Today was a wonderful day. It was the one-year anniversary of the surgery (28 Aug 2018) that removed the sigmoid section of my colon, taking with it any potential cancer (there wasn’t any!). By virtue of the joys of trying to align various schedules, it was also the day for a follow-up colonoscopy to see if there were any more polyps or signs of cancer. After the rather horrid preparation process, I went to the hospital this morning, had the test, and received the news that there were NO further signs of cancer! Between this colonoscopy today, a CT scan... Continue reading

As I have now done every year since 2010 (see past years), here are three words that I aspire to be the "themes" of my activity this year. You'll note that these are really quite similar to my 3 words for 2018 - and in truth I think 2019 is really a continuation of everything in 2018 that was left undone with the severe disruption and chaos of both: 1) uprooting our family to move to Vermont; and 2) the unwelcome guest of colon cancer. I am SO ready to put a period at the end of the sentence of... Continue reading

I may have just found my new favorite "Lorem ipsum" text generator - HIPSTER IPSUM! https://hipsum.co/ For the longest time, my choice when I just needed some columns to fill in with filler text[1] was Bacon Ipsum, which is always... Continue reading

Tonight in Nashville, Matt Mullenweg delivered his "State of the Word" presentation at WordCamp US. Not being there in person, I watched the live stream. The recorded stream has about 28 minutes of various quotes that were displayed. Matt starts... Continue reading

Yesterday (Dec 6, 2018) was TheBigDay when WordPress 5.0 with the Gutenberg block-based editor landed in all of our WordPress sites for upgrade. Some of the places to learn more about the launch include: WordPress 5.0 launch announcement (with videos)... Continue reading

Have we given up on personal blogging? Are we instead doing that all writing in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and similar services? Is the personal blog dead? [1] I had lunch this week with a friend who, like me, has been... Continue reading

The news out of Matt Mullenweg last night was... THURSDAY! That day, December 6 (2018), is the next target release date for WordPress 5.0. If you have been paying attention to WordPress, or listening to any of my reports into... Continue reading

October 31, 2018, was a special day for me. Not because it was Halloween, but because after 10 years a small little document I co-authored about the "P-Charge-Info" header for SIP-based Voice-over-IP (VoIP) was published as informational RFC 8496. You... Continue reading

The good folks over at WordPress.com are doing something interesting - they are giving free .blog subdomains for any new sites created on WordPress.com. Now, to be clear, this is not ANY subdomain under .blog. For instance, I was immediately... Continue reading

Here is a quick 3-step process for launching WordPress in a Docker container. You can use this to easily launch a new WordPress instance on your local system to test out new versions, new plugins or anything else. First, though,... Continue reading

Over the past few weeks as I’ve been grappling with colon cancer, it has been soooooooooo tempting to just pop open the Facebook app, write a story in the box and press “Share”. Simple. Easy. Done! Or inside the Twitter... Continue reading

The call came this morning, right as my regular weekly Strategic Communications team meeting was starting up. Once I saw the call was the Burlington hospital, I muted my connection, shut off the video ... and waited breathlessly for the news... The surgeon was delighted to call and say... no more cancer was found in the colon walls or lymph nodes! It's done. Finished. Fertig. I'm as close to "cancer-free" as anyone with colon cancer can be. No further tests needed. No chemo. No other treatments. I'll go back in about three months for a "flexible sigmoidoscopy" where they'll use... Continue reading

I put on pants today. Shorts, even. With a belt! This was a BIG deal. It's not that I haven't been wearing pants 😉 ... but that I've only been able to wear running pants with an elastic waste since leaving the hospital on Thursady. My stomach was too bloated from the surgery and it hurt too much to wear anything else. Until today. Another small victory! Never having had surgery before, I'm learning what countless others have learned before me - that each day brings a series of small victories, without hopefully any major defeats along the way. To... Continue reading

--- "I'm sorry, but unfortunately one of your polyps tested positive for colon cancer." Not the phone call you want to receive at 4:00pm on a Friday afternoon. Especially one week before you are about to buy a house in Vermont and start the process of relocating your family - and leaving behind your friends, other family members, and your whole "support system"! In truth, not a phone call you EVER want to receive. But I did get that call on June 29, 2018. And after many more tests, discussions and agonizing analysis, I'll be entering the hospital in a... Continue reading

“BEAR CROSSING - STAY ALERT” The bright yellow sign shouts its warning to me from the side of Interstate 91. I am in the middle of Vermont. There are few people here. Most of the time I-91 has walls of trees on either side, occasionally broken by amazing mountain views or scenic views of small towns. And so we are warned of bears and... moose! “MOOSE CROSSING - NEXT 5 MILES” I have seen the photos of damage caused by moose. You have a 2,000 pound animal on thin, spindley legs. Knock out the legs and the main bulk of... Continue reading

“FREE” says the sign pinned to the telephone pole in front of our house. And as we put out items, they usually disappear within a few hours. It’s been a fascinating aspect of living where we do in Keene, New Hampshire. We live on a fairly busy cross street, and so a good number of people are driving by. And they do stop and take the stuff we put on the street. All of it. Maybe it is part of being a college town. Maybe it is the huge number of people we see going to yard sales. Maybe it... Continue reading

I woke up this morning frustrated that I simply haven’t been writing across my various sites. In theory I am a “writer”, but I haven’t been writing! And as I wrote in My 3 Words for 2018: “because if I... Continue reading

If any of you will be at WordCamp Europe 2018 this week in Belgrade, Serbia, please do say hello. I'll be there starting this afternoon and am greatly looking forward to learning from many of the people involved deeply in... Continue reading

Continuing the tradition I started back in 2010 (see past years), here are three words that describe themes I intend to focus on this year. They aren't "resolutions" as much as areas of activity. "Themes" is a good way to think about them. HEALTH Carrying this one over from last year... because sadly not a great amount has changed over the past 12 months. I have let my weight creep up to where I am about 30 pounds over where I should be (and where I was back in 2011). I haven't been exercising. I have some dental issues to... Continue reading

Can I publish one podcast episode each day for the month of November? That's the premise of "National Podcast Post Month" or "NaPodPoMo". Similar to the idea of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where writers sign up to write a... Continue reading

Facebook truly DESPISES Snapchat! As documented in a blog post today, Facebook has now added "Stories" to their main mobile apps. Just like Snapchat, these stories: expire after 24 hours can be either images or videos have all sorts of... Continue reading

In one picture, this comic from xkcd nails the very sad state of fragmentation with our messaging systems today. The text says: I have a hard time keeping track of which contacts use which chat systems. And that is our... Continue reading

For those of us experimenting with "360-degree photos", last week's announcement of Jetpack 4.5 had a hidden but awesome feature: you can use a shortcode to embed your 360 photo or video into ANY WordPress site (that uses the Jetpack... Continue reading

Yesterday I had an incredibly fun experience starting off 2017 - and now you can share in that: For Immediate Release (FIR) episode #68 is available for listening or download at: http://firpodcastnetwork.com/fir-68-us-actually-say/ Host Shel Holtz (in the big picture above)... Continue reading