I’m currently on the plane on my way back from my fourth consecutive trip to Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference. I have so many things I want to do. I want to code. I want to watch videos of sessions I couldn’t go to, and in some cases ones I did. I want to read the book on Swift. So many things to do.

Why?

The past WWDC was quite different than the others. In past years, Apple got on stage and showed the world new versions of iOS and OS X. These keynotes were predominantly to showcase user-facing features. Things such as Notification Center, or tabbed Finder windows. Not discussed during the keynote, generally speaking, the improvements to Apple’s developer tools, such as Xcode. That time came after the world stopped listening.

This year, things were different. Things progressed as usual… until the section of the keynote dedicated to developers. This portion of the keynote was a whole different beast. In just a few slides Apple made some incredible announcements, not the least of which a whole new programming language for their platform.

It was immediately clear: things are different now.

This shift began a couple weeks before, when the official WWDC app was released. As always, there were a series of sessions that were going to be kept secret until after the keynote. In prior years, these sessions took on the incredibly uninventive name of “To Be Announced” until after the keynote. Not this year. Apple took liberties with the session names for WWDC 2014.

During the keynote, presenters were really confident. The pacing was relaxed, until the developer section. Jokes were made, and surprisingly, most were pretty funny.

This tone wasn’t limited to Tim and Craig, however. Presenters at the sessions carried the same confidence — I’d almost go so far as to say swagger — with them. The Apple engineers I spoke to privately didn’t verbally share any hints of what’s to come, but their body language spoke volumes. They’re excited.

As the week progressed, something else quickly became clear.

Apple’s tone — or perhaps their spirit — was more than just confidence. It was also about cooperation. The spirit of WWDC 2014 was about doing things together.

So many of the features Apple released were about fixing problems that face all developers in their platform, of all sizes. Improvements in iOS 8 and OS X aren’t about giving gifts to the huge corporations. Smaller developers also reap the benefits of all of the same new features and tools.

Leading into WWDC 2014, the relationship between Apple and the developers that rely on their ecosystem was extremely adversarial. More than that, it was untenable.

This week, as developers learned more and more about the new tools Apple is providing, and about the new territories they can explore, things took a turn. What just one week ago was “us versus them” is now “you and us, together.”

Apple is a strange bedfellow, but the bed has never looked more inviting.

A quick update regarding my T-Mobile woes: they reset my password, which caused me to go through the new account creation process. However, this “new” account retained my purchase history from before and all seems right in the world again.

Now I have all of the options I researched available to me. I asked on Twitter whether T-Mobile or Verizon fares better in the Moscone area of San Francisco, but I got no particularly definitive feedback. Seems like I’ll be carrying two SIMs with me on Monday and playing it by ear.

Unlike my password validation issue, this is the kind of problem I don’t really mind having.

WWDC is fast approaching, and roughly 5000 people are making the pilgrimage to San Francisco to see what Apple has in store for us. WWDC is possibly my favorite week of the year, as I learn a tremendous amount in very little time, and get to hang out with so many of my friends that I don’t generally get to see. Naturally, I’m really stoked. So stoked, in fact, that I’m already in San Francisco with my wife Erin to get in some sightseeing before the conference.

While many people have posted tips over the years—here’s mine from after 2011—the one tip I recommend most to attendees is to say “hi” and make friends. You’ll be doing a lot of waiting in line, and not just before the keynote. Go ahead and make friends with those around you; it’ll help pass the time, and you never know what you may have in common.

Speaking for John, Marco, and myself: if you see us in or around San Francisco, or even if you catch someone in the halls of Moscone, please do say “hi”. We all find it extraordinarily flattering to hear that someone knows who we are, let alone may be a fan of the show. Don’t be afraid.

Okay, fine. Maybe it’s just me who is surprised when he gets recognized.

For the last few days my wife and I have been visiting family on both sides that live around Los Angeles. Since we were bouncing between locales, and since LA is an exercise in urban sprawl, we decided to rent a car. A friend of mine had mentioned that he was looking forward to trying a new rental service that is only available in a few locations: Silvercar.

The Idea

Silvercar is designed to be a modern, tech-savvy take on car rentals. In most locales, the process is as follows:

1. Make a reservation using their app or website
2. When you arrive at your destination, find the Silvercar rental area
3. Walk up to any silver Audi A4. It’s the only kind of car they rent
4. Scan the QR code on the windshield using the app
5. Get in and drive away

Silvercars offer a few perks over regular car rental:

• As mentioned, the fleet is entirely silver Audi A4s.
• All cars are equipped with WiFi (more on that later)
• Easy in/out using the iPhone app
• Competitive prices: we paid under $70/day for a rental out of LAX, though this included a $50 new customer credit. This is roughly on par with a far crummier car from Hertz.
• When you return the car, if you don’t want to bother filling it with gas, they charge $5 plus whatever the normal rate is at the pump.

