We're Ba-a-a-a-a-ack...
(Tap tap tap) Is this thing on? Can you hear me down in back? <g>
After a longer than expected hiatus, we're finally back. I'm now sitting in my new home at something that resembles a desk, in something that resembles an office, and am ready to restart something that resembles work. <g>
Our move went reasonably well, and we even have most of the cardboard boxes unpacked, although our previous house hasn't sold. With our usual impeccable timing, we decided to sell just as the real-estate market tanked. It *will* sell--- it's a gorgeous location, and the home's in good shape--- but it's gonna take a while. Sigh.
To add to our summer fun, my wife got a new job, and started that a week after we moved. She's doing great; but the new job added some factors to the move we hadn't foreseen. Hey, let's push that stress-o-meter a few notches higher! <g>
Closer to the normal subject matter of this newsletter: The local cable company here in the boondocks is a relatively tiny outfit, and getting connected to the internet was problematic. While waiting for cable, my only option for connecting to the internet was a 33.3Kbps dial-up connection. At one point, I actually stayed online (at 33.3 Kbps) for 30 hours straight, trying to catch up with the email that had accumulated while I was totally offline, but I didn't even come close to catching up. In fact, the new emails arrived at the server at a rate just slightly faster than the rate at which I could pull them down: Each time I thought I'd made progress against the tide of email, my email client would fetch the next batch--- and would find more emails on the server than what I'd started with! It was like trying to drain a swimming pool with a drinking straw--- in torrential rain.
It got worse: Eventually, my server space filled with hundreds of megs of queued email, and the emails started bouncing. My apologies if you were among those whose emails overflowed.
But the local cable guys finally got things sorted out, and I was back online at high-speed. I'll catch up with reader mail this week, so if you've sent in a reader-service or subscription request, I'll get to it soon, honest!
One of the reasons I can promise to get to it soon is that Mike Elgan has agreed to give me a hand with what has (until now) been a one-man operation. Some of you know Mike from the days when he was Editor at Windows Magazine. He's also been editor at HP World Magazine, HP World News, Inside HP, The Palm Reader, Palm News, Road Tricks, Portable Life News, Laptop Life, BuzzWords, Pocket Windows, Portable Windows and some other print and online publications. (Whew!) Mike and I have worked together very well in the past, and it'll be good to work with him again.
One of the first things Mike's done to attend to a request
that many, many of you have asked for over the last couple years; but I just
wasn't able to get to: He's set up a daily feed of LangaList
items via
There are other changes and improvements in the works, too; we'll be rolling them out in the coming issues--- stay tuned!
And, of course, as always, we welcome your feedback on all the changes. No doubt we'll be tuning and tweaking as we go along and, with your input, we'll make things as good as they can be.
On with the show!
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Other
Permalink
