That's definitely not my issue. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It's been too long since I posted anything, and I haven't even had time to write down some of the ideas that I've had for postings (not that anyone is reading this yet). Maybe that would be the first place to work on things for the site. Someday, when I have a better method, it'll be days between posts… Instead of quarterly. eesh.

I've been writing a lot more in the past few months, but most of it has been for documentation at work and a couple of stories I'm writing - slowly. The work stuff isn't all that interesting to people on the outside, it's support processes and procedures for our manufacturing and production groups.

The stories I'm writing, on the other hand, could be interesting for… well, I'm hoping a lot of at least a few people someday. Not that I plan on publishing, but I'd love to get some kind of feedback from people who aren't in my circles of friends and acquaintances. Once I've got a few more pages (only at about 6k words so far) I might put some of it out to read. In that vein, I also found a site called the Critters Writers Workshop that has members “pay” for peer reviews by reviewing another writer's work.

More as it comes to me, and I'm hoping to get to some changes for the site very soon… It might look a little different, but it'll still be the same low-volume, low-readership site it's (pretty much) always been.

Leading up to December 23rd, my wife (K) told us (me and our two older kids, 10 and 4) that we were having family game night. She also asked if I could take a half day for work so we'd have some time together, since I'm usually not home 'til seven most nights. I took the whole day off…

On that day (being a Friday), I was told that I needed to dress up a bit. Why? Slight change of plans, we're going out. Into Boston, but it's a surprise. Get dressed, get warm clothes on, and drive down to Alewife for a ride on the T (my four-year-old's first, and he loved it). Get into the city, K checks the time, and walk around for a bit. Check the time, and head toward Government Center. K's excited, and the three of us have no idea what we're about to do. Then we see the tent.

I'm not sure what the kids said first, but all I could say over and over was, “No way. No WAY. No way.” K had put all of her willpower into keeping this a secret, and apparently most of our family already knew and / or were in on it. I knew the tent from the special we'd seen on the Peter Pan 360 Experience on PBS. We were actually there and would get to see the awesomeness that it looked like on TV. My description of the show doesn't do it justice, at least compared to the video they have on the site. Definitely worth checking out, even if some of it's a little different (cast, etc).

Amazing, it was one of the best stage shows I've ever seen. That might not mean a lot, since I haven't seen a lot of “major” stage performances. K has though, including shows in Boston, NY, and London - and she said it was one of (if not the) best she's seen too. The acting was fantastic, the set and props were incredibly well done, and the theater in the round made for great views throughout the whole show. The way they handled the flying was really great too - they didn't try to avoid the wires, they were just another prop the actors used. They would clip in while delivering lines, and fly around… or swim, or twirl, or float.

It's too bad that it's not a long-running show around here, because I would love to see it again.

My wife is awesome anyway, but for her to keep something this big a surprise for this long…? That really raises the bar. Love, love, love her to pieces.

(part I)

Now it really is 2012. Whoa.

It's been a busy few weeks. We had Christmas, some vacationing up north, New Year's (eve and day were both relaxing and fun), and now back to work. With the way my company had holidays, I was off for 11 days but only used four vacation days. Nice. This is going to be the overview version. I plan on writing more about the stuff that happened over the past few weeks, just because it was such a good time all over the place.

Christmas Eve was spent with the in-laws at their house. We had an awesome dinner, then sat outside with a roaring fire (fire pit FTW). Christmas Day was great too - Santa was good to the kids, and to us. We got to sleep all the way to 7:20. whee.

The day after Christmas was spent packing up the van and driving north to the Bretton Woods area (about two hours from home). We stayed at a beautiful place (the Mount Washington Resort) and had a fantastic time. Great company, delicious food, incredible views (inside and out)… and we even went for a swim in the outdoor pool - 45F and still outside, ~85F in the pool.

During that time, I've watched the Doctor Who special on BBC America, and the Christmas “review” show. I mention that because one of the people who's always on there is Chris Hardwick. If you don't already know who he is, you should - whether you're a geek, nerd, normal, or other. Very entertaining, and I've been turned on to the podcast as well.

