no more bedhead

Today Ellen took Keke, Stewie, and Munchkin to Vermont for a week. They left this morning. Early. They are going up for a memorial service for Ellen's aunt and uncle who passed away over the winter. It's going to be a big party at Gram's old house where all the cousins are getting together. It's great when everyone is gathered and I am sorry that I will not be able to be there. Not to mention that I have to miss a trip to Vermont (I heart Vermont).

I am not going because Beenie has to to go to scout camp next week. So I am driving him there and picking him up before Ellen and the other kids even get home. This has its advantages for me, as I get to go in to work and work at home without being bothered. I also get to hang out by myself for a few days. I love my family very much, but I have this real need to be alone every once in a while. Hopefully this will get that out of my system for a while!

Another cool thing is that overlap time between when Ellen left, and I have to take Beenie to camp. We get to hang out, just the two of us, for a couple of days. That's pretty great, as Beenie is getting older, and is fun to just hang with. As a matter of fact, tonight we got to sit around and watch the season premiere of Doctor Who on the SciFi channel. They ran the first two episodes of season 3 back to back. It was great!!! I think David Tennant is a better Doctor than Christoper Eccleston was, and I thought he was fantastic! Can't wait 'til next Friday!

I met with Laurie, from the Diocese of Western New York today. To simplify things, I drove to Erie, PA, and she met me there (from Buffalo). Mary, at the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania was kind enough to allow us to use their offices (and their wireless network) so that we could discuss the scope of the project.

As you may remember, I am designing a new website for DioWNY. Laurie and I met to discuss what she is looking for, what I can do, and how we can make it all happen. It is going to be a challenging project. Laurie is asking me to do things in Joomla that I haven't done before. This is good, because it will stretch me and refine my skills. I'm looking forward to it and terrified by it at the same time.

Also, we decided that we will probably go with a hosting company that will give us a portion of a server and an operating system, and we will have to load whatever programs and applications we want to use. What that means for me is (probably) that I will have to load Apache, MySQL, and php, in addition to a webmail application, a mailing list application, and a control panel. I am very excited to do this, although it means a lot more work on my part to get going, and a commitment after we're done, to maintain the system. I am willing to give it a shot, if Laurie is willing to give me a try. She actually knows a priest who hosts with this company, so she is going to hook us up so I can ask some questions.

While we were at the Diocese of NWPA, we met their bishop-elect. His name is Sean Rowe, and he's 33 years old. He seems pretty cool. Of course, when I was 33 I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. (One could argue that I still have no idea!)

Anyway, it was a good day, but long.

What a great day!

Beenie had baseball practice tonight, and while we were there a hot air balloon truck came out onto the outfield and started unloading their basket and folded up balloon. By the time practice was over, they had it all stretched out and were starting to fill it with air. We went over to watch and I saw a guy holding a rope that was attached to the top of the balloon. Intrigued, I went to ask him what he was doing. He said that there is a "valve" in the top of the balloon (although valve may be an understatement - it looked like someone sliced off the very top of the balloon). His job is to pull on the rope to hold the fabric "plug" in place while it is inflated. When it is full, he ties the end of the rope to the basket, then when the pilot wants to land he "pulls the plug" and the balloon comes down.

An interesting thing he told me that I didn't know was that they first fill the balloon with cold air, using a fan, and then when it is mostly inflated they turn on the burners to heat the air. I always assumed that it was hot air from the get-go. Learn somethin' new every day!

The other thing that was really cool is that Beenie, Keke, and I went out back tonight to watch the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Atlantis pass overhead. They had been docked, then undocked Tuesday (I think), and we had a chance to see them pass by really close together last night. Unfortunately it was too cloudy. Fortunately for us, the shuttle didn't land today as planned, so we got to see them go by tonight. They each took about 3 minutes to cross the sky, the ISS first, followed about a minute later by the shuttle. It was cool because they were both going across the sky at the same time.

Of course, since today is the longest day of the year, we were cutting it close as to whether it would be dark enough to see them, but it just was. Suddenly, a spot of light appeared out of an indigo sky, and crossed from the NW to the ESE. The ISS was pretty bright, with the shuttle a little dimmer. It was neat!!

Edit (11:19pm): The weatherman on the news just said that the ISS and Atlantis were travelling at 17,500 mph!!

