I’m trying. Trying to be positive. Trying to motivate myself without hate. Trying to find an activity that I’m passionate about while maintaining my emotional center.

It’s hard.

The switch to the Joyent Accelerator went off without a hitch.  The instructions were clear and well-written, so following them was a snap.  This domain is moved, next is Tammy’s weblog then Red Bee Designs.  The Red Bee Designs site is in Ruby, so that requires a bit more intervention, like getting a lighttpd port assignment.

Onward!

I’m moving the sites we have with Joyent to a new Shared Accelerator over the next few days. Please be patient as you may have intermittent outages.

Life is full of ups and downs. It’s a cliché to be sure, but true. I’ve tried to spend some time this week figuring out what makes up a “Steve Kirks”. It’s an identity crisis I’ve never had to face. I’ve change my appearance by growing my hair long, adding a beard and mustache and even wearing different clothes and shoes. Yet, when I look in the mirror, I struggle with an internal conflict–is the person staring back at me really “me”?

I don’t really know any more.

We missed out on a house. We should have signed the contract but didn’t. I wish we would have thrown a bit of caution to the wind and made the decision.

We’re trying to move along.

Hi Weblog!  How are you?  Have you missed me?  I’ve missed you…

I’m home, getting ready to cook turkey brats on the grill.  I’m missing my friend Matt Kerner and his wife Sarah.  They are super nice people with 25 hours worth of things to do and only 24 hours in a day.  I wish we could see them more often, but I have to follow their weblogs to really know what’s going on.  Matt’s been at a conference and if I read [Sarah’s weblog](http://beautyschooldropout.net) correctly then she’s been chasing yarn in Austin, TX.

My mother-in-law recently [snagged an iPhone](http://keckeley.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/igotta-iphone) and now she’s learning to use it. Her husband Burl just finished an upgrade from cable to Dish Network and is loving the DIY Channel. The two of them are in Des Moines for the long weekend, visiting Anne’s daughter Mary (Tammy’s sister) and our nieces. We got a phone call from the older niece Julia to let us know that Grammy was there safe and sound, that she missed us and most of all that she “loves Aunt Tammy”.

I always spend time thinking of my family during the month of May. I’ve been estranged from most of my family for several years and May is the worst month–my father’s birthday is the eighth, my brother’s was yesterday and Mother’s Day is thrown in for good measure. My birthday is traditional Memorial Day (look it up) and that means by the end of the month, I’m battling the blues. Celebrating holidays and birthdays without your family is hard because when you’re a history person like me, you look back to give you perspective as you move forward. When I look back, there are two lives I lived: my birth until I turned thirteen, then from thirteen until I married Tammy (25).

My early life is easily remembered and enjoyed. The rest is almost best forgotten. Buy me a Scotch and I’ll tell you some of the funnier stories.

Tammy’s family has had their share of problems, but somehow they have all come out better because of it. My family became bitter, divided, obsessed with everyone’s wealth and status and worse, indignant and passive aggressive. It’s best that I left that behind, but May is the month that it hurts the worst, I guess next to Christmas.

Here’s to all the wars we’ve fought (both real and imagined) to preserve the liberties we all sometimes take for granted. This weekend, raise a toast to Americans everywhere who’s lives were given in the name of this country.
 

Space Invaders cutting board on Etsy: “Etsy craftsman l337motif uses ‘pixels’ of walnut and hard maple to create wooden cutting board with vintage gaming motifs for $125 each.”

(Via Boing Boing Gadgets.)

Michael Ruhlman’s essential kitchen gadgets: “Food writer Michael Ruhlman’s list of essential kitchen gadgets are what you’d expect from a guy who wrote a book called The Elements of Cooking — no garlic massagers or bacon wafters here.”

(Via Boing Boing Gadgets.)

Gogglemarks – Backyard Composter: “Well, it’s garden season again, which means it’s time to start composting. I meant to be composting throughout the winter, but a telephone pole fell on my old compost pile, and I’ve had absolutely no motivation to repair it. It wasn’t much of a pile anyways. As anyone who knows how it works will tell you (not me!) composting can be tricky. It takes a delicate balance of nitrogen, carbon, moisture and air to do it correctly, and if you’re doing the conventional compost ‘heap,’ that means making sure your balance of raw material is good, that the heap is well drained, and that you turn it over quite regularly so that air can get to the microbes that need it.
Some folks (especially urbanites like myself) have resorted to compost tumblers, which alleviate the air and moisture issue by making it easy to aerate and drain the pile. These tumblers are cool, but often expensive. Since it’s essentially just a drum on a fixed axle with some holes poked in it, it was fairly easy to build one myself on the cheap. I settled on a design that maximizes air and drainage, keeping the compost moist but not wet, and aerated but not dry. I did it for about forty bucks, and it didn’t really take any special tools.”