As Reclaim continues to morph, I ‘ve been thinking a bit about working teams. One of the real joys—and possibly under appreciated privileges—I’ve had professionally is being part of really amazing teams, which often translates to working with great people. I was living in New York City in the late 90s, just in time to witness (many times first-hand) the NY Yankees 3-peat World Series championships in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Now it might be easy to dismiss this team given they were chock-full of money and talent (they’re the Yankees, after all), but turns out the Orioles had an even higher payroll with arguably as much talent in 1998.* And also, remember the Mets!!! Beyond the money and individual stars there was something more at play—a sense of joyful commitment to the work married with talent made them something else all together. Even the leagues of folks who hate the Yankees would crack a little with that particular team—they were hard not … [Read more...]
Resignation
It’s official, I have resigned my position at University of Mary Washington, and will be going full-time at Reclaim Hosting. It’s almost surreal, and I follow in the footsteps of the great Tim Owens—-whose hard work these last six months has made it all possible. And while I reference the opening sequence of The Prisoner above in honor of #prisoner106, my resignation was neither premature nor acrimonious, and it won’t be immediate. I will be working through September at UMW to ensure a smooth transition. What’s more, one couldn’t have asked for a better situation over the 1o years I’ve been at UMW. I had amazing colleagues in DTLT, a remarkable level of autonomy, and the best faculty and students you could imagine. I think the work I’ve done at UMW speaks for itself, and I leave feeling I was part of a group that truly made the campus a better place to teach and learn. There can be no greater professional satisfaction than that in this … [Read more...]
Already got a domain? I challenge you to reclaim your server.
It started with a chai latte. Not this particular bowl of chai (from La Boulange in San Francisco), but one equally as potent. The other day, I was poking around the list of apps available for automatic installation for Domain of One’s Own participants. I have experience with WordPress, Moodle, phpBB, MediaWiki, and YOURLS, but there are 100+ other applications that I’ve never used or seen, let alone installed and configured. I thought to myself, I should probably check out a few of these apps so I can provide some guidance to people who are looking to set up their site, and don’t know where to get started. I decided to start with the image galleries (which I’ll write about later), as that was something that would have immediate application as part of my own infrastructure. I also decided to make myself a cold chai latte, as I’d been up late the previous night getting sucked into a game on Steam. Within an hour, my brain was vibrating in my skull (or at … [Read more...]