So I'm having this problem. I'm trying to find solutions for incorporating a mailing list into a website. I'm looking at ones that allow mail to be "pushed" out to a subscription list, and also at ones that allow recipients to view the archives and/or respond to the email and have it sent to the whole list. Most people refer to this as a "listserv" (although "listserv" is actually a copyrighted brand name, like Band-Aid for adhesive bandages). I'm looking at three different websites where I can apply this technology.

One is my parish's website, where we want to use it to send our newsletter, and have an archive of past issues. Being able to password protect the archives would be helpful.

Another is our diocesan site where I have been asked to set up a "listserv" for clergy, but don't have more specifics than that. I think it would be helpful if we could have archives, and the ability to set up more, different lists as we identified the need.

The third is the other diocesan website that I'm working on. They currently have a series of "listservs" in their site, but we are going to be rewriting the entire site, and switching hosts. I will admit that I don't yet know if this is a key issue that we need to deal with or not, but I want to be prepared with some possible solutions when that discussion happens.

The problem I'm having is with the hosting companies. Our parish is on a shared host and the TOS states a limit of 400 emails/hour. That should be plenty for the parish's needs, but I can't find any information about whether we are allowed to use those programs. I guess (and I probably will) just install one and see what happens.

The diocesan site is self-hosted so my options are theoretically unlimited, except that the way the servers are configured is a little weird. My first thought for the diocese was Mailman, but it uses Python and the webserver doesn't have python installed. We haven't checked the mail server yet, but it seems like many things are just cobbled together, so I'm not holding my breath.

The other diocese is looking for a host, so I'm trying to determine which company will allow us to do what we want. The question is - do they want a shared hosting environment, or are they willing to pony up for a dedicated server (or at least a virtual private server)?

So that's where I am, sitting here knocking my head on the desk while gigabytes, terrabytes, phps, mailer-daemons, cgi-bins, terms of service, underselling, crontabs, and streaming audio swirl around looking for a place to land.

If you have any thoughts on: Dreamhost, SiteGround, Rochen, Slicehost, or even something different, please let me know. Please. (Or your experiences with Dada, phpList, or Mailman.)

Ellen has a fantastic opportunity this week. She has been asked to help with Peer Ministry Training in our diocese. Peer ministers are high-school aged kids who feel called to help their friends in all manner of spiritual counseling. (Sometimes it's easier to talk with someone your own age.) You have to apply to the program, and the costs are pretty steep. But, you spend a week at our Camp & Conference Center where you are given the tools to do this job effectively. Ellen is one of those trainers this week.

What that means on the home front is that I am home alone for a week. Well, not exactly alone. Ellen took Stewie and Munchkin, and I have Beenie and Keke with me. The only concern we had was that this is the second week of my "real job". Fortunately, Martha said I could bring the kids with me. We did that on Monday.

I was frankly afraid that the kids were going to be bored out of their skulls just sitting around the office all day, but we went in to work on Monday and it proved not to be the case. One of the big bribes, though, was "If you're good, we'll have lunch at the Cafe". Needless to say, lunch was good!

I had meetings for a good chunk of the day. The first was about an hour, in my office, so we had to find a place where the kids could play and not be too disturbing. The second was a meeting of the Episcopal Community Services Development Council. This one was in a conference room, lasted about two hours, and included a visit from the bishop. Except for one bathroom break, I don't think any of us even heard the kids for the entire time!

The only glitch in the whole day was that after the kids were so good at ECSF, they had to let a little of that pent-up energy out. Once we were back in the office I had to "shut them down" once, and we had one major beverage spill (an escaping energy issue). But overall they were really good the rest of the day and I actually got some work done.

The down-side to splitting up the family like this is that it really messes up people's routines. Even though everyone got up early to go in to work, the kids were up until midnight (when I went to bed). The problem is that Keke doesn't want to sleep in her room by herself, Beenie wants to sleep in his room, but will sleep on the floor in Keke's room if she sleeps on the floor too. Keke readily agrees to that, but then decides she would rather sleep in her bed. Since she is in her bed, Beenie decides that he will go back to his room. Rather than have no one in the room with her, Keke will move to Beenie's floor. After that there is no telling who will be where! Monday night Keke ended up in Beenie's bed (where she compained that he kept rolling over on her!), and last night she ended up in my bed (where she is less of a bed hog than her mother!). So, everyone's schedule is a little out of whack, but we're having a good time, surviving, and yes, I'm feeding the kids and getting the dishes done! I've not quite reverted to bachelor days.

