Deeds

My exploration for new and alternative social media platforms is coming to an end. Over the past couple years I joined dozens of social media platforms in search for the better ones for me. In my last post on this subject, I did a lot of editorializing but with this post I'll be brief and present the with the list of social media platforms and websites where I have a presence. This list may continue to shrink in 2025.

I will never miss an opportunity to ride at the end of December with temperatures peaking at around 50 F. I rode about 50 miles yesterday! It’s pretty warm for this time of year here in South Dakota. The ice is looking rather thin for safely ice fishing on most area lakes…I hope those I saw ice fishing this weekend stay smart and be safe.

My quest continues in 2024 to find better social media platforms! While Mastodon is currently my favorite social media platform for engagement, it's unfortunately not the platform many of those that I followed or followed me on Twitter. Many of these friends and acquaintances have either migrated to Bluesky, Threads, or stayed on Twitter/X. I've been busy looking at these other alternatives.

My new standing desk is requiring a new location for my cup of coffee. I will adapt...

Last year at this time, I quietly introduced a new website called INFOTECH Pub. It was an effort to see if there was enough interest in a website focused on information technology much in the same way I've seen interest in socPub and CMS Report. Well, the short answer is no.

The site's failure to pull in new traffic was due in part because I didn't have enough original content for the site to distinguish it from my other websites. In truth though, after spending more almost 25 years in an information technology career, my heart was never really that interested in spending my off hours supporting a business IT related website as a hobby. With these two obstacles in the way of any success for the website, I've decided to close down INFOTECH PUB and redirect any traffic back to socPub and CMS Report.

One of the neat things about Bluesky is that you have the ability to use an Internet domain as your handle on Bluesky. So for instance, instead of having @bryanruby.bsky.social as my handle, I now have @bryanruby.com as my handle. In the world of decentralization, this allows you to have the same username no matter what application/platform/server you're on. This is one of the advantages of the AT Protocol which Bluesky is built on.

I plan on writing more about why this feature matters and how it is done at a later date.

With a Friday off on December 22, 2023 I took a short ride in the afternoon on my three-wheeler. For a near-Christmas ride in South Dakota with no snow on the ground, no wind, and temperatures approaching 50F...it couldn't have been a more perfect ride on my 2017 Can-Am Spyder RTL. The ride only totaled 30 miles but gave enough distance to ride west out of Sioux Falls to Wall Lake and then head north making a round trip through Hartford.

I can't recall ever having this enjoyable of a ride this close to the end of the year. With rain and snow in the forecast for Christmas, I likely won't have any more opportunities to ride in 2023. That doesn't make me sad, because I already got my Christmas miracle...a motorcycle ride in South Dakota at the end of December. So for now, I'm just going to look forward to discovering where the roads take me in 2024.

Despite our above normal temperatures this December, I finally accepted the undeniable truth that the temperatures now are just too cold to enjoy our patio. The patio furniture has been covered and moved into position to face the South Dakota winter with its fury of wind and snow.

Just a brief video below of this year's Christmas decorations in the front of my house. Along with the ride is our family dog, Jasmine!  Nothing else special to see here, but since I posted this video on my social media accounts, I decided it should also be posted on my blog.

In the video, I sound like I'm out of breath I don't know why except that I started putting up the decorations too late int he day and needed complete the task before sunset. 

Holiday greetings to all that find this post!

I spent this weekend upgrading my "non-personal" websites from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10. There are four of them which include socPub, CMS Report, INFOTECH Pub, and After Work Pub. These websites share some of its content from one another using the Domain contributed module. Managing four websites under one database and one Drupal install provides some advantages but also presents some unique challenges. Luckily, the beta version of the Domain module was developed enough to not present too many upgrade obstacles for me.