I decided I wanted a burrito for dinner tonight, so I got on Citysearch to find the best burrito place near my house. Turns out there’s some place called “Burrito Factory” a couple miles away, and it’s rated a 9.1/10, so I decide to try it.

I walk in and order a burrito to go, then sit down at a table. Next to me, two guys are talking animatedly about something. I listen in on the conversation. One of them is talking about hacking a HD-Tivo…something about the serial port…and then complaining bitterly about FreeBSD’s lack of Serial ATA support for whatever chipset he’s using with his SATA card.

But seriously, my favorite overheard geek conversation has to be the following. This happened a few months ago. I am out with a friend at the Country Inn off Saratoga. (Country Inn is like Denny’s, but a bit better and locally-owned.) This place is called “Country Inn”, so I am expecting old people ordering the senior citizen specials, right?

There is a loud argument going on at the next table between two guys. Turns out one of them is a PHP programmer and one of them is a Java programmer. And there is war happening at that table. I hear words like “enterprise” and “beans” and “object-oriented” being bandied about. Still in a heated argument, they pay their bill and leave, not pausing for a second to look up at the rest of the people at the restuarant, who are watching them with mild curiosity and amusement.

I love San Jose.

(Oh, and Burrito Factory was really good. If you’re in the area, check it out. It’s on Camden, in a strip mall, just to the west of Union.)

Please stop putting addictive substances into your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream so I can resume my normal life without craving it constantly.

Yours truly,
-Erica

P.S. That receipt that you printed out at the register after I bought my last pint — WHICH IS ALREADY GONE — yesterday… you know, that coupon for 75 cents off two more pints of your heavenly goodness? Yeah, that one. That was just evil.

Oh man. I pretty much killed myself at BARCamp last weekend. And by “killed myself” I mean “killed off that pesky immune system.” That’s right; I’m sick. A cold is my body’s way of telling me “SLOW DOWN FOR A MINUTE AND GET SOME SLEEP, WOULDJA?!” I guess sleeping 4 hours Friday night and 6 hours Saturday (and that was a fragmented 6 hours; it was more like 4+1+1) was not enough, despite the fact that I slept most of Sunday to make up for it. I took yesterday almost completely off work as a “recovery day” and I took another half-day off today to take another nap, toss down some Sudafed, and relax a bit.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, vacation!!! Okay, so my silly friend Andrew (yes, Andrew, you are silly!) is a 9-year Burning Man veteran, and he told me such great stories about it that I just had to try it. Why Burning Man? Well, apart from the obvious why-NOT-Burning-Man-as-I-am-one-of-those-crazy-people-who-will-try-almost-anything-once, a lot of my friends have gone and really enjoyed it; I need a vacation; and I really need a vacation where I don’t have to be awakened by my cell phone. Since there are no cell towers in the desert, that problem is solved (thank God.) Brandon & Ben have agreed to hold down the office for a week while I am gone and report back to me with a “Erica, please hire someone with X, Y, and Z skills so we are not running around like crazy people when you decide to take a vacation” post-mortem when I get back.

So Andrew and I went to a Giants game last night, where we watched the Giants stomp the Phillies 5-0 and sat there talking about Burning Man the whole time. I bought my ticket today ($240; craigslist saved me about $18 over the list price!) and found a ride, a tent, and bought some weird/cool/funky clothes (the pics that come out of this are going to be freakin’ hilarious!) I still need to buy more clothes, and get together some “essentials” like dust masks and water before I go.

I am fabulously excited about Burning Man, as I already know it will be completely unlike anything I have ever experienced, and please God let there be some hottie guys there, cuz I need some’o’dat. I’ve put Forex training on hold for a couple of weeks (until I get back) so I can devote my full attention to making sure Burning Man rocks my freakin’ world. This week is already completely crammed full of stuff to do; I have something going on every single night, and conflicting engagements most of those nights! I have become a social butterfly and I am lovin’ every minute of it!

Until next time… I’m preparing to PARTY!!

I’m live at BARCamp, which is what I would term an offbeat but fun “meatspace” networking event. Back story: Tim O’Reilly, who is the founder of the O’Reilly publishing house, holds an event called FOO Camp every year in the woods in Sebastopol, CA (read: middle of nowhere) which brings together a bunch of geeks (200 or so). The geeks get together and brainstorm all weekend on new technology. This is considered the “A-list” party for geeks to attend every year.