That's all for now, but plenty still to talk about…

Glad almost all of our shopping is done, and Santa is all ready for our house.

It happens every year, but around November-December we always wonder where the year went. Is it because of the good times? I think so, it seems like the fun stuff makes time seem to fly by, while the boring and awful stuff takes forever to get through. That's not to say that you'll feel like you have more time if you do more boring things and deal with more awful events. It's the quality of the time that matters just as much. But, I digress (often).

We're looking forward to Christmas this year, the three kids are at a great age for it - 10, almost 5, and 18 months. It's going to be a lot of fun watching their faces and getting pictures of reactions as they tear the paper apart to see what's inside. This is one of the many times that I love being a parent. I remember how much my brother and I looked forward to getting up early, plowing through our stockings 'til it was “late” enough to wake up our parents (that was the rule), and reveling in the day.

That's what I hope my kids remember when they're older, and especially as they (hopefully? probably?) have kids of their own.

Here's a post I started (but never posted) from 2006-12-12:

While doing a Google Search for a xonex rü journal, I started on a path that led me to something pretty cool (for anyone who likes pens and paper). It went like this:

• My Moleskine to
• this much is true: Moleskine Love to
• moleskine hacks - Google Search to
• Mike's Moleskine Hacks to
• E-motion to
• Graf von Faber-Castell to

That last one is the kicker. Actually, all of the links are worth checking out, but that last one is great to look through. It's a bunch of high-end pens and writing implements.

I don't know the last time I looked at these links, but most of them still work. Just in reading them today, I was sucked into the same pages again, and found even more links. One of them is from the last link above, pointing to the Pen of the Year for 2011:

Update: Looked it up on Amazon, and it's $3995. No, the decimal point isn't in the wrong place, it's almost four thousand dollars. I guess I won't have it on my wishlist anytime soon.

That could be the title of my autobiography.

This site, like a lot of my life, has been a work-in-progress. If you look at the current home page, you'll see a little content and a link to my Google+ page. At least I've got some current content on here now, as opposed to the way it was for quite a while.

Once I finally get this area settled (or at least settled enough), I can get to work on the main page. It will probably show some of the things I'm working on when I'm not working, like writing, Web development stuff, and other hobbies. It's amazing how quickly my time fills up, between home and work.

Some of the things I have to finish:

• template layout: I like the way it's laid out for starters, but I need to make some tweaks
• color scheme: light works, but I need to add or change some of the colors used.
• configuration: need to nail down some settings to make adding content easier (so close)

Today is the day before Thanksgiving and it's a ghost town at work. There are actually more people than I thought there would be, but by 5pm it'll be pretty empty. Even now, the parking lot isn't nearly as full as it was this morning. The upside is that we have time to get caught up on a lot of the little things, and the commute isn't nearly as awful as normal.

This has also giving me a chance to look into more of the DokuWiki setup for this site as well as my main page (which is just a one-page deal right now). I think I'm going to use two DW setups - one for each area, the blog (here), and base of my site. There was, and still is, the option to use farms, but it might be easier for me as a personal-use site to just do it this way.

Idea: would it be useful to have a plugin that lists the plugins that are in use? It wouldn't even have to be dynamic, just something to get a list as a snapshot of what's in use.

I've been using Dokuwiki for about six months now. It started with a documentation project at work, and it allowed me to (finally) find a way to manage the content for my site. I've used a whole bunch of CMS options over the past almost ten years, including some wiki options… This is the first time in a long time that I feel like I've found the right thing for me.

Once I figured out what to use, there was a whole host of options (plugins, etc) that I had to go through - and still have to check out. A great starting point was Andreas Haerter's post on creating a DokuWiki Blog. It got me pointed in the right direction, and he's also using DW to run his main page and blog.

I still need to fix a lot with the archived version of my site (2003-2010), but at least I have a good place to start building the new one.