Playing Catch Up today

Let me take this fine Monday to catch you up on a few things with Penguin Shell
and with Lockergnome in general.

First, the Penguin Shell volunteer project is rolling forward. We’ve not landed
on a name, though I’ve seen more than two dozen interesting and clearly viable
suggestions. I’m currently working through a way to post all the possibilities
for a vote of Penguin Shell readers. Of course, I’ve always got to be concerned
about Gnoming a server, so the home server is pretty much out of the question.
Maybe we can work something out for additional space on the Lockergnome server
… I’ll let you know.

Along those lines, I’ve had an offer from reader Scott Goyo who, by the way, is
one of the founders of eTapestry.com. eTapestry is a company that provides
web-based software to nonprofit organizations. Scott has been kind enough to
offer space from which we can coordinate both our volunteers and the projects on

which they’ll be working. It looks like a viable options for our purposes, and
I’ll thank Scott publicly for the offer. Again, we haven’t worked out specific
details, but I’ll keep you posted.

Having a broad range of skills can be very useful. It can also slice up your
time as thin as the ham on a good deli sandwich. The absence of Penguin Shell
last week (with the kind understanding of Lockergnome’s operations guru, Lori Lockwood) was

the direct result of possessing a broad skill set. I spent the week eyeball deep

in legal documents, helping to reorganize a company I used to work for. With a
boatload of work (and, of course, your patience), we were able to take this new
company from a blank sheet on Monday to a fully organized and legally recognized

legal entity on Friday. Talk about moving paper mountains. For once, the
inability to decide what I want to be when I grow up paid off. Somewhere in the
paralegal/programmer/author/marketing skills, I was able to be helpful in
reorganizing this company. Thanks to the effort, the probability of fulltime
gainful employment looks very strong once again.

Finally, it’s time for the weekly Gnomedex reminder. 25 days and counting! Need I say
more? Time is ticking on this great opportunity to meet computing luminaries, to

gather with like-minded computing enthusiasts, and to share time and food with
the whole Lockergnome staff. Walk, run, bike, drive, or fly - you simply
shouldn’t miss it.

Have a great Monday.

See you in August