Changes are coming…

We’ve been blogging here about email for 11 years now. My first post was published August 29, 2007. In that time, we’ve published more than 2300 posts, and written probably millions of words. For years we have blogged multiple times a week.

This summer we’ve not kept up our normal posting schedule. We’ve been a little busy with non-email stuff. We’ve spent this summer planning, purging, and packing for a big move. We’re almost finished, and early next month we’re getting on a plane with our cats and moving to Dublin, IE.

Picture of a church on a hill in Dublin, Ireland

We’re both excited about the move, and looking forward to living in a new place and meeting new friends.

Most of the changes are personal, but we’ve also been thinking about what business changes we’d like to implement. I have some exciting thoughts about the next phase of Word to the Wise, too. I am looking forward to sharing them with you in the coming months.

One of the big business changes is that we decommissioned our cabinet and have moved all our services into the cloud. We’ve run services on our own hardware since before we were Word to the Wise. Starting with a server sitting in the closet in a Boston apartment, then moving up to donated colo for SamSpade.org/. We’ve had a full cabinet for close to 15 years, first at Integra, then later at Hurricane Electric.

A few weekends ago we pulled the last of our hardware from HE. After we left the support folks sent us this picture of our servers acting as cat bed for the colo cat. 

Cat sitting on servers

Happily, this is all the e-waste we generated from all of the hardware gear we were using. A small amount is going with us to Dublin. But the bulk of our hardware, including some from ‘inside the firewall’ (i.e., the house) was donated to the Network Time Foundation.

 

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The importance of email fades when there is yet another school shooting in the US. I cannot fathom the depth of grief and sorry for the parents who lost their children today. It is an utter tragedy that we, as a country, continue to accept dead children as an acceptable price to pay for the second amendment.
I am a graduate of Virginia Tech. I went to class in the building that is no longer there because of that shooting. I shared a major with the first student the killer shot. I had a horrible realization a few years ago that shooting, once the worst mass shooting in US history, was no longer even in the top 3. I’m sure now it’s not in the top 5.
Yes, I could write another post about reaching the inbox. I could announce a new change at an ISP. But, in the face of what happened today, I can’t. Someone shot up a school. Another community is in mourning for their children. Our leaders in Congress offer thoughts and prayers and nothing else. This is the country the NRA has purchased.
“It’s too soon” to talk about gun control. “We shouldn’t react hastily” in response. We can’t travel on a plane with a full size bottle of shampoo and without taking our shoes off because of one man. But let’s not react hastily to another school with dead kids.
I do try and keep politics off this blog, I know how divisive politics is in the US these days.
But that I’m happy because a tragedy that I had a marginal association with is no longer even in the top 5 largest shootings is horrifying to me. How normalized has students, kids, babies getting shot become that I react so inappropriately? Way too normalized.
It’s Valentines day. A day we’re supposed to spend with our loved ones celebrating each other. Yet so many families are, instead, mourning their children or holding vigil in the hospital.
America should be better than this. I thought America was better than this. But I was so wrong. We can BE better that this, but we’re not living up to our ideals.
One of my favorite West Wing quotes (and, oh, there are many) starts:

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