It’s been over three months since my last posting, but I’m going to attempt to get back to my writing. As I indicated in the last post, things have been just crazy busy. For the last 6 months of 2006, there was at least one week a month where I was out of the office. That had a cascade effect that culminated in being behind in just about every aspect of my life.
Since the first of the year, my focus, or new years resolution if you will, has been to get caught up and after two solid months I’m finally starting to see the light of day. I’m finally starting to see the fruits of my two-month slave labor camp and I’m finally able to begin thinking about writing again.
So does this mean that I’m all caught up and life is back to “normal” again? Far from it. I’m still running to beat the band, but at least I’m past the drum line and running next to the trombones. Still will be another month until I see the flute section, but I’m still running!
Just a quick note to say that I’ve upgraded I just upgraded Movabletype, the software which I use to manage the content on this weblog. It’s not a major upgrade, but there are a few additional features and tweaks that SixApart has done, which I like a lot.
The interface has been cleanup a bit and simplifed. They’ve added tags and a few built-in plugins that should make managing the weblog a lot easier. As much as I like the new stuff, you never know if something has gone wonky after an upgrade, so if you run across anything that doesn’t work, or is just a little off, please contact me and let me know about it.
Thanks in advance!
I know postings here have been a little sparse. This hasn’t been by choice, of course, it’s just a culmination of several things that have made writing somewhat difficult. Like most things in life, it’s not just one reason that causes things to break down, but a number of things that cascade together to cause the problem. I’ve thought long and hard as to why my posts have been few and far between and I think I have a plan to get things back on track.
Issue #1: Too Many Blogs
For starters, I have two other blogs that I write on, so often times I just don’t have the bandwidth to write on this one. One is at TV.com and the other is at NPUG. The blog at TV.com really deals with my activity with TV.com and isn’t really all that interesting, unless you’re a member. I’ve thought about combining it with this blog, but do you really want to read about how many points I have as an Editor for “The IT Crowd?” Yeah, I didn’t think so either. 
The “Director’s Log” at NPUG is going to be going away though. The idea was to have a place to talk about running a PUG, much like the TV.com blog is about being an Editor at TV.com. Unfortunately, there’s so much work that goes into producing the monthly meetings and maintaining the site, that everything I want to say has already been said. There’s simply too many other areas in which I can and do have a voice that the Director’s Log is a bit redundant - so it’s going away.
Continue reading “Shaking Things Up A Bit” »
I just upgraded the software which I use to manage the content on this weblog. I use MovableType and they recently released version 3.2 in beta, so I installed it. There’s a ton of changes with this version and so far I really like it.
However, you never know if something has gone wonky after an upgrade, so if you run across anything that doesn’t work, or is just a little off, please contact me and let me know about it.
Thanks in advance!
It was brought to my attention that some of you may have been having difficulty posting comments to the site. It seems the culprit was a plugin I installed to help throttle comment spammers called MT-DBSL. If you tried to post a comment you may have gotten a message something like the following:
I’ve removed the plugin since MT-Blacklist is working so well at moderating comments, so there’s really no need for the extra layer of protection.
While I was making changes, I also installed the MT Moderate plugin so that trackbacks will be moderated by default as well. Trackback SPAM seems to be the biggest plague for MovableType right now and most of my friends have turned off Trackbacks all together. I’ve been tempted to do the same, but every now and again I do get a valid ping, so I hate to kill them all together. Now that the Trackbacks are moderated and don’t actually appear on the site automatically will help a lot and make the cleanup not so urgent.
While on the subject, I have high hopes for Brad Choate’s new plugin SpamLookup. It looks to be the successor to MT Blacklist and once it’s out of beta I’ll give her a test. I’m just leery installing the beta version at this point, even though Jay Allen gave it high marks. I’m no Jay Allen, so if something goes wrong, I don’t know that I could fix it with ease, so I’ll wait until a full version is released.
Well, that’s about it, I just wanted to let everyone know that the comments issue has been fixed and give a quick update on some of the other fixes. So post away! 
Well, the little contest of “Guess What’s In My SysTray” is over. Didn’t get quite as much attention as I hoped it would, but for those that did participate, they sure gave it a good shot. Since no one guessed every item and not all items were guessed, I’ve decided to award the prize of a free Gmail account to the two people who contributed the most - Raena Armitage and Merlin. Congratulations you two!
So just what ARE the final answers you ask? Well, I guess I’ve kept you on the edge of your seat long enough, haven’t I? 
