Category: Website

Apologies for the somewhat denuded appearance of the site this morning. The server that hosts my images (and my CSS stylesheet!) is currently down.

I’m going to keep posting, however, mostly because I’ve found an excellent coffeehouse, complete with free wifi, here in Pittsfield. (It helps that the baristas here at Digital Blend really know what they’re doing. I almost expect to see Coffee of Doom-style menu listings on the chalkboard; fortunately, no wedgies here today.)

With such a congenial atmosphere, I might as well blog—er, and work, too—because it doesn’t look like the rain is letting up any time soon.

Just updated the tagline. Courtesy Mike Doughty, nee M. Doughty of Soul Coughing, in his fine “Move On.”

I think we get confused, even on a day like today, about where we all stand. Me? I couldn’t be happier to be in a country that was born of a bunch of people standing around and talking about what was wrong with their current form of government, and then doing something about it.

I realized the other day, just as I was falling asleep, that I link far too often to official “media” and far too rarely to other bloggers. And I don’t comment on other people’s blogs nearly often enough. And I certainly don’t respond to comments on my own blog very quickly. Which may explain why sometimes I feel like my only audience consists of my friends and the SiteMeter stats page. It’s just that I spend too little time trying to get to know the rest of you. And I know you’re out there.

So, consider this an open thread. If you find this site interesting, and you blog, and you’d like a link, and especially if I haven’t blogrolled you already, please post a comment. (Note: I know part of the problem is that comment links generally fail on my static site. So if all else fails, try commenting here—though you’ll have to register to do so.)

On May 2, 2002: “Hating your customers, part n” and “…part (n+1).” Who says nothing stays the same on the Internet?

On May 2, 2003: “Man, I’m boring. How boring? Just put in a composter last night, that’s how boring. But I’ll be a boring guy with the best vegetables on the block.”

On May 2, 2004: the weekend of mulch, or just how much work is entailed with 15 cubic yards of organic product. “I knew we were in trouble when by Friday night at 6 (after two hours of work) I had shifted hardly any of the pile and only succeeded in covering a few beds.”

(And this weekend? Digging up stumps in our front yard and laying down new grass seed. Ah, May.)

Apologies to those of you who are seeing posts twice, or are trying to open posts from my RSS feed and not finding them. There appears to be a problem with my site in which some posts just don’t get saved correctly. I’ll try to look into it.

Continuing my trip through my archives for 2004:

July

Blueberries in summer. Microsoft.com blog portal launches, complete with OPML support. I’m an NPR Phonecam Challenge winner. I get namechecked on NPR. RSS begins to roll out across Microsoft.com community pages. Trip to Portland.Sonic Youth. Eating at Salumi. Optimism, or reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer while watching The Day After. The hottest day of the year. Denbigh Presbyterian burns. I ’fess up about our Boston move. How I sold our house at my ten-year reunion…in a bar…over a fax machine. The plan for my cross-country drive.

August

1600 miles in two days. Roadtrip photos. Gootllysac. Completing a cross country drive—3000 miles—in four days. We buy a house in Arlington. Fridge installation after kitchen demolitions. Missing the herb garden. New house likes and dislikes. On going to the Mass RMV four times. Wireless printing redux.

September

MFA photos. The great glass pumpkin. The existential Red Sox. Wireless tunes. The first presidential debate, and my fantasy question for George W.

October

The Long Tail and the blogosphere. PJ Harvey plays the Avalon. Dexter Gordon review. Sub Pop goes RSS. Dirty tricks. Blogging style. Pros and cons of blogging the presidential race. Hell Night. Ending the drought: Red Sox victory. Carl Perkins. Walking through Boston with George.

November

Blogger for hire. Delicious Library. Resignations. Review of the Frank Sinatra Show with Ella Fitzgerald. On not doing home improvements right before a dinner party. My first Thanksgiving dinner as lead chef. Boston late fall photos.

December

The Pixies with Mission of Burma. Bobby Timmons. Photo gallery. Votes, Bits and Bytes conference. Justin Rosolino at Club Passim. Google v. Gutenberg. Walking around Asheville. Global Voices covenant. Thawing out.

It always takes longer to write these things than I think, but I thought I’d take a look at 2004 before we get into double digit days in 2005. All in all, it wasn’t a bad year on Jarrett House North. New houseblogging, new photos, cross country drive, my beginning and end as a semi-official corporate blogger, blogger for hire… ah hell, here’s the highlights reel for the first half (second half coming shortly):

January

We land on Mars. My phonecam photo to be published in the Guardian. It snows in Seattle. MSDN launches blogs.msdn.com. I have ten subscribers in the feeds.scripting.com community. Mars is warmer than the northeast. Lots of CSS learnings. Sail to the moon.

February

Last ski trip in the Northwest. Dave Winer visits Microsoft. Google Valentine’s Day toolbar. Prodigal dog. Rosemary. Generation gapped. Compassionate conservatism. Esta visits a shooting range.

