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.

The subscription model for anything is broke. Keep raising prices, upset your current customers, only offer a discount when they cancel the subscription. Why not make your current customers happy instead of only pleasing those arriving or departing? This is a stupid game we play.

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.

In the early years of our marriage, my wife and I bought a lighted Christmas wreath. The wreath was two feet in diameter and was strung with the old incandescent cluster lights. This wreath hung in our picture window of our first house and would make its way to the transom window above the front door of our second house. Over the years this Christmas wreath had become my favorite decoration to hang during the holiday season.

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 have come to both hate and love social media platforms since joining them in the early days via Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. There are some days I just want to quit all social media. Yet, social media has become an indispensable tool for communication, connection, information sharing, and in some cases building community. For years Twitter was my favorite for microblogging, but as X, for better or worse, it's no longer the valued social network it once was for me. Like many of you, I've been looking for an alternative to Twitter.