Not only did Jen and I go to Ikea today and fill up the van with build-it-yourself boxed Swedish furniture, but after we got back and unloaded the van, I went and bought a very swanky 2002 Volvo S80. I sent a picture to Flickr, but it hasn’t shown up yet… (so I just uploaded it.).\
Yes, I know that the S80 wasn’t on the list. I went to Don Beyer intending to get a lovely little blue S60. But, as soon as I got there, it came back into the lot with a very happy person who ended up buying it. So, as I was considering my options, I wandered through the lot, and what did I spy? A lovely grey luxury car priced well below blue book that fell right into my budget. So, I found my favorite sales person (her name is Namaste, and she’s very nice… if you go to Don Beyer Volvo in Sterling, ask for her) and asked if I could take it out. She handed me a key and a plate and off I went. Since no one’s around AOL on Saturdays, I took it and whipped around campus a couple times. Wow. It’s an incredible drive, and a lot nimbler than you’d expect a large sedan to be. It takes corners like a champ and has power to spare. I’m glad I got the bigger car. It’s roomier, faster, and handles better than the S60… and gets the same decent mileage.\
I’m sore from taking out the middle seat in the van and lugging boxes of furniture from store to car to home, but I’m happy. I can stop looking for a new car for at least another 8 years. Yay!\
The only problem? Jen says I’m a yuppie now that we own a Volvo. I tried to tell her that we were already yuppies because we own a minivan, but I don’t think she believes me.
Being Prepared
Ernesto is here! Quick, grab the Dilly Bars! (hi, Mom!)
Ties that bind us
Probability that Brian and I are having a bad day on the same day: 100%. I am sure of this, because either my headache and subsequent desire to keep my eyes closed is causing Brian to shriek and run around or his shrieking and running around has caused my headache.
Dreams
You know something is wrong when you can’t get to sleep because you can’t stop thinking about work, and then when you do sleep, you have nightmares about work that wake you up. Just saying… something’s wrong when that happens.\
Oops: I upgraded to the new version of Movable Type last night and forgot to rename the comments script. It’s fixed now, so comments should work (not saying you’d want to leave a comment, but if you did, they work now).
Up Early With Photo Booth
Fun With Photo Booth\
Sitting on an install call this morning, I couldn’t help playing with Photo Booth.
On Modules and Widgets
I got a couple comments on yesterday’s post about ModuleT and widgets. I don’t post often (another vote against splitting my personal blog, I guess), but all the details about AIM Pages, our microformat or other thoughts on widgets will be over on the Alpha Blog. That’s where Joe, Shawn and I talk about module stuff. We’ve been so busy lately that we haven’t posted as much as we should, but there’s a lot to talk about, so keep your eyes peeled for news.
To Fork or Not to Fork
I’ve been working on a new blog and I keep running into the same question, so I figure I’ll pose it to you, my loyal readers (umm, I think, I actually have no idea who reads my blog and I’m OK with that). Should I start a new blog for just technical nerdy web bits or keep everything together? I’ve been itching to write longer articles on topics and I feel limited by the current layout (which I love for entirely different reasons and don’t see changing in the near future). A long article about CSS doesn’t really fit in half a page.\
What do you think? Should I start a new blog or just tweak this one? Do you read this blog because you’re my friend and we know each other in “meatspace”, or for some other reason?
E-Mail Management Tip: Unread Messages Smart Mailbox
I get a lot of mail. When things are humming, on the order of two hundred to three hundred a day. It’s a little slower now because a lot of people are on vacation, but not much. How to deal with all of it? It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of time, especially if I miss a day.\
Since I started using Apple Mail (Mail.app for those in the know), I’ve fallen in love with Smart Mailboxes. On top of the 30-40 filters I have to shunt messages into appropriate folders based on listserv or project, I have a couple smart mailboxes, the most important being Unread Messages. I created a new Smart Mailbox with a couple parameters: Message is Unread, and not in my outbox (or various other AOL IMAP folders I don’t care about like “Spam”).\
Having a single place for all my unread mail that collapses to empty when I’m done, and is sorted by thread, has saved me all kinds of time. I can quickly scan threads, making sure I only respond to the last message (or sometimes only read the last thread because it should have the whole conversation in it) and can take care of things right then, or flag them for later (that’s another smart box).\
It makes mail more like reading feeds, which makes me happy, and might make you happy too.
Keeping Track of the Big Idea
I was playing around with my Dreamhost control panel recently and noticed that there was a new one-click install for activeCollab. Being the curious sort that I am, I figured, “I’ve got unlimited domains, and practically unlimited disk space, what’s one more?” and installed it. It’s great. It’s still pre-1.0, but there are enough features, and it’s so well designed, that it’s very usable. I’ve started using it to keep track of the side project so when I’m bored and need something to tinker with, I can tinker towards something instead of just watching TV.\
Today, I added all the stuff Jen wants to do to the house (not surprisingly, that list is a lot bigger). I now get what all the GTD‘ers are talking about. It makes me feel a whole lot better seeing everything in sections, with proposed due dates and milestones. It now doesn’t seem impossible. There’s a lot to do, but with my handy-dandy copy of Home Improvement for Dummies, I think I can do a lot of it myself.\
So, if you have Dreamhost, give it a shot the one-click way. If you don’t, go download it and give it a shot (umm, you should be fairly comfortable installing things on your webserver and setting up databases… if not, go get a Dreamhost account – can you tell I like Dreamhost?).\
If you don’t have an account and want one, if you enter the promo code lawver_dreamhost when you sign up, you’ll get a 10% discount on any of the level one or two accounts. Why? Because I love Dreamhost and I think you will too.\
Yes, I know this post feels kind of spammy, but both things are really cool, and they both make me happy.
The boys
Random stories:\
I got tired and dizzy playing ring-around-the-rosie with Brian, so I transitioned us into a new game: I would dance in one spot while he ran around me. This morphed into us just dancing. At one point, I got really into the music and started getting crazy. I ran my fingers through my shoulder length hair and pulled upword, so my hair was standing on end with my fingers tugging to the beat. A moment later I looked down and saw B pulling on his short hair too, trying to dance the way I was.\
Brian turned down a chocolate chip granola bar for an apple & cinnamon rice cake at snack time. The boy is whack. Maybe he pulled too hard on his hair.\
Max started and finished his first fictional chapter book today, all 235 pages. Hurray! This makes me deliriously happy.