Let me begin by thanking all of those readers who told me that they missed my blog. I appreciate the positive feedback. It is because of that praise that I have decided to do the Blogathon again this year. That means 30 days of posts to come. Technically the Blogathon doesn’t begin until June 1st. I am using the last days of May as a warm up for my writing mojo. And, because I now know people enjoy my blog, I will try very hard to continue posting on a somewhat regular basis after the Blogathon ends. I know, intentions don’t matter as much as deeds. I am hoping that making my intention public at the outset will help motivate me to continue come July 1.
This is the part of the show where I stare at the screen willing words to come to mind. Sadly, I am drawing a blank. So I will use this time to share some of the ways I have been occupying my time (in no particular order):
1. Tech Whispering. I continue to offer tech support on a myriad of devices. When I say myriad, I mean it. This week alone I have worked on a couple of Android tablets, two Macs with either Tiger or Mountain Lion and three Windows machines with XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
I have also started doing work on WordPress. Most of my work has been customizing themes, but I have also been configuring plugins and trouble-shooting issues. I like the challenge and have received a lot of customer praise for my work.
2. Teaching myself PHP. There are now a gazillion websites out there from which to learn any number of skills. The opportunities are truly overwhelming. When I decided to learn PHP, I started my research on Coursera and found a course on Building Dynamic Websites that I really enjoyed. Then (compressing a couple of months of trial and error) I turned to O’Relly’s Head First series and started working on their Head First PHP and MySQL book. Now I have my own little sandbox where I get to play with PHP whenever I want.
3. Traveling. This year I have been traveling back and forth to the east coast with a fair amount of frequency. Some of the trips have been for solemn occasions and others for joyous ones. Regardless, I almost always manage to sneak in a trip to see my beloved Niecelettes. I am looking forward to a trip east in August where I get to see my nieces again. To clarify the distinction, the nieces are my brother and sister-in-law’s kids as opposed to my niecelettes who are my brother’s children. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see the nieces as often as I would like because it is quite a challenge to get from here to there.
We also just returned from 2 weeks in Spain where we got to visit Granada, Sevilla and Cordoba. I will leave that as a teaser because I will undoubtedly going to use stories from Spain as blog fodder in the weeks to come.
4. Crafting. Barely. My projects continue to pile up, but I just don’t seem to be getting much done. Right now on my needles I have a pair of socks and scarf for a friend. The sewing backlog is huge and I have yet to start a real project (as opposed to just practicing) on my loom.
So that’s life in Lake Woebegon. I’m as curious as you to see what I come up with for tomorrow.