However, there are many more geeks who want to go to FOO Camp than who actually get to go due to the limited space at Tim’s hideout in Sebastopol. So some geeks decided to do an event here in the Bay Area instead. The premise: FOO Camp, only without the woods, and without the “exclusive invite” strategy. SocialText donated a 2500sq.ft. office in downtown Palo Alto, several sponsors (including Simpli!) donated money for food, and the rest is history… an all-weekend, goofy geek party with free food, tents in the office, people camping out under tables, and lots’n’lots of laptops and interesting people. Oh, and in the spirit of things like Burning Man, you’re supposed to give or participate in a conference or demo session of something cool that you’re doing.

I stayed here last night till about 4AM, went home, slept for about 7 hours, and came back to an already-packed house full of weary (or, in some cases, caffeine-buzzed) geeks. I’ve attended several fascinating sessions on everything from “How to succeed at Google AdWords” to “Women in technology” to “Why our pluralistic voting system sucks, and which voting systems don’t suck.” I must say that the conference sessions are amazingly well-done considering people signed up for slots on handwritten pieces of paper on one of the walls!

My goal here was to walk out with the conference attendees knowing what Simpli was all about and that we offer dedicated servers, colocation, and shared hosting here in San Jose. I started off by talking to Andy Smith, one of the organizers, about doing a hardware sale of some of Simpli’s old hardware to raise money for food. A couple of us in irc.freenode.net #barcamp thought it might work even better as an auction, so Ben and I spent 5 hours on Friday labeling old equipment and hauling it up to Palo Alto for the auction. I would definitely consider the auction a success! Most of the items (which are old hard drives and computers with prices starting at $5) have received at least one bid, and a few have even had multiple bids. We’ve gotten rid of some old hardware and raised about $200 for this BARCamp (or the next one, if this one already has all of the meals bought.)

I definitely think BARCamp was executed quite well for having been planned so quickly. I’m also celebrating being able to meet other women who are in this industry; geek women are so rare and it’s great to meet some who live close by. I definitely think BARCamp will be happening again, and I also think it will shape the direction of the next SuperHappyDevHouse. (One example: The presentations really do add to the event and “gel” the whole thing together, as opposed to it just being a weekend-long water-cooler hangout.) It has been a great weekend so far!

I took a few days off from Forex and headed up to Sacramento to join N at the state fair on Saturday. It was pretty fun! I think the best part was the giant turkey leg N had for lunch. That was some turkey leg! Food and fat people galore…and lots of ways to spend money, though N and I got out relatively unscathed. Even though the fair was held in Sacramento, which is notorious for being really hot in the summer, it was a gorgeous day and wasn’t burning hot.

Last night, I dove back into Forex for my 1-week anniversary of trading. Last night felt to me like the first night where I had true confidence in my trading skills, and it showed… I made 14 pips in 2 trades!

There are many different styles of trading, from “day trading” (where you hold open a trade from 1 hour to 72 hours), to “momentum trading” (you “ride the wave” and try to get a lot of pips in a short time), to this goofy little offshoot of trading called “pip sniping”. Pip snipers are the hit-and-run gangsters of trading. Pip snipers “pick off” tiny movements in currency and get 2, 3, 5, or 10 pips in a trade… and they do it as many times a day as necessary to make a ton of money in trading.

After a few days of trading, you definitely find the trading style of the 3 above that you’re most in line with. Day traders will leave trades open overnight and set careful limits and stops to get what they want; momentum traders keep half an eye on the market all day (and often set up SMS alerts when a market hits a certain level); and pip snipers are always ready with the trigger finger, poised on that “buy” or “sell” button. Yeah, I’m a pip sniper! (Actually, I think most traders start out as pip snipers, and then progress to other forms of trading.) There’s something about the adrenaline rush of pip sniping that’s quite addictive. “It’s going up!” you crow excitedly (or in dismay, depending on how you just traded.) “Now it’s going down!” Since the market changes every few seconds, you always have something going on. This is when it’s helpful to have two monitors; you can keep the charts open on the secondary monitor and glance over every few minutes to make sure you have a good feel for what the market is doing.

I’ve pip-sniped 3 pips so far tonight, and I called the market right on the money! I’m going to put up some example charts on makemoneytradingcurrency.com just as soon as I have time to write about how I trade.

As a side note, I started with $5000 in my demo account (demo account = not real money), and I now have $5025. In my first week, I’ve made 17 trades, of which 10 have gained me pips. That’s a 58.8% average, which is pretty good for week #1! I’ll keep these statistics updated as I continue trading.