An eventful year!

Well it's been a very eventful year. One year ago I agreed to write a book on Linux Home Automation Linux Smart Homes For Dummies). It should be available on Monday, the 14th of August 2006. It pretty much took up all my time for the last year (I'm a very slow writer). We (the Editors and I) actually had to pull 2 chapters (plus other material) from the book because it was getting way too long! The book is supposed to be about 348 pages long (it's 364+ pages). The 2 chapters that we removed were on Mr. House and Asterisk & Mr. House and LIRC (Linux IR Control). They would have added another 30 pages to the book. We also removed a lot of side material. I think the book is better because we removed the side material. I wish we could have kept the Mr. House and Asterisk chapter but it was too long and it would have added more of a delay to the book. I'll work on that material soon for magazine articles.

While the book was being worked on I managed to get sick. Yeah, I know I promised not to talk about work or stuff outside HA but this directly affected the amount of time I have to work on HA. What started out as a breathing problem (I'm asthmatic) turned into a digestive problem as the strong anti-biotics did a number on me. This in turn cause me to be unable to ride my bicycle (I ride long distances to relax, exercise and control my weight better). I ended up putting 20 lbs. more than I would have normally seen during the winter. In the long run this screwed me up from January through June. Just as I started to get over all of this my wife got sick. I ended up taking care of her while she was sick. In fact she's just getting over that. So for the last 9 months we've been battling illnesses. This has left little time for things like hobbies or many chores around the home. So for the next few months a number of put off chores will be done. I will also be able to allot some time for HA as I have a number of links to post and a lot of updates to my many web pages. Throw in the fact that things have been very busy in the labs where I work and I can easily say 'Life has been interesting'.