So, it looks like the baby will actually get her new pair of shoes.

I’ve made the jump back into the steady-paycheck world. I’m now Director of Marketplace Products for Boston.com.

In this role, I’ll continue the work I did from 2002-2004 on BostonWorks. Recruitment is an incredibly exciting (and scarily fast-moving) space right now, and I’m glad to be back in the thick of it. I’m also now working on Real Estate, Automotive, and other marketplaces. I look forward to learning these industries inside and out.

Within the next few weeks, I’ll start up the Marketplaces blog on Boston.com. I hope to engage the community in discussions on how we can all move these applications into the Web 2.0 world.

If you ever have any suggestions, please drop me a line at jpbutler@boston.com.

One year ago, A. and I married each other. Yay!

Today, we celebrate our anniversary in the traditional way: sitting in the bleachers at a Red Sox game.

Our one project for this year is getting the attic insulated.

Anyone know how to do this? I don’t even really know where to start. Please drop me a line if you have any suggestions

Holliston just got mushed. 30 minutes of downpour, hail, heavy wind and cloud-to-ground lightning. Very scary. At least I don’t have any tree limbs down on the house; some of the neighbors may not be so lucky.

A. should have been on the 4:58 train out of South Station. I hope her commute wasn’t too hellish. Update: She’s safe and sound, if a little wet.

So, the G5 is FUBAR. Oops.

The good news is that, after swapping out the logic board and the hard drive, it’s like I have a whole new computer. The bad news is that it’s like I have a whole new computer, one without my 20,000 songs, 5,000 pictures and 20 months of email archives; one without my software customizations; one without all my Quicken data. I’m not looking forward to pulling the system back together again. At least I have been using .Mac for all my current work, so I have live versions of my current documents, address book and calendar. I also was good about burning CDs of all the business stuff, so that’s covered.

This is just not a whole lot of fun.

On a more positive note: Three cheers for the guys at the Genius Bar at the CambridgeSide Galleria Apple Store. They’ve done a fabulous job doing everything they can to save the machine, and keeping me informed about what’s going on. Good on them.

A. and I went to see March of the Penguins last night, watching the brave struggle of the little birds — the very cute little birds. They waddle, slide, swim, cavort.

They have a tough life, though, braving the storms, the cold, the leopard seals and the vengeful gulls. Today’s helpful hint: Never take a woman entering her third trimester to a movie where the babies get eaten.

My G5 is refusing to boot. I came down on Saturday morning to a frozen screen. I rebooted it and it just spun. I tried safe mode, I tried rebooting from the install disk. Nothing. I’m not panicking yet, but I think I have to take it to the Apple Store at the Galleria tonight.

It’ll be interesting to see how good their service is. I’ve spent about $20,000 in hardware and software at that store since 2001. I wonder if they’ll take that into account when trying to make me happy today.

A. and I braved the baby-industrial complex yesterday, taking the day-long Prepared Childbirth class at Isis Maternity in Needham.

We saw two childbirth videos: one featured pain intervention, the other, screaming.

Actually, it wasn’t that bad. We talked a lot about how the moms are feeling now, when to call the doctor, when to go to the hospital. They allayed our fears that we would have the baby on the way to the hospital — apparently that only happens in movies. We learned what happens in the delivery room. We learned all sorts of scary new acronyms. We learned that the external fetal monitor does not actually have a siren on it.

One of the better parts was the childless friend stepping in for the out-of-town dad. She made the best comment of the day, describing the videos as “the best form of birth control.” She also asked the first epidural question. I’m convinced she was an audience plant, put there to make sure that the rest of the group kept engaged.

We have three more classes scheduled: Infant CPR, Newborn Essentials, and (…)Feeding Basics, a class I need not attend, and dare not write out for fear of Internet filters miscategorizing the site. I’m sure at this rate we’ll have this whole parenthood thing down pat, before it even starts.

One of my original goals for Life Times Voice was to provide community software for Americans abroad. It may still happen.

In the meantime, here’s an example of the type of work that’s important for us to read: Sleepless in Sudan, the blog of an aid worker in Darfur I found through Global Voices Online.

I’m working on a couple of projects for which I’m thinking through the best way to incorporate wikis.

Does anyone have any examples of a site where the main articles are controlled, but there’s a shadow wiki on the topic where people can collaboratively edit a scratchpad version of the article? I could imagine that an editor would periodically update the main article with the best of what’s happening on the wiki.

If you know of any examples of this, or of other interesting uses of wikis, please drop me a line.

Thanks!

