Another Month Goes By - Sat, 26 Feb 2011

It’s the end on February, and life got in the way again. So the next version of Behold won’t make it out this month. Let’s work for March now.

There were a few tricky bugs I was solving, and then I got caught with a couple of weeks of distracting life-events: father in hospital, income taxes for 6 family members, car problems, setting up PVR system for family, had to enter a stock market contest, and a set of regular activities that in addition to the other things, wore me down a bit. I could tell that I needed a bit of a recharge when 10 percentage points came off my squash results.

But I am still focused at getting Behold’s version 1.0 out. Another week or two on the bugs and a couple of weeks for the help file. I keep using the IEGP (if everything goes perfectly) qualifier on this to reflect my always optimistic programmer’s viewpoint of how long I think this will take. If only I had a ten-person team working for me, then it might go faster.

The month started optimistically enough. The groundhog peeked out of his hole here in Winnipeg on February 2 and saw the sun, but before he could scurry back into his hole, he froze solid. In Winnipeg, that means 6 more months of winter.

Then I had some input into the BetterGEDCOM endeavor and I’ve been not only contributing, but learning about where the technological future of genealogy is going, and that will a bearing on the direction for Behold will ultimately take.

Finally, during February, I started tweeting, or twooting, or twiddling, or whatever you call it. Initially I signed up for it simply to try to win a coffee cup and Tshirt. But then I found it a great platform for me to document my new discoveries, mostly related to genealogy, programming, the web and other items of interest to me. I’ve also set it up, with the help of bit.ly to add a tweet in only a few seconds and not worry about it. It’s actually fun to do, even if no one’s listening.

Twitter will also provide yet another medium for me to assist Behold users. I’ve noticed quite a few companies, including my web host and Microsoft, provide support on Twitter with fast response, whereas trying to get support through their other channels ranges from slow to impossible. Being on Twitter allows me to access that support now when I need it.

My Twitter ID (if you’re interested) is @louiskessler. I’m still not on Facebook, though.

Back to work. There’s a few days left in February to get a few things done.