WordPress 2.0, that is. Brilliant webmaster that I am, I decided to upgrade in the middle of a Monday. Apologies to anyone who walked in in the middle of the rehab. I think it’s good to go now.

Please let me know by comment or email (jv at starkravingcalm dot com) if you see anything fishy.

Two items in my daily “gold” news feed that caught my eye:

• Say “No” to Average (Seth’s Blog)
  In which Seth Godin talks about working the edge of a market instead of the middle. Turning down the average requests, focusing on the unique and spectacular.
  

  “By turning down the average stuff and insisting on standing for something on the edge, he profits…. It’s really scary to turn down most (the average) of what comes your way and hold out for the remarkable opportunities.”

• Initiative (Daring Fireball)
  In which John Gruber decides to quit his day job and focus on making his blog the best it can be.
  He references a Steve Jobs quote:

  “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work… keep looking, and don’t settle.”

I don’t know if Godin and Gruber are coordinating with each other, but when two of my e-roes say the same thing on the same day, I listen.

Signal vs. Noise has (inadvertently? or not so much?) reminded us all of the pitfalls of doing research online. Jason asks readers’ opinions of LASIK surgery. The result? A tangled snarl of a comment thread. “It’s the best thing ever!” “You’ll burn your eyes out!” etc.

The bell curve gets turned upside down on the Web. The extreme negative and positive opinions are amplified by those who have an axe to grind or a horn to toot, while the silent majority just don’t take the time to share their stories.

Apologies to Seth Godin for the title of this post.

My first post-full-time project went live last week. Bryan did the design and layout; I did the nav, trippy fade effects (many thanks to script.aculo.us) and some of the copy. They paid up yesterday. I’ve done a few freelance web projects before, but this is the first one I’ve been paid for working on start-to-finish. More importantly, it’s my first professional writing dividend. Looks like I’m the proud papa of a new business.

Three rings and a ball of fire, spinning madly about the sorcerer’s hand like a weird circus of illusion. He winked at the crowd. “There’s more where that came from.”

I should begin this notice with a disclaimer: I’ve heard maybe ten minutes of Garrison Keillor in my lifetime, and I’ve never listened to The Writer’s Almanac, but it’s now available as a daily podcast. If anyone out there has opinions (Keillor’s politics notwithstanding; SRC is the Switzerland of the blogosphere), let’s hear them. I figure it’s worth five minutes of my day to check it out for awhile.

Thanks to 43 Folders (yet again) for the tipoff.

Last Wednesday was my wife’s birthday. She asked for a pair of white rocking chairs for the porch. Newly-minted househusband that I am, I hauled two big boxes home from Wal-Mart and spent ten minutes assembling two nice new rocking chairs.

This was followed by twenty minutes scraping the gooey residue of several “this end up” stickers off said chairs. (I know, lighter fluid would’ve dissolved it right away.) Yesterday, Signal vs. Noise confirmed what I knew in my heart: whoever produced these chairs cares not a whit for the butts that sit in them.

So I’m one step closer to my writing goals. I’m no longer a full-time software developer. That could change in the future, but for now it’s just me, my PowerBook, a Rails manual, and some freelance web projects. I left my day job on St. Patrick’s Day and have been crazy busy in the two-plus weeks since.

In theory, this should leave me with more time for this blog and other writing pursuits. But that hasn’t been the case until now. I have a month’s worth of errands to run. I’ve tried various combinations of playing stay-at-home dad, paying Grandma to babysit, and working at the corner coffee shop. I haven’t found the right balance yet. It’s nice to sit out on the porch, soak up the nice weather, and watch pollen collect on the screen. But my toddler yells “DADDY!!” and tries to bowl me over every time he remembers that I’m home.

I’ve also gotten excited about doing web work again. That’s bound to happen, I guess, when I’m doing it for me and not for my boss. The unfortunate side effect is that I’ve honestly been less excited about writing. Working on my own and learning Rails has become today’s shiny thing. That’s scary.

But.

When people ask “So what are you going to do now?” I still say that I want to be a writer, and I mean it, and feel guilty that I haven’t done more of it. I’ve spent most of this morning proving to the blogosphere that I still exist, and I’ve enjoyed it.

Things should settle down once I get into a routine with work, errands, and general time management. And that routine will include regular posts. You heard it here first.