This is a quick Terminal command that makes Safari appear faster by reducing the built-in rendering lag.

To try this (after backing-up, etc.) go to the terminal after Safari has quit and type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.25

The default time in the Safari preference time is 1.0. Now go ahead and launch Safari.

I just did this on the G5, and it seems to be making a big difference. Of course, it could also be all in my head.

A. and I aren’t really allowed on the airplanes anymore. Apparently the airlines aren’t thrilled with the concept of our little girl potentially joining us unexpectedly at 30,000 feet.

It’s a little sad, because I’d love to go on this Habitat for Humanity Global Village trip to Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, from August 27th to September 10th. Jennie Long, the fabulous co-leader of my trips to New Zealand and Guatemala, and her husband Matt are leading the team, and they still have a couple of spaces open.

Come with us to experience Northern Ireland beyond the guidebooks—by working with local people and learning firsthand about the country’s culture. The trip leaders hope to assemble a team of twelve flexible, open-minded, fun-loving and diverse individuals for an unforgettable fourteen-day adventure to build homes, friendships, and lifelong memories.

Itinerary

Sat. August 27: Depart for Northern Ireland

Sun. August 28: arrive at Belfast airport and travel to Downpatrick; orientation

Mon. August 29 & Tues. August 29: Build

Wed. August 30: Local sightseeing

Thurs. August 31 & Fri. September 1: Build

Sat. Sept. 2 to Mon. Sept. 4: Side trip to North Coast

Tues. Sept. 5 to Fri. Sept. 9: Build

Sat. September 10: Say goodbye; back to the Belfast airport

This Global Village trip to Northern Ireland will be for 14 days, and includes group activities on days of R&R.

I highly recommend these trips. I’ve done three — most recently Thailand — and each has changed me. If you ever thought about traveling, and helping the world, you should definitely consider doing a Habitat trip. If you have any questions, please drop me a line; I love to talk about these trips.

Wait! Oh yes, wait a minute Mr. Postman

Tomorrow, our postman will bring the new Harry Potter book. And silence will rule Alden Road for the next 36 hours or so.

To ease the wait, check out this Harry Potter pronunciation key, which will speak the correct way to pronounce many of the names and words in the series. Her-MY-o-nee.

Software rave corner.

Tea Timer is a great little Mac program for setting simple alarms. You can set it to go off at a specific time (like an alarm clock) or after a specific interval (like a kitchen timer). While it’s running, it displays the time remaining in the dock. Tea Timer does one thing, and it does it well.

I use it all the time to force myself to stop what I’m doing. I’ll give myself 15 minutes to flip through NetNewsWire, or five minutes to write this email. Or even, “5 minutes to write this blog post on Tea Timer.” It’s a fabulous little feedback device.

He came through in the playoffs last year, and now he’s taking the stage: The man, the myth, the legend — Bronson Arroyo.

I may have to buy his record…

Of course, the funniest thing on that page is the “Customers who bought this title also bought” section.

1. Tessie, by Dropkick Murphys

2. Fever Pitch - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

3. The Best of the Standells

You think we Sox fans buy as a pack? We are *so* being profiled.

I’m working on a couple of projects that will include text-ad components. So, to play with it, I’ve added Google ads to a couple of sections of JPButler.com. Check out the Tanzania travelogue and let me know what you think.

I’m working on a couple of projects that will include text-ad components. So, to play with it, I’ve added Google ads to a couple of sections of JPButler.com. Check out the Tanzania travelogue and let me know what you think.

Previous generations of geeks sat in the garage with their ham radios, talking to people around the world, expanding their horizons, understanding new cultures, making new friends. Today, I just surf the blogs.

Global Voices Online is the place I start, an excellent sampling of the best from around the world. You should definitely check it out.

Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson shows how to handle a PR problem. He doesn’t shuck and jive; he actually acknowledges the problem and takes responsibility.

On Friday, the SF Chronicle’s consumer-rights columnist ran a piece about complaints from Wired subscribers that they were getting threatening letters from a collection agency when they let their subscription lapse.

    The reason turned out to be that they were among the small fraction of our subscribers who signed up for an automatically-renewing subscription under the bill-me option, rather than the usual credit card option, and then didn’t send in a $12 check at the end of their billing cycle. They thought, quite reasonably, they were just letting their subscription lapse and were not aware that they had signed up for the auto-renew plan, probably because the details of the subscription plans are not marked as clearly as they could be.