Without any further ado, here are the final answers:
01 = WhatPulse
02 = AveDesk (freebie)
03 = Trillian (Raena Armitage)
04 = Google Desktop (Merlin)
05 = HotSync Manager (Raena Armitage)
06 = Rainlendar
07 = WinPT (Merlin)
08 = UltraMon
09 = Palm Desktop Alarm Manager (Merlin)
10 = Windows XP Network Status (Merlin)
11 = NoIP (Merlin)
12 = StyleXP (gfox)
13 = AVG AntiVirus (Raena Armitage)
14 = Windows XP Volume Control (Raena Armitage)
15 = Picasa2 (Raena Armitage)
16 = Gmail Notifier (Merlin)
Thank you to everyone that participated!
There hasn’t been quite as much interest in the contest that I started last month, so I guess it’s time to bring it to a close. The contest will end this Sunday, so if you want to guess, NOW is the time to do it.
To lend a little help, I’ll give everyone #2, which is AveDesk. It was a little bit obscure, so I thought a little help was in order. So here’s all the right answers thus far with credit to the person that provided the correct answer.
01 =
02 = AveDesk (freebie)
03 = Trillian (Raena Armitage)
04 = Google Desktop (Merlin)
05 = HotSync Manager (Raena Armitage)
06 =
07 = WinPT (Merlin)
08 =
09 = Palm Desktop Alarm Manager (Merlin)
10 = Windows XP Network Status (Merlin)
11 = NoIP (Merlin)
12 = StyleXP (gfox)
13 = AVG AntiVirus (Raena Armitage)
14 = Windows XP Volume Control (Raena Armitage)
15 = Picasa2 (Raena Armitage)
16 = Gmail Notifier (Merlin)
This leaves only 3 more to guess!
Update: In the comments, gfox guessed number 12 correctly, so I updated the list. I also put links to the programs as well in the list so you can find the software should you want to try it. 
Borrowing an idea from my friend Craig Froehle and since a snapshot of my systray was in the previous post, I thought it might be fun to have a little contest. My main workstation is running Windows XP Professional and in the image below, I have numbered all of the applications running in my System Tray (aka SysTray). The first person to come the closest to guessing all of the applications correctly will win their choice of either an XL Palm T-Shirt, or a free G-mail e-mail account.
Feel free to guess as many times as you like, but all guesses must be posted as a comment to this article. Of course others can take your guesses and combine them with their own, but it’s all in good fun.
Happy guessing!
I just upgraded the weblog software that I use for mashby.com, MovableType, to version 3.15. While I was at it, I also upgraded MT-Blacklist to the latest version and additionally installed MT-DBSL, which is a new plugin for this site.
Continue reading “Upgrades Away!” »
There’s an old saying that goes, “There’s lies, damn lies, and then statistics.” Regardless of the addage, I still like looking at them from time-to-time, especially this time of year. Maybe it’s from all my days in marketing, but I like looking at charts and graphs and comparing results from one year to the next. So this year, since I now have enough data, I put together a little presentation to see how 2004 stacked up to 2003.
In looking over all the pretty bar and line graphs, a couple of interesting things poped out at me:
Total number of page views:
» Increased by 665%
Total number of unique visitors:
» Increased by 403%
Total number of articles posted:
» Decreased by -60%
So what does all this mean? Well, this means that readership of the site in 2004 increased six-fold, but I published half as much. 
Continue reading “Perhaps This Only Matters To Me” »
Just a quick note that I’ve upgraded MoveableType, the Content Management System (CMS) that this weblog uses to the latest version - 3.01D. It’s clearly still a “developer’s release” since there wasn’t a lot of handholding when it came to the upgrade instructions. You don’t have to be an expert, but if you’re not familar with editing the config files and templates, you may want to wait for the full release of MT 3.
While I’m giving an update, I should also mention that I’ve changed the layout of the front page. After careful consideration, I’m now listing the first 3 entries in their entirety as opposed the snippets of the last 9. I never really liked the “Click here to continue reading…” links, but my entries tend to be so long that I thought it would help. Anyway, I’ve switched it back and now I think mashby.com looks more like a weblog.
Let me know what you think by posting a comment below! You know how webloggers LOVE comments.
