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Pugdog's Back???

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Pugdog's Back???
[I thought I had posted this yesterday, but it probably got caught in the hardware problem, since right after I posted it, the system got unresponsive.... Since then ( the past 24+ hours, things have changed more. This is the updated post.]

I guess it's time to post something, on my erratic appearances and disappearances here the past few months.

Some know my personal situation, and most do not. I work from home, mostly, and have two adopted daughters, one special needs. Part of working from home is to be there to relieve mom, and take turns raising an adolescent with emotional issues. (can I be so vague?)

Anyway, this takes time, and usually I can balance it off and it goes unnoticed in my on-line presence. Lately this has not been the case, though.

1) I had an accident that caused some lingering injuries, and it has affected my use of (fortunately only) my left hand, but two hands are needed for typing. My ability to do as much typing, coding, programming, problem solving, etc has been limted by this.

2) As I was finally recovering from this, at least to the point of partial return to my usual tasks, my 11 year old daughter ran away, and continues to be a problem in that reguard. Dealing with the police and CYS, and support, etc is time consuming and draining. In fact, as I started this letter (the first time), mom ran out to get her at school because of new threats to run and that's not good. It's been extremely stressful, and exhausting. In the past day or so, we find out she was supposed to have been on medication (based on tests run 3 weeks ago, and we were told were 'normal') and she's had multiple seizures -- a new problem. Needless to say things went from bad to worse.

3) Right in the middle of that, the NYC incident occurred. My _entire_ family is from NYC, and though most have moved out, some have moved back, and it was only the past day or two we were sure everyone survived. Some injurines, and lost work, but no deaths. A small blessing, at least.

Almost everyone has been understanding, but I figure it was time to say something publically, since just as my username is showing up on the logon page every log on, my off-line real-life situation got to the point where I wasn't around answering anything.

Bill Cosby in one of his old routines said never tempt 'worse'. I seem to have been doing that every time I said I was back. So I'm not going to say that this time. I'm just going to say I've lost a lot of work, and thus income, and the ability to even hope to catch up in the forseeable future. (despite writing this, things did get "worse" in the past 24 hours).

I'm still making decisions about releasing the plugins so people could contribute to them. The goals have always been to improve the over all Links experience, but to protect myself where I have to in my investment of company time and resources. If I can't continue to do that, then releasing the code is an option.

I hope this answers a lot of questions, and some of the mail I've been getting, and why I haven't answered (or even seen?) some messages to me.

Oh-- one more thing. My server was getting bogged down in junk mail on certain domains and ID's, and I've had to change the way mail was being handled (on top of everything else going on!). Virtually all the "catch all" accounts are gone, so please use one of the posted, or official email addresses I have, or your mail will be bounced, or lost (I still don't know what qmail was doing with the mail for a 2 day period... <G>).

I'm sorry my "disappearance" occured at a key juncture in the history of Links SQL, but it hasn't been by choice. I am considering making the plugin code, and code I've been working on free release to speed development. I will still finish building the Image Gallery plug in for larger image systems, and incorporate the postcards and paypal options into that. Hopefully Alex/GT will consider adding in a "flag" field to the admin, that will allow plug-in developers to let their plugins attach into the admin area, the way the file_type field does. This will make things that much easier in the future.

Robert

[09/19/01 revised 09/20/01]




PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

The best way to contact me is to NOT use Email.
Please leave a PM here.

Last edited by:

pugdog: Sep 20, 2001, 6:19 PM