First World Problems The Car

I have, in very short time, gone from hating all BMW drivers to becoming one. In all the worst possible ways. I really do believe that within the semi-affordable sport sedan segment, they are “The Ultimate Driving Machine”. Part of the draw of renting a Silvercar was being able to see how an Audi compares.

It turned out to be death by a thousand paper cuts.

To be clear, I really liked the Audi. I thought it was a well-made car, and way, way better than any other rental I’ve ever had. But many things about it annoyed me just a little. By the end, it made me appreciate how much better the A4 was than any other rental, but also made made appreciate my car that much more.

What I noticed:

• The window sill is too high, but
• the center armrest was just a little bit too low.
• The feel of the switchgear was excellent.
• Audi’s MultiMedia Interface, which is their equivalent of iDrive:
  • The stick, rather than sliding in four directions like on the iDrive, instead tilted. Which was wonky, and felt flimsy.
  • It showed wonderful upcoming exit information (i.e., what gas stations were at upcoming exits), but at the cost of next-move instructions not being terribly clear.
  • However, the display in the instrument panel included navigation data, which was awesome, and much nicer than the single center-mount screen I have in my car.
  • …but it didn’t show the next turn as early as I would like.
• The stereo was pretty bad.
• The volume control was to the right of the gearshift, in an unnatural place for the driver, but much more accessible to the pasenger.
• The car sounded like an anemic, struggling 4-cylinder. Probably because it was an anemic, struggling 4-cylider.
• The WiFi was slow. Unbelievably cool to have for free in a rental, but really slow. To be fair, this test was done on the 405 outside LA and it could be a hiccup.

The only other thing to note is that in some locales, such as LAX, there are absolutely no car rental agencies on site. Thus, you have to take a LAX shuttle to the cell phone parking lot (which is free). When you get on the bus, you use the Silvercar app to send a text message to them to let them know you’re on your way. By the time you get there, the car is waiting. An additional car is also waiting to take your delivery agent back to their facility. It worked out well, but it did take time for the bus to arrive.

On the return side, you drop the car off at their facility, and then one of their drivers takes you to your terminal in that same car.

At a more traditional airport with on site rental car presence, none of this would have been the case.

Overall

Would I do it again? If it’s cheaper than Hertz/equivalent, absolutely. If it’s slightly more expensive than Hertz, almost surely. However, the value-add diminishes as price gets more and more expensive than a traditional, national chain.

No matter what, I definitely recommend Silvercar, and will start my next car rental search with them.

Should you decide to give it a try, you can use the referral code CLISS; if you do, we’ll both get $25 off.

I’ve been evangelizing T-Mobile’s free 200MB data for life for a while now. I think it’s a really smart move on T-Mobile’s part, and I admire them for doing something outside the box.

Well, I did, anyway.

Around a month or two ago, the website used to manage your prepay account, T-Mobile’s Mobile Internet Management, changed. Instead of accepting passwords of up to 16 characters, it now accepts passwords that are 15 characters or less.

As a developer, I am already shaking my head in disgust, but the fun is only beginning.

When I attempted to log in with my 16 character password, I was forbidden, because my password was too long. “Okay”, I thought, “I’ll just reset my password using the ‘forgot password’ link.”

Nope.

When one “forgets” their password on T-Mobile’s MIM, T-Mobile simply e-mails the password back to the on-file e-mail address. In my case, the invalid, 16 character password.

Sigh.

For a couple months, this was simply an annoyance. I had been able to see how much of my data was used each month, but now I can’t. Instead, I’ll just rely on the “you’re running out!” messages and hope for the best.

Things, however, took a turn when I realized I’m going to be traveling and could really use some mobile data.

I called T-Mobile early last week and spoke to an extremely nice individual in Colorado. Things were off to a great start. I explained the situation to him, and he told me that the only way to reset my password was to have engineering do it manually.

ಠ_ಠ

That was annoying, but fine. I was told I’d have an answer in three business days, before my trip started. That was nearly a week ago.

Now, I’m in the position where I want to give T-Mobile money for extra data, but I can’t, because I can’t log in to do so. When you’re a struggling also-ran like T-Mobile, you need to do extreme things like offer free data to get new customers, and get them to pay you. However, all of those extremes are for naught if you can’t get the basics right.