I finally got around to delving deep into the new code for the comments portion of MoveableType 3.0 Developer Edition. The latest version of MT includes a multitude of ways in which to configure comments, including using the TypeKey authentication system. The motivation behind all of these changes in the comment system is to combat the problem of comment SPAM. Since installing MT-Blacklist I haven’t had much of a problem with SPAM, but unfortunately MT-Blacklist doesn’t work with MT 3.0. According to Jay Allen, the comment features built-in to MT 3.0 don’t warrant the need for MT-Blacklist any more. Time will tell on that one, but so far I like what I see.
But I could use some help.
Please fee free to post as many comments as you like to help me test the system. You do not need a TypeKey in order to post, but if you have one, please feel free to use it. I don’t care so much what you post as long as you try the comment system and let me know if you run into any problems. I want to keep the comment system as open and friendly as possible, while still trying to limiting SPAM as much as possible.
New Feeds
In other news, I’ve revamped the syndication feeds that I offer. There are now have 3 feeds in RSS 2.0 and Atom format:
» Main Weblog - RSS 2.0 | Atom
» Photos - RSS | Atom
» Travelogue - RSS | Atom
The moblog is still in whatever RSS format TextAmerica offers and that will eventually fold into the photos section at some point.
Google Ads
Last but not least, I’ve incorporated Google’s AdSense into the weblog. I’ve tried to make them as unobtrusive as possible, so hopefully you won’t mind them too much. I know that I’m not going to make a lot of money off of them, but it would be nice if they could help cover the hosting costs for the weblog. Given the ad rates though, it may generate $5 if I’m lucky, so feel free to click on as many ads as you like.
Did a little housecleaning this afternoon. I consolidated the Workout log into the main weblog under the category Health And Fitness. I haven’t posted to it in a long while and if I do in the future, it will be in the main weblog anyway. I also pulled the old Webcam page into the Odds And Ends page. It just made more sense to keep the navigation as simple as possible. I also removed the Wishlist because it just wasn’t working for me the way it was laid out.
There’s never enough time in the day, but there’s a few things that I’m working on for the future:
» Merge Moblog & Photos - I don’t have a camera phone, so posting to the moblog is a somewhat cumbersome process. Since that’s another area that has gone by the wayside, I think I’m going to integrate it with the photo gallery. I’ve been looking at Coppermine for the software to run the photo gallery and my buddy Craig uses MfOP2 for his moblog, so that’s another option as well.
» Cleanup Comments - Since upgrading to MT3, there’s a bunch of new options regarding comments. For those looking to post a comment, you probably don’t notice any difference, however on my end I have to approve each one. There’s many different things I can do with comments and I just have to figure it all out and clean up the code.
» Song Of The Week - Inspired by Asterisk, D. Keith Robinson’s weblog, I’m hoping that I can add that feature to this weblog as well. The only flash player that I can find that resembles Robinson’s player is something called Wimpy Player. It’s available either as a button, or a full player. Costs money though, so it’s something I have to think about. Plus, I don’t have Flash, so I’d have to rely on the kindness of strangers to customize it for me.
» A Complete Site Redesign - Inspired by a favorite coffee cup of mine, I have the early buzzings in my head of a site re-design. I know that I’ve been tweaking colors and little things like quotes, but this would be a complete overhaul. I’m still fleshing out the rough sketches, but I hope to get to it later this year.
Well, that’s about it! Whenever I make changes to the site, I always like to document it by posting and entry on what’s changed in case any one is looking for something that’s no longer there.
It was brought to my attention that the Contact Form was not functioning properly since a recent server upgrade. I fixed the form, so it’s now working properly.
Just a few notes regarding the weblog that I thought I would share.
MT-Blacklist
Posting an entry regarding comment SPAM really opened the floodgates. Every hour it seemed that there were more and more comments that were SPAM. So I went ahead and installed the MT-Blacklist plugin. Although version 3.0 of Movable Type will dispense with the need for using MT-Blacklist, I needed something in the meantime that would eliminate the current flood. The plugin was a piece of cake to install and 5 minutes later everything was up and running. If you’re having to deal with comment spam on your weblog, definitely give this a try.
Smileys
With St. Patrick’s Day over, I switched the smileys back to regular ones. I updated the original entry to display the Leprechauns so that the entry would make sense. In case you’re wondering what other sets I have waiting in the wings, you’ll just have to wait and see.
Oh and if you noticed the “[updated]” notifications in the right navigation, that’s because I updated the smileys, not because there’s new content. Sorry.
