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Is this thing on?

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Blowing the dust off here, so in case you see this somewhere, HI! Yes, we will try and start writing again, for various reasons.

Right now the immediate issue is Ron. He’s had lifelong gastric issues but they have really escalated over the past couple of years. This has resulted in his health getting bad enough he was finally admitted to the hospital where they found he has a neuroendocrine tumor of the small bowel.

He is scheduled for surgery on December 17th 2024. The surgeon has a few options, but we will know more after further imaging, and she will know more when she opens him up and is able to have a good look.

That’s the short version.

There’s a million details between then and now, but prognosis for him is good and recovery is likely to be long.

new post

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if i add a new post does it show on the front page?

Blog refocus

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As you may have guessed by the last post the Ron And Andrea blog is undergoing a change. Instead of WordPress or business related thoughts, our posts will now focus on remodelling and finishing our new house.

Not a huge change right now, mostly the theme and some cleanup. Older posts will remain but eventually shuffle off into the archives.

So – if you’re still reading via RSS and were only interested in WordPress related news, you might wish to unsubscribe with no hard feelings. However, if you want to keep tabs on our house news and what we’re doing, this is the place we will be posting everything.

Tune in! We have tons to say! (and pictures… so many pictures… )

Back to the country

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Andrea & I have been living in Fredericton for about 2 years. Before that, a trip to visit the children/grandchildren was most of a day. We having been enjoying being closer for visiting more often and the convenience of close shopping.

When we moved we planned on staying in Fredericton for a few years saving up to purchase a piece of property and build a home. Since we are both technically self-employed with a business that has almost no “real” assets, borrowing for building a home is slightly more difficult for us. Knowing that, we planned on saving a good portion of the funds before building.

In the mean time, it doesn’t hurt to research the market for availability, prices, etc.

Given our business, the only absolute prerequisite has been a location where we could get decent speed Internet either with a high bandwidth cap or unlimited bandwidth. In Lakeville, we had satellite first then wireless. Either of those are okay for casual usage but are less than ideal for people who use the Internet all day.

Second, we want some elbow room. I have been mainly keeping an eye out for property that is at least 3 acres (1.2 ha).

Third, because we work at home, we don’t get out and around as much as people who commute to work. A house nestled in a larger treed lot does have privacy but if you are there almost all the time it’s a bit claustrophobic. A property with a view would be a big plus over the long term.

Over the last year Andrea & I realized that century old houses that came onto the market were more likely to include a few acres than properties in our price range that met our wants.

We started looking at listings of older homes with a small parcel of property.

In September, the family leasing the Lakeville house were approved for a mortgage. At the time there were 3 houses on the market that met our list. We arranged a viewing of all 3 spaced over a week.

We put in an offer on one of them in early October and became the owners on Friday.

Now working for CopyBlogger

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In case you missed the news breaking on twitter, Ron and I are now officially both working full time for CopyBlogger Media, LLC. Ron, of course, will be programming away – working on cool features for various projects, and I will continue to help explain how to use those things. 😉 Basically, the same thing we have been doing, except with a steady paycheque.

What does this mean for everything else? Not much, really. Most of our other projects, like WPeBooks, and our assortment of free plugins, will continue on as they have been. The only immediate change is what little outside client work we had been doing will go down to next to nothing.

Not only are we excited, but we are both really, really happy. It turns out in the couple years we’ve known Brian Gardner and the rest of the crew, we’ve become great friends and the fit is excellent. The transition towards working full time, in retrospect, may have seemed slow and gradual, but also practically inevitable. The working style within CopyBlogger also suits us quite nicely, and sometimes they insist we take time off (crazy!) !

Time off’s a good thing as well. 😉 We think this will give us more time to work on our other project and also make better decisions about them.

The next year will be interesting indeed.

Going to Toronto

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Or, as the locals say , “Taranna”. 🙂

Ron and I have been to Toronto multiple times, so no sightseeing for us. This is good, because there are many friends to catch up with at WordCamp, as well as family in the area. Did you know Ron was actually born in Guelph Ontario? Well now you do.

We are actually really excited to come to Toronto and speak about the multisite / network feature of WordPress because we both feel WordPress itself can be a great opportunity for Canadians to shine at home, and not have to go abroad for success. WordPress is easy to learn, highly rewarding and could be the answer for a few Canadians to create their own jobs.

Saturday we will give a presentation on how we got involved with WordPress, ho we dove into the deep end of the pool with multisite and look and the kinds of things multisite can do for you.

Sunday, Ron & I will lead a workshop where we will instruct users how to set up multisite. We’ll go over the entire network admin area, as well as cover the more common plugins used. Of course, we will talk about domain mapping, wpebooks and answer tons of questions.