Zak Homuth

Haha. Big Stu is my Dad, and if you haven’t met him let me tell you he is a very big and towering teddy bear. And we all love him buckets. And he just turned 60! The following is my notes from the trip… I just got home from probably the most incredible family vacation, ever. Incredible being together. Incredible amounts of food, and sun, and beaches. Incredible hanging out with my parents. Incredibly stressful getting home and back. And incredibly bad timing. It was a pretty serious blend of emotion, and chaos. And I’m so very, very happy that I could be there with my dad, my mom, and my family, even though the timing was so terrible. For my Dads 60th birthday this year my mother got him a trip. A trip on a cruise. A trip on a cruise with her and the 6 of us boys. For lack of a better word, this sounded insane. The following is my rough recounting of the trip. We left home at 11pm Friday night. We were actually in the car and pulling away a few minutes before 11, which marks the first ever, in the history of the universe, time that the Homuth family was on-time, let alone early to do anything. Now the first stage of the trip was the suspense filled journey to the U.S. border. Its not a very long drive to Sarnia and thus Detroit from my parents house, so thankfully it wasn’t long and drawn out, but the nerves were running pretty high. As you all know I had a bunch of border trouble back at the start of January, and we were less than sure that I was going to make it across for the family vacation - which was pretty tense/stressful/disappointing. So we show up at the border at about midnight, and as expected immediately get asked to head inside. Everything went pretty friendly though. Of my experiences lately these guys were the nicest to deal with yet. It really was the best fusion of through and friendly I could have hoped for. So once inside I get asked the standard welcome to the border questions, and I talk about my B-1 visa issues over the last couple months, and about the family trip. I explain that while my B-1 issue still isn’t resolved this trip is unrelated. And after a couple of standard questions I give the officer all of my paperwork collected over the last couple months, and I go and sit down with my brothers and my Dad. The officer reviewed my documentation and my file for maybe 15 minutes, and called me back up to go over it all. As I said he was very through, he actually looked at and read most of my documentation. He got a pretty good kick out of my post about my original problem at the border and credited me for taking as much blame in the process as I did. And in the end approved my visa and let me in. I do owe him a thank you, and a shout out - so here it is! Thanks a ton. You let me participate and a pretty incredible family event. And I came back home, just like I promised. So thanks! So at this point I have that wonderful sick to your stomach feeling that comes after all of your nerves let go. I’m shaking, mumbling, and its more than a little hard to talk. But I’m through! I made it in. And I’m on the path to rebuilding a relationship as a visitor of the US. We manage to reassemble the convoy and other than a couple little navigation hiccups we arrive at the airport and curl up for a little nap before our flight. two flights, a layover and a bus ride later we board the Celebrity Summit cruise ship, where I am currently sitting on the back deck and typing up this post. We made it! Now basically the whole cruise followed the following pattern:

• Boat drives while were sleeping
• Wake up hungover at some island
• Breakfest with the family
• Get changed, packed for the day
• Meet at the gangplank and head to a beach
• Put on 8 gallons of sunscreen and sleep under a palm tree
• start drinking at 9am
• Sleep more
• Head back to the boat at 3pm
• Zak tries to hide somewhere and work for 3 hours
• Get dressed for the show or dinner
• Show or dinner
• Dinner or show
• Drinking and partying to all hours of the night with Clint, Jake and Grayson
• Go to sleep & Repeat

In the interests ot documenting for everyon elses sake, a couple pointers:

• The internet sucks! ($1/min at the best)
• $5 per chair / $5 per umbrella
• $8 each person each way to the beach

And the islands we visited:

• Saint Thomas
• Saint Martin (Favourite)
• Antigua
• Saint Lucia
• Barbados
• Starting and ending in Purto Rico

It was an incredible trip and I have more to write about it, but for now this is it!

A Step In The Right Direction

I just wanted to say a very profuse thank you to the customs and border patrol officer that let me into the U.S. on Saturday so that I could participate in my Dad’s 60th birthday celebrations. Its a step in the right direction, and I appreciate that. Thanks. I’ll write more about my latest experience at the border in a later post, but for now let me say that he was very through, yet the nicest and most understanding so far. It took about an hour, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, and the goal seemed a lot more oriented with getting me across than keeping me out. So again thanks! This is about to be a pretty incredible experience, and I’m glad I get to take part.

U.S. Border Status Update

I can’t help but laugh a little. Its been 39 days since I first tried to cross the border with Steve to go down to Mountain View for some incredibly exciting business training. Its been 37 days since I tried for the second time and was dismissed for having a scary file. Its been 28 days since I applied for a B1 Visa from the US consulate in Toronto. 14 days since my first interview when my application was sent to Lewiston for further processing. 1 day since they invited me back for a second interview. about 7 hours since I got up at 4:30 this morning to catch a train to Toronto to visit the consulate. And about 75 minutes since they suspended my application on the grounds that I’m a Canadian citizen and don’t need to apply for a Visa from the consulate (apparently I had to show up in person to find this out).