    This was really distressing to hear for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that sending letters from a collection agency for $12 is a poor way to treat customers. But the good news is that it has clarified a problem that we can fix, and for that we’re grateful to the Chronicle.

Route 16 in Wellesley is a disaster right now. If you have any choice in the matter, you should avoid it.

They’ve been ripping up the road around Wellesley College, leaving miles of uneven gravel, a half a foot below the normal road height. This has been fine, if a bit annoying to drive; you slow down to 20 or so, and the road noise is deafening.

Unfortunately, the pounding rain of the past few days has destroyed the road, creating a tortoiseshell minefield of craters several inches deep. We had to drive at three miles per hour, steering to avoid the biggest holes, bouncing up and down in rapid jerks. My poor little car was not happy.

I don’t know how long it will take them to repave this, but I think we need to change our commute to go to the Pike, unpleasant though that is.

On a separate note, the Wellesley town website is useless. Keeping us up-to-date on the status of the construction would be an excellent use of the town’s website (and an outstanding use of RSS.) Anyone know of any services that already do this?

Wow, this is a neat little del.icio.us hack.

Within del.icio.us, you can tag links for a specific person by using the for:{username} tag. So, if you want to send me something to read, tag it as for:jpbutler. This is a private tag that only that person can see. Very elegant solution.

This is really useful. (via Brad Feld’s weblog)

I shut down the Life Times Voice application last weekend.

With our baby (whom I will refrain from calling by name, at least until she’s actually here) on the way, I need to get a full-time job (or a nice series of consulting gigs.) Baby needs a new pair of shoes.

The Life Times Voice application took a decent amount of time to administer and support, so I couldn’t juggle it and a 40hr/week gig at the same time. Rather than overcommit, I pulled the plug.

Is it gone forever? Maybe not. I still have all the code, so it may return, perhaps embedded in other applications. Life Times Voice LLC is still up and running — even thriving, thanks to a couple of recent consulting gigs — so the next incarnation may be bigger and better. I plan on writing a series of “lessons learned” posts over the next few weeks.

In the meantime, I want to thank everyone who helped me beta-test it. Your help and support was invaluable. I will not forget it.

Onward and upward.

Download Squad
Weblog reviewing new software for download. I’ve already found a couple of nice Mac utilities.

Estimating realistic project deadlines
Quasi-mathematical method for projecting project durations.

Holliston’s immigration profile
5.3% of my town’s residents are foreign-born, most from Canada. Boston.com has similar stats for all MA cities and towns.

Wikipedia entry on Holliston, MA
If you’re not playing with Wikipedia, you should be.

Satellite of Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
Google has taken their satellite mapping worldwide. So, of course I checked out places I’ve been…

FoundCity
Neat - del.icio.us + geotagging + Google Maps

Finally, if you want to see what I’m bookmarking (some of which ends up in linky goodness), check out my bookmarks page on del.icio.us.

More good TV: 30 Days on F/X.

A. and I saw Morgan Spurlock’s outstanding movie Supersize Me last year and swore off junk foods (for at least a couple of months.) In the movie, Spurlock went on an all-McDonalds diet for a month, with predictably dire consequences.

In 30 Days, Spurlock uses the same “30 days in a lifestyle” immersive concept to dramatize societal issues — minimum wage in the pilot, steriods and anti-aging therapies in the most recent episode. His next one is about a man who lives the life of a Muslim in America for 30 days.

Highly recommended.

It takes a little Tivo-fu to get this recorded, because it’s on at the same time as Lost. At least F/X is good enough to repeat the episode a few times through the week.

I’m 33 today. Call me Larry Bird. Call me Jason Varitek.

32 was eventful. Got married. Bought a house.

Now, we have a little girl on the way. 33 is looking pretty sweet.

Every once in a while I pine for a simple rut, a break from change, time to catch my breath. My last good rut was in the fall of 2002. The next one may not be until 2022.

We missed it the first time around, but we’ve just started watching Lost in reruns. It’s pretty amazing so far.

I should have expected big things from JJ Abrams and David Fury. We own all the Alias and Buffy/Angel DVD sets…

No one in China can view Typepad blogs, reports Rebecca McKinnon.

When I was over there, they blocked all the major news sites; now they’ve extended the ban to opinion and blogging sites.

Censorship is seldom a positive sign.

What it’s like to date an Apple developer.

I like to think that behind every good developer there is a good woman. No. A great woman. It takes a special breed to put up with the stuff that comes along with dating a computer nerd. Those of you who have ever been with a hard core geek know what I’m talking about. Some day I think it would be easier to date one of those guys who hangs out at the golf course all day with his buddies drinking beer.

