Posted on December 11th, 2007
Hello everyone! Welcome back to my fancy new and improved website. After far too much downtime, I have rebuilt and recovered. This is my new home on the web. Quite a bit has changed both online and offline, so let’s take it all one at a time.
New Site
First of all, I hope you like the new look and feel of the site. I would claim credit for all of it, but sadly I can’t. The theme you see in front of you is a highly edited version of Envy by WPDesigner. I have long enjoyed their themes and it’s a great site for some seriously nice Wordpress design. Let me add, editing a theme, especially one with lots of images (all those curvy things you see are images) takes a long time. But it was worth it, and I think this now reflects my preferences.
As I mentioned above, I am now on Wordpress. After many years of using Textpattern, I have decided to make the transition. Wordpress has matured as a platform, and while many of my objections about it remain, there’s no denying that it has claimed the mind share of more developers and users on the Internet than just about any other blogging platform. I would continue to use Textpattern, but it just doesn’t quite match up with my needs anymore.
The old web content is still around, however I have only reimported the haikus. My guess is that this is the only part anyone truly missed (if you missed anything to being with). This brings me to my next new feature: a poll! Wordpress has a plugin for doing online polls, so I can now ask:
Should I reimport my other old posts?
- Yes, I miss your rants. (67%, 2 Votes)
- No, please move on. (33%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 3
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Other new features include new photo gallery support. You can see an example of that in this post here. What this means, however, is that I’ve dropped using the Gallery photo management program. I never liked having a separate tool to archive my photos to begin with, so I’m hoping I will enjoy keeping them all one one page. Less clicking.
Sadly, the great data loss of 2007 resulted in me losing my photo galleries. That’s not a problem because I have backups of all my photos, but I need to bring them back piece by piece. I’ll be doing that over time in a series of photo posts bringing back some of my favorites. If there’s one you would like, please let me know.
From a comments point of view, writing and then editing your comments after the fact should now be a lot easier. You should now be able to preview your comments instantly, and then correct them if you’ve made a mistake. Additionally, I’ve added OpenID support. That means that if you use an OpenID system (like LiveJournal), you can authenticate and post your comments directly. No waiting for my approval (although if it becomes spammy, I’ll have to turn that off). For LiveJournal people, authentication is as simple as putting your LJ URL in the web address blank. If you’re johndoe on LiveJournal, just put johndoe.livejournal.com in the blank and then give LiveJournal your username and password when asked. Of course, if you don’t have an OpenID, that’s no problem. Just post like normal.
There are all kinds of other things hidden here at and about. The Contact page now lets you IM me from the web while each post now has some additional tools that allow you to either bookmark things you like or find related content on other blogs (that’s the Sphere link you’ll periodically see). Also, if you quote me elsewhere, you can now use a trackback link (and I can trackback to others as well).
Offline
So where am I in life since August? Well, I have now moved to San Antonio where I am product managing at a fantastic company called Rackspace. They are an absolutely outstanding Internet hosting company that specializes in premium customer service. As a result, they have tremendously loyal customers and a great reputation. Product Management is excellent fun and exactly what I wanted to do after getting my MBA. Getting to do that at a company that is strategically strong (kicking ass), full of great people (about 1,800 employees), and an industry leader is a real treat. To say the least, I’m enjoying my work.
Misc FAQ
So I’m sure you have lots of questions, so here’s an abbreviated FAQ of questions that have not yet been frequently asked:
Wait, where are the haikus?
Look here.
Are you writing more haikus?
Yes. When I feel like it.
And the photos?
More to be coming shortly. Leave a comment if you want something in particular.
I have another email address for you than the one listed on your Contact page. Should I change?
I actively check the address listed on the Contact page as well as my Gmail address, my Cornell alumni address, and my Rice alumni address. If you have another address, please update.
How do I get a link on your “Friends” list on the right? or I’m not your “Friend.” Take me down!
Just leave a comment.
Nothing works in my browser!
If you’re using IE6, I’m truly sorry but I just don’t care. Please do what Windows has undoubtedly been telling you to do for the past nine months and upgrade to IE7. It still sucks, but it at least sucks in a less ridiculous way. Or, just download Firefox and be happy. To be honest, this website looks the best in Firefox and Safari and OK in IE7. (Why IE7 insists on rendering 1 pixel high divs as something like 3 or 4 pixels, I have no idea.)
If you’re not using IE6, leave a comment or email me.
What’s Sphere?
Sphere is a nifty tool that helps you find related content on the Internet. Clicking it will open a little box that will show you other blogs with similar content. I have no idea how useful that is, so please let me know what you think.
What happened to your old site?
My hosting company (not Rackspace) had a disk meltdown that somehow affected both my server and the backups. I’m at a loss as to how that could have happened, but it did. My data was salvaged only because I had a reasonably recent copy of my blog database stashed elsewhere. The other things, like my photo gallery and the images I used on my site, were lost.
Who hosted you?
Email me (or use the cool IM thingy here) and I’ll tell you.
I have been insanely busy this week at uTest. We had our General Availability launch and got a lot of excellent coverage from around the world for our software testing services. Some of our highlights include: