I have some fun things coming up…

• Sat 17 Sep: Off to Chattanooga with Rick [and hopefully Jessica ;)] to go see Derek, Sandra, and Cason play at Covenant College. Hanging with my people is awesome. It’s Sarah H.’s, concert, and it’ll be good to see her again.
• Fri 23 Sep: Off to the DC area to go see Caedmon’s play in Maryland. I’m hoping to get to hang out with Chrissy during the day before the show; haven’t seen her since before she went to Ireland, and I want to hear all her stories. Bryan and Erica and Joe and Rhonda will be at the show for sure, and I’m really hopeful that Christiana, Mark, and Karyn will be there. My heart may not be able to take the awesomeness.
• Sat 24 Sep: Shake off the awesomeness hangover, drive back to IAD, hope a plane to GSO, and hopefully drive down to Charlotte real fast, kidnap Brandon and Sarah, then bring them to the Greensboro area for Mike’s birthday party. I’m ready to see him and Kari, Brian and Sarah, and hopefully Charles, Jason, and Susan. I don’t know that I’ll be able to take two days in a row like this!

Also, looks like I’ll be headed back to KSC for more of the same in October.

I’ll admit: I’ve never known the citation of “scattered as the woman whose body / was torn for the twelve tribes” from Caedmon’s Call’s “Petrified Heart”, found on 40 Acres.

Okay, so I guess I could have gotten that off of the Song Vault page for “Petrified Heart”, since it’s right there with the lyrics and all. And really, I should have known that. But I didn’t, and … I can admit that.

Maybe.

Wait, I just did.

Hopefully the citizen-subjects of the .net will not revolt against my tyranny and expect me to be overthrown. If nothing else, I’ll restrict all my posting to AYOR for a day … or something.

dotnetters

Originally uploaded by coffeestainedpages.

It’s been two months, but this photo is still really great for me.

I played a small part in Brandon and Sarah getting together for the first time, and I figured that the first .net wedding needed a staff representative of the .net.

That, and Brandon and Sarah had me be the MC of the reception. That’s why I’m in a tuxedo.

There’s some really great folks in that photo. I like ‘em lots.

The [rmfo-blogs] experiment, in process for some time, has finally paid off: my friend Rhonda is being paid for the re-print rights of one her Weblog entries about a childhood memory of fighting for the right to sit in the front seat of a car with her brother.

Too cool.

Chris Anderson makes an excellent suggestion: allowing rabid fans of a band to update information about that band in a wiki. I saw the light on this concept a couple weeks ago with the .net; I could let people update this information themselves!

Now, to install MediaWiki and play with it and figure out how we’ll implement it on [caedmonscall.net] and [derekwebb.net] …

I’ve been putting off upgrading all the local WordPress installations, and other than brief breaks for food, showering, and laundry, I’ve done nothing but upgrade WordPress installations for the last 12-plus hours. The sad thing is, I’ve still got about 15% of what’s left on the box to upgrade.

To be fair, it’s not a straight WP upgrade. I have a blend of plugins that I like to use, a way of keeping WP installs neat and orderly that I like, and also some general cruft cleanup that I’m doing with this. I also had found a couple installs that had egregiously escaped upgrade for a couple cycles now.
I thought I’d be done by 5:00 p.m. or so tonight. Then I thought I’d be done by dark. Now, I’m just going to quit before midnight and pick up tomorrow. I could go for a while longer, but I better not do that.

Three years ago, I joked about doing the Blogathon. This year, I’m not joking. I’ll be supporting Blood:Water Mission, which is seeking to bring HIV-free blood and clean drinking water to Africa.

I jokingly suggested this the other day on the Rumor Forum, and then … I just felt like I shouldn’t be joking about it. I fired an email off to Derek, and he told me that he’d support me. Derek’s been working with Blood:Water and raising money for them out on tour for some time now.

I would appreciate your support for Blood:Water, whether you donate through the Blogathon campaign that I’ve set up or directly on your own. If you do feel like you want to support me in this, do so with a link, some fun IMs while I spend next Saturday on a posting spree, and whatever other ways you can think of.