Status Of Series Entries
There are two “series” that I started that I haven’t yet completed. There’s the Grazing Across Louisiana series and the The Matrix Saga. I’ve received comments from many people asking where the next installments are to each of these series. Rest assured that I haven’t forgotten about them. The reason there haven’t been any new posts in these series is that they take a long time to write. Each remaining entry has been started and I work on them as time allows, so thank you for being patient and for letting me know that you appreciate them. That means a lot to me.
Quoted In The Paper
I’ve been meaning to post this, but it just didn’t fit as an entry all by itself. Anyway, I was quoted in a local paper here in Nashville, called the City Paper. It’s a daily publication that “is a civic-minded, public-spirited newspaper devoted to exploring issues relevant to Nashville readers.” I was contacted to comment on some recent announcements made by PalmGear and you can read the article at this link.
With St. Patrick’s Day just two days away, I thought it might be fun to replace the smileys I normally use with a set entitled Leprechauns. This icon set was made by Jason and thanks to his hard work, I’m able to easily include them on my site. Thanks Jason!
While I was updating the smileys, I noticed that there are a lot more in Jason’s set than in my default set, so I added them to my Smiley Module Template. Since there’s some new ones, I thought it might be helpful if I listed what smileys are available when you post a comment. Enjoy!
= :) or :-) (Smile)
= :D or : -D (Big Grin)
= ;) or ;-) (Wink)
= :P or :-P (Tongue)
= :( or :-( (Frown)
= :O or :-O (Eek)
= :| or :-| (Mad)
= 8) or 8-) (Cool)
= %) or %-) (Roll Eyes)
= :,( or :,-( (Cry)
= :x or :-x (Kiss)
= :# or :-# (Lips Sealed)
= :s or :-s (Undecided)
= LOL (Laughing Out Loud)
= ??? (Confused)
It’s hard to believe, but today marks the one year anniversary of my weblog. That’s right, it’s been one year to the day that I posted my first entry. Since that first short and timid post, I’ve really gone wild! I’ve created a moblog, a photo gallery, a workout log, and I’ve even taken a stab at writing travelogues. All that typing translates into 429 individual entries averaging 417 words per entry for a grand whopping total of over 179,000 words. It just blows my mind when I look at all these stats. 
Speaking of stats, here’s a few others. Not only have there been three color changes over the past year, in the past 12 months, mashby.com has served up 171,829 individual pages and had approximately 28,576 unique visitors. It’s been steadily increasing since the launch of this site. Since the first of 2004, I’m currently averaging 1505 pages served per day (14,319 per month) and 132 unique visitors per day (2,381per month). Never in my wildest dreams did I think that people would actually read this silly thing!
Continue reading “Time Flies” »
I know I haven’t written in awhile and I want to thank everyone that sent me an e-mail, or dropped me an instant message to let me know that they missed my entries. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. Anyway, I thought I should at least give a quick update on what’s been going on and why there hasn’t been any entries in over two weeks.
For starters, I’ve been busy keeping my New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve given this year a nickname - this is the year I “cut bait, or get out the kitchen.” In other words, either I get what I’m involved in organized and working properly, or I drop it and move on. This has translated into a lot of work, but this are progressing nicely and I’m finally starting to see some of the fruits of my labor.
Continue reading “A Quick Update” »
When I first created this weblog, I always wished that I had come up with a cool name, or slogan; however I was never successful in thinking up anything clever. I’m envious of web sites like Antipixel and NotPretty. Those names are so cool and unique. Although mashby.com may be somewhat unique it doesn’t really describe anything. Well I was thinking about stuff today and maybe it’s the overwhelming amount of caffeine that I’ve had today, or the lack of sleep, but a synapse mis-fired and I may have come up with something. I’ve changed the title of the weblog to “That Reminds Me Of A Story…”
If I’m visiting with someone chances are I’m going to use that in a sentence. Someone will say something and it will remind me of something I’ve done, read, seen, or heard about. When that happens, the very next words out of my mouth will usually be “That reminds me of a story,” and I’ll then launch into some story that could be told in 2 sentences, but I’ll stretch it to 2000. I don’t limit myself to just verbal discussions as frequent readers of this weblog are no doubt intimately familiar with. Heck, I can write 2000 words on Windows Movie Maker without batting an eye!
