Jesse Ross | jesseross.com

So, this is a little late coming, but my birthday was a couple of weeks ago. The day of my birthday was pretty quiet — I picked up my little one from school and headed up to my mom’s for a quiet little family get-together with my mom, dad, brother, sister and Ali. The night before I had met with Robb do crank out some frames for an animated sequence of one of his short flicks, and afterwards he and I got together with a small group of my closest friends for drinking and good conversation at the Chatterbox in St Paul. That was the night of the second debate, so we had plenty to chat about, and it seemed everyone had a good time — I know that I certainly did.

Hannah had told me weeks in advance to save the weekend following my birthday for a big surprise she had planned for me. We had joked about it for a while, with her asking me “what do you think we’re going to do?” and “where do you think we’re going to go?” and me offering up ever more ridiculous locations: “I hear Des Moines is nice this time of year”; “What’s going on in Bismarck?”; “I’ve always wanted to go back to Winnipeg.” At one point, I even suggested she might take me on a staycation to St Paul, since I have a special bond with the city I attended college in, a city Hannah lovingly refers to as “East Minneapolis.”

Little did I know the adventure that was in store for me on Saturday at 2:00. She told me to pack a days worth of clothing, as well as some nicer “out on the town” clothes, and we headed eastward. At this point, I was thinking “well, maybe we’ll go to her dad’s in Afton, or we could even go as far as Madison.” When we exited in St Paul, then it hit me: We really are going to St Paul for my birthday.

Our first stop was Heimie’s Haberdashery, the finest mens’ clothing shop in the metro. I had never been in before, despite having spent a fair amount of time wandering the streets of downtown St Paul, but I had heard great things from Hannah’s dads. Upon entering, I was surprised (but not too surprised) to see Richard, Hannah’s dad there. He and Hannah informed me that we were to be picking out some fancy new clothes for me, which we then proceeded to do. I got placed in a pretty sharp pair of slacks, button down shirt, sweater, sport coat and scarf, a few of which I ended up leaving the store with, the rest staying behind to be tailored to a perfect fit (I have to admit, I look damn sexy in the whole shebang).

After the clothing adventured, we walked the edge of Rice Park to the St Paul Hotel, where Hannah had arranged a fancy suite for us, right in the heart of the city and across the street from Rice Park (the cutest little European-inspired park in the city). We unpacked our bags, watched some TV, ordered some room service, and just hung out and relaxed for a few hours before dinner.

Hannah hadn’t planned dinner (she did try to get us in at Meritage, but it was booked), so I decided on Pazzaluna, an Italian restaurant I’d heard great things about but also never checked out. We got all fancied up and walked outside and across the street for dinner. The drinks at Pazzaluna were superb, and the gnocchi was seriously to die for; it just melted in your mouth (my mouth is watering right now just thinking about it…).

After our amazing and romantic meal, we decided to take an evening stroll around the city. We wandered up and down the river, stopping to chat and kiss and explore the buildings. We eventually made our way back into the downtown, to the area I referred to as the “dimly lit part of St Paul.” Eventually we ended up passing by a little bar called Señor Wong. The bar was new, and I had never heard of it, but since the night was still young and our hotel was within stumbling distance, Hannah suggested we take a peek inside and maybe grab a drink or two.

We got inside, and Hannah seemed to be actively looking for something, but I wrote it off as her being curious. Then it hit me:

“SURPRISE!”

You know that moment when you run into someone, like a business associate or a school acquaintance, but they’re out of context, like at a grocery store or a Death Cab for Cutie concert? That was the experience that I had seeing my family in this bar I had never heard of, in a city they rarely come to, at 9:00 in the evening. When it hit me that I was actually looking at my family and friends, and yes, Hannah had indeed arranged this whole thing far in advance, and had thrown my the first surprise party in my 28 years on this earth, I was blown away. Hannah had even arranged for the bar to mix a special birthday drink for me: a sort of a caipirinha with fresh limeade. My friends and I all drank and chatted and ate and had a great time (watching Michael fail miserably at drunken pool was a particular highlight). Hannah had pulled off the perfect surprise party for me, and given me a birthday day to remember… I’m most definitely the luckiest guy ever to have managed to end up with her.

Thanks, honey… you’ve set quite a bar for me to try to hit for your birthday next month ;)

Happy 50th, Dad! Here’s to another 50 more!

So, I discovered as of late that I’ve been added to a bunch of MN tech blog feeds. That means that people are probably subscribed to them (otherwise why would they have made them), and they’re looking for all the latest and greatest in tech news in the frozen midwest.

Well, sorry to disappoint, but you’re going to get me in the mix too.

Yes, I may write about some tech stuff. But I also rant about sappy shit like love. Which is the topic of tonight’s post.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. I’m feeling pretty meh about the whole thing. The only redeeming feature about tomorrow is the fact that Ali gets to have a big party at school… and that I am guaranteed to get at least one Valentine card (from her, of course). I guess it’s expected for single bloggers to bitch about tomorrow (hence groups like this), but I’m not really that bitter. Sure, I would love to have someone to share dinner with tomorrow, but I haven’t decided if replacing all my free time with wooing attempts on the phone late into the night is really worth the trade.

