schmichael's blog » Portland

Biking to Work

Michael Schurter — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:51:11 +0000

Finally made it up to biking to work 3 times this week! Had only been averaging about once every 2 weeks for the past couple months. Sam & I recently moved to North Portland which is flat. We had been living in the very hilly Southwest area of town, and biking to work from there was killer.

I really didn’t realize how much my situation had improved until my friend, Aaron Colflesh, pointed me to HeyWhatsThat.com which generates elevation change profiles for you based on coordinates:

My current route from home to work:

It has a good 100′ hill in it. Not fun on the way home, but it doesn’t last too long.

Now compare that to my old route from home to work:

No wonder I never did it more than once a week! It was brutal coming home.

We’re much happier in North Portland in general, but finding these diagrams made me feel much better about struggling to get on bike at the old place.

Catching up on photos: Lots o’ Hiking

Michael Schurter — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:55:07 +0000

I’ve finally gotten around to organizing and uploading over a months worth of photos off of my little digital camera. Just to make sure there’s something geeky in this post: I use F-Spot to organize and upload my photos to PicasaWeb. Despite neither of those products being terribly popular, I really enjoy them both. I’ve found PicasaWeb to be a lot easier to work with than Flickr, but Flickr definitely has a lot more support from 3rd party tools and products.

You can view all of my photo albums or just check out the ones you’re interested in:

Failed Ramona Falls Hike – Sam & I attempted to hike to Ramona Falls one day, but a 6″ deep snow drift on East Lola Pass Road stopped us from continuing. Was still a very enjoyable day driving around Mt. Hood.
Horsetail Falls Hike – Fun hike in Columbia River Gorge.
Saddle Mountain Hike – An incredible hike that technically defeated us about a quarter of a mile before the summit. There was still a lot of snow in some spots, so we’ll have to return to finish the hike someday soon!
Jen & Veen’s visit – Just a random assortment of pictures from when some friends visited.

Join #webdevpdx on Freenode

Michael Schurter — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:59:33 +0000

Chris just created a channel for web developers in Portland, OR on Freenode, so if you’re a web developer (or sysadmin or dba or designer or manager forced to deal with us webdevs) come on in!

#webdevpdx on irc.freenode.net

New to IRC? Try one of these clients:

Pidgin (but not really Adium)
Chatzilla
and of course The Client of the Future: irssi

Update: I should have mentioned I’m schmichael on IRC.

From Anabaptist to Methodist and Back Again

Michael Schurter — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 03:18:13 +0000

My wife, Samantha, and I attended Portland Mennonite Church for their Sunday morning service today. The singing was beautiful.[1] The sermon excellent.[2] And the potluck: classic.[3] Ironically within seconds of nervously taking a seat at potluck someone mentions going to Central Illinois for a wedding, and we discovered someone else’s wife went to the same tiny summer camp in Minnesota as Sam.

However, the real irony was in the fact that I found myself enjoying an Anabaptist service. To understand this you have to know a bit of Schurter family lore:

My father grew up United Methodist, swore it off and joined a Apostolic Christian Church, and in the past few years has gone back to a United Methodist Church.

I grew up in the Apostolic church, went off to college and became Methodist (Free, then United), and now I’m back at an Anabaptist church (albeit Mennonite instead of German Apostolic).

I guess I should clarify Sam & I haven’t joined the Portland Mennonite Church, but we’re definitely planning on going back!

1. I’m a sucker for hymns and actual multi-part harmonies. This was only my second time experience Mennonite singing, but both times have been the best congregational singing I’ve ever heard.

2. It was on the Parable of the Talents. The pastor managed to speak frankly both about the current financial crisis and our responsibility to do good (the true meaning of the parable poorly summed up in a sentence fragment…sorry).

3. Lots of casseroles (“hotdish” in Minnesotan).

Moved to Portland, OR

Michael Schurter — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 05:51:28 +0000

My wife & I just arrived in Portland, OR today after 4 grueling days of travel via Penske from Peoria, IL.

Job 1 is finding a place to live, so we can move out of our friend’s apartment.
Job 2 is finishing up a project Chris Pitzer & I have been toying with for ages and really need to get live.

Stay tuned, and ping me if you live in Portland, OR and like Python, Linux, Web Dev, Open Source, and/or Beer. I’m always looking for exciting new contracting opportunities as well, although at the moment I’m pretty swamped with existing clients.

Right now its bed time because I’m dead tired and have a full day of apartment hunting and catching up on work ahead of me tomorrow.

If you care about my personal life, feel free to look me up on Facebook. This blog is my geek outlet, but I’m not promising my personal life is any more exciting.