Continue reading “What’s In A Name Anyway?” »
After Friday’s entry regarding Plugins and how to tweak MT, I couldn’t help but do a little tweaking myself. That coupled with the comments from my review at The Weblog Review, I thought of a few things that I could do to kind of spruce up the place. There’s a saying that you’re never truly done with a website. There are always things you find that you can do to tweak it just a little bit more. Well, this weblog is no exception and here’s a rundown of what I did.
Add A Description
The first thing I needed to address was the issue of describing what my weblog is about. The name “mashby.com” doesn’t really tell you much if you don’t know me already, so I added a description to the upper right corner of the main weblog. I’m a big fan of introduction statements on a web page, so I can’t imagine how I missed this one.
Continue reading “Sprucing Up The Place” »
It’s taken longer than I thought, but I was finally able to post Day Two and Day Three of the Natchez Trace Bicycle Tour today. Some of the highlights include further tales of roughing it on the Trace, progress on my aching ass and almost getting hit by a truck. Ahhh… good times.
Currently, I’m working on Day Four and the Epilogue, but with my total words count now surpassing 125,000, there should be plenty of content to tide you over until then. Also, don’t forget to visit the companion photo gallery. As ODATT said in his review of this site, “…one thing that Michael is, is thorough.” 
! I laugh every time I read that.
I’m back from my trip and swimming in a backlog of work, but that’s to be expected. Otherwise things are slowly returning to normal as I continue to gain mobility in my legs. Seems if I need to move them in any other direction other than in a circular motion I’m in for some surprising pain.
Speaking of cycling, I’ve posted all the pictures from my trip in the Photo Gallery. I’m also making progress in posting the first day of the Travelogue. I don’t expect to have everything up until the end of the week given how much content there is to post. The trip was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about myself along the way, so there’s quite a few entries to post. In fact, it makes the think that their must be a better way to manage this type of content because it’s going to be a bear to navigate, much less read. Until I come up with something better, I’ve added some navigation to the first entry in the archive so that you can jump to a particular day. As always, if anyone has any suggestions on how to organize my Travelogue content, I’m all ears, please post a comment.
Continue reading “My Author Went On A Trip And All I Got Was This Lousy Content” »
I’m back in the saddle as it were . We returned from Destin last night and I was finally reunited with Gracie. I could swear that she has grown while we were gone.
I’m still finishing up the travelogue. Days 1 and 2 are posted. I’ve got Day 3 complete, but not posted and Day’s 4 and 5 are about halfway done.
In the meantime, I did get the photos posted from the trip. There’s a total of 109 photographs and should give you a visual pictograph of our little vacation. I hope you like them.
I still find the fact that I have a weblog a bit odd. I guess I just never saw myself as a writer, much less someone who would post personal tidbits on the web. However, today marks 6 months that I’ve been doing it, so I guess I didn’t know myself very well did I?
When I started this weblog, I really had no idea what it was going to look like, or what I would write about. Would I mostly comment on technology like Mike Rohde does on his weblog? Would I post interesting news like the guys at Gearbits? Or, would I focus on my personal life, like the wonderfully heartfelt and funny Jumping Monkeys? Well, I’d like to think that it’s been a nice tasty mix of all three examples. I read all three of those weblogs almost daily and I think they are all excellent examples of how diverse and high quality weblogs can be.
In these past six months, I’ve expanded from a simple weblog into a multi-weblog. I added movies, books, photos, a photolog, a workout journal and even a travelogue. Crazy! Now that I’ve run the gambit with this medium, I decided to condense the content just a bit. I’ve moved the movie and book sections into the main weblog, so you can now find that information in the Books and Movies category archives.
So what’s in store for the next 6 months? Who knows! I’m enjoying this wild ride as much as you are. And that’s the most surprising part. I’m amazed at the fact that people do want to read what I write. It’s not that I have a huge audience or anything, but this humble little weblog averages about 1200 unique visitors and approximately 5000 page views a month. That’s pretty surprising to say the least.
I’ve just added a new section to the site - Travelogues. The purpose of this section is to give me a place to post my travel notes from my trips. I’m currently on vacation with my wife Holly in Freeport, Bahamas and you can follow along with us as I have time to make a post here and there. This is a new type of writing for me, so I’m still trying to “find my voice.” Hopefully you’ll find it funny and a good read. As always, feel free to post comments and let me know what you think.
Even with the ‘Male Obsession Bug’ running rampant in my system, I did make time to post a few new things around the site. In the books section, I have a review of The Sterling Huck Letters by Sterling Huck and a review of Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes by Meredith Books. In the movies section, I have reviewed City Of Ghosts, Magnolia and Double Jeopardy and last but not least, I have half of the photos from my recent trip to New York in the photo gallery.
