Now that school’s back in session, things have picked up. Now that I’ve finished a long-running PHP project, I’ve decided to delve into the world of Ruby on Rails. Yeah, I’m 2 years behind, but now I have plenty of time to do it since I’m home alone 3 nights out of the week while Julie’s at class. Last weekend I attended the Grand Rapids Ruby Users Group. It was nice to get together with people interested in new and better ways of development. It was very refreshing and I learned quite a bit. For now, I’m working on a pet web application using Rails and the Google Maps API. I decided to throw an app together that would let you quickly plan trips - sort of like Dopplr or Yahoo!’s trip planner, but more focused on a precise Itinerary and less on the social aspect.
On Thursday I’m going to see Helvetica The Film. I’ve always been mildly interested in design and typography, so it should be really interesting. Later this fall, I’ll get to hear Julie perform Carmina Burana with the MSU choir and there are plenty of other performances going on in the music department.
So things are looking good in the culture department. The locals are friendly and traffic is an absolute breeze. There are some cool cafes as well, such as Espresso Royale and Beaner’s. Lansing also seems to have the highest number of ice cream parlors per capita.
This summer has been nice, getting above 90 degrees only a few times. But now it’s quickly changing to fall, and I don’t know if I can handle the cold weather again after living in Virginia for 4 years where temperatures in January stay around 30 degrees.
I think we need to give our “life surge,” just like the real “surge,” more time. We’ve been meeting most of the benchmarks!