Tech guy had a busy day. Besides packing a bunch of Buddhapuss shirts, he installed the mailing list program. Some open source program called Dada.

For those who signed up for the mailing list, yes a periodic ( and hopefully relevant ) mail is coming your way sometime soon.

Tech guy: OK, so all you do is type up the message and click the button and away you go.
sam: It just fires off to everyone on the list?
Tech guy: Everyone gets it.
sam: Even me?
Tech guy: Even you.
sam: And this is all free?
Tech guy: Free.

Yep, sending mass emails is remarkably easy to do.

Whilst typing away this morning a fuse in the power box blew. The real fun started once the new fuse was in place.

The Wife: There’s something wrong with the PC.
sam: It runs perfectly.
The Wife: It won’t turn on.
sam( presses power button – nothing happens )
sam: I’ll call tech guy.
Tech guy: What did you break now?
sam: The PC won’t start.
Tech guy: Is it plugged in?
sam: Yes! Seriously it won’t fire up.
Tech guy: You’ve been googling again haven’t you?
sam: This is serious! Press button – we got no power.
Tech guy: I’ll check it out. Don’t touch anything.
Tech guy checked all the connections, but it still won’t start. Popping open the case tech guy made a discovery. He held up a massive wad of gray cat fur for me to see. It could be from only one critter in the house, the long hair cat, Electra ( Buddhapuss’s apprentice )
sam (to The Wife): Honey look at what your cat did! She broke the PC.

Tech guy vacuumed out all the fur and all was good. Now the PC runs like a top.

Tech guy reviewed the usage logs today and discovered that site traffic increased more than 50 percent over April. Not too shabby. Time to buy tech guy a beer me thinks. Or maybe a Ask Buddhapuss t-shirt. : )

Anyway, even cooler stuff is coming shortly including a new 2 part poll and the first chapter of The Ridge Runner and possibly the first chapter of Velocity.

We’re also going to incorporate more pictures to the site since there’s lots of bandwidth to spare. Such a visual crutch should help the blog out. Lately after writing for 12 hours a day, I run short on energy for the site.

It’s time to go catch some sun while it’s still shining.

Hey,

Tech guy here. If you’ve been following the site this past week you might’ve noticed a few minor, but important changes. sam wants me to explain them.

1) Karma ratings – at the bottom of every blog is a karma bar, indicated by the phrase Current Karma. This is your chance to tell sam what you think of the blog by assigning it a positive, neutral or negative karma. Like the blog? Hate the blog? Think it’s whatevery? Click one of the links in the karma bar to let sam know. The karmic rating updates in real time and displays to the left of the bar in parentheses.

2) Categories – in order to make it easier to find blogs, we added a category selection. At the bottom of every blog, just below the karma bar is the category. Click that link and to see all the blogs for a given category, sorted by date.

3) Search – the search results now show the category of the blog, as well as the current karma. Give it a whirl.

In the coming week or so, sam wants me to overhaul the reader ratings page so the karmic results are more interesting. Right now its just a long list sorted by karmic rating. That’s kinda beat, I know.

Laters,
Tech guy