The MacDeskBlog

I should have asked this question years ago, but I’ve always just kind of winged it in the past. I bring it up because I’m processing some November pictures and discovered two original artwork submissions for Halloween. One the one hand, I like to have a Halloween picture up on the site on Halloween (fireworks on 4th of July, etc), but on the other hand, that pretty much limits enjoyment of the picture as a desktop to a single day.

So, I ask you, how early should I post holiday pictures?
a) day of
b) day before
c) up to a week before
d) more than a week before

Feel free to vary your answers by holiday. And honestly, the holidays for which I typically get submissions are only Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, and Christmas, though submissions are always welcome for other commemorations.

As a corollary, do you enjoy Fall landscapes during the Spring or Summer? How much should I try to post seasonal pictures within their seasons?

And if you’re paying attention, yes, this does mean that posting of some pictures gets delayed by a full year (or even two back when submissions were heavy) in order to hit their holiday.

At this point, I am fully closed out from my previous employer. I worked for the past 16 years at Genentech, which was a great company. Most of the people I worked with were great. The jackass who was CEO when I first joined managed to get himself fired shortly thereafter and was replaced with a senior scientist by the name of Art Levinson. Some of you Mac folk may recognize the name since he joined Apple’s Board several years ago, or you may know him from Genentech.

So if it was so great, why was I happy that they laid me off? Well, their long-time business partner and majority shareholder, Hoffmann-La Roche, bought them out last year and started to change too many things which directly affected me. I deal well with some changes, but these didn’t fall into that category. We were given nonsensical requirements with ill-defined deliverables on unreasonable timelines without access to anyone who could clarify any of it. I dreaded going to work. To say my morale plummeted would be an understatement. I’d say it evaporated. Meanwhile, I’ve watch Roche operate over the past 16 years, and I’m not impressed with their decisions. I fear for the future of Genentech. I fear that all Roche knows to do with a goose that repeatedly lays golden eggs is to cook it. So, I’m glad they laid me off. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway.

Truth be told, my wife and I flew to Bonaire last September to look for a house. We filed for residency down here in November. We aimed to move down by the end of last year, but once I heard rumor that I might be getting laid off, we pushed our dates back little by little. And when it materialized, I did a little happy dance.

So, that’s the basic story. I hope it’s not too much of a rant. I wish all of my former co-workers the best of luck at Genentech, A Member of the Roche Group. And to those who have moved to Basil, I wish you a speedy conquest; may you conquer the beast from within.

More on island life to follow…

My wife started a blog for us at http://bonaireadventures.wordpress.com/feed/ to share what we’re up to down in Bonaire. I promised some updates here which will still be forthcoming after everything gets resolved with my former employer.

My wife and I both made it to Bonaire in April. We stayed in a nice little condo for a couple weeks, and this week moved into the house we’re renting for the rest of the year. Our stuff is due to arrive next week, and our paperwork should be ready a few days later. Unfortunately, our camera died this week, so I won’t be adding more Bonaire desktops very soon though I may post some to the blog. Aside from that hiccup, everything is going well.

The mail server for MacDesktops.com is being cutover right now. I think that I should receive all mail sent during the cutover, though some will be delayed.

I just finished configuring the new announcement lists on Dreamhost. If you were subscribed to any of the announcement lists, you should have received a confirmation email from the new list on Dreamhost. If you don’t see it, then please check your Spam/Junk folder to see if it was filtered.

If you do not click the confirmation link in the email or if you did not receive one, you will stop receiving announcements.

I’ve been sitting on some news for a while and I think it’s time to share it. I was notified last month that I’m being laid off from my regular job of the past 16 years. As strange as it may sound, this turns out to be a good thing. My wife and I have been planning for life post-career for quite some time now. Though we’re short of our targets, we’ve decided that we are going to execute on our plans. We are moving out of the country early next month. Once there, I’ll share more details.

Don’t panic.
I will continue to run MacDesktops from our new home, and there will be no break in service during out transition. I am still struggling with the last pieces of the mail server transition, but I’m going to tackle that today (Wednesday) and hope for the best.

I’m sure that you’ve noticed that despite my call for submissions a few months ago, the site has subsisted on pictures from Frank J Sinkavich, Stan Peyton, Timothy M. Urbanek, Victor Hamberlin, NASA, and me since then. Please join me in thanking Frank, Stan, Timothy and Victor for their tremendous contributions to the site. I have been accumulating new submissions during these months. Once we get settled, I’ll increase postings with those new submissions. So please, keep sending them in.

Thank you for your support,
Ryan

I’ve been planning to migrate mail to a new server. The current server must have caught wind of it because it decided this morning to disable the announcement mailing lists. Rather than troubleshoot the problem, I am working on migrating mail. I hope to have announcements working again within the next few days.

[Update] The mail server decided that announcements are okay again. I’m still working on the transition to a new mail server, but the urgency is reduced. I hope to avoid any mail server or announcement outages during this process. [/Update]

[Update 2] It appears that I gummed up my mail server for a couple of days. Some of you probably received multiple daily updates or updates for Thursday or Friday this morning. I’m finished with the groundwork for this transition, but the cutover is still to come. [/Update 2]

Hey everyone,

I’m running quite low on submissions these days. I’m starting to think that MacDesktops may be running down. I am flush with pictures from a few dedicated photographers, but submissions in general are way down. Some of this I blame on Apple’s success. As Macs have become cool once again, and once Apple lost the label of “going out of business for 20 years,” the need for reaffirmation on our computer screens has diminished. Some of the blame I’ll also lay on Apple’s relatively weak print ads over the past few years. The Think Different campaign, the early iMac campaigns, and the late PowerMac/PowerBook campaigns all had a variety of catchy and quirky slogans in them. The stuff is mostly simple marketing speak. But mostly, it falls back on me. I haven’t worked on promoting the site for several years. That’s one of the side effects of keeping the site free with minimal advertising.

So, it looks like I’ll be curbing back to only one new picture on some days, probably starting this week. I’ll post two at time when I can and I will ramp back up to two each day if submissions rise again. I’ll continue to post anime on Mondays and NASA/ESA pictures on Saturdays, and I’ll continue to try to post one Apple picture on Tuesdays or Thursdays (always with a preference toward submitted ones over something I come up with myself).

Thank you to everyone who has been coming for so long, and to those of you finding MacDesktops for the first time.

Ryan

I’m pretty sure that I fixed site preferences. It appears that Dreamhost changed PHP versions and/or configuration on me, probably when I had to upgrade to a virtual private server. As a result, cookies were not being retrieved successfully.