So, now I’ll just give my money to Verizon, since I can’t give it to T-Mobile.

Well, I suppose I could call T-Mobile and read them my credit card information over the phone, but I’m not an animal.

Background

When we recorded next week’s ATP, we realized shortly before show time that our showbot wasn’t operational. Since the showbot wasn’t even our work, we couldn’t really complain. Brad Choate took it upon himself to be kind enough to fork the open-source bot that is used on 5by5. We owe Brad many thanks for roughly a year of faithful and uneventful service.

If you’re not aware, while we’re recording our podcast, it’s also broadcast live. Additionally, we have an IRC channel (#atp on Freenode) where we hang out with listeners. In this channel, there’s an automated robot that listens to the channel for title suggestions. Those suggestions are logged and placed on a page for us hosts to review at the end of the show. Additionally, listeners can up-vote titles they really enjoy; this lends a completely false air of democracy to the process.

So, what with the bot being down for that episode, Marco took it upon himself to whip together a really quick-and-dirty showbot using his PHP framework in the span of 20 minutes. It didn’t have an IRC component; it was simply a web page that one could use to suggest a title or up-vote an existing one.

A Challenge

That got me thinking… I wonder if there’s an IRC package for Node?

Spoiler alert: there is.

So, during the after show, I started to hack. Within around the same 20 minutes, I had an IRC bot that was POSTing to Marco’s short-lived web form.

The next day, I spent a few hours hacking on it. While I’m certainly not done with it, I’ve come up with something that seems to be functional.

Thus, I’ve open sourced “Accidental Bot”; you can find it at GitHub, of course.

Getting Cute

As is often the case, recently I stumbled upon a new technology that I really wanted to find an excuse to use. In the past, that has been things such as .NET reflection, LINQ, Cocoa Touch, or iBeacons. In the case of Accidental Bot, however, it was two things: Node and WebSockets.

Node has been mentioned quite a few times in relation to Camel, the engine that runs this site.

WebSockets are something I’ve only been able to play with briefly in the past. The general premise is, rather than having a user’s web browser continually asking the bot “Can you send updates?” on a regular basis, instead, I instruct the web browser to take a different approach. In this case, the web browser opens a connection to the bot, and keeps it open. Thus, as new titles or votes come in, the bot can push those updates directly to all connected users immediately. This is far preferred to having a latency between the time that a vote or title comes in and the time a user sees it on the site.

So, Accidental Bot conists of a few components:

1. The bot itself, written in Node.
2. The bot’s connection to the IRC channel, to listen for suggestions made there.
3. The client page, hosted on this site.
4. A websocket connection between the two.

In very quick and brief practice, this seems to work, and work well. What’s on GitHub is the result of less than working day of hacking, and thus, there are plenty of features that could be added, and plenty of bugs lurking beneath the surface. However, when we record next, I plan to have the Accidental Bot running to see if it can handle the load.

Gotcha

First, the titles page is not terribly exciting to look at when the bot isn’t running. And, generally speaking, there’s no point in keeping it running when we’re not recording.

Originally, I would have liked to have hosted the titles page in the same Node server as the bot itself. However, I’m hosting the bot on Heroku. Heroku only allows each dyno to have one port open–in the case of the bot, I need it for web socket connections, and thus can’t open a second port for just plain web connections.

Luckily, since connecting to the bot is done client-side, there’s no reason I can’t host the titles page… anywhere, really. Thus, I looked to the obvious place: the publicly accessible web server hosting this very site.

In a perfect world, I would have opened a web server within the bot and handled sending the static HTML page from there.

I also don’t like that there’s is no persistent storage for titles, should the bot crash during recording. I don’t see the point of rolling an entire database—even NoSQL—for something so ephemeral. However, I can’t even dump a JSON blob on the filesystem because the filesystem is also ephemeral.

Future

Knowing me, as soon as this bot is good enough™, I’ll leave it be and never touch it again. However, there are certainly plenty of improvements that can and should be made.

Nevertheless, my hope is that fledgling show networks may want to build on the work that I’ve done, to help make the experience that much better for their listeners.

In the spirit of Dr. Drang’s “outboard memory”, I’m placing this little tidbit here for my own future reference.

I have an iPad that has LTE. I have two SIM cards for it: the Verizon card that it came with, and a T-Mobile SIM that I picked up for the free data late last year. I generally keep the T-Mobile SIM in it, as I don’t often need data, and when I do, it isn’t much.

