A Change of Season

I've had an entry 99% written for December 14, 2000 for half of forever. Today I deleted it. It's April. Whatever pithy descriptions I had of Christmas can't possibly still matter now. You're waiting for news. Any kind of news. Perhaps you sit desperately by the computer, waiting for some word of my life. There's still a couple of hundred hits a day on the site, probably representing the different people who are subscribed. Thanks for believing I'd come back one day.

So, why the delay?

Life, mostly. It's been busy, and not the good kind of busy for journalling. Do you really care about my intraoffice management woes or the piles of snow that's been dumped on us? Well, probably you do, but that's neither here nor there. Let's go through the basics, and some catching up and some bringing up to speed. We can work from there.

And, as it's been so blessedly long, I figured it was time to do a sitewide update of the web site. And so, at last, the journal, the In Nomine pages and all the rest are being collected into subdirectories of the main web site, not piddling little subsites. The main website itself is getting a much needed facelift, and the front page of the site is now the real front page, including of this journal.

Anyway -- the basics!

• My name is Eric Alfred Burns, though I answer to almost anything depending on the day.
• I'm the Manager of Information Technology for Brewster Academy, a not-for-profit independent secondary school along the banks of the beautiful Lake Winnepausakee in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. This is despite my degree, which is in English Literature.
• In my spare time, I'm a freelance writer, poet, and role playing game designer.
• I'm in my thirties, and am in reasonable health given that I'm in poor health, if that makes sense.
• I have a black cat named Sarah.

Any of the above you don't understand you can get out of the archives of the journal, available to the left, or in the navigation links

So, what's actually new with me, you ask?

• I'm a Masters Degree candidate for an Masters of Science in Educational Technology, through a cooperative program between Brewster Academy and Curtin University of Technology. It says something about Brewster when I can report that I'm getting a degree from the institute "ranked as Australia's leading science and technology institution, by the prestigious business magazine Asiaweek published by Time Inc." as their website claims. (I have no idea if Curtin's the Australian equivalent of M.I.T. or DeVry, to be honest, but their curriculum seems good and I'm having a lot of fun.)
• I have my new, permanent car -- bought actually from my parents, in an effort to save money (since they decided to buy an SUV). It's a 1993 Honda Accord LX in premium condition. I'd forgotten how trouble-free Hondas were. I'd also forgotten how nice it is to have both a decent capacity fuel tank (the Saturns both sucked when it came to fuel capacity) and fuel economy (the Dodge was no friend of the environment). Being able to push 500 miles on a tank of gas is a good, good feeling. In a nod to In Nomine, my license plate reads "Smite."
• I am largely (though not entirely) recovered from the car accident. My fingers aren't fully curling on my right hand, but this is a minor issue, really.
• Writing-wise, time's been hard to come by, what with some illnesses, plus work (and this is a busy time of year), plus the Curtin studies, plus playing with my TiVoesque DiSHPlayer. (Did you know the Simpsons come on six times a day if you have the right feeds? All six different episodes, no less!)
• I've past my third-year anniversary on this site.

That last bullet point makes me leery. Yes, I passed my third anniversary, but I went four months without posting a bloody thing, and only a few token posts in the three months before that. Really, since the accident this website's seen a dramatic downturn in material. Which is another good reason for this redesign, and the centralization of the website proper.

You see, it's time to make this site new again. To incorporate 21st Century concepts and technologies into it. To reinspire the whole. Part of that is to recognize the limits of time on my creative output, and adjust my site to accommodate that. If people come in through the front page, they can see each day what changes I've made to the site, whether it's here or somewhere else. What's more, if I have good openings for my creative work, I can showcase it and maybe draw a more diverse audience here. Besides, I have all this old poetry that needs a home....

Here's hoping.