Coming to the end of a very needed, very restful two weeks vacation. I can't remember the last time I took so much time off. I really didn't have any goals for the time off other than to relax. And relax I did.
I did get some good projects done. Made some good progress on a longtime musical project I'm doing with friends. Help to run initial setup of the Burlington generator maker space. Saw friends. Stayed up late, slept late… Spent time with family. Checked off all the things I had hoped to do.

My last project was to update the Samstone's website. (Samstones.org). That's a tribute site I created for Sam and the Samstone's project back shortly after Sam died in 2006. It was my first experience with WordPress and with writing PHP. Since then I've done a lot of WordPress blogs and I've gotten reasonably good at keeping them current. But, i was always too afraid to change the Samstone's page because of all of the PHP packing I had to do back then to get it to work. I was so worried that all of the stories and Samstone placements etc. would get lost if I made a mistake.

More recently I started to worry that my old WordPress version (2.02) was going to fall off the edge of the earth. I could no longer get plug-ins etc. and there was no facilities for exporting content. I'd written a bunch of Python code at one point to extract it for archive but there was no way to keep it moving with essentially seven-year-old code.

So the last couple of days I bit the bullet back everything up as best I could and slowly moved the thing up through seven versions of WordPress. I have to give it to the WordPress guys they've made it's very easy and robust to jump levels. What you get past a certain point (2.7) all the updates are automatic.

So a few minutes ago I just finished bringing the thing to current level(3.8) . It will make things a whole lot easier to maintain and extend . It makes me feel good that this site that talks about Sam, organ donation, Sam's Legacy fund, and sandstones will now be easier to maintain.

I feel good that even after seven years the site gets quite a bit of traffic. I think Samstone's has turned out to be a very good way of keeping Sam's spirit moving in the world.Thanks to all of you out there who have sent in Samstone placements or fines or requests. Keep them coming!

As everyone gets back to work this week , i wish you all a happy and productive 2014. Let's make it so!

Night all, night Sam
– Me

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