I've finally got the pictures up on Yahoo Photos. And it only took me a week! In case you're curious, all pictures were taken with a FujiFilm FinePix 1300 1.3 megapixel digital camera.

Just a very quick note to say that I'm back in Florida, staying with my folks for a month. I'm going to get laser eye surgery this Friday, and then I need to hang around for a buch of check-up visits. As soon as the doctor says I'm OK to go, I'll be driving back to DC.

I've been busy hanging out with friends and eating out, and I haven't had a chance to upload all my pictures. I will soon, and I'll post a note here. In the meantime, for those who didn't already know about it, you might enjoy the pictures I already have online at http://photos.yahoo.com/mcsquared88. Enjoy!

Hi everyone! Did you miss me? I'm alive and having a great time. Andros island is nothing like New Providence (AKA Nassau). My first week and a half or so was kind of boring. The hoteliers were just too busy running the hotels to spend time with me and the computers. I did get to do a good deal of diving, but as I said, I won't bore you all with the details ;)

I did meet some cool people at the Forfar Institute. They had met Tray, the other volunteer at a different hotel, and were calling around trying to find him to fix their computer. They managed to find me instead. So in exchange for the 4 hours I spent re-imaging their computer and getting their Internet connection working again, they let me join them for a snorkling day trip and late-afternoon dive trip. Both the snorkling and diving was excellent!

This past Thursday, I transfered to Small Hope Bay Lodge, which is simultaneously the most technologically advanced and most remote hotel I've worked with. Do check the Web site, it's a beautiful place and the people and food are as good as the diving.

Tomorrow (Sunday), I'm going to a wedding of two of the people I met a Forfar: Joe and Heather. I'm up this late (it's now about 12:45am) because I'm working with one of the divemasters here at Small Hope Bay to create some CDs of music as a wedding gift. I've been working 10 hour days since I got here, so I'm plenty tired. But since Jeff (the general manager at Small Hope) has told me that I can dive when I'm not working, I'm trying to get the work done as quickly as possible ;)

Small Hope is the first place I've stayed at that doesn't have air conditioning in the rooms, but they do have A/C in the office. It's also the only place with a serious bug problem. I think I'm going to go thru a full container of bug repellant before the week is up.

Although this has been a fantastic experience, I'm looking forward to being home again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

When I finally get home, I'll have a chance to upload all my pictures and I'll add a link to this blog.

Stay tuned!

So I'm about due for my weekly post, especially considering I'm going to Andros tomorrow and I expect that Internet access won't be as convenient.

First let me remind everyone that I'm a big fat looser. I didn't go to any clubs last week. I finally went to the Zoo (the name of a club) for about 3 hours last night, and I didn't speak to anyone. I had 2 beers, I stood, I listened to the music, and I watched the crowd. Pretty tame stuff. It was a fun place, and I'd recommend it to anyone, but as much as I thought I wanted to get my groove on, when I got there I realized I ain't got no groove.

I should just rename this blog to 'My Summer Job.' I typically work an 8-hour day, though it's not a very difficult job. This week has been very quiet. I've spent most of my time puttering with the computers, and almost no time training. I swapped the back office computer with the owners' home computer, which also involved swapping the network card and CD burner. I got the 2 computers on the LAN to see each other again. I finally downloaded some CD burning software and created a simple backup system using batch files. And I figured out their 7-year old DOS-based reservations/billing software so I could purge out about 12,000 old records that were bogging down the software to a snail's pace. Note - If you didn't understand any of that, that's quite OK. In a nutshell, I puttered around with computers for a week.

I did go diving again this past Sunday, and it was the nicest diving yet (except for the shark dive). The first dive was a pretty standard wreck at about 45 feet, but it was a small bunch of divers so I took my buddy and went exploring a bit further out from the group. We were rewarded when we spotted a beautiful 6-foot nurse shark. I was about to tap her tail when she decided she had had enough of us and swam off. The second dive was no deeper than 20 feet, and it was described to us before-hand as a wreck. It was more of a debris field than a wreck. My navigation skills allowed us to do a big circle around the area without getting lost. We found another small nurse shark wedged under some wreckage, and tons of fish. I have never seen parrotfish so big. They were bigger than my head.

