To many it’s just another dot-com going under, five or six layoffs lost among the thousands more going on around them. It’s dear to me, though. Pyra Labs, creaters of the Blogger software I use to maintain this weblog, is down to a company of one. Out of money and unable to continue as it had, co-founder and CEO Evan Williams is the only one left.

Blogger is just one of the several tools available to easily create and maintain a website such as this one, but it was my tool of choice. They’ve got about about 100,000 weblogs using their software – this one was number fourteen. Pyra created exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. There’s been some rough going as they tried to keep pace with demand, and it was clear from the beginning that eventually they’d run out of money, but they had what I thought to be the best thing going.

It wasn’t just the software that made the company dear to me. It was the human face they presented to the world. They started their company shortly after the company I work for did. We were about the same size. I could relate. But they were in San Francisco, sure to go far, sure to join the ranks of the dot com millionaires. I was in backwards Athens, Georgia, creating software for rural electric utilities. They were riding high, we were struggling to keep the doors open. I could live, through their eyes, a life that a few small changes, a few different decisions, could have given me. I connected with them in a way I’ve never connected with another company before. I wasn’t just a customer.

But of course, the times have changed. The bubble they were in has burst. Here in Athens, we’ve turned around, too. Turning a profit, even, with a solid future in sight. I’m still living multiple lives, though. My own, of course, and the one they let me live with their words. Thanks, in large part to their efforts, I’m living many, many more lives through the words of thirty or so more people, chosen from the hundreds of thousands of people now writing online journals and weblogs. It would have been much harder for me to find these people without the efforts of Pyra and the other people doing similar work.

I don’t need Blogger. I could do all of this on my own. But I like Blogger. I’m sad to see things end up this way. I wish them all the best of luck. And thank you for everything you’ve made possible.

The independant university newspaper has a write-up on my play opening tonight. The Red & Black is rather embarassing for a newspaper, but at least they got all the facts right.

My play has been written up in the local mainstream paper. Writer Mary Jessica Hammes does a good job, as usual.

A correction: yesterday’s vote wasn’t strictly along party line, just mostly so. Here’s a breakdown of the voting.

Work: mighty busy.
Life: extremely mighty busy.

Tonight is the last rehearsal without an audience. We get a preview crowd tomorrow, and then it’s the opening night extravaganza on Friday. It’s all coming together into a wonderful little show. Today, I had lunch with a class of university upperclasspeople (one upperclassman and a whole bunch of upperclasswomen) who had lots of questions for me about the show and directing and acting. It was like being on “Inside the Actor’s Studio”, but with food.

And just like that, Georgia has a new state flag. (link to picture of new flag) I never in a million years thought the Georgia legislature would act so quickly and painlessly. OK… I should be more specific. I never thought the Georgia legislature Democrats would act so quickly and painlessly. The legislature Republicans all voted against the new flag. The only thing the Republicans did, besides whine, is get “IN GOD WE TRUST” added to the design before they voted no.

I’d spent all morning diagnosing a bug in our software that just rared its head after hiding for months. I’d finally proven it wasn’t my doing and passed it on to one of the real programmers to fix, and now I was hungry. It was almost two hours past lunch time, and my tummy was feeling it. Especially since I’d slept until the last possible moment this morning and skipped breakfast. Before I decided what to do, a nice looking young woman walked into my office and said, “Would you like some chips and salsa from On The Border?” The powers that be continue to smile upon me.

“Have you ever been out in the forest (bush) or maybe even in your own backyard, and come across a strange fungus, lichen or maybe a slime mould, and wondered “what’s that?” .My web site is my small attempt to photograph and name many of these strange things. Many of the photos have been taken around the Auckland region of New Zealand.”

The Hidden Forest has beautiful photography and quite a lot of interesting botanical info on Slime Molds, Lichens, Fungii, and other primitive plants. Found via Poor Clio.

America’s Library.gov is the US Library of Congress’ on-line home. THere you’ll find old audio recordings, video clips, and other interesting exhibits. It’s geared toward a young audience, butI enjoyed it just the same.

The kitty went as close to the brink as a kitty can and came back to tell us about it. “Rawr” and “Purr” seem to sum things up. When we took him to the emergency room Tuesday night (Wednesday morning?), he’d come out of his siezures. Blood work was done, and his red blood count was half what it should be. They stabilized him, and by the time he saw his regular vet the next morning, the blood count was down to a third of normal. After more searching, it was discovered he had the best of the possib;e diagoses: blood parasites. Little things that swim around in the blood stream, chomping on the tasty red blood cells. Icky, but curable. He’s now on many medicines and we’re watching for signs of things to come: blood damage like this lead to organ damage. How much damage and which organs remain to be seen. But for now, he’s chatty and eating fish.