Lots to say, almost no time to say it

Almost. I do have more time this week than I did the previous week, and even more than the week before that, and so on. The last time I was out at HQ someone who had just found out that I was writing a book asked how in the world I had the time to do it. What, with starting a new job at a start-up and all. Quite honestly, I don't know how I managed. The last few months have been little more than a blur.

Here's a few highlights. As you know, America elected its first black President. Hooray! I didn't vote for him. That's a whole other, guilt-ridden post that will come out at some point.

Around the same time I finished up my book. This past Tuesday I got the final draft after the layout guys had got it ready for publication. According to the schedule I have, the printers should be setting it up as we speak.

Working with everyone at Pragmatic Bookshelf has been an unbelievable honor and an amazing learning experience. I thought I knew a fair amount about writing. Working with professionals showed me exactly how much I didn't know. Good thing I draw my monthly paycheck from another line of work.

This last week Meg and I put in an offer on a new house right off of downtown Lawrence and had it accepted. There's a great story revolving around the offer process that, again, is a post unto itself. We're set to close the first part of December assuming everything continues along smoothly.

It's a great, nearly 100-year-old house two blocks from the heart of Lawrence. Stoked doesn't begin to describe how excited we both are, but there's some miscellaneous to take care of. Speaking of which, if you know of anyone in Lawrence who would love a killer deal on a townhouse through July of '09, let me know.

On the code front, I've got back to coding for fun. With the book and talks and everything that's been happening for the last few months I had almost forgot how much of a joy it is to sit down and hack on code just for the joy of creating something.

One of my co-workers, Brian McCallister, created a mailing list for Yet Another Bug Tracker, or yabt. The last time I was in Cali we were talking about how we both wanted a simple bug tracker that stored everything in the repository. Whenever you've got your code, you've got your tickets too.

Both of us have been kicking around the idea for years, he finally did something about it a few weeks ago and I've been playing with some code this week. I posted what I anticipate the initial CLI looking like. If you're interested in participating, join up and share your thoughts.

Other than that, not much is happening around here. I've got some much needed vacation time schedule for after Thanksgiving, just in time to get ready to move! :-)