Travel

Back from Rio de Janeiro

I want to apologize for the lack of job postings in these last two weeks. I had to travel unexpectedly to Rio de Janeiro due to my mother’s passing away suddenly. It was a big stress for me and my family.

I got back to Orlando this morning

The good part of the trip was that I got to meet in person two icons from the ColdFusion group CFBrasil, FelipeMX and João Felipe. We had lunch at a typical Brazilian restaurant in Ipanema, “Brasileirinho”, and discussed the possibility of having Gert Franz (Railo) talking to universities and schools in the near future. They are young, full of talent, excellent programmers and are willing to help the CFML growth in Brazil with implementation of Railo open source.

DSC07609
DSC07611

Back from Vacation!

Oasis of the SeasI’m back from my 2-week vacation. I purposely haven’t take my laptop with me. Internet access on the cruise was too expensive and I turned myself off completely to enjoy Cozumel, the islands and the Oasis of the Seas, fantastic 17-floor ship. One week cruising and it was not enough to explore the whole ship. I spent the second week with family and friends in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando parks.

Sorry for the lack of posts during that time. I’ll catch up with the job postings from now one.

Michael Jackson In Rio de Janeiro

I found this video on YouTube from long time ago when Michael Jackson visited Brazil. He recorded this video clip in a “Favela” (gueto) in Rio de Janeiro, with the participation of a School of Samba, showing “slumbdogs not milionaire” playing their drums and practicing sort of samba.The quality of the video is not good, but it’s interesting.

Presentation At Valença, Rio de Janeiro

Last month, during my vacation in Rio de Janeiro, I took the opportunity to accept an invitation from the educational foundation Dom André Arcoverde in Valença (State of Rio de Janeiro) to talk about current web technology  in the United States. I spoke to the Faculty of Information Technology about ColdFusion and other Adobe products like Flex, Air, but mostly about ColdFusion.

I want to thank Ben Forta and the Adobe Team for their support in sending me several Powerpoint presentations and DVDs for distribution.

Unfortunately, maybe because of the security detectors at the airports, my netbook failed and I lost everything I had prepared, even the backup pen-drives. So I had 2 days left to prepare a new presentation. With more information about the level of knowledge of the students there, I could prepare a new presentation on their level, more interactive, with much more code examples. Most of the students and teacher didn’t even know what ColdFusion was.

Well, the final result was amazing. Both students and faculty understood the power of ColdFusion through the examples shown “on-the-fly”. They were amazed by the speed od coding and the results. So, now the faculty is planning to implement ColdFusion at the university for the administration and in a near future, to implement ColdFusion in their curriculum (right now they teach PHP and some Java).

I considered my job done, and hope the CF community can start going to universities and schools to promote our beloved ColdFusion.

Back To Work…

I’m back from my 3-week vacation in Brazil. Too sad ! I wish I had more weeks to stay on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and the northeast.
Well, I’ll start writing technical articles again, but first let me introduce to you a place for those who want to spend some time in Rio de Janeiro. It is a Bed & Breakfast from a friend of mine, called “Casa da Renata Bed & Breakfast“. They advertise in Sweden, here is their site in English: http://www.fritiden.se/en/object-rental/8457/ and below are some photos.

Renata's Bed & Breakfast Entrance
Renata's Bed & Breakfast Living room
Renata's Bed & Breakfast Bedroom
Renata Bread & BreakfastTerrace

American Flight 905 Miami-Rio on Mother's Day

I had a terrible fllight from Miami to Rio de Janeiro. My flight, American Airlines #905, had to do an unscheduled stop in Manaus (north of Brazil) to allow a passenger who had heart problems to be attended. After 3 hours waiting inside the plane, finally we were cleared to continue the trip.

Soon as we landed in Rio de Janeiro, our plane was kept off the terminal in quarantine while they redirected all passengers to a room for health inspection. That transformed my normal 8:30-hour trip into a 13-hour one.

That made me be late for the Mother’s Day lunch with the family at a famous steakhouse, but I made it and found everyone there waiting

Well I flew the next day (Monday) to the northeast and I’m enjoying my vacation in the beaches of Maceio, state of Alagoas.
Maceio04 Maceio03 Maceio02

Happy New Year !

Happy New Year to everyone !
It has been 4 years since last time I went to Rio de Janeiro, and now the Carnival approaches and I will miss it  again.
A friend sent me several pictures in a Powerpoint presentation with a Bossa Nova song in background just to tease me and I’m sharing some of them with you here.
I recommend you to book your trip for Feb/Mar 2010 in advance and enjoy the Carnival in Rio, or if you want to try this year, you may find still some tickets available.
Copacabana BeachCopacabana BeachView From Christ Redeemer