back to the US to see my folks in Lancaster, PA (also known as the heart of Amish country), meet or renew my acquaintance with the newest additions to (and somewhat wiser and nerdier stalwarts of) the Lane family, Emily and her sister Becky, catch up with some friends, and attend my 10th (gulp) Haverford College reunion.

• 
  They'll be diggin' you up if you sleep there too long, Davey...

  On the same trip, I had the chance to visit, in Dublin, my lovely friends kiwi-born Roobie Ward and aforementioned fellow Possum Brother, the Irishman Jonny Farren. It was a short but great expedition. Passing through, I even got a chance to see my mate, Craig "Bobbitybob" Roberts for a slice of bad, overpriced pizza and a coffee in Piccadilly Circus (if I remember right). On the way back to Heathrow on the 6:30am tube, I also had the pleasure to meet a gorgeous if evasive Cypriot, Daina Miskouri, who sent me this somewhat dubious portrait of herself.
• It was a year of activism, trying to show the NZ government and the computer-using masses how they might live and work better by using Open Source Software... In a related news, 2002 was the first year in which I was elected to a position - business coordinator - within an incorporated society: the NZ Open Source Society.
• I negotiated an underground stream - Cave Stream enroute to Arthur's Pass - with Hayden, Roobie, Penny, and Jonny. A slippery, dark, cold, wet, exciting experience. I recommend it.
• I decided to add a bit of value to my house via some rennovation-type activities. In the process, whaddaya know, I learned how to wallpaper! Thanks heaps to Penny's folks, Isabel and Jim, who led the way... Thanks also to a lot of friendly ultimate players, both native and visiting Americans (you know who you are) who helped with the preparations, painting, and chips and beer...

  
  The crew outside Cave Stream (an underground stream in the Southern Alps)...

• Oh yeah, and something I never thought would ever happen: I, at the insistence of my flatmates Polly and Penny (and the cat him - using the term loosely - self), am the (proud?) owner of a cat called Bartholomew... He's got limited personality, perhaps due to the fact that he sleeps persistently, and preferably on my bed, the fact that I've found myself to be allergic to close-contact-with-cat notwithstanding. The only time he's animated is when I a) hassle him (frequent), b) need to get Penny to feed him, or he has to go outside to the loo (usually in the veggie garden, occasionally obliterating one or more of the crops...).
• Was impressed by the exploits (and stamina!) of a guinea pig called Sooty from Wales.
• I commissioned the construction of a deck. Many thanks to Jim Jackson (Penny's pop) who put in pretty much all of the elbow grease required to realise this gorgeous wooden... apparatus.

• 
  Final Possum Bros performance at Roobie and Jonny's farewell (Wunderbar)

  Had a brillant time tramping in the Southern Alps with friends, in this case Polly and Brendon Love, aka B. Love and Special Sauce (it's probably not worth trying to explain...) around Arthur's Pass. We left the track, forged our own path up the side of a mountain, slept under the stars next to a mountain tarn, and even had a skinny dip in the morning (it was chilly) before climbing to a peak and then back down another river valley to the road, arriving back at our car just after dark.
• Realised a love for the game of volleyball... I played both indoor (on a team called "Gadoosh" - for the sound the ball makes when it's hitting the floor at our feet... doh!) and on two beach teams called "Be serious!" and "Going Somewhere". The latter two were a tip of the hat to two very amusing autistic boys in Polly's class. Apparently, the first is used somewhat unpredictably as an icebreaker when classroom conversation is experiencing a lull. The second is a statement of intention/fact as the young fellow decides on a course of action, pins his ears back, and strikes out for a spot on the horizon. Needless to say, his minders work in shifts to keep up with him...
• Enjoyed a bit of sailing with my colleagues at OpenStrategies...
• My friends and I created a new institution in Christchurch: Schticknicks.
• I shared my first bath in a wood fired bath tub a hundred feet up a sheer rock face..., with a gorgeous dutch-kiwi, in the orange moonlight.

There you have it - my 2002 in a nutshell. I'm sure there are events, both major and minor that I've forgotten - I'll leave it to you to let me know about them. Hope your 2002 was as good as mine - I'd be interested to hear about it - and that your 2003 will continue to display an upward trend.

Now, some of the most astute amongst you might have noticed the glaring omission of any mention of that "holiday" with which the appearance of this document seems to coincide... The "holiday" that most people (in the northern hemisphere, at least) associate with snow and mistletoe and and 34th St. and Bing Crosby and Jimmy Stewart and think should be more holy and wrapped from head to toe in swaddling clothes but is actually just a rebranded winter solstice celebration riding on the coat tails of a legitimate ancient soulful-pagan-goddess ritual co-opted by the newly pious power brokers of the dark ages now promoted by a rotund sleigh-driving red-faced-felt-suited chimney plugging bearded Coca Cola swilling corporate sponsored omniscient iconoclast prone to ho-ing allegedly residing at a rural post box, Main North Pole Rd. In fact, that omission was not entirely accidental. If you're curious as to my position on these things, I invite you to read my (recently updated) treatise: Confusism Demystified.