walkah: birthday

I've always had a thing about significant numbers - 07/07/07, my 30th birthday, etc - today's significant number is 5. My "baby" girl, Camryn, turned 5 today. Her ears are pierced, she rides a two-wheeler, and starts kindergarten in less than a week. My baby isn't so much a baby anymore...

Camryn, you are the sweetest girl in the whole wide world, and I love you with my whole heart. Happy Birthday! Now, if you could only read and your dad would let you use his computer...

I've never made a big thing about birthdays - especially my own - but, for several reasons, this birthday means a lot to me. It's a very real marker for the close of an unbelievable decade in my life and the opening of an exciting new chapter.

When I look back at my 20s, I usually have a hard time believing it was all one decade... so much happened and so much changed. In hindsight, perhaps, it was clear going in that things would be intense: two months after my 20th birthday my son, Andrew, was born.

The fast-forward version of the ten years that followed goes something like this: I got married, finished my Computer Science degree at UofT, became a Canadian permanent resident, started my career, bought a house, had a second child - my beautiful daughter, Camryn, co-founded a company, bought an SUV,bought a new, bigger house... then I hit what all my astrologically-inclined friends tell me was my Saturn return... I got separated, moved out, sold the house, tried to learn to cook, lost my father (and all the unanswered questions he took with him), started wearing glasses, rethought my career and tried to figure out 'dating'.

There are certainly days where I feel like an entire adult life was crammed into my first decade as an adult...

So, here I sit at 30... everything feels new, terrifying and exhilarating. Things feel entirely up in the air, in constant flux and on a clear, intentional path. I'm an old man with my whole life ahead of me.

One thing is clear, the change is on. I've marked that here with a bit of a 'relaunch' of this site, such as it is, but the real action is offline. So...

Happy Birthday, me. Here's to the next 10.

Chances are you didn't hear it here first, but today on Drupal's 6th birthday Dries released Drupal 5.0! I have to say this is far and away the highest quality release in my time with the Drupal project. The new default theme (that I'm using here) is lovely, the admin interface has been revamped.. things in general are moving towards a much more polished product. Personally, I think the module dependency, installation, uninstall situation is my favourite new feature... but that's just me. Also exciting is this is the first time during my involvement that we've gone up a major version number. So long Drupal 4, long live Drupal 5.

If you haven't yet, download this release. It's a good one.

Happy Birthday, Drupal. Rock on, Drupal community indeed.