Last night was the WordPress1.5 Upgrade party at Chez Mullenweg on a cold, rainy night. I braved the elements to hang with the some of the most fun-loving bloggers I know.
Matt kindly provided install/upgrade services for some bloggers, whilst some DIY’ers (such as your humble correspondent) sat in the living room and performed the painless upgrade ourselves (it really is painless!). If you have not converted your blog to WordPress yet, or if you have been thinking about starting a blog, there is no better time to do so… the install itself is a beautiful process. WP is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which in short, means that the software will remain free (as in beer) for its users.
Jason D. provided a wonderful show for those near and far, via Jason’s iChat session with Sam. I now present to you a few clips of Thor’s profession of love:
I have also Flickr’d a handful of photos, you can find them (and other attendees’ photos) under the tag “upgradeparty”.
I pulled up the driveway to my parents’ house this evening, curiously spying the kids at the preschool across the street. All the kids were clinging to the chainlink fence, all staring in the same direction. It was almost like a scene from Village of the Damned. I then noticed a car stopped along the road, the driver seemingly nervous, her attention switching back and forth between the children and the passenger side of her car. I first thought that maybe the kids were looking at the driver’s dog, which was a gorgeous golden retriever who was happily smiling out the passenger window.
As I exited the car, I was greeted with a familiar, yet odd sound. cluck cluck cluck… CLUCK
I was taken aback for a moment. It is an unusual sound to hear this at my parents’ house, of all places. Sure, their house is somewhat near a few farms, but not close enough for chickens to wander randomly into! I was accustomed to this when we lived in Hawaii, but not here in Bay Area Suburbia!
I cautiously approaced the other side of my mom’s car, to find myself face to face with a very large rooster!
He was very healthy and robust. His feathers were very clean, and the colors bright. I wondered who was missing their Rooster at this very moment.
I looked down at the street, where the driver of the aforementioned car was talking to a few boys on the sidewalk. “Don’t chase it, boys!” She yelled. “I mean it!” I gathered that these kids were her sons.
I yelled down to them, “Is this your, um, chicken?” They all shook their heads “no”.
The rooster started heading down the driveway. I feared that it would get hit by a car coming around the turn.
My sister had come out of the house since I had yelled, “Why is there A CHICKEN in the driveway?!” She started walking towards it, digital camera in hand. The rooster became startled and cut across our driveway to the next yard, the sun starting to set. At least he was heading uphill rather than towards the street. I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.
When I arrived inside the house, I was told a story of how my parents were awakened this morning by the sound of a rooster crowing. My dad thought that it was the alarm clock, and kept hitting the snooze button. My mom got suspicious that my four year old niece had been messing with their alarm clock and switched it to a rooster crow (”I didn’t know we had that sound on our alarm clock!”). I had unknowingly solved The Mystery of the Persistent Alarm Clock.