It's News to Me

In what felt a bit like an unexpected call in the middle of the night, back in October, the 21st to be specific, I received an email from a former client of mine with whom I have consulted off and on since around 1988 asking whether I'd be willing to consider «an assignment for a year or so in New Mexico.» Having already retired and, I'll admit, having begun to resign myself to the inevitable decline that leads to the end of life, I was surprised and invigorated by his suggestion so I followed up with him just to learn what the possibilities were. That conversation and subsequent events have now led to a new opportunity for me, a new role. And just this last week, I received a formal offer to become the Call Center Manager for the Vertex Outsourcing call center in Las Vegas, NM -- not Nevada mind you, but New Mexico.

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If you are viewing this entry in an RSS reader, come on over to my blog and take a look at the new theme I installed today.  It is called 1BlogTheme and it was created by Javier Garcia.  It has a rich feature set that can be configured from the admin panel in the WordPress installation without having to delve into the mysteries of PHP.  Explore any of those new features that may interest you by clicking on some of the links that surround the post.  You won't hurt anything by doing so.  If you find you have displayed something (for instance, the list of Bookmark Services) and you can't get rid of it, just click on the link to Home above and everything will be restored to normal.  If anything seems to be broken for you as you surf around the site, let me know in the comments. 

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Jerry Pounds has tagged me to participate in the meme that he wrote about yesterday that he called «A Favorites List.»  I received a phone call from him, in which he urged me to answer the same set of questions about myself that he answered, and I agreed.  I don't go looking for these meme-type blog entries as do some of my blogging acquaintances, like Tish who says she enjoys them, but since I don't get many requests for specific posts here at my blog, I thought I'd comply with Jerry's request.  So hang onto your hat or hold your nose, whichever seems appropriate, because here are my answers.

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Just to update those of you who pay occasional attention to this web site, I'm now back after taking a month off from blogging. Also today marks 90 smoke-free days. With each passing day not smoking my pipe becomes easier, but lest I be complacent, I know that the only thing that matters is not smoking today. So I continue in my resolve to remain smoke-free today.

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In an email exchange this morning with my friend Juan, who recently celebrated turning 60, he commented that he had been somewhat concerned about me because he noticed that I hadn't updated my blog in «many days.»  He is right of course in a manner of speaking , but in another way he is overlooking that the blog actually is updated each day, even if there isn't a newly composed post like this one.  Since others of you may not be aware of these daily modifications either, I thought it worth my time to point them out to you and to share some of the insightful remarks that Juan made in our exchange. 

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If any of you are still checking this weblog, you'll have noticed that I haven't posted anything new here in a couple of weeks.  I haven't been incarcerated, or hospitalized, and I am not in a coma, I'm pleased to report, but I just haven't felt up to posting anything, and the longer I have waited to post the more difficult it has been to think of anything significant to say upon my return.  Why I have these blockages, I don't know, but have them I do occasionally, so that's just the way it is.  I'll use this post to note a few things that have happened and comment on some discoveries I made while I was on my unplanned vacation from posting. 

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The incredible Mr. Moor, who began blogging recently but quite reluctantly I must admit, has discovered the joy of blogging. 

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If you've been a reader of this blog for any time at all, you'll have seen me mention my friend Paul Moor, whom I have known now since the early 1990s, almost 15 years. 

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I was a bit disappointed yesterday after installing version 2.0 of Windows Live Writer that it didn't give me the ability to create new Pages or to add Categories from the interface in WLW.  So this morning I went to the WLW MSN Group and joined it where I found a thread describing the same problem I was experiencing.  I added my confirmation of the problem to the thread and later this afternoon, I went back there and found that Joe Cheng of Microsoft had posted the solution. 

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While chatting with my friend Mike Neel in Skype's IM, he informed me a new version of Windows Live Writer was available so I downloaded it and have just installed it.  This is my first post from it.  Mike informed me that it has more support for WordPress's features, which pleases me greatly.  One thing you can now do is create a Page, which in WordPress is different from a blog post.  You couldn't do that before, so that's a sweet feature.  (I haven't experimented with doing that yet, but if Mike says it's true, then it must be true.)  I just discovered that it now has the ability to add tags, so I'm experimenting with that below.  Now if I can publish this post and my computer doesn't start to smoke, I'll consider this experiment a success. 

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