Anyway, here goes:

• May 2009 — I graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a BS in Information Systems and minors in Math and Computer Science.
• Fall of 2009 — I applied to the news challenge with my friend Erek Alper.  We made it to the top 50 (out of about 2200).  If we had won we would have been given $300k to create a system that routes questions from citizens to the appropriate government representatives and run a pilot in Cheltenham and Pittsburgh.  Close but no cigar!
• 2009 to 2010 — I worked for ColorQuick (http://www.colorquick.com)/ while Lyla was finishing her fifth year at Tyler / Temple and had lots of productive fun in the real world.
• Summer 2010 — I spent working for a new startup called SpeakerText, where I worked on an interactive transcript tool that people can use to add text to their online videos (http://www.speakertext.com)/
• March 30th, 2010 — I was informed by Linda Peterson that I was accepted in to the MIT Media Lab graduate program in Media Arts and Sciences for the Fall of 2010.
• July 3, 2010 — I started this blog, which I will begin to update now that its intended purpose is about to start.
• July 27th, 2010 — Starcraft 2 was released. (http://www.starcraft2.com). / This began two weeks of getting absolutely nothing done.  Then I had to get married so that ruined all my fun!
• August 21st, 2010 — I married Lyla Duey in the Abington Art Center.
• August 22nd to August 31st — we spent nine days in the Gallery Inn, (Old San Juan, Puerto Rico).  It was a glorious, relaxing time.
• September 1st — Lyla, Erek, my dad, and I pack up an entire apartment and drive it to Boston.
• September 4th — Lyla moves to Spain for a 10 month program as a Fulbright Scholar.  Very exciting!  (but, of course, very sad )

I think more happened, but this is good enough for now.  There, now nobody can say I didn’t provide basic context for these posts.

Here is a picture of the honeymoon for those that like mushey stuff:

The experience was worthwhile, and I learned a lot of good habits along with plenty of things I will forever know to avoid.  The most important takeaway is the value of good project management.  This doesn’t even have to do with following a particular development methodology — I am simply talking about having someone who is in charge of fostering and championing a clear vision of the product.  Someone with the time to keep the team organized and moving in the right direction.

Now that I’m out, though, I’m doing my best to hit the scalding hot summer ground running.  Between today and September I will be:

1. Working for a truly great startup called SpeakerText.  They provide interactive transcripts for online videos and I’m working on the transcript player.
2. Teaching a few friends how to create web applications (i.e. the art of PHP, MySQL, and jQuery), and working with them on a long-term pet project known to those that know me as The GPF (The Globally Personalized Forum).  It’s going to be a system for group-based-yet-still-personalized communication.
3. Watching the entire series of Battlestar Galactica for the first time.
4. Planning a wedding, spending time with my fiance before she has to leave for Spain, and finding an apartment in Cambridge before I have to move there for MIT.  You know, those little things.

Since it is 2:00 in the morning, I’ll abruptly end this ice breaker post with a comment:  If you have ever used Craig’s list to find apartments and said to yourself “damn it, I wish I could just see these things on a fracking map” then rejoice for Padmapper.com.