However, I’m about to embark on my annual pilgrimage, and as such, am likely to want/need to use data on my iPad. It’s quite likely I’ll need more than my 200MB that I get for free. Thus, what should I do? Despite all the kvetching about Verizon lately, I want to make sure I get the best bang for my buck if I am to buy a one-day, one-week, or one-month data pass from either carrier.

So, I crunched the numbers:

Some notes about the above:

• “X pass” indicates a non-recurring/one-shot plan.
• “X Monthly” indicates a recurring plan. They must be canceled before the month is up, lest they automatically renew.
• I’m using base-10 representations for data sizes, since the carriers probably do the same. And for easy math.
• The table is sortable, if you click on the headers.

To me, the clear winners are the 1GB week pass on T-Mobile, as well as the 300MB day pass on Verizon. Naturally, depending on the length of your travel and your data needs, your mileage may vary.

UPDATED 29 August 2014 1:30 PM: Changed to reflect new T-Mobile plans.

UPDATED 29 November 2014 7:30 AM: Changed the T-Mobile day pass to reflect the decreased price of $5 (from $10).

UPDATED 6 June 2016 8:00 PM: Updated all prices; added the many new Verizon monthly passes.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of joining my “OTP”, Myke Hurley, on his fantastic interview show, CMD+Space. In this appearance, I talked to Myke about my recent news, Camel, this blog, and blogging in general.

What’s wonderful about CMD+Space is that every episode is worthwhile, and every episode I learn something new. Myke has a great talent for not only picking great guests, but also putting in the effort to ensure that he asks great questions as well. If you’re not a regular listener, you should be.

“Maybe it’s just not supposed to happen for us.”

My wife Erin — the most important person in my world — is feeling somber again.

It’s late 2011. We’ve been trying to have a child for a year now. It hasn’t happened yet.

We’ve progressed past keeping track of her cycle on a calendar. We’ve learned about basal body temperatures and Erin has just started using ovulation prediction kits. Erin has taken more of an interest in the goings on inside of her body than she has ever had to in the past. She doesn’t want to, but she has to. She has to if we’re ever going to be able to have a baby.

We haven’t sought out professional help or anything, but we know it’s taken us longer than it “should”. Something just isn’t right.

“Well, we wanted to have the baby some time in the next year or year and a half, so we started trying. Turns out, we were able to connect the first time!”

I squeeze Erin’s leg.

Hard.

We’re at dinner with dear friends of ours that we’re visiting. They don’t know we’ve been trying to have a baby. They’re incredibly excited to share their news with us.

They should be.

But unbeknownst to them, Erin and I just had that knife in our hearts turn another 30°. The wound immediately gets reopened.

“Well, I’m having fun practicing!”

This is easily the hundredth time I’ve told this joke. I’m not sure if it was ever particularly funny. I know for sure that I don’t find it funny anymore.

I’ve just been asked “When are you two having kids?”. Again. I know the person asking is trying to be nice, and trying to make conversation. Well, unless it’s a family member. Then they really are asking and really want to know why we’re being selfish and taking so long.

I use the joke because it’s disarming, and it forces me to smile. I’m scared if I tell the truth, I won’t be able to smile very much at all.

“We’re pregnant!”

Again, with friends. Again, they have no idea we’ve been trying over a year now.

These particular friends got married in March of 2011. We had already been trying for months before they even got married. We were at their wedding.

Not too long later, they’re pregnant.

Turn the knife.

How is this fair? We’ve been trying since they were planning their wedding, yet they’re able to conceive so easily. It just doesn’t add up.

Erin is putting on the happy face. She’s doing an amazing job. It’s a little easier because she is happy. We’re very excited for our friends. They can’t tell she’s dying inside. No one can tell.

Except me. I can tell.

And she’s dying.

“I think I’m ready to get help.”

It’s late spring of 2013. Erin and I have been trying for two and a half years now. We’ve flirted with the idea of seeing a fertility specialist, but I knew Erin needed to come around to it in her own time. It seems like she has.

It’s a huge step for us, as it’s an explicit admission that we can’t do this on our own. That we need help.

Life seems to happen in stages. As someone who has had a Facebook account since 2004, I’ve seen it. All of my friends got married (we were one of the first). All of my friends got pregnant. All of my friends had kids. We started on the marriage bandwagon before nearly anyone. Erin was a couple months shy of 24 and I was 25. Yet here it is we’re on a treadmill, and can’t progress forward. At this point we’ve been married 6 years.

I stop looking at Facebook daily, like I used to. I rarely look at it anymore. I just can’t stand it; every other post is about someone’s baby. I’m happy for them… I really am. But I can’t see the constant reminder of how we’re falling short. Of how we can’t seem to conceive.

