In the days and weeks before the arrival of our newest addition to the family we're getting ready to have folks come stay at the house. One of the things we've traditionally resisted is having a "Guest Room". Frankly paying rent on a room and keeping it up just for the few nights a year it would be used has never made much sense to me. When somebody drops by we have a very nice airbed that does a reasonable job.

This time, however, things are a little different. The folks will be in town and staying a little longer than normal so something a little better would be handy. We considered going out to find a futon mattress to make for a more regular bed.

The problem always came back to the same old discussion of what to do when we weren't having guests. So we placed a call to the local furniture rental shop and viola. Days later a brand new bed and bed frame arrived and was setup. It couldn't have been simpler. For less than the cost of one night in a hotel room we now have a very nice queen sized bed in the "guest room". The best part is in a month or 6-weeks we simply call and have it taken away.

Here we have the obligatory last post of 2008. The lists of things that changed this year could fill volumes. Waiting for the fireworks last year, in a house with no blinds on the windows, we were just getting started on the new adventure. Quite an adventure it has been too.

Starting a new Drupal consultancy at the beginning of the year. Getting more involved in the Drupal community and wrapping up the winter with a visit to Boston for my first Drupalcon. Even a few months in Drupalcon was a chance to renew friendships and make many new friends.

After a winter of travel and coming home to Idaho we came home and got down to work. Several projects cranked out and lots of Drupaling later it came time for a summer of travel. From Oregon to Maryland the trips were great. Once again it seemed everywhere I landed the topic of conversation was Drupal. One of the highlights was spending hours manning the Drupal booth at OSCON with Kieran, who would soon become a colleague at Acquia though that wasn't to come till a little later.

Autumn is one of my favorite times of year. Actually truth be told I love most of the seasons, each for their own beauty and grandeur. Mornings that start with a deep chill and transform into crisp days filled with color are hard to beat. Beyond the inherent beauty the promise of winter's coming is inescapable. Skiing, ice skating and building snow forts are just around the corner while the days grow short.

Fall Cleanup

Spring cleaning in my mind gets overbilled. Sure spring days are sometimes warmer than their cousins in the fall, but the days of fall just beg for a good cleanup. Getting the house in order and ready for the longer nights of winter where the family will be inside more of the waking day is but one of the advantages. Fall cleanups, with the holidays and gift-giving around the corner also provide a great opportunity to assess what the family's needs are. With these ideas fresh in mind one is much less likely to run out and get a gift for a family member that isn't needed.

At the Reno airport catching up on some news reader backlog I came across the Uncletterer headline Google can now OCR all PDFs. Jumping out of the newsreader and to their site it was exciting news. Well it turns out the headline is misleading. Google can, and will, OCR public PDFs. It won't, however, do any OCR on the documents in private spaces including Google Docs.

I wrote some time ago about the plan for scanning documents and getting rid of our filing cabinets. Well with all that's been keeping us busy since then it hasn't happened. The scanner part of the workflow is great and I have some ideas on what I want to do with the documents once they are OCR'd but haven't taken the time to work out the workflow.

On a completely unrelated note why is it that TSA spends so much time looking at my bag of clothes and completely passes on the bag I forgot to take my ziplock of fluids out of?