Apocalyptic fiction has always captured my imagination. As it turns out, I like destroying the world. “People in extreme circumstances” often makes fiction compelling.

I’ve always adored The Stand, Stephen King’s best novel, and one of my favorites. I enjoyed Earth Abides. So, full of hope, I picked up Left Behind, and then actually plowed through all 12 volumes of the series, all the way to Glorious Appearing.

Here’s the plot, in a nutshell: All the “believers” are {killed|raptured}, and those left behind fight a seven-year battle against the Anti-Christ, culminating at Armageddon with the Second Coming of Christ.

Ok, that’s a pretty good setup for a story.

Unfortunately, the authors ruined a fine concept with awful execution. They made the apocalypse boring, the second coming of the Lord tedious. They crammed five books worth of material into twelve books. Of course, I bought all twelve books, so points for them, I guess.

Anyway, that’s my short review. More interestingly, here’s a blog where the writer is deconstructing the Left Behind series. He brings information and insight to the topic, including explaining the series’ basic flaw — “the characters in the book act like they read the book jacket.”

David Weinberger tells us that he’s through lying to people that he’s keeping up with their blog.

I’ve been faking it for a while. Months. Maybe a year. If we’ve met and I look confused about something you told me, and if you said, “I blogged it,” as if that should be explanation enough, I’ve made some excuse as if I read every one of your posts except that one.

I’m still pretty good about keeping up with people I know — I’m lucky in that blogging penetration among my close people is still below 10% (despite my best efforts).

My NetNewsWire subscription list is up over 400 feeds, though. I’ve submitted to the fact that I’ll never fully catch up.

In Sarbanes-Oxley Era, Running A Nonprofit Is Only Getting Harder
I’m addressing issues like this during my Civic Leadership Institute fellowship…

The power of silence
Good story about negotiating.

Purge
Some lawyers are horrifically blase about the prevalence of eating disorders among female attorneys.

The 25 most difficult questions you’ll be asked on a job interview

I’m working at Boston.com, helping them hire a BostonWorks product development team. How would you like to be the BostonWorks Product Manager?

Product Leadership - You’ll be driving the development of the BostonWorks.com product, leading innovation and managing execution.

You’ll work on making the business cases for projects, building the ones that have the most market impact.

It’s your product. We expect you to be able to do something special with it.

We’re also looking for a designer and a developer.

Black market in stolen credit card data thrives on the Internet
Excellent NYT article talking about the secondary market in credit card data. NOTE: most of these credit cards are stolen offline.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the curve
Microsoftie talks about life under the HR ranking system.

How to get Slashdotted

Want secure passwords? Write them down
Good advice from a Microsoft security guru

The teenager’s guide to the real world
Good read for the teens in your life. Real life ain’t cheap.

How to become a hacker

Maybe it’s because of what’s coming this fall, but this video got to me.

The movie looks fabulous. Check out the trailer for The March of the Penguins.

God, I’ve been bad at this. As I’ll explain in a few days, we have a lot going on…

But anyway, on to the Linky Goodness!

RedSox.feedster.com
A fun partnership between Boston.com and Feedster, this site aggregates Red Sox blogs.

Roger Ebert’s Glossary of Movie Terms
Fun cliches from the movie world.

This fish needs a bicycle

Rapid Afterimage
Neat visual effect.

Flickr color pickr
More fun with colors.

How to wash an outdoor grill
Seems timely. I have my first cookout at the new house on Sunday.

Blogging Baby
Timely, for another reason.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address
This is pretty inspirational.

Manhole covers are exploding in Central Square, half a block from our old apartment.

Traffic came to a standstill near Central Square after police closed down Mass Ave. between Prospect and Sidney Streets.

Jay has an interesting single-serve coffee Father’s Day gift guide. All sorts of interesting stuff there.

Toddler quarterly objectives.

This was originally going to be in Linky Goodness, but I need to promote it. Here is a fabulously entertaining blog by an NYC nightclub bouncer.

Do you expect Stanford’s student newspaper to spam Google? This is very disappointing.

It’s hard to vocalize how absolutely disgusted I am, and on how many levels. First of all, the dozens of links that pad the side and (especially) the bottom of every Daily article do not constitute mere “advertising,” despite what it says on the label. Nobody is expected to click on these links. The links are intended to boost each page’s ranking in search engines like Google that place a high premium on inbound links from credible sources. It’s hard to get more credible than stanford.edu. Which brings me to the second reason this is disgusting: that Stanford, of all places, is being used to game Google. (I realize Stanford itself doesn’t condone this, which makes it all the more frustrating that the Daily is leeching off its clout toward these ends.)