At least 48 posts in 24 hours? I can probably pull off 60. I’ll start my research this weekend so that I have some links at the ready for my perusal and postage when next Saturday rolls around.

There are good days and bad days. Yesterday was a GREAT day: hung out with Derek, recorded some interviews, got to tour his house [I love 1920's bungalows, and the Webbs live in one ... color me jealous!], and then got to eat at La Hacienda with him and Sandra. Just a fun day, which was capped off by our weekly Tuesday night gabfest-and-sometimes-movie gatherings at the Granades’ … but no movie, so we just talked. Well, they talked, and I drawled … and mimicked Larry the Cable Guy. [Badly.]

[So sue me, I'd had four hours of sleep and had driven 250 miles, after a weekend of non-stop travel and toting.]

Today, well, today sucked. Servers going haywire. Spam reports to handle [related to server exploits that I've been chasing all day :sigh:]. I’d been away from the office for almost a week, so I was playing catch-up the entire time. I just never felt like I was on-pace for anything today, but as I prepare to go to bed, I feel like I have a bit more of a handle on things.

And if nothing else, we’re going to Tim’s Cajun Kitchen for lunch tomorrow, just us guys. I’m still amused by the hivemind thing we had going … someone randomly brought up “bread pudding” in a conversation where Jeff had discussed this sugary treat his mom used to make with leftover mashed potatoes, and then … 30 seconds later, lunch at Tim’s was planned. Scary how we all twigged really, really hard to that.

[I don't care who you are ... that's funny raight dere, even if you don't know Larry the Cable Guy's oeuvre.]

If you’ve ever wondered why I babble about WordPress or other things I care about so much, BeConnected’s Eight Ways to Be a Good Customer will explain it fairly succinctly.

I wish more people would do this with [rocksmyfaceoff.net]. I guess I spent enough time in the sportswriting game to love, love, love feedback, so I know that I should give it, too.

[HT to Lifehacker.]

Now this is how you do open finances. I’d love to see how they’re doing this, because I could use a similar automation tool… although I guess I could put it in by hand if necessary.

On Sunday, I posted about Mark’s thoughts on how computer-mediated communication reveals our true selves.

Today, Travis Prinzi added a comment pointing to Jason Upside Down’s Ten Suggestions for Christian communication online. It was quite excellent, so I thought I’d link to it as well.

Violations of such suggestions—on others’ part, and on mine—are why I don’t discuss such things in online fora very often. I often am left with a quite bitter taste in my mouth.

Man, I look upon posts like Mark Traphagen’s about how computer-mediated communication can truly reveal what is on our hearts, because it strips away many of the buffers that we have and go, “Wow, look at what we have created.” The joy of the experiment of [rmfo-blogs.com] is just as high as it was when I kicked it off.

And what does this slice of my heart tell you, reader? That I’m a prideful little snit that wants you to know that I’m the man behind the curtain.

I cut short my extended weekend because I was so not feeling well. I thought a migraine was oncoming, but it never fully showed [blessedly], although I feel like I do after they’ve subsided. Bleh.

I could be being awed by the wonder of Phil Keaggy now, having hung out with Jeff and Adriene all afternoon. :sigh: But I did get to hang with Joe and Andy, which was a long time overdue. Plus, Derek rocked the house as always, and it was fun to hear Sandra play with a band, and Steven Delopoulos … well, Steven was his wacky self. I don’t know that the mostly-young crowd knew how to take him—he’s very much a mature and thinking man’s songwriter these days, and, at 26, I felt above the median age of the crowd—but he was willing to break out some old Burlap to Cashmere standards for fun.

All in all, a good trip, even if I didn’t sleep worth a hoot last night.

I am proud to present: Here in Nashville, the Andrew Osenga Weblog.

[The fun coups are come when they ask you for your help. Hee.]

A month ago, I went to a Derek Webb show and got to hang out with my good friend before the show for several hours. In the middle of that time, we carved out 40 minutes or so to talk while being recorded. I’ve got lots of thoughts about all of this, and they’re worth discussing at some point, but for now … I’ll just point you to the interview.