Looks like the holidays have come around again.

Well it's been an eventful year. At the beginning I was still working for Essential Wisdom, and the outlook for getting our first customer was looking more and more glum. In late 1998 it had been decided to pursue a business-to-business model rather than selling software directly to consumers, so our future depended on selling our technology to some kind of company which sells products that require some layout work or other customization, such as pools, furniture, computer equipment, landscaping supplies, etc. Fairly early this year the software was in a state which would permit such a sale to occur, but as usual with a new product salesmanship is the bottleneck. The CEO is the only person remaining, still trying to get that first sale.

When the initial investment capital ran out, so did our salaries. A few people were able to keep working there a few more months in exchange for company stock, but that didn't work for me so I accepted a position at ExpressBill, a company whose business consists entirely of printing and mailing large volumes of medical bills. They were using very outdated software that was not allowing them to grow the business and had decided to rewrite all of it on a Unix system. So I was doing C++ on a Sun system. I was glad to gain some Oracle database experience but wasn't so happy about not being able to continue using Java. I also doubled my salary but that was predictable since I had purposely taken the lowest salary I could deal with at EW in order to get more stock.

Things were going well enough, and I had planned to stay for a while, but in October I got an offer I couldn't refuse from homebid.com. So I am working there now; back to coding in Java again. The initial idea there was to build a web site where people could sell homes online, using either the usual offer model or an auction. They wanted to be the eBay of real estate. Some research was done into whether people would adapt to selling homes that way. A large percentage of people prefer to have some hand-holding with a conventional realtor when they buy or sell a house, though. Even though we would offer our services for a much lower commission than a normal realtor it would still be an ``iffy'' choice for many people. So again they have opted for a business-to-business strategy, hoping to partner with an existing large company with a web site and a real estate business or an interest in one; such as Prudential or Yahoo.com. The strategy may work, or not, but I'm not so personally invested in it this time and with $25M in venture capital they probably won't run out of money as fast as EW did. The initial web site development was done by an external consulting company, and homebid is just now hiring their own staff, so we are in the handoff process where we are supposed to take over the existing code (read: existing mess) and start making improvements.

So much for business. Personally not a lot has changed. I'm still single and spend most of my free time on hobbies and projects.

The sliding door project is getting closer to completion. I was going to work on it today but was feeling lazy, so I made fruitcake and fixed a couple of UPSs (backup power supplies to keep a computer running when the power goes out) instead. That was the ripoff this last hamfest; I always seem to buy something that whoever is selling says works great then I get it home and find out it had no chance of working. In this case both UPSs needed new batteries. The batteries weren't cheap but I figure I still spent less than half the new price of the UPSs. I also found a good deal on a 2M radio with a remote control head; that's been fun.

I'm working on front-end software for my touchscreen computers. That's an old project but I gave up using Linux on those machines due to lack of memory and am writing some old-fashioned optimized C code for DOS.

I have termites so will be solving that problem soon I hope. Terminix has lost the information about my warranty coverage which was obtained by the previous owners, and which I renewed the first year but they didn't send me a bill the next year. So I guess I get to start over with some other company. Goes along with eliminating the problem that probably got the termites started in the first place; the back patio add-on room was built with wood beams right down to the concrete slab, an inch or so away from the dirt, so I think that's where they got in, and have now infested other areas of the roof. I think I'm going to redo that back wall with a combination of masonry and steel, and the roof over that room needed replacing anyway because it isn't sloped enough and the water puddles between the lap joints of the roll roofing. Not quite sure how I'm going to redo the roof; the challenge is to get more slope to it without lowering the ceiling any more (the back wall consists of two sliding glass doors, a big window, and 4x4's between them; and the ceiling is already right at the top of the doors). Maybe will just use corrugated steel which won't sag and the slope won't matter so much. It's not visible outside the yard so appearance doesn't matter much. Or, I could raise that roof straight up above the adjoining one at the high end, by a couple feet, put windows up there to let in more light, and gutters to catch the rain off the adjoining roof. The swamp coolers also need replacing some day but I don't think I'll worry about it this next year. They still function but are rusting out. And I prefer the air conditioning anyway. I want to build some stainless steel swamp coolers some day so they won't rust out.

The citrus trees look like they didn't grow any since I planted them. They have put on new leaves, lost old ones, and stayed about the same size. They get lots of water with the irrigation, so there's no excuse really other than just taking time to get settled. I'm hoping for a growth spurt this spring. I also planted a pecan tree a couple weeks ago, out by the sidewalk, after a long time thinking about what kind of tree would not make too much of a mess, but produce something edible, and have a nice canopy to hang out over the street without hanging too low. My neighbor a couple houses down is coordinating a city program to plant street-side trees in the older neighborhoods, and she seemed to concur that it was a good choice, and that the city actually encourages overhanging trees. So I hope it survives. It was a little expensive because they are harder for the nursery to grow; they buy them bare-root, and get them started to make sure they are going to leaf out nicely because bare-root trees have a higher initial mortality rate. The taproot is so long that they plant them in two pots stuck together. I had to dig a really deep hole for it but was surprised to find how easy it was after leaving the hose dripping overnight.

The irrigation is working better. I got my dam built up higher and got all the leaks stopped so if we get a good head of water and the yard is not too dry and I have recently mowed, I can actually flood the whole yard in 45 minutes.

I started an aquarium last June; my dad gave me his spare tank, and my mom got me some fish to put in it for my birthday. They've been prolific and I have lots of little fish now too. The aquarium plants are also doing well. I did a lot of reading on the 'net and joined an email list for aquarium plant folks so learned a lot of the mistakes not to make beforehand. The important things are lots of light (2-4 watts of flourescent light per gallon of water), various fertilizers and mineral requirements (clay in the substrate, and the waste from the fish for fertilizer), 25% water changes every couple weeks with tap water (both to get rid of contaminants and replenish minerals needed by the plants... but tap water may not work in some areas) and carbon dioxide injection. I'm doing the CO2 the simple way - with a bottle of sugar water and yeast hooked up by a tube to the filter intake. I have to make a new batch every couple weeks when it gets fully fermented and won't make any more bubbles. It works well enough for my 20 gallon tank but the folks on the list say it's better to buy the bottles of compressed CO2 intended for dispensing fountain drinks, especially for bigger tanks. One bottle of gas lasts a year or so reportedly. I will probably put together a large tank someday, in front of the picture window in the living room.

Thanksgiving was nice. My mom came over and I did the turkey this year. I even bought a dining table for the occasion (haven't gotten around to building one yet like I planned, and the one I bought will do nicely as a kitchen table anyway). I made turkey noodle soup after the leftovers had dwindled down somewhat. My mom helped with the Christmas tree Thanksgiving afternoon, and I put up the outside lights the next weekend. There are more this year - several sets on the privet bush and about 10 sets of the miniature kind on the hedge as well as the ones along the awning. I must have started something because more of the neighbors have lights up than usual now too.

If you have web access I'm updating my newsletter thingy more often now at http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud/journal/.

This year's newsletter was done on LyX for Linux, the GUI version of TeX.

I've been working on a web-based address book (see www.nettebook.org) and was just thinking, if I'd get a ``groups'' feature written it would be a much better way to keep track of my Christmas card list. We'll see. Next I get to figure out how to address the envelopes this year. Last year I just wrote a simple script to send them to an old daisy-wheel printer and manually fed in each envelope. Will probably use that printer again.

Enough rambling from me. Merry Christmas, and may Y2K bring a minimum of power outages and century-overdue bills.