I mainly mention this as warning that if my site appears to be down, email bounces, or any other strangeness occurs, it might be because I’m in the middle of moving things around. It will probably be another couple of days before I start shaking things up. While I’m moving thing around, I might try consolidating some of my stand-alone WordPress sites into a WordPress-MU setup. That would make upgrades and other site management tasks a bit easier, I think.

With a little luck, and a lot of attention to detail, you might never know that I’ve changed anything. Yeah, right! Watch this space for further announcements.

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I get to unwrap one of my presents early this year, and it ranks up there with some of the best — a new job! I’ll be working with Alex King and the other fine folks at Crowd Favorite. I’m really excited to have the opportunity to work with this crew to tackle some great projects.

Four years ago, when I joined in on the development of WordPress, it was just a fun thing to do on the side. There was never any expectation of any kind of reward, it was just fun to be a part of a project that so many people found useful. As time went on, WordPress evolved into a more generally useful web site development platform, and businesses like Crowd Favorite have sprung up to help organizations take advantage of its power and flexibility.

I’m sure Alex would agree that it is truly rewarding to be able to take what previously was hobby, and turn it into a livelihood. Of course, it’s not just WordPress — there will be projects based on other web application platforms, and I’m sure we’ll be dealing with Perl code as well as PHP, just as I have in my other work for the past many years. I enjoy the variety, so bring it on!

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About two weeks ago, I started a new job (which explains at least part of my blogging lull, you see). I’m working on Free IQ, which is a streaming media site for entrepreneurs. There’s more to it than just the streaming media (you can upload video, audio, PDF files, PowerPoint presentations, etc.), but I’m still learning the ins and outs, so I don’t know the full scope yet.

When I interviewed, they were favorably impressed by the fact that I’m a WordPress developer. This is something that our industry is seeing more and more of — involvement in open source projects is often a good selling point in your resume. Several people have come by to ask me WordPress questions, and more than once I’ve been asked, “you’re the WordPress guy, right?” I haven’t actually done anything WP-related, yet, but I think that might come down the pipe one day.

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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.

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Just like every other year that I’ve promised myself that I’d get them mailed off weeks in advance…

Of course, it didn’t help that we had some sort of stomach virus making the rounds in our family over the past several weeks. First Jamie was sick for about a week, then Claire got it the next week, then Susan had it after that. Fortunately, Mary never caught it, and I either got a weakened strain or my system just fought it better, because I only had a few days of mild symptoms.

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Thus, a few weeks ago I signed up to play on our church softball team, figuring that it would be a good way to commit myself to getting some exercise. We had our first practice on Friday night. I didn’t embarrass myself too badly, considering that it’s been nearly thirty years since I played little league baseball. I did a pretty good job catching fly balls, but I need to work on grounders (can I blame it on my bad knee and a glove that isn’t broken in yet?). At first, I was missing almost every pitch in batting practice. But my teamates pointed out that I was consistently swinging high. I was swinging for a baseball pitch, but with the slower softball pitches, the ball drops more at the end of its trajectory. Once I began swinging down under the pitch, I started hitting pretty consistently. We practiced for a tad over two hours, so I expected to be pretty sore over the next few days.

Saturday morning wasn’t as bad as I expected, though. I expected soreness in my legs, shoulders and throwing arm. But I didn’t expect the soreness in my right hand and in my feet. Still, not too bad. Then on Sunday, I did some yard work. I needed to finish pruning the crepe myrtles in front of our house, and also some shoots from the pear trees. Then I had to haul all the branches from the front of the house down to the woods at the back of our property.

Yeah, that did it. I’m really good and sore now. Fortunately, it only hurts when I move. I think I need to make time a couple of times a week to do a little touch-up exercising. That should help remind my muscles what they’re there for, and keep them from getting a once-a-week shock. It’s bound to mean more pain at first, but I’m looking forward to the pay-off (losing weight, gaining muscle tone) in the long run.

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The dramatis personae in this little skit are Comcast and Tivo. Comcast will be playing the role of bad customer service, and Tivo is cast in the role of the hero. The scene: late evening at a household in a small town on the edge of Metro Atlanta.

Our cable service used to be provided by Adelphia. You may or may not be aware that Adelphia got itself in trouble a few years ago — one of those little “creative accounting” problems that made companies like Enron and Worldcom so famous, you see. Because of this, Adelphia was recently bought by Time-Warner Cable and Comcast. The buy-out happened a while ago, and we expected that eventually Comcast (who became our new provider) might change our channel lineup in some way or another. Which they did, yesterday. We hadn’t seen a prior notification of the change, but then again, we don’t always read all the promo material that comes with the bills.

