I make no claims regarding use, but searches for – are totally destroying the ;.

Also, what’s up with the en dash dip at the end of each year?

(Updated “n dash” to “en dash” for those that care.)

You may (or may not) have noticed this and sibling sites may have been unavailable recently. Sometimes it’s just gone for a few minutes. Sometimes days. Unfortunately, the server attached to the network is dying a slow death and increasingly prone to dropping its connection, rendering anything here awfully far from you. Though it’s not like I’ve been providing much for your consumption, anyway…

I blame the flood.

Much earlier this year, I was spending a lazy Sunday with the laptop on the couch, idly poking around the web. One of my coworkers IMed me, unable to connect to a server at the office. Not concerned but wanting to be helpful, I attempted the same, replicated their problem, and passed the details to the guy in charge of addressing those problems (happily, since it wasn’t me who needed to visit the office on the weekend, even though it’s walking distance for me). About an hour later, he called me.

“Hey, so, I’m at the office, and in the server room…”

“Yea? Figure out the problem?”

“*shhhhhhh*”

“What?”

“*shhhhhhh* Can you hear that? *wooosshhh*”

“No, there’s too much ‘shhhh’ … wait, that’s not… is that water?!”

“Can you join me in the office, I’m gonna need some help.”

We had a nice server room, until we suddenly discovered an water line existed on the floor above it, and that should it burst (as we also discovered it could) the result had some long lasting implications.

That Sunday afternoon entailed wading through funky water raining through eroding ceiling tiles our now sickeningly humid server room, extracting drenched production-hosting and office servers (including this one) from their home, and spreading them around the office, dissecting them to expose internal bits to drier air. By evening the server room was empty, and a few started bringing a few critical machines back online for testing and preparation for transport to offsite hosting. Morning was final configuring in the new environment (still cannot believe they even booted), and approaching noon on Monday I went home to crash. Recovery remains ongoing – we’re still playing catch-up.

It was also that night amidst toweling off wet hard-drives I found out that Kelly was pregnant, which is not how it happens in the story books. Kelly tells that part of the story better, so I’ll leave it right there, but by now you’ve probably heard that news.

Home and work set up this year with some major life stresses, but to ensure this year was as difficult as possible, fate threw in plenty more. Illness and death, moving, pregnancy (they’re not all bad)… I’ve included short mention of some here, not to diminish significance, but to share some news for those still watching and make note for later review.

This has not been a consistent place to find me this year. I don’t know if that will improve. Time and focus have not been mine, and often when I feel I’m taking back control, something else distracts.

Fortunately, we’ve had something in the works for a good distraction.

In about a month, I’ll be a dad.

I’m looking forward to fatherhood for many reasons, but one standing out is the priority it gets above all else. I have to celebrate this new life, and after this year, anything else vying for attention needs to get in line.