Wow, it really has been a great summer. I spent most of it in my home town, Marquette in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Marquette is a great little city on Lake Superior. The weather is fair, beaches are beautiful, and it has world class mountain biking trails that are easily accessed from anywhere in town.
I bought a Jeep Wrangler and did a lot of camping and exploring in the deep woods of the UP. You can checkout the photos on flickr.
I also spent 3 weeks in Seattle with my girlfriend Amy. She participated in a teaching program there, so I tagged along... telecommuting is a great thing :) On the weekends, we made 2 trips to Olympic National Park and one trip to San Juan Island.
On San Juan Island, we went sea kayaking with Sea Quest Expeditions. The guides from Sea Quest are great and we were really lucky to come across several pods of Orca whales. Check out my little video..
Ben Ellingson is a software engineer, web developer, and consultant. He is the creator of nofluffjuststuff.com, uberconf.com, and related NFJS websites. He has 13 years of development experience, is an active member of the Boulder Java Users Group and the No Fluff Just Stuff community. He spent his early career at EDS and IBM; then developed a content management system for nCube, a pioneer in the Video On Demand space. He is a multi-talented developer; proficient coding on the server-side, front-end, and mobile applications. His latest creation is the iPad app for Über Conf. Ben lives in Boulder, Colorado. He is an avid runner, who has nearly completed his goal to run the world's 5 major marathons. You can keep up with Ben's work at benellingson.blogspot.com.