March

On knowing the Black Dog. Trent Lott blog case from Harvard’s Kennedy School. Elvis Costello plays Benaroya Hall. AMS gets acquired. Remember when Al Qaeda blew up Madrid? Lego Death Star. Hindemith and Shaw and requiems and me. Learning to pray. Faster than a speeding bullet.

April

Sloanblogs (still a very short list). On Nirvana and seismic shifts in popular music. I call Bush out: “Bush ought to be a man, admit that he and his cabal of true believer advisors were wrong, wrong, wrong, and resign. He is unfit to be our president.” Justin Rosolino’s new album. Finding weird free music online.

May

Fifteen cubic yards of mulch. Accountability escapes us over Abu Ghraib. Why RSS succeeded where CDF failed. Robert Kellogg and Elvin Jones, RIP. We go house shopping in Massachusetts.

June

Shooting with the Nikon Coolpix. UVA class of 1994 10-year reunion, and photos around the Grounds. How Hermione stole Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I call for a virtual Bloomsday in 2005. Doc Weinberger visits Microsoft.

This site has gotten a bunch of traffic over the last 18 hours or so from DayPop, which thinks the site suddenly jumped up into the Top 10. The cause: apparently a hiccup at Weblogger, my hosting company, which spread the home page of Weblogger.com, including the crawl list of recently updated sites, across some 160 registered subdomains.

(Aside: I wonder if the hiccup was related to a Manila upgrade?) I like having better comment moderation; thanks, Erin, for doing the upgrade.)

This isn’t how I pictured getting into the DayPop Top 40, needless to say. However… as long as all you folks are coming here, anyone know a software company in Boston that needs a product manager?

Joi points out that translation is a derivative work. I hadn’t thought about that. I think I need to change which Creative Commons license I’m using. (I currently have BY-NC-ND.)

Well, that was quick. I’m now under BY-NC-SA, which allows derivative works as long as they’re shared back.

I added a new jump page to all the photo albums I’ve officially published from the site. In lieu of implementing formal image management software, I’m handcoding the page for now. The gallery is written without tables, and should work well in most modern browsers.

It was kind of reassuring to work forwards from my first photos to see how my composition has improved. Of course, upgrading from the still camera on our camcorder to the 2.1 megapixel model I’m currently using didn’t hurt either.

I spent most of the day offline, unintentionally. I had taken the Passat to a dealer for its slightly overdue 30,000 mile service, and ended up waiting four hours for them to do the service, replace a leaking gasket, and replace my rear brake pads—an unanticipated expense, needless to say, that I could definitely have done without.

Nonetheless, I was not idle. I finished this review for BlogCritics; finalized the design for our Christmas card (and now just have to find a low cost place to print it); and completed a new mix which will be posted shortly.

And listened to a lot of tunes. Man, that Loretta Lynn record is really something else…

house of warwick: Manila: Five Years Old. Steve points to Dave’s post on the fifth anniversary of Manila, the content management system cum blogging system that runs this site, as well as the blogs of more than a few Net luminaries. Unfortunately, it remains the Rodney Dangerfield of blogging platforms. I still have to explain Manila, and Userland, and Dave, and the whole history of blogging every time someone asks me what my site runs.

Manila officially launched on November 29, 1999. I got my first Manila site, the direct ancestor of this one, on March 14, 2000.

…and Google opens an office less than a mile from my old house. Ah well. They’re looking for software engineers, and I’m certainly not that anymore.

So far I’ve had two contacts since posting my resumé online, one for an internally focused IT position and one for a short contract position in Washington State. I perhaps should make this more explicit: I’m looking for a software product management position, or a position in marketing that can leverage my expertise in software development, blogging, and XML content syndication. The position needs to be in the greater Boston area, or a position where I can do much of the job remotely. And I have a travel constraint; since Lisa works in sales, I need to be on the road less than 20% of the time.

I did notice that my resumé now comes up in the second page of hits for “product manager resume” on Google. Progress, but not optimal. Anyone want to help me boost that position? Just point at this page with the link text “product manager resume”…

The 11th of November is one of those overloaded days. It’s Armistice Day, the day on which the treaty ending World War I was signed. It’s Veteran’s Day, dedicated to all those who have served our country in the armed forces.

And for me, it’s also an important anniversary. Ten years ago tonight was my first real date with Lisa. I say “real date” even though we had had several dinners together with Shel and had even gone on a winery tour together—“real date” because on this date I thought of her for the first time as more than just a friend. We went to a concert at George Mason—I think it was Emmanuel Ax and Peter Serkin—and then ran out of gas coming off the interstate onto Route 7. (Thankfully Route 7 goes downhill from the exit ramp to the next gas station.) And you know what? We didn’t even care.

Happy Veteran’s Day, everyone, and happy anniversary, dear.