Oh, and speaking of movies, I’m locked and loaded for The Matrix Reloaded. Thanks to Fandango, I’ve already purchased two tickets for the 7:00pm show on May 15th (opening night) at the Regal Green Hills 16!
EDIT: The movies and books sections were integrated into the main weblog, so they can now be found in the category archive (08/15/2003)
Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE movies. However, I’ve delayed adding a section of movies for some unknown reason. I don’t know if it was because I knew that there would be a lot of work involved in creating the layout for me to use, or if I simply thought I didn’t have much to say. Granted I do talk a lot but trying to put together a cohesive and interesting review of a movie is a little bit different.
I guess it was watching The Wedding Planner that finally did me in. That movie was bad, but it was also insulting at how bad it was, so I just felt compelled to share my thoughts on the subject. That in turn lead to the movies section of the site and 7 total reviews for your reading pleasure. Being a NetFlix subscriber, as well as an overall movie junkie, there should be no shortage of content in this new section.
EDIT: I consolidated the posts found in the “movies” section into the main weblog. So you can find them in the main archives under the “movies” category [link] (08/12/2003)
I’ve posted two new galleries in the Photos section. One is on some woodworking projects that I did recently, but the more important one is on Holly’s Easter Egg.
This past Saturday, we bought Holly a new car. She hasn’t had a new car since she purchased her first car back in 1992, so it was definitely time for a new one. She bought a 2003 New Bettle Turbo in Chromaflair Silver Green. It’s a hard color to describe, but Chromaflair is a color shifting paint that reflects different colors depending on light and viewing angle. Suffice to say that it’s a pearlescent color that is very cool and VERY Holly.
After browsing some of the other weblogs out there, such as Leo Leporte’s Leoville and Chris Pirillos’ C:\PIRILLO.EXE, I decided to add a section called WebCam. There you will find my webcam as well as my desktop cam, so you can see what is running on my desktop. It’s a bit voyeuristic and a may be a little too Osborne-ish, but I figured I’d give it a shot for the time being and see how it goes. I hope you like it.
Update: I found a way to show you what music I’m currently listening to. I have a lot more planned for this feature, but for now you’ll find this in the “Now Playing” section listed in the navigation bar on your right. For fellow webloggers who would like to know how I did it, Matthew A. Haughey has an excellent article on the subject on his weblog.
Since I’m doing more activities like yoga and now cycling, I thought it might help to have a separate dedicated section. Thus recreation [Edit: changed to “workout”] has been added to the site. I plan on using this section mostly as a workout log, detailing some of the recreational activities I’m involved in. Besides, I think you’d get tired of reading about my posterior pain all the time.
Also, I’ve added a SETI section to the Odds & Ends page.
I think I’ve finally patched all the holes and mended all the hems on this puppy. The site is finally done. Well, is a web site ever truly done? Let’s just say that version 1.0 is done for the time being.
I got the archives up and running and the rest of the static pages are done. I’m still finishing up the about section though. It’s turned into a bit of a novella, but as anyone who knows me will attest, I don’t know how to do cliff notes.
Although this is feeling more and more like an exercise in narcissism, I hope you enjoy the site and like the small improvements I’ve made.
I’m still a newbie when it comes to this weblog thing, so I’ve been thinking about what type of stuff I would write about. Since I really enjoy reading, I figured a Reading List might be in order. So, I’ve posted a few comments about some books that I’ve been reading recently: The E-Myth Revisited and Getting Things Done. They aren’t all going to be business books, but that’s what I’ve been reading the most of recently.
Of course, this opens up a whole different train of thought, such as movies and other interests that I have. Palm OS Devices have been such a large part of my life since 1997 and I have plenty of outlets for that passion, but there’s other passions that I have such as movies, food, etc. and I’m not quite sure what to do with it all. For example, I signed up for NetFlix in November 2002 and since then I’ve rated over 558 movies, have 106 movies in my on-line queue and have watched approximately 35 movies since then. Those movies include the first two and a half seasons of The Sopranos (12 1-hour episodes each season) and as if that wasn’t enough, I’m not talking about the fact that I usually watch each movie twice because I want to hear the director’s commentary the second time. Wow, this is sounding more like a support group confession than a little “ditty” about a hobby.