Last month I reached my 4-year anniversary working as Director of Online Campaigns at NGP Software, where our small team does what we can to help Democrats and their allies with their online campaign efforts. During that time we’ve built a *few web sites, managed a few online campaigns, won a few awards, helped a few Democrats get elected, and had a few laughs. I’m very proud of our team and the work we do, and looking forward to much more of the same to come.
* lots and lots
On this day in 1791, Virginia ratified the Bill of Rights, becoming the 11th State to do so, and thus reaching the required 75% of states needed to ratify to make these first 10 amendments part of the Constitution. Well done founding fathers!
I recently read a great book about the drafting of the Constitution, Miracle at Philadelphia. There are many facts about our government that we learn and just take for granted, such as the formulas for representation in the House and Senate, and the inclusion of a ‘Bill of Rights. This book provided a fascinating look at the sausage making that took place as the Constitutional Convention WAY over-stepped their mandate by creating a whole new form of government, and how close they came to failing. Thanks to James Madison for taking such good notes during the process.
In 35 Days we’ll say good bye and good riddance to a President who has utterly failed in his job requirement to ‘preserve and protect The Constitution of the United States of America’. Thankfully, hopefully, the damage he’s done can be undone, and America will have learned how easily a government can undermine our guiding principles, and how vigilant we must remain to prevent it from happening.
If you are one of the very very few people who ever actually looks at this blog, then it can’t have escaped your notice that things have been pretty quiet around here lately. There are three primary reasons for this; technological, lack of time, and competing alternatives.
For years, I have maintained my blog using MovableType, a first-rate blogging application that I was glad to purchase and keep installed on my own server. But over time, something went hinky, and attempts to post content became increasingly likely to fail with an ‘Internal Server Error’ rather than to successfully post. Web servers are a bit like cars to me. I can fix minor and routine problems (change a tire, etc…), but more serious breakdowns are beyond me. Upgrading my MT software didn’t fix the issue, and I was stuck with a very unreliable blog.
As for time, it’s been a very busy year. I’d like to find time to blog, but often real life intrudes with a higher priority. Two events have consumed much of my time over the last few months, the Presidential campaign, and training for and running a marathon. These events have concluded happily, and now I may be able to reclaim some of the time devoted to them in order to again write more for my blog.
And lastly, new web technologies such as Facebook and Twitter have provided new means to quickly and easily share info about myself and what’s going on in my life. Given the technical problems with my own blog, and the wider reach provided by these alternatives, it became very easy to just use them while my blog lay fallow.
So there’s the explanation. But changes have been made. I have moved to new web hosting, and migrated my blog to use TypePad, the hosted blog software by the maker’s of MovableType, so reliability should not be an issue. With major events passed, I will be making a commitment to make the time to write more. And I’ll work to integrate my blog with my use of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites as best that I can.
And who knows… maybe, just maybe, someone besides myself will actually read the result. We’ll see.
50 Days! It sounds so wonderful to say, just 50 Days left until Bush’s last day in office. What a painfully long eight years it has been.
I have been in the midst of a MAJOR blog lull, I haven’t even posted in this category since the countdown was at 200 Days on the 4th of July. But the lull wasfor good reason. I was busy doing all I could to help elect that man who will replace Bush (and inherit the tremendous mess that he made), and was also training for a marathon (more on that later).
Getting through the election season was like a marathon itself, and happy each ended well. Eight years contains 2,920 days. Now there’s just 50 left. You do the math, but if compared to the 26.2 miles of a Marathon, we’re just inches from the finish line!
For about the last five years or so, I’ve maintained my blog using Movable Type’s (MT) software on my own web server. And during that time, I’ve been happy with the program and it’s features. It has allowed me to build and tinker with sites on my own server. But a server admin I am not, and when, from time to time, things go hinky on my server, I am not well suited to troubleshoot and fix the problem. Over the last several months, my MT installation has been very inconsistent, and is just as likely to return a server error as it was to work as it should.
I have been using web.com as my web host for about the last four years. Their VPS Root server allowed me to create the sub-sites I desired, and I was familiar with their service and support. Unfortunately, their service has suffered, and competitors offer hosting package with more features and more disk space at less cost.
And so, it’s time for me to move on. For my web hosting, I’m moving to Host Gator and am currently working at moving my life/files to my new server. As for my MT blogs, rather than install MT on my new server at Host Gator, I will instead use Six Apart’s hosted blog service, TypePad.
I’ve spent part of today, migrating my blog’s to TypePad. It’s too soon for a full review, but so far I am finding it promising and looking forward to letting them manage the burden of keeping things up and running. And hopefully, having restored reliability to my blog life, my recent lull will come to and end. Stay tuned…
We’ve got a new member in our family! Wrigley is a boy, about three months old and 10 pounds. He’s a beagle mix, just rescued from a West Virginia Animal Shelter last week. He’s had an exciting day; long drive to new home, bath, new collar, outside to meet the neighbors, and now taking a well-deserved snooze on the family room floor.
It’s weird to say, but I’ve never felt this way about a phone before. Sure, I’ve loved gadgets all my life, and have gotten especially close to a number of computers in my day. But my new iPhone just makes me smile, and I’ve had it less than a week. Maybe we’re just still in our honeymoon, and it will soon become routine and unexciting, but right now, it’s just so much fun.
Greetings from Glasford, Illinois! We’re here visiting my in-laws over the holiday weekend, and really enjoying the summertime change of pace. I’ve just returned from a nice 5.43 mile long morning run along country roads like the one shown here (without any stopping!), and now after some muffins for breakfast and helping Dad with some yardwork, I expect we’ll visit the old family farm this afternoon and find some fireworks to watch tonight. I have also done some good family hunting this week, tracking down many distant relatives of my wife’s in Glendale Cemetery in Washington, Illinois, and posting the results online at Find-a-Grave.
But the best part of all?? We only have to endure 200 more days of Bush!