Good friend (and fellow former Abuzz’er) Jay Brewer lets us in on his next career move.

I started to realize that blogs focused on certain product niches and categories might just work and work well and most of all - be fun. I decided then to start to look for more topics I could write on and to get other people to write on topics they were passionate about. Blogpire Productions was born.

I’m so jealous. Maybe I’ll actually do something with entrepreneursdiary.com and daddybloggers.com.

The ice cream man came down my street today. If I weren’t in the middle of a conference call at the time, I would have leapt down the stairs and got myself a cone.

I know I’m in suburbia now…

Why activists are better marketers

Blogging the upfronts
A New York Times writer blogs the annual TV “upfronts”

More of the world’s dumbest criminals

The Working Podcast
Audio blog about interesting work topics.

Security expert Bruce Schneier gives reasons why the recently passed REAL ID law will not increase our security.

REAL ID doesn’t go into effect until three years after it becomes law, but I expect things to be much worse by then. One of my fears is that this new uniform driver’s license will bring a new level of “show me your papers” checks by the government. Already you can’t fly without an ID, even though no one has ever explained how that ID check makes airplane terrorism any harder. I have previously written about Secure Flight, another lousy security system that tries to match airline passengers against terrorist watch lists. I’ve already heard rumblings about requiring states to check identities against “government databases” before issuing driver’s licenses. I’m sure Secure Flight will be used for cruise ships, trains, and possibly even subways. Combine REAL ID with Secure Flight and you have an unprecedented system for broad surveillance of the population.
Is there anyone who would feel safer under this kind of police state?

PosterWire
This is a really smart and interesting weblog covering movie poster art.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe trailer
I’m pretty excited about this movie. I loved these books when I was a kid, and I’ve given the books as gifts countless times.

The Yankees are self-destructing. How much fun is that? They’ve found that $215,000,000 won’t necessarily buy your way out of last place. Ha ha ha.

When the Yankees are losing, I indulge my schadenfreude by reading the New York tabloids. Today’s Post has a couple of fun reads, starting with an analysis of why they’ve gone downhill

The ramifications have hit the Yankees at once, like a perfect storm, leaving their roster old, overpaid, inflexible and with few prospects to address the difficulties through promotion or trades. This is an old, brittle team that should only become more brittle with time.

2005 mirrors 1965, the first year of a 12-year drought.

Bobby Richardson had a sense that the ‘65 team was nearing the end and it wasn’t just because of age and injury. The Yankees had been to the World Series 14 of the previous 16 seasons. There were subtle signs that this mid-’60s team had become a little selfish. That showed itself in the delving out of World Series shares. The Yankees, throughout Richardson’s career, had always taken care of young players and clubhouse attendants and the like, but the 1964 the team was not as generous as a new generation of players came into power.

Between the business, the house, the move and the pregnancy, I haven’t been able to find a 15-minute block in which to write a simple posting. And the longer I’ve stayed away, the harder it is to start up again. It’s time to go back to writing every day.

I’m finding getting back into the writing habit even harder than trying to get back to exercising regularly (which I’ve been able to do the last couple of weeks). I’m just creaking along. Creak. Creak.

So, things have been a little busy recently. We have moved into the new house, and now, we have a baby on the way. We’re due in early November.

Woo Hoo!

Someday I’ll have a nice comfortable rut again. Someday.

I’ll be in New York next week attending the Good Experience Live (GEL) conference. I’m bootstrapping this year, so my conference budget is pretty low; I’m excited to be able to make it to this one. If you’re interested in going, registration closes today. If you’re in town and want to catch up, drop me a line.

To prepare, Phil Terry suggested reading Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi. I picked it up yesterday and tore through it. It has all sorts of good advice for connecting with others and maintaining those connections. These skills aren’t easy for an introvert like me, but they’re critical to the success of my business, so I need to suck it up and get out there more.

Verizon CEO rails against his customers.

Seidenberg, for instance, said people often complain about mobile phone service because they have unrealistic expectations about a wireless service working everywhere. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone, is the state’s largest mobile phone provider.

“Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?” he said. “The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement.”

Seidenberg said it’s not Verizon’s responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon’s service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.

Does he realize how awful he sounds in these comments? There are much smarter ways to say the same thing. Smarter than “if we don’t meet your expectations, call our 800 number and we’ll gladly help you lower your expectations.”