In total I’ve missed 50 percent of the seminars I was trying to visit the US to attend. Spent about 25 hours fussing, worrying and filling in paperwork to try and fix my file. Spent about 18 hours in transit, lineups, and call queues waiting to meet officers. Spent about 12 minutes speaking with officers. And 26 days twiddling my thumbs waiting for the US government to inform me that I’m using the wrong process.

Like I said, I can’t hep but laugh a little.

I never imagined, for the life of me, that a border guard having a bad day could so unrelentingly affect my future. Live and learn I guess! If I were to offer a hypothesis - it seems a bit like the support center phone transfer problem. Except instead of no one knowing how to fix my problem, no one is willing to say I’m ok. The original officer decided I was a bad guy, and no one has the balls to overturn that. Which I guess I get. If I actually were bad, who wants to be the sucker that proves the original guy right. Especially in a system where there is no duty to serve the customer. What I don’t get, is why the computer screen trumps the insurmountable evidence I have been bringing with me. Why a note that says I was unprepared and didn’t provide paperwork is worth more than the paperwork I didn’t bring the first time. It doesn’t make sense. And I’m pretty sure that’s a catch-22. I’m pretty sure there is no way to win without some serious amount of compassion on the part of a border guard.

So I head back to the border. Back to plead my case. I know a little bit more now, and I have a better skill-set. And maybe these are silly questions, but I can’t help asking. Couldn’t they have just told me to go back to the border a month ago? Why did it take so much paperwork, time and money to explain a process to me? Why even offer to look into it? Or most importantly, why lie to me and keep passing the buck?

Starting Deployment

 Today we start the intrepid journey from client-side javascript running on our local machines towards a server stack on EC2 which will be supplying the files, dynamically bootstrapping the environment, and chatting with the client-side javascript such that changes can be persisted, files can be loaded and save, and collaboration can happen. In short, today we start to move stuff to the servers. EXCITING! We are currently blitzing on the last few bits of the puzzle. The weekend was spent on the API, yesterday on integration and design actions. And we want to let people in day after tomorrow, so that means today and tomorrow are going to be spent reviewing and deploying. I’ve been saying it a lot lately, but we are really close. In other news I got a response from the consulate today that I need to go in for a second interview. So I’m going to try and head there tomorrow I think. I have no idea where I stand, but fingers crossed!

Random Thought: Activation Energy

 There seems to be a lot of activation energy to my writing. Whenever I’m in the zone and writing daily its great, my thoughts are clearer, I’m more productive despite spending time writing, and I have good focus on my priorities. But whenever I get into a coding zone, writing seems less important. It cost me so much more to switch gears into email, or phone calls, or writing. If I had to guess I’d say this is the same thing Stevie experiences whenever I call him and ruin his train of thought. Its also probably related to flow, but in this case I’m concerned about the tear-down time to leaving flow. In other news we missed our Alpha launch last Friday, but we are hot on the trail and should start deployment again on Wednesday. So much glue, so little time!

Upverter: Porn Star Interns

 We are getting to the point where we need to hire people, and are very excited to start growing the team. And a big part of our longer term strategy will be to use interns. But we have a problem. No one really knows who we are, and a lot of the really good co-ops mistakenly think that working for Google or Facebook is the best thing for their career. I have a lot of friends that have written on this subject already, so rather than lament the broken I’m talking about our little hack here at Upverter to try and fix the problem, for us at least. Check out the Upverter Blog to read the rest.

Furiously Deep

 I have been just furiously deep in hack mode lately. And I apologize for going quiet on the wire. We are getting really close, but we still might not make our Alpha launch on the 4th. Fingers crossed! Back to work!

Its All Down Hill From Here

 Haha. Please don’t take me too seriously. But I’m sooooo old now! Yesterday I turned 26 years old, which as I’ve been told is on the old half of my twentieth decade, which I’ve also been told is bad, or at least least good than the first half. haha. And then apparently you become really old when you hit your thirties, hence, all down hill from here! ;) In all seriousness though, I am so happy about the place I am at in my life right now! To be 26 and have gone the places I have, to have had the successes I have had, the wonderful family and friends all around me, and to be on this incredible journey is just amazing. I wake up so happy and excited to be here. And everyday I get to continue trying to make the world a better place. Wow. I will say that my birthday was lovely though. My mom cooked a wonderful dinner and birthday cake - it was great! I’m glad I was home for it.

Upverter: Exciting Feedback!

 Today on the Upverter blog I wrote about some of the great feedback we’ve received lately. We have always had long term goals to try and fix some of the very real, real world problems with doing electronics, but a particular piece of feedback has prompted me to talk more about those long term goals. You should give it a read! I’d really like to start a discussion on what people really want and need. Assuming you want to build the boards you design - how do you want to do it? What can we do to make that easier? Get the idea?

 Haha. Seriously though, it is! And with any luck we can start tossing around Alpha invitations in another week or so. A week! Its been 152 days since I started Upverter and in that fantastically short, busy, and life altering 5 months we have managed to (almost) cobble together a pretty cool piece of software that we are really hoping changes the way people look at electronics. I’m just so very excited to be here! I wake up so excited everyday to make the world a better place, and we are just so very close to sharing the start of our vision with the world. So for lack of anything else to write about today - be excited! And if you haven’t already done so head on over to the upverter.com landing page and sign up for the beta!