Less than 3 years ago, I was the proud owner of a fully populated entertainment center/bookshelf. This is not one of those small pieces of furniture, mind you, but at least 10 feet in length and 8 feet tall.

I love information - I'm essentially an information pack rat, although as you'll see, that is changing. I've kept most of my books from college - especially my math and computer science books. I really (read never) have time to read them, but just seeing them on the shelves takes me back to a time where I was younger, smarter, and more in control. =)

nick.org - down!

After almost four years of no unscheduled downtime, nick.org came to a screeching halt Sunday. I noticed an email from my brother, Kevin, indicating that I had farked something up. “That’s weird”, I thought, “it was working fine last night.” I went to the website and found it very unavailable, with nothing but a strange Apache directory listing. I attempted to ssh and found that it was unavailable too. Uh oh. I happened to be talking to my parents via Skype at the time (it was Mother’s day) and juggling Jerry on my knee.

Jerry turned two today. Eriko and I are both amazed at how quickly the time has passed and how much he has grown. I’ll post some pictures as soon as I upload them.

• The happy family.
• The cake eater!

http://twitter.com/nkirsch

(I’m recording this for posterities sake, not due to excitement.)

I took a big step today… I’m in the process of uploading about 500MB of mail to gmail. I will use it as my primary email client/storage repository.

I’m changing two things at the same time - my email client (mutt) and the server. Up to this point, all my mail has been stored exclusively on my own servers. My reluctance to put it elsewhere has been a matter of control - loss of privacy, loss of flexibility. At the moment, my email address will forward both to Google and store a copy locally. Longer term, I will have a short-term backup queue combined with a complete synchronization of Google’s store.

After a long period of deliberation, ups and downs, excitement and confusion, I’ve decided to move into a new position. The things that I enjoy most about being a director of software engineering are the things that could have made me great at the position but not destined to stay there - the ability to be involved in all aspects of the product, to comment on virtually every specification and product decision, to help set direction and provide vision, to be hands-on and technical, and to be patient yet firm.