Category: Site News

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Effective Immediately: I’m Closing My Ill-Used Spam-Attracting Forums That Barely Serve A Vestigial Purpose At This Point

Essentially: it does what it says on the tin. My bbPress forums were
a) Magnets for spammers of every *dol, Cia*, Dolc*gab* and Ho*ref*nance
2) CPU chewers for little payoff
D) Not really used by y’all or me*
So, in short, I’m deactivating them and shall breathe a sigh of relief.
If you’ve comments related to my posts, feel free to leave them in the, errrm, comments sections. If you’ve Elbee Elgee-related bugfixes or feature requests, plunk ’em in the Bitbucket issue tracker. I’ll also keep an eye on the forums over on WordPress.org in order to keep current.
In shorter short: so long, and thanks for all the fish, bbPress!

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Reach Out And Touch Someone

Apparently my contact form has been non-functional for a while. I finally figured out that it was due to the old contact form plugin I was using not working when Akismet (ptui!) is disabled.
So I rebuilt it from scratch and now you can recommence your comments, complaints, etc. with all due haste. *grin*

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Merry Christmas!

For to us a child is born,
   to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
   and he is called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

-Isaiah 9:6 (ESV)

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…Huh? Whazzat?

Egads! Cables!
Fear not, long-suffering readers, for lo!, I am yet alive. I’ve been reliving the last week each of the last three, namely: working ’til around 1am Monday and Tuesday followed up by general craziness with church-related stuff Wednesdays and Thursdays and then, more likely than not, time off on Fridays.
Things have calmed down for the moment, though. Be warned, however — the first person that says “Veritas”, “Legato Networker” or “JetStor” to me gets a withering stare and possibly a Vulcan Death Grip in return.
That is all that I shall say of the matter.

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Blogging, Or Lack Thereof

So it’s readily apparent that my blog output has been woeful as of late. I could come up with a litany of excuses as to why this is so, but truth be told, it’s been a case of my heart not being in it.
Suffice it to say that Real Life Concerns have been weighing heavily upon my time, some of which I will discuss later, some of which I probably never will be able to.
Long and short of it, though, is that I’m still alive and kicking and hope to return to blogging form some time very soon.
In the meantime, may I offer you these exquisite LOLBirds for your consideration and edification?

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Seasons’ Change

Regular readers will have noticed that updates have been, well, sporadic around these parts. There’s a very good reason for this: September 4th marked my 7th anniversary at my company; September 5th, I was offered a new job. Monday was my last day at my old company, which I’ve always declined to mention, as it just seemed prudent. (Let’s just call it Mock Seed Tartan.) Tuesday was my first day at the new place.
I’m excited to be working at Learning By Grace — I’ve been brought on as “Mr. IT”, platforms guy and hopefully will be able to help them make a transition from more of a startup mentality to one more focused on production and performance.
Leaving my previous job was definitely a hard decision, though primarily for one reason and one reason only: the people. Beyond Aron I had many, many friends there and I will miss each and every one dearly.
Hopefully my posting frequency will begin to go back up a bit as I get acclimated in my new surroundings. Thanks for the understanding.
And to those of you at ATL: thanks for 7 great years. I wish you all the success in the world.

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There’s A-Doin’s Afoot

Can’t go into depth right now, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy as of late, thus le output du blogge has been, well, downright pitiful, and for that, I R Sorry.
I promise you, though, things will soon be

Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, I have started my own little photo blog where I hope to post some of the best shots taken by either myself or my wife. Not much up there at the moment, but I hope to post a bunch more short order.

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Traffic Surfing


So last week was fun, traffic-wise. Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds posted a link to an older entry of mine on the same day that he opined about the prevalence of “Can’t connect to database” errors that WordPress-powered sites tend to throw under load. Fortunately for me, I had anticipated just such a meteoric rise to Cylon-powered stardom and installed Donncha’s WP Super Cache plugin, and lo!, all was well. Unfortunately, as the above graph shows, few of those inbound links resulted in follow-on visits. Ingrates! Trespassers! Users! Fie!
*grin*
The link resulted in my single highest day’s traffic and my single highest week’s aggregate traffic, which is definitely nice, considering my highest-trafficked pieces to date have been my contributions to Teh Internets’ vast archive of Scottish Slang. So, you know, net benefit and all that.

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Texas Travelogue ’08, Day 1

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series Texas Travelogue '08

Things have been slow around the blog the last week (obviously), since the fam and I have been on the road in Texas, visiting my in-laws. Please accept these next few round-ups as a small amount of compensation for the dearth.

Day 1: Saturday, March 8th

Kate and Poppy.
Scooted over from home to my parents’ place to hop a ride down to PHL to catch our flight out of Philly. American Airlines’ check-in services was painfully slow (to the tune of 1:15), so much so that we cleared check-in with a mere 5 minutes to spare before our scheduled departure. We cleared the TSA’s gauntlet in nigh-record time and huffed our way to the gate, only to find around 30 other folks waiting to board as well. We hopped aboard the 737, took our seats and a few deep breaths later were on our way to the flightline.
We were looking forward to a timely takeoff, but the weather had different ideas apparently, as we ended up sitting on the tarmac for around an hour waiting for a line of thunderstorms to blow themselves out before chancing departure. Fortunately, we only ended up losing an hour and were aloft with very little trouble.
The flight was smooth and relatively uneventful, with Alvin and the Chipmunks being the in-flight “entertainment” (so labeled since I was able to follow the entire movie, start-to-finish, without the benefit of headphones) and the drink service minimal, but we soldiered on. The kids were wonderful for the duration of the 3.5 hour flight, so much so that we received compliments from several sets of passengers as to their behavior upon our arrival at DFW.
“Nanny” and “Poppy” met us at the airport and swung us by Whattaburger to grab dinner (I ate a chicken sandwich, and yes, I’m aware of the irony inherent in that) and then went back to my in-laws to hit the hay as soon as was possible.