Twitterfeed is dead. Long live...

dlvr.it?  

In advance of the sad day when Twitterfeed shuts down, I'm testing out options.  In addition to buffer.com and dlvr.it, it looks like IFTTT is a possibility.  If this were a fair test and, I would try out all three services and compare and contrast, but I'm just looking for something that is quick and easy, so if this dlvr.it test works out, that's what I'll use.

One positive so far is that it looks like dlvr.it will pull posts from my blog and send to both twitter and facebook.  The "post to FB" feature broke on twitterfeed a while ago, and I've just lived with it only sending to twitter (blogger already does its own automatic send to G+).

So here goes.

A Night in the Lonesome October

October has begun, along with our traditional month-long family bedtime reading of Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October, his last novel, and my favorite of his.  The book is broken into a chapter for each day of the month, which makes it great for doing a chapter a night and following how the story progresses over the course of the month.

The characters in the book are all references to existing character in fiction and life, and while some are obvious, others are not.  Christopher Kovacs has an illuminating essay on this topic, perfect for *after* you've read the book.

Coffee cake: A tale of 48 hours of love and loss in 3 pictures

Meet cute

Midcake crisis

Grieving

Replaced a laptop keyboard

Kids broke a number of keys on my laptop keyboard, and I finally put on my big boy pants and replaced it.  It was surprisingly easy to follow the official instructions and swap the thing out.  The hardest part was attaching the keyboard connector, getting the pins lined up just right so that it clicked in place.  This step took a few minutes and only mild cursing, and is more evidence why it's a good thing I'm not a surgeon. 

You've been a good ole keyboard, daddy, but you done broke down

2016-09-11

Fifteen years ago today, Sarah and I were in the midst of a move to Burlington, Vermont.  Sarah had already driven out 2+ weeks prior (with power of attorney to sign for me) in order to close on the house.  I was remaining in Chicago through September 25 in order to finish up work on the latest version of SPSS.

On the day in question, a few of us were already in the Pubs Warren when Chantal arrived and announced that "all these business types in suits were on their cell phones in the lobby talking about a plane that crashed in New York."

So we immediately checked the CNN site, which wouldn't load because of too much traffic.  Same with the NYT site.  Finally, success on the Chicago Tribune page.  After 20 minutes of reading everything available on what looked like a horrible accident, the image on the page refreshed and the South Tower had been hit.  Suddenly, getting out of the Sears Tower seemed like a good idea.  As everyone gathered their things, they announced over the speakers that everyone should leave the building.  

I went to the Metra station and asked if there would be extra trains heading out of the city that morning.  "Why?"  (In 2001, there hadn't been enough time for news to spread -- no twitter.)  I walked to the El and took the Purple Line back to my nearly-empty apartment, called Sarah, and then read books from the Evanston Public Library for the rest of the day.  

(note: published 12/31/25; backdated to when I wrote it)