dcor's blog

Starting work in a position in Prof. Stephen Harrison's lab at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Boston.  I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty again and to be in the thick of things.  The last 6 months doing freelance has had its ups and downs and all in all I find that I'm more suited to a semi-structured life of working by day, and superhero freelance geek by night.  The writing will continue as will the web developing. 

Maya is taking the news well considering we have recently obtained a spacious palacial crate to contain her destructive tendancies for when we're gone.  Our local dog walker is also probably thrilled at the news - as the little pampered princess suddenly gets more walks than she did when I was home all day!

Steph is the one taking it the hardest.  His first question, "Will you still be making most of the dinners?", told me exactly where his priorities lay.  That said, he's very happy as long as I'm happy.  That I am.  Now, if only I could pry his latest new Mac away from him so that we can spend some time together! 

The trip to Toronto was a grand success.  Months of anti-social behaviour were quickly remedied with a bit too much socializing which left me completely giddy and spinning from trying to do too much in too little time.  I'm sorry to say I didn't manage to catch up with Kushan or Pat (who did make the effort).  I also am sorry to have experienced rush hour traffic on a Thursday night in Toronto before a long weekend - never again!  I was very happy to have caught up with Karen and her little Maya (a human baby, and a mighty cute one at that!).  As well as to have spent time with the still prego Eun-Ah.  I was most happy to finally meet and hang out with two of our family friends who are recently engaged (to two other people).  Three weddings coming up in the distant future if you count Pat!

Driving back and forth is no holiday - Though driving through Vermont is absolutely breath taking - but we do plan to come down to Toronto more often.  At the moment work comes first.. and then we'll see how it all goes!

The time is just zooming by and I'm counting down the days to our return to Boston.  Having a great time meeting up with friends.  Especially the ones who I see almost every time I'm in town.  A week is actually a very short period of time. 

Attending Eun-Ah's baby shower today and spent last night celebrating Sam's Birthday.  Here for a week with Maya.  Will report more as time goes by. 

The update of the Sunyata Retreat Centre is complete thanks to the efforts of Heather and the centre managers Bart & Marion.  I think I can safely believe that the site is in good hands as Heather takes over some of the foreground work that I had been doing previously.

Updates: Events list, Registration Form, Admin interface, theme layout, email address, removal of repetitious information, Ability to register/book for retreats/events online via credit card or laser card, general site clean up.

Hard at work from last night and this morning on tidying up the content and layout of the Sunyata Retreat Centre with Marion's daughter Heather.  Communication is great and I'm looking forward to seeing the final product! There won't be any changes of theme but I have hot-wired things so that there is less clicking around (thanks to the criticsm of the site that Heather was good enough to write, 5 pages!).  Hopefully now things will be more streamlined. We've ripped out a lot of repeatitious links that were really unnecessary.  Now if only I can figure out how to make information appear via views in a shadowbox - that would be cool.

Another nice detail is to be able to register for retreats online using a credit card!  This was in place but we never properly converted all of the existing retreats.  There were quite a few views related issues for me to answer, especially the admin side interface so that the center has full control over all of the content! 

Finally, what to do about shrinking the number of pages with detailed content?  Well, that's Heather's department and for that I'm forever greatful!

I'll post again when the changes go live.