The problem was that they completely shuffled the channels around, but our Tivo still had the old channel lineup information. The Tivo thought that it was recording NCIS on one channel, but it was actually recording Gilmore Girls from a different channel. Obviously, this was going to wreak havoc on our recording schedule unless the guide information was updated soon.

So, we decided to call Comcast and ask if they had some idea when they might be pushing out new channel lineup information for our area to whatever clearinghouse services they use for that sort of thing. When the service representative answered, Susan briefly explained the situation to him (cable channel lineup changed, Tivo doesn’t have correct channel guide now). Without any hint of doubt, he tells us that our Tivo is “not compatible with Comcast”, and that we would have to buy a Comcast DVR.

What the?!? I chimed in, “No, no, no! You’re kidding me right?” After all, my wife and I do know a thing or two about how a DVR works. “No, sir. Tivo will not work with Comcast cable service.”

Well, damn. That was news to us, especially since we were looking out our television as he spoke, where we had used our Tivo to pause live programming temporarily for this phone call. “Wait a minute — you’re telling me that our Tivo flat-out will not work with Comcast?” I asked. Without missing a beat, he replied, “that’s correct.” Astounded, I said, “that’s crazy! It will work, it is working, it just doesn’t have the correct guide information, all we want to know is when Comcast will be updating the guide info!” He continued to insist that Tivo would not work, and that we needed a Comcast-branded DVR. We informed him that if this somehow turned out indeed to be the case, that we would certainly be checking to see if there was an alternate cable service available in our area.

Still amazed by the previous conversation, we decided to check the Tivo website to see if they had any information on this problem. We did some searches in their support area, and didn’t turn up any current info for this particular change, but found some older articles about similar problems. The consensus seemed to be that such a problem normally cleared itself up within a few days. But just to be sure, we decided to give them a call.

After a brief dance with their phone navigation, we ended up talking to Jason. We again briefly explained our situation, and let him know what the Comcast rep had told us. He was, of course, surprised at what we had been told. Jason asked us for some details about how our channel lineup had changed — what were the old and new channel numbers for Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, History Channel, etc. Once he had that information, he was able to guide us through the settings on our Tivo to find a list of available channel lineups, and we were able to pick an alternate channel listing that matched up with our new reality. Then we had our Tivo refresh its programming information over the network, and we verified that our To Do list showed the correct programs on the new channels for upcoming recordings. We let Jason know that he was much more helpful than the guy at Comcast had been.

So: Tivo++, Comcast–. We made a followup call to Comcast. The original rep we spoke with wasn’t available, but we gave the new rep a quick rundown of what we had been told earlier. She sounded surprised that someone had been so quick to tell us that Tivo wouldn’t work with their service (she did at least ask somebody else, since she wasn’t sure). She said that she would add a note to our service ticket and inform our previous rep and his manager that we had been able to resolve our problem. Okay, so I guess Comcast gets half a point back for that.

It would have been fine for the first Comcast rep to tell us that he didn’t know the answer to our question. Really, the question was more relevant to Tivo. We called Comcast first because in our eyes, they were the “agent of change” in the equation. And we figured that since channel lineup changes aren’t too terribly uncommon, they might have some idea how long it took for that kind of information to propogate out to other services that need to know which channels map to which networks for a given service area (not just Tivo, but things like TV Guide, local newspaper listings, Yahoo’s TV listings, etc.).

But if that question wasn’t common enough to be handled by a first-tier support person, he should know that it’s okay to say “I don’t know” and either ask someone else, bump us up to a higher level of support, offer to research it and call us back, or even ask us to try contacting Tivo. It’s called “customer service” for a reason. When you keep the customers happy, they stick around. When you tick the customers off, you make them want to leave. Maybe I over-reacted. Maybe we should have called Tivo first. But in any case it’s a good thing for Comcast that Tivo was able to help us resolve the problem. Because otherwise, Comcast would have remained the one at fault, in our view.

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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.

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See, the problem is that this clock only counts 24 hours in a day. I think I need to upgrade my clock to a 36 hour model. That would probably give me enough time to do all my work, spend some time with my family, and maybe even get some sleep every once in a while. Yep, a 36 hour clock is what I need. Does anybody know where I can get one of those?

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