Now that I’m back in the media biz (at Boston.com/The Boston Globe), I have a whole new set of competitive challenges. Today’s New York Times does a good job outlining the problems newspapers face today.

I’ve pretty much made tech.memeorandum.com my browser homepage. They are doing an outstanding job summarizing the top technology stories of the moment. If you’re in the business, this should be one of your favorite bookmarks.

If you lean more to the political, regular memeorandum is pretty good too.

We’re 30 days to our target launch date. We’ve moved obstacles off critical path and outsourced non-core components. Our nightly war room meetings address showstoppers that came up that day. I’m already working on the FAQ.

We hope the launch date (11/4) doesn’t slip. We’re 36 weeks into a 40-week project; now we just need to deliver this baby and bring her home.

For the past several years, some friends and I have shared Red Sox season tickets out in the bleachers.

Each spring we get together at Flattop Johnny’s, have a few beers and draft our games. My number one draft pick this year: Saturday, October 1st vs. the New York Yankees. It seemed like a pretty good bet back in March that this game would mean *something*.

Today should be a fun day.

The little-girl-ification of my house is proceeding in full throttle this weekend. Yesterday afternoon was the the big run through Babies ‘r’ Us. Today, we’re putting together her room.

Starting with her little nightlight…

Only a few more weeks until we get to meet her.

Wow, I have a lot going on right now, with the new job, the impending baby and the 2.5 hours of daily commuting. My writing schedule has suffered.

I’m still going to keep writing, but I need to figure out how to fit the time into my new reality. It should be an interesting juggling act.

I was very cranky when I couldn’t get ViaVoice to work on 10.4. I installed it and followed all the instructions, but no matter what I did, the system wouldn’t recognize the microphone.

Here’s how I fixed it:

* Go to System Preferences

* Choose “Speech”

* Turn “Speakable Items” on

* Go through the ViaVoice Setup program again. At this point it worked for me.

I hope this helps you, Dear Google-visitor from the future.

I’ve been using Tinderbox for years for managing all my information, planning and GTD work. It’s an incredibly powerful piece of software for knowledge management.

If you’re on a Mac, you should go check it out, especially as it’s on sale now.

I’ve been playing around with Ruby on Rails over the past week or so. It’s pretty amazing. If Rails had existed last year, I’d have implemented Life Times Voice in it instead of in PHP. Rails automatically generated plumbing code that ended up taking me about a month to write last year.

I need to redesign JPButler.com soon; maybe I’ll do it in RoR.

I’ve been playing with Pandora for most of the afternoon; it’s really pretty neat.

Pandora will take any artist or song you give it and generate a radio station based on your selection. For example, I created a channel based on “Tangled Up in Blue” and Pandora has given me “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Friend of the Devil,” a couple of Neil Young songs and one from Townes Van Zandt, an artist I’d never heard before but liked immediately.

They give you 10 hours for free; after that, it’s $36/year. I’m not sure I’ll pay that, but it’s an intriguing alternative to the uber-mix.

Haven’t posted in a while, blah. Lots going on. I’ll start again now.

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.