ShareThis

In this article, Bob briefly outlines six benefits that he gets from writing on his blog: Meet and Greet, Self Documenting, Self Promotion, Mentoring, Education, and Giving Back. Even though I don’t make time to post something new every day (I wish I could), I have some of the same thoughts and feelings about why I keep a blog. Click on over, read his post, tell Bob why you blog. And tell him that Dougal sent you.

ShareThis

Our niece, who is a senior this year, was at the high school when the tornado hit, and suffered some cuts and scratches. Her car was also damaged, but unlike many others we’ve seen on the news, her parents think it should still be drivable. And she was, understandably, upset by the whole experience. We’re left wondering where the students will finish out their school year, and where they’ll hold graduation ceremonies this year.

Just imagine — you’re sitting watching Good Morning America before you go to work, and there are Chris Cuomo and Sam Champion, reporting from the front of your old alma mater. Or, what’s left of it, anyways. You hear reports about how many of the worst injuries occurred in Third Hall, and you realize the irony, because you already know that Third Hall would normally be the safest part of the building. Your Algebra class was on Third Hall. You took semester of Typing in a Third Hall classroom.

You watch the news footage of the football stadium (”…Please remember that there are no al-co-holic beverages allowed in Bates Memorial Stadium…” says a voice from more than twenty years ago), and where there used to be bleachers, there is now a gaping hole. Where there used to be a press box, you just see a couple of shards of walls, tentatively standing on their own. Where there used to be a thicket of pine trees, you find a group of splintery stumps. You used to know that stadium and that football field well. You should have — you were in the famous Enterprise High School Wildcats Marching Band (”Go Big Blue!”), and you marched with pride into every football game.

And there in the background, you see Army helicopters parked on what you know to be the football practice field. And you instinctively know that the helicopters arrived from Fort Rucker, which is located next door to your old hometown. And you see ambulances and fire trucks from all the neighboring towns — Dothan, New Brockton, Daleville, Elba, Ozark… Yes, neighborly love is still alive and well, especially in times of crisis.

As the cameras pan around, you see another large building in the distance, with a sizable hole in the roof. You realize that it’s the sanctuary of St. Luke United Methodist, the church you used to attend. The church you were married in. You still have many friends who attend that church.

You see hear voices and see faces of people you know. GMA talks to Bob Phares, the Assistant Superintendent of Schools. Bob was also your Sunday School teacher. You’ve had dinner with Bob and his wife Susan at several church fellowship meetings. CNN interviews Toni Kaminski, spokeswoman for the Medical Center. But you remember Toni because you used to live in the same neighborhood, and your kids used to go swimming in her pool.

You spend a lot of time on the phone with friends and family, making sure they’re all okay. So far, you haven’t heard of anybody you know who was seriously injured. A few people you know suffered some property damage. A tree falling on a house. A barn blown away. One trailer with a damaged roof, another with its roof completely torn off. But fortunately nobody was home at the time.

And lastly, you wait to hear… You wait to hear the names of those who didn’t make it. Hoping that none of them are people you know, directly or through your friends who still live there. And you pray for the families of those unknown souls, and you guiltily, shamefully, honestly thank the Lord that your own family is safe.

I’ve set up a Yahoo! Pipe to collect information. It’s gathering news stories from Yahoo! and Google, and throwing in any Flickr photos tagged “tornado” and “enterprise”: Enterprise Tornado News. There will also be news from local newspaper sites like the Southeast Sun, the Enterprise Ledger and the Dothan Eagle, none of which have RSS feeds, as far as can tell.

ShareThis

Susan and Claire, October 2005

A very happy birthday to my wonderful wife, Susan! She is truly an amazing woman, able to take care of our kids, keep up our house, help out her parents at their business, and take classes for grad school, all at once.

ShareThis

It’s not like I didn’t have anything to write about. Since my last post, Jamie had a birthday, Mary did some really cool stuff with squids for a science project (and I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures!), Claire started walking, I had to give our dog an emergency midnight bath, and Susan started finals in her grad classes. Plus I’ve had plenty of stuff going on at work that might have been worthy of writing about (and some of it was even good! ).

It just comes down to being busy, and having higher priorities. But fortunately, it hasn’t been the bad kind of busy, for the most part. Just the average, run-of-the-mill kind of busy that fills your life without leaving much time to write about it.

Suffice it to say that I’m still here. I do intend to write some more posts soon. I’m hoping to do some more fun stuff with WordPress (I started to look at a minor optimization for the post-custom fields, but haven’t had time to finish it up). I’m still tinkering with a theme change for this site, which I hope to get ready in time for an upgrade to WordPress 2.1. I’ve got a ton of photos that I need to upload to Flickr. There’s…stuff.

But first, I have to work on organization. Something that I’ve been studying a lot lately. But that’s a topic for another post….

ShareThis

Susan’s spookalicious Halloween theme

A few months ago, I mentioned that my wife Susan had gotten her blog up, complete with a pink theme. She’s been pretty busy lately, what with taking care of our three kids, working part-time, and taking graduate classes (whew!). But she still managed to work on a Halloween version of her theme, which has been up for a short while now.

So, until further notice, enjoy her new, spookalicious, purple site!

ShareThis

I’ve got eight draft posts in my queue, and three of those are no longer timely, and so I’ll probably end up deleting them. Of the remaining five, one is about how to use the WordPress object cache in plugins, another is about separation of presentation from business logic in HTML::Mason (a mod_perl web framework), one is an explanation of what blog ping services are, and the last two are non-technical. The ping service post is the only one that I’ve actually written any content for, and I started writing that one nearly a year ago. The others are basically nothing more than links to articles I was going to comment on, or placeholders to remind me that I wanted to write something about the subject.

Most of my time lately has been tied up with my day job. We’ve had some big projects on tight deadlines, and we developers had to really push to get things done on schedule. I’ve had to work late at the the office several times in the past few weeks, and that throws off our schedule for getting home projects done.

At home, we’ve been trying to finish building the rest of our bedroom funiture (we’ve almost finished the final piece, a wardrobe). And we still need to finish stripping and repainting the dressers for the girls’ room. We’re also trying to get things cleaned up in general, in preparation for out-of-town family visitors for Independence Day weekend. We’re going to have a very crowded house, with lots of kids to wrangle. If you don’t hear from me again after July 4th, it might mean that we didn’t survive.

And I’m not the only one who’s busy. Susan has her hands full keeping up with Jamie’s summer program, therapies, and doctor visits, Mary’s activities, and taking care of baby Claire, along with everything else. And when she can grab a spare minute on her computer, she’s been working on the website for her 20th class reunion.

So, for the three of you who were just about to delete me from your list of sites to visit, don’t abandon me yet! I should be posting more articles soon-ish. In the meantime, why don’t you take a break and enjoy the sounds of summer?

ShareThis

A neighbor down the street from us had found our dog! This nice young lady had first spotted Spirit wandering around on Thursday, and thought that he didn’t look like he should be wandering around on his own. Friday afternoon, she spotted him again, and called to him. When he came to her, she got hold of his collar and called the phone number on it. Susan met her halfway and retrieved our wayward pooch. This young lady doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going to be giving her a gift certificate in thanks.

We helped the kids bathe him later that night, and he seems happy to be home. Of course he’s lost his winging-it privileges — no more trips outdoors without a leash!

ShareThis

I’m sure she’ll be posting on a variety of topics, from web design and technology, to current events, to family matters. Everybody drop by and welcome Susan, my very own Digital Diva, to the blogosphere!

ShareThis

ShareThis