I started writing a post complaining about how New Year’s always lets me down, but that’s really no way to start out 2007. So, instead, let’s talk about what cool things I’m working on for this year:

• Go to FOSDEM in Belgium
• Animate/create special effects for a short film
• Evangelize Jabber
• Launch an alternate reality game
• Wrap up season 2 of Chasing Windmills
• Do a 5 week immersion in Brazil this summer
• Participate in 24 Hour Comics Day
• Create a vlog mini-series
• Teach Ali to read so that I can teach her how to use a computer and build web sites

I realize that I still have about a month before I’m officially allowed to start making New Year’s Resolutions, but with this one I want to make sure I give people sufficient warning. As many of you out there know, I’m a big advocate of open source, and an even bigger advocate of open standards. It’s because of open standards we have things like the Internet, the Web and email. Well, in an effort to support open standards, as of the first of the year I am moving over to Jabber exclusively for my instant messaging needs.

At this point, you probably have one or more of the following questions:

• “What is Jabber? And, other than wanting to talk to you, why should I use it?”
• “How do I get Jabber?”
• “What is your new address?”

If you’ve never heard of Jabber, Jabber (known formally as XMPP), is an instant messaging protocol, just like AIM, Yahoo Messenger or MSN. The biggest difference is that Jabber is open and decentralized. For example, if you want to talk to someone who uses AIM, you need to go through AOL’s servers. If you want to talk to someone using MSN, you need to go through Microsoft’s servers. Jabber is actually more like email: you can talk to people on different servers, as long as their server speaks the Jabber protocol. These include servers run by companies such as Google (via Gmail), LiveJournal and Earthlink. In fact, because it’s open, anyone can run their own server, which is what I’m doing now via my new web host.

In addition to openness and decentralization, Jabber has many other noteworthy qualities, including a much better security model than email (no spam!) and the flexibility to add custom functionality on top of the core protocol.

If you think this sounds good, and want to get in on the action, grab a client that supports Jabber. There are tons, but the ones recommended by the Jabber Software Foundation are at the top of this list. Oh, and you’ll also need a Jabber ID. If you have a Gmail account, you already have a Jabber ID: it’s the same as your email address. If you don’t have a Gmail account, there are tons of other servers offering free accounts. Here is a handy guide for getting an account on the jabber.org server.

So if you’ve ever enjoyed my witty one-liners and masterful use of emoticons, and would like to continue to enjoy them from 2007 on, hook yourself up with a Jabber ID and Jabber client and hit me up!

When in doubt, add more blood. Or bling. That’s what I always say.

Well, I just woke up. It was nice to be able to sleep in on a weekend. It doesn’t happen often, so when it does I really cherish it. But I have a lot of catch up to do here, so here we go:

First, yesterday was the day. Another birthday come and gone. I’m officially at 25 now. There are only a couple of really significant things behind being 25: I can now rent cars without crazy additional fees, my car insurance rates will drop considerably, and I will never be able to join Fabrica or be on The Real World (I don’t need the drama of The Real World anyway). The party went well. It wasn’t tons and tons of people, but it was enough, and the people who were there made for a great time. I laughed a lot, I played some great video games, I ate some awesome cake and ice cream, and I got a lot of much-needed human contact and conversation.

Second, I’ve been meaning to write about the whirlwind trip to New York. Jamey and I flew out last Saturday morning, shot tons of photos for a freelance project we’re doing, and flew back that evening. We spent something like 6 1/2 hours in the city, and about 13 hours in planes or at an airport. It was quite fun though, and even more fun since I got to hook up with Aline to hang out during that time. It was great to see her: she looks awesome and seems really happy and at ease there (most of the time!). Thank you for the birthday presents, Aliney!

Third, I finally got an iPod. It makes me happy. My FM adapter just died though, so I need to kick some ass about that one: the damn thing didn’t even survive a month, and at $40 a pop, that’s not a “subscription model” I want to be a part of.

Fourth, I’m really digging on Ruby on Rails (and Ruby in general). Plus, the awesome friend that is Jen hooked me up with some space on her server that already has Rails installed, so I’ll be crushing on that for a while, I’m sure. Even though Flash 8 has some fricken sweet features, I think there may be fewer and fewer reasons for me to build SWFs when Rails has some beautiful Ajax support.

Fifth, another of my recent crushes is del.icio.us. I’ve known about it for a while, and always thought it sounded neat, but only recently have I witnessed the true power of that which is del.icio.us. If you have not checked it out, do yourself a favor.

Sixth and last, I’m building… something. It’s not art, it’s not software. But it’s cool, and I hope you’re going to want it. Stay tuned to our irregularly scheduled program…