Apologies for the light posting the last few days. It’s the more or less inevitable result of my constant travel, several recent client projects, and as of yesterday morning a throat that’s been annexed by some sort of fierce animal – possibly badger or large racoon – producing both a sore throat and hacking cough. The folks from Scalix were very understanding during my first call of the day, but the reality is that I sound like my throat has been sandblasted (which, in a way, it was). I have not at the present time officially identified the vector for my mild but quite irritating illness, but when the culprit is found my vengeance will be swift if ineffectual.
In the meantime, couple of items to mention:
- Holiday Week Schedule:
I’m currently scheduled to catch a 11:10 flight Wednesday morning out to LaGuardia for the annual Thanksgiving visit. Big thanks to Alex for sending along this airport parking link as DIA’s economy and long term lots are almost always full the day before a major holiday. I’ll be in NY/NJ through Saturday, returning to Denver late afternoon. The net is that I’ll be out of the office most of the day on Wednesday, though I may try to get something written on the plane. - WordPress Migration:
At some point over the break, I’m going to try to cut us over to WordPress from Movable Type, with the assistance of one very kind individual. I’m hopeful that the transition will be relatively transparent for all of you, although it’s likely that you’ll notice little things like our feeds being completely refreshed. I’ll post before or after, but if you notice anything wonky feel free to drop me a line. - Personal Host:
So far the decision to go with John Companies for our colocation needs has been an excellent one. We’ve had no measurable downtime (that I didn’t cause), and all of my requests to support for new domains and the like have been handled eerily quickly. I’m very happy with that decision (although it should be noted that I was similarly happy w/ 1and1 at one point). So far, so good.But John Companies are a bit out of my budget for a personal site, which has been hosted with 1and1 for several years at no cost. I’ve considered getting a bare bones personal server with something like ServerPronto for $30 a month, but I just don’t think I need it for the few things I’m hosting there. On the short list for a personal account at the moment are Austin Web Development and TextDrive – any others you’d recommend I look at for cheap personal hosting?
- Email / Comments Backup:
Just an FYI to those of you waiting on replies to email or comments: I’m not ignoring you, I’m just quite backed up. I’m making progress, however, and expect to be reasonably up to date by tomorrow. If you have an urgent matter for me to attend to, just ping me on IM. - Speaking of IM: Responsiveness:
After I unintentionally insulted someone a week or two back with some IM latency, I just figured it would be worth clarifying my response behaviors with respect to the IM channel. If we’ve interacted before and I know you even a bit, I’m going to respond to IMs. It may just be to say – “busy, can’t talk now” – but if at all possible, I’ll reply. If you’re not getting a response, it’s unintentional: I might be away and forgot to set my availability, I might be having machine issues, I might be having network issues.For those of you I don’t know, my responsiveness will vary according to my workload. If I’ve got multiple things occupying my attention, it might take a bit to get my attention. Apologies in advance.
- Upcoming Holiday Time/Travel Moratorium:
As discussed previously, but worth repeating given the inbound requests for my time, I’m on the road probably every week between now and Christmas – sometimes twice. Following Christmas, however, I’m taking my customary two weeks sandwiched around New Year’s Eve, during which time I will not be responding to emails/phone. Once I’m back, I will not be traveling – with the aforementioned exception of Mashup Camp in mid-Jan – until late October’s Lotusphere. I’m trying to get into the habit of blocking out predefined periods of no travel; August is the next likely candidate. Just an FYI. - stikkit:
One of the sites I’ve been waiting to see was the online organizer stikkit, which launched back at Web 2.0. As I told stikkit’s Surj Patel a week or two before, I was intrigued by stikkit’s potential, although John Gruber’s initial review of the service is somewhat less enthusiastic. After creating my account following the official door opening, however, I exited rather quickly after learning that the export functions were not yet delivered. I’m not putting that kind of information into an application that I can’t extract it from. Last Friday, however, the stikkit folks announced iCal export from the calendar, so it would appear that they’re making real progress there. Soon as I can export everything I need, I’ll give it a real trial as my current capture solutions are far from perfect. - Welcome Back Ryan:
You may have seen this already in my del.icio.us links, but Ryan’s back on the scene, and I highly recommend you peruse this dynamic language advocate’s take on the open source Java news. I can’t say it enough: we’re all better for it when Ryan is blogging. This is a reminder of how nice it is when some of the voices you respect return to the keyboard, and gives me hope – faint though it might be – that we might hear more from Adam some time down the line.
The only other things to add are sports related. As someone who’s watched Pedro Martinez pitch to Alfonso Soriano and basically play a game of “let’s see how far outside the strike zone he’ll swing,” I personally think the Cubs are out of their gourd for what they signed him for. Lastly, my condolences to the Michigan fans in the audience (even though I think your loss helps my Irish). Saturday’s game was outstanding, and hard fought on both sides.
