I've been so busy I haven't been able to update this page in the last 3 weeks.  I've applied March colors, that was almost 2 weeks ago!

The big news is that I am now collecting visitor stats for my own site.  I bid on a job that didn't go through because the client decided to go with different technologies, but in the process of bidding I needed to see how difficult it would be to collect Web statistics.  I replaced the counter on my home page with a Perl script that I wrote (this kind of embedded page within a page is sometimes called a "Web-bug").  I also have a page that displays the data.  The high-tech jargon for this is LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Perl), and RDBMS (Relational Database Management System).

It takes time to make bids for freelancing!  I'm glad I'm now employed and that I no longer have to do three jobs in one: sales person, bookkeeper, and worker.  That's the other big news, I finally was able to get to all those items that have been on my "to do" list for ages including getting a job and the work for LinuxChix.

I was given a big fish to fry three weeks ago and I'm working on it.  It's on my list for today.  As soon as I've got a working model, I'll be ready to announce it because this is something I might be able to sell to many small businesses.

I still need to start doing some volunteer work for BFREE because I received 677 new photos four weeks ago!  I'm thinking about implementing something like Joel's picture database, but that is a project for when I have some free time on my hands.

Ericka Chickowski interviewed me for an article in Computer Source Magazine that is now on the newsstands.  It's a great article and she's a wonderful writer.  This one might even be worth paying for back issues - they are disappearing quickly!

Hectic doesn't even BEGIN to describe the last 3 weeks.

I arranged to have Seattle LinuxChix meetings at NSCC.  I've lined up a couple of speakers and I'm still looking for more.

I start work at Alaska Maritime on Friday.  I'm thrilled!

Of course, Murphy's law applies and I just got my business cards that had been on-order for a while.  I had them done at Ballard Printing by Vicky Stafford.  Vicky did an amazing job making my business cards look like my Web site (only better).  She also sent me her file of the art, which I haven't had time to examine yet.  I plan to do that within the next couple of weeks - maybe I'll put her work on the Web.

As one would expect from Murphy's law, on the day that would have been the best for me to start work, I had scheduled a visit to see relatives.  Tom and I flew to southern California to visit with my Mom last weekend (Friday).  We did manage a kayak trip in the Back Bay bird sanctuary in Newport Beach.  That was great!  We saw one lone loon, blue herons, lots of pelicans (lots of white ones and a few brown), earred grebes, great egrets, snowy egrets, and American avocets in winter plummage (this was a new bird for us), plus an assortment of hawks.  At night, we heard an owl, but we never saw her.

It might have been our imagination, but the birds in southern California came a LOT closer to us and were unperturbed when we (accidently) came very close to them.  Tom says it's their "California laid-back attitude."

It was warm and sunny in southern California.  Now we are back in chilly, overcast, drizzly Seattle.