Hiya, folks. As you may have noticed, ePluribus Media is doing some updates. These updates are both internal and external -- some you'll see, others will happen behind the scenes.

As with all such efforts, your feedback and contributions are always appreciated; please feel free to sprinkle a few in the comments.

Upcoming on ePluribus Media in terms of content is a review of Public Journalism 2.0: The Promise and Reality of a Citizen-Engaged Press, edited by Jack Rosenberry and Burton St. John III. Our own Aaron Barlow contributed to it (he wrote Chapter 5), and I was fortunate enough to be quoted. The topic is both relevant and timely, coming shortly on the heels of news regarding how Susie Dow's Iraq, Contingency Contracting and the Defense Base Act started a series of events that culminated in the Department of Labor finally recognizing the benefits claim of the Kirk von Ackermann's family -- six long years after Kirk disappeared in Iraq, in what the Army CID determined was a clear-cut case of abduction and murder. Kudos again, Susie, and our thanks for your dogged pursuit of justice.

I'll be posting my review of Public Journalism 2.0 in the next day or two. Keep an eye out for it.

Other things are happening -- some still in the planning stages but moving forward. More on all this later. In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Yesterday, the community site was updated with an anti-SPAM filter to help counter an ongoing problem with SEO spamming.

You may notice the neat little "no spam" icon and link at the top of the content section -- kudos to Roxy our fantabulous rock-hopper penguin webmistress for her deft and responsive skills.

Other changes that went on were behind-the-scenes for the site editors. Quite a while ago, we added the ability to schedule posts so that as we build content or prepare content for publication on certain dates, we could set the date and time for the post to appear. One element we didn't add until recently was a way for site editors to see what was scheduled. Now, when a site editor wants to see whether there are any scheduled posts for his/her day of managing content and maintaining the front page, they can.

We added a link to a page that will show 'em scheduled posts that have not been published.

So, I just thought a little update would be in order. We want our readers and intrepid army of eclectic posters to know that in both obvious and subtle ways, we're constantly working to improve the site.

Now, please go check out Susie Dow's recent post entitled Why is Obama Administration Hiding Evidence of Torture? and follow it up with Hello Dolly Llama's The “grab yer guns and destroy Obama” meme is now an internet game!, then resume random perusal of the rest of the items that are percolating on the page.

Happy Sunday! You can tread this announcement as an additional Open Thread.

Thanks to our wonderful and mystically-endowed-in-the-cyber-arts webmistress Roxy, we're back!

Our toolset and underlying core software has been updated, and our DB backed up, all in a little under an hour.

Kudos to Roxy! Huzzah!

(Please direct all donations to our PayPal account, or send lots of flowers to Hawaii. Don't worry about an address -- just include a note that they're for Roxy, and the islanders will make sure they get delivered.)

...my "arm" in a sling.

Fell on the ice while clearing the driveway of ice/snow/slush...injured the elbow. 
Appears to be a bone bruise and nothing more, but the radiologist will let us know for certain tomorrow. (Yeah, I'm not a complete fool -- we had it x-rayed.)

Anywho -- irony of ironies, nested:

1.  I fall on the ice while out clearing the ice so that nobody will fall on it and get injured.

2.  The doctor said I might want to ice my elbow to help alleviate pain and prevent swelling...from the ice-related injury it sustained.

I think I should go to bed now, and hope that "Blessed Irony" has finished attempting to make her presence known.

 ;)

I originally wrote this as an email to a friend, but thought it was a good enough example of living irony to share.

Crossposted to DailyKos.

"What's in a name" might well be answered in the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" -- evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy to control the blogosphere, the internet, US politics and even the WORLD has now crept out of the shadowy depths and into the light...

Yes, that's right -- the Great Orange Satan has finally tipped its hand. Er, claw. Whatever.

No, really. And I'm sure the reich- right-wing pundits will be all over this as evidence of a nefarious, insidious conspiracy any time now.

~pause~

...any time now...

OK - I'm foundering a bit.  I had a heck of a time finding the comments I made.  I ended up just going back on the diaries to find Jeff's witty piece and my comment.  Sure enough, Carol was there.  Hi back at ya, Carol!  Such a friendly face!

If I were to characterize the past several months it would be one of bubblegum which ends up in the hair.  LONG hair!.  While I've taken off the firefighting uniform for now, I know I'll have to doff it shortly.  The range of life's little complexes range from refinishing kitchens myself then 401Ks and investments go tubular, kidlets medical and school complications, oh heck - you guys know, it's just life. 

It's that dadgum wad of pink Bazooka bubblegum tht is well-chewed and you thought you had put it in the right place to dispose of it.  Little did you know that the endge of the coffee table just wouldn't do.  So when you ducked to clean out the cat yack, yout hair caught on the edge of said coffee table and low and behold you have a new addition to you coiffe.

All tried and true methods of ridding yourself of that growth:  "Out damn spot!" don't work (no, it ain't cancer, I just reread that and thought "Oh, crap!".  We're talking mundane stuff here - none-the-less time-consuming).

Political veterans rights,Snate, Congree,  Pretty Bird Women House, family, school district commitments, health of kidlets and grandbaby -all of which occupy the mind.  So it's a Hey There to you All, I'm around but cannot be counted on for now.  January - mehbe so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezxkqPc19FA&feature=related 

So take that all you Christmas standard or ho-ho-humbug folks!

__________

On a long and lonesome highway
East of Omaha
You can listen to the engine
Moanin' out as one long song
You can think about the woman
Or the girl you knew the night before.

But your thoughts will soon be wandering
The way they always do
When you're riding sixteen hours
And there's nothing much to do
And you don't feel much like riding
You just wish the trip was through
__________

The haunting words and lyrics in the song Turn the Page¹ give an instant sense of the road's long journey, conveying the sense of a journey that just continues methodically as the strength and endurance required to go on becomes a focus on just completing each day.

Life is like that sometimes, giving us more than enough to focus on so that the only way we can continue is to deal with what is immediately ahead of us and reflect only on that which was immediately encountered on our journey...

Yes, as ePluribusMedia gets ready to migrate to the new hosting solution lots of stalwarts like Roxy, StandingUp and others have worked hard to make this possible.

And CoinKitty is coming along too. We want you to be able to find and test our 'Tip`em' buttons and they will be showing up here very soon.

CoinKitty is now very close to opening up the 'Front Doors' and will soon be asking our existing 'Mousers' to use our software to re-join CoinKitty.

Thanks to all our 'Mousers' and the other anonymous testers!