Takin’ a break, 2019

One of the best perks of working for Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, Happy Tools, Akismet, Gravatar is that every five years you get to take a 3-month, paid sabbatical. It’s a wonderful perk, and if it sounds wonderful to you, check us out.

Mine starts on Monday. So I’m unplugging from Slack, turning off WordPress notifications and spending some time doing off line stuff.

If Lucy has her way, that means a lot of fishing.

Nothing beats boots on the ground

My wife and I thought this plan was a very bad idea. So we began to fight it. We spread the word about the plan to move the library. We talked about why this was a bad idea, and proposed alternatives. We met with other people opposed to this idea to map out strategy. But most importantly, we attended meetings where the people who made the decisions about the redevelopment plan would be.

Since January, my wife and I have spent most of our free nights attending meeting after meeting. Library board of trustee meetings. Redevelopment agency meetings. Town council meetings. Redevelopment advisory committee meetings. Local Democratic Party meetings. Redevelopment town hall meetings. And any meeting we could think of where we could talk to people face to face about the library.

And we won. The mayor wound up announcing that the library would not be moving.

Wilbur at Giant Cypress

Congrats Wilbur! Enjoy that downtown library.

NetNewsWire 5, Alpha 1

My favorite RSS Reader is back, with its first alpha release on the new 5.0 line. I’ve been using it a couple of days now, syncing with my Feedbin account, and really enjoy it. Reading is quick and easy, just keep hitting spacebar. And I love the “Today” search, which limits my unreads to just what’s new today. Pretty darn impressive for an alpha 1.

Here’s Brent’s release post on his site.