Looking ahead/looking back

our site went through some kind of problem yesterday and wasn't back up until after I left yesterday afternoon. So I just now got the links out to the concerned parties, and I got addresses from most, so I've sent out all but two of the copies that I need to mail.

The only feedback so far has been that people loved or hated the cover (god gives adam an iPod, a la the Cistine Chapel). The best part was that when I described this in an e-mail to the sources, Dave Winer wrote back and said "Which Adam?" a great little joke (because the e-mail was also addressed to Adam Curry) that I completely missed the first time around, proving once again that I'm really not that bright.

Anyway, I'm kinda closing the book on the past month today. Gotta tie up loose threads with the page designer for the blogging story, which I still dislike. Too general, poorly balanced, too "pro-blog." It stands as a testament to my limits and as a cautionary tale about the dangers of saying yes too often. Yes, it's a good topic; yes, we should be writing about it; yes, I'm in the best position to do it. But if I would have said no, or if I would have said "yes but later," it would have been a better story and everyone would be better served.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of the job is saying "no."

I've got a bunch of stuff to do: Furniture to assemble, a new computer to set up, spring yard work. I've got some friends to hook up with podcasting, some sci-fi stories that need finishing, and then there's the newspaper stuff: A yearlong project on local neo-pagans to bring in for a landing, plus the aforementioned explainer piece on the epistomology of global warming (thank you, Anna).

But right now, UNC is about to play its first game of the 2005 ACC Tournament at noon. For those of you who are not from North Carolina, that makes this a High Holy Day in the Tar Heel universe, and I must repair to a bar or something.

Peace out.