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I was not prepared for this.

Still really warm here.

People said that it gets hot here.

I thought that I understood hot. “I’ve lived in hot places before”, I said to myself.

Sure, Sacramento gets pretty warm in the summer. Maybe one or two weeks of 100+ weather in August.

But never have I experienced anything like this.

In January, we had snow one week and 70 degree weather the next. By February it was in the 80s, March and April in the mid-90s. By May, we had our first 100 degree day, and I suspect that it has only dipped below 100 briefly a couple times since.

The house AC has been running constantly, I’m scared to open the power bill every month, the lawn is dead (we’ve had just over 4 inches of rain so far this year), and I pretty much hide indoors anytime before midnight.

I guess the good thing is that unlike last August, when we first moved to Austin, the temps have been dipping down into the 70s at night. I remember when we first moved here, it was 100+ during the day and 95 at night.

That was rough.

Amusingly, when it’s this hot for this long, you do sort of get used to it. Kylie and I have gone out a few times lately and said to each other “wow, it’s nice out tonight”, then checked the weather:

95 degrees.

Rule 0

I note one of you has his hand and wants to ask a question. Go ahead. “What is our hackerspace’s philosophy?” you ask. Well I’m glad you asked that question as I was struggling to come up with an un-contrived way to work this into a blog post. You really saved my bacon.  Well our hackspace can been summed up with three sayings.

0) Don’t be on fire.

This embodies our essential and fundamental philosophical belief that each individual human should strive not to combust in an oxygen rich atmosphere. The rules of thermodynamics are against us, but with care we have so far managed to maintain this rule. We have enshrined this philosophy as our hackspaces rule 0, showing the reverence that we hold this axiom.

1) Well volunteered.

We believe in self-empowerment and also spreading out power among our members. So whenever someone suggests a project or problem that needs fixing they become responsible for implementing it.

2) Let me show you this neat thing.

We enjoy sharing our knowledge and projects with other people, this extends to young hackdays where we teach young kids about technology and how to make things.

I stumbled on this gem from London Hackspace while judging entries to the 2011 Great Global Hackerspace Challenge.

The five finalists from the ~30 hackerspaces that entered (not all listed here) will be announced soon!