“It’s like driving a used car off a cliff. Every month.”

Erin and I have just left our fertility doctor’s office. Since the actions we’ve taken thus far haven’t really stuck, it’s time to start discussing more invasive alternatives. In our case, that means in vitro fertilization. We talked to our doctor about this for around an hour. It’s worse than we expect in every way.

It’s harder on Erin in terms of time spent, pills taken, procedures she’d have to go through. It’s harder on both of us in terms of a financial burden. Our choices basically amount to driving a used car off a cliff every month, or driving a shiny new car off a cliff once. It’s something we’ve had to prepare for, and we’ve been saving for a while now, but it’s still hard to swallow.

Now having the facts, we talk it over. Simultaneously we curse our poor luck and dysfunctional bodies and yet at the same time we give tremendous thanks that modern science gives us the option of doing IVF at all. We worry about the potential for twins, triplets, or more. While our doctor is very cautious when it comes to “multiples”, it’s still something to worry about.

A lot to consider. As with seeing the fertility doctor in the first place, I think it will take time for both of us to come around to this idea. We may never actually do so.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

Erin and I woke up early, for no particular reason. She has just come back from the restroom, and she looks white as a ghost.

“Wait, what?”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

It’s March 3. Just a day or two before, we were discussing whether or not we want to take the leap of starting our first round of IVF treatments. Erin shows me the pregnancy test. It’s one of the ones that says the words, rather than having easy-to-misconstrue lines. Clear as day, there it is: Pregnant.

We’ve been with our fertility doctor for nine months now. That irony isn’t lost on us. We’ve been getting help, and seeing him each and every month to assist in the conception process. Somehow, by some miracle, it finally worked.

Erin and I are beyond ecstatic to announce that she is pregnant!!

We expect to meet our baby — “Sprout” is our going nickname — in the first week of November. (I should point out we’ve also selected the designated sprout emoji: 🌱)

We’re so extremely thankful, and so unbelievably lucky. We’ve taken a long road to get here. At times, we weren’t sure if we would ever get this far. We’re scared to death of what the future brings. We’re scared to find out if we’ll be good parents. We’re scared that Sprout may not end up healthy, despite every test so far saying he or she is.

Despite that, we’re overjoyed. We’ve conceived. We’re having a baby.

We’ve worked hard at this. Some of it was practice, but a lot of it was work. Even before meeting 🌱, it’s already so amazingly worth it. When we got our first ultrasound, and were able to hear a fast little heartbeat, it was all worth it.

Four years after this journey began, barring any unforeseen complication, it will finally end. We will finally get to meet our Sprout. Our little bundle of pure, unadulterated joy. We’re so excited, we can barely think or talk about anything else.

Finally.

This morning I received a pull request for my blogging engine, Camel. The pull request had a lot of changes, and they were made with good reason. The primary purpose was to split up camel.js. Instead of one monolithic 650 line file, it was split into a total of four files. This makes sense to me. I instituted some “flower boxes”, which were controversial, in order to try to demarcate the different sections of the file. That was already indicative to me that something wasn’t quite right.

I liked the changes. They were an improvement over my monolothic file, and provided for a separation of concerns between different parts of the app.

However, I’m not sure they were right for Camel.

When I was a younger developer, I always aimed to be right about everything. I did what was considered the “best practice”. No matter what. I mean, it’s a best practice for a reason, right?

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve stopped caring as much about what’s best during practice. I’m worried about what’s best in the game. While reviewing this pull request, it occurred to me that it was done well, and done by the book. But that didn’t make it right for my project.

I’ve come to realize, with time and experience, that “best practices” are simply a starting point. They’re there to point you in the right direction. But they’re not designed to be followed letter-for-letter, word-for-word. Instead, you have to do what’s right for your project. You have to be pragmatic.

For Camel, my priorities are to be “fast, simple, and lean”. It says so right on the tin. Splitting Camel into four files just felt like too much. It wasn’t right for my project.

In my case, simplicity is important to me. I wanted Camel to serve not only as the engine for this site, but also as a sample for someone like me—a total Node noob—to learn from.

As always, I think the answer is in the middle. I think that Camel should be split into either two files (routes/helpers), or three files (entry/routes/helpers). It’s only a file or two less, but it’s quite a lot easier to swallow. Doubly so for someone who is new to the code.

And if it weren’t for this pull request, I may not have bothered to really think it through. I’m already so very glad that I decided to get over my fears and open source Camel.

The system works.