A couple of weeks ago Beenie announced out of the blue that he wanted to play baseball. Fortunately I remembered that he had brought home a flyer a couple of weeks earlier about the YMCA's baseball program that is being held in June and July. I was particularly interested in this program because it is a non-competitive league where the coaches pitch. This is the last year Beenie can be in it because of the age limits. I figured this was the best setting for him to learn some of the skills of the game without the pressure of winning.

We got him signed up and his first practice was tonight. He did a good job. He's actually pretty decent with many of the skills, and he had a great time! Oddly, whenever we play baseball in the backyard he hits left-handed. Tonight, when they did batting practice, he stepped to the plate right-handed. He did fine, but it surprised me. I asked him about it afterward and he said "That's how I bat. I did it at the batting cages." (He went to the batting cages with his scout troop.) He did fine, but I was a little surprised.

I hope he has a good time playing!

I have a problem with my knee. Not that I just don't like it, I mean a real, physical problem.

About five years ago I went to an orthopedist to see why my knee was making a popping and clicking noise when I stood up. It didn't hurt, but I didn't think it was supposed to be making noise. He agreed. Actually, he said that it was due to a tear in my meniscus, and that it wouldn't get better, it would only get worse. His suggestion was to come back when there was pain, and he could do arthroscopic surgery to fix it.

Four years later (Spring 06) it started hurting so bad that I could hardly walk. I went back to the doctor (and naturally by the time I went back it had stopped hurting, so no matter how hard he twisted, pushed, poked, and prodded, there was no pain). He said it was up to me. I decided to have it repaired, and we got the date for surgery all set and we were ready to go. As we got closer to the date of surgery, it became apparent that there would be no one to take care of the kids, so I had to cancel the surgery.

This was okay, until now. Usually when my knee hurts I describe the pain as "like someone is taking a metal rod and trying to run it through my knee". For the last two days that description has changed. Now it is "like someone is trying to run a metal rod through my knee from the inside". Odd sensation.

Maybe I should do something about it.

I am officially employed. My title is "Technology Consultant" and I am working for the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio. My job is basically to work on the diocesan website, looking at things like layout/design, information structure, databases, etc. , but I also am doing various and sundry things that need to be done that relate to web activity.

Today is my first contract day, although Monday will really be my first day in the office. I was in for a couple of hours one other day, just to familiarize myself with my surroundings, and get a feel for what I needed to do there (as opposed to what I could do from home). I was there for a meeting yesterday and got my "key fob" so I can let myself in and out of the offices and, more importantly, the parking lot.

The best part of this job is that I can do a lot of it from home. I intend to use the summer to go in to the office a couple of days a week, as there are things I can only do there, and I'm more productive there! The position is a three month contract for up to 20 hours per week, so I will still have time to spend summer vacation with my family.

And then, when it rains, it pours. I got a call today from my new boss, Martha, who said that the Diocese of Western New York was looking at redesigning their website, and probably using the same CMS that we are using, and had some questions that she thought might be another consulting job for me. I called them, we talked for quite a while, and it looks like I have another job helping them with design and setup of their site. They are in Buffalo, so my commute will be a little longer!! Actually, I will probably have to go up there once, but the rest of the time I will be able to access what I need remotely.

Perhaps this is the start of something?

Tonight was the last week of the season. For Keke that meant one more game. For Beenie and me that meant the Tournament. If we beat the orange team, the ones who beat us 4-0 recently, we would be playing in the championship game against the grey team who we've never beaten, ever.

We came out well, and played hard and the score was tied 0-0 at the half. As usual, the second half proved to be our undoing. Twice the orange team got behind our defense and had a three-on-one with the goalie. Twice they scored. Final score 2-0.

The good news was that it was one of those games where the kids left it all on the field. They had nothing to be ashamed of - they played hard and came up with the short end of the stick. That happens.

Coach Dina and I gathered them around after the game and handed out certificates and medals that had each players name on them. They were pretty cool (Dina found them and did all the work, I just handed them out). The best part was after we let everyone go, a few of the players came up to us to thank us for coaching, and several parents told us how much they appreciated everything we had done during the season - that their kids had had a great time! That made me feel really good.

Oh, the orange team and the grey team ended the championship game in a tie. They were scoreless at the end of regulation, then went through one full round of a shootout and ended tied 1-1. The league director talked to the coaches and they agreed to leave it as a tie. Cool.

Keke's game was good. Because we lost, I got to watch more of hers than usual. She told me that she had been playing defense for a while and had taken all of the throw ins. I think she had a great time playing. At least I hope she did.