The coolest part of the dive was the very end. I was tired of swimming, we were almost right under the dive boat, and it was about time to surface. I decided to just sit down on the main portion of the wreckage and just watch the fish around me. I was looking at the wreckage in front of me, and I noticed a tiny spotted eel was staring back at me. I found this guy completely at random. Whoa.

So maybe I should say a bit more about my daily life. I've been a pretty happy camper this week because I got a remote for the TV. Evidently, the hotels keep the remotes at the front desk and normally give them out when you check in. At the first hotels, they didn't bother to give me a remote. Actually, they didn't bother to give me one at this hotel either, but I noticed the basket when I was working and asked about it.

All of the hotels have had either cable or satellite, and I'm talking about 50 or so channels. The funny thing is that they have most of the South Florida stations. Channel 7 news is pretty incredible. People used to joke that their motto was "If it bleeds, it leads." It's not really a joke. When there isn't enough crime locally, they have a segment called "Off the Satellite" where they talk about crime around the country. I think their new motto should be "Crime all the time." I think the point of network news is to scare people into never leaving their homes.

Speaking of leaving homes, I don't do much of that myself. I did walk around downtown Nassau once or twice this past week, But unless you're shopping for liquor, jewelry, or perfume, there isn't much to do in downtown Nassau. Although the library is around the corner, and I actually passed it last night, I wasn't interested in exploring. Like I said, I'm a looser. I haven't even used the hotel pool since my first week.

I think I'll be doing more of the sun and sand thing in Andros. The hotel I was at my first week was right on the water, and I expect that to be the norm in Andros.

I really should start working, so look for another post from me some time next week.

A few things I should mention:

Most of these Weblogs were typed on my laptop late in the evening in my hotel room, saved to a floppy disk, and then pasted into the Blogger.com editing Web page the next day. In this way, I can spend a minimum of time on the hotel computers.

Victor - Don't despair, I'm sure I'll need your services when I'm on Andros island starting the 22nd.

Take care!

7:33 PM 6/11/2002

I've been reading the book "Nerds 2.0.1" by Stephen Segaller. Reading about all the 20-something multimillionaires is a bit humbling. Actually, it's kind of depressing. I remember all the aunts and uncles referring to me as the next Bill Gates when I was younger. Now I'm a 27-year old grad student with negative income.

The more I read the book the more I felt like I was unable to predict a future trend. Then I thought about my current day job: teaching Internet skills to small hotel operators in the Bahamas. Today, I explained everything from decentralized computing to DNS to the difference between HTTP and HTML in less than an hour. Is that belittling decades of achievement, or just a way of coping with a student who's falling asleep right in front of me. Seven years ago people were talking about the international growth of the Internet. I'm sure there will continue to be people who make a good living out of spreading the gospel of TCP/IP such as I'm doing (albeit as an unpaid volunteer).

But if I had to pick something that I think will be the next "big thing," it would be digital rights management. DRM, as it's commonly referred to is the emerging software and hardware systems for restricting the ways customers can use intellectual property (music, movies, books, software, etc.) that they have purchased. DRM scares me because I see myself as much more of a consumer than a creator of intellectual property (IP). I don't *want* to be restricted.

Ted Nelson's original vision for Xanadu was of a system that maintained owners rights and used micropayments to reimburse them. The RIAA claims that major media owners are reluctant to make their libraries available online because of the fear of rampant piracy. William Gibson talks of a virtual future where skimmers get paid for useful data that they add to a global encyclopedia of everything.

In the paper that I wrote [stopped here for the night]

10:21 PM 6/12/2002

[continued]

In a paper that I wrote for Professor Singh's final exam in my "Intro to Cross-Disciplinary Studies" class last Fall, I described a utopian future where micropayments and weblogs fueled a personal publishing revolution. If there's a business opportunity, maybe that's it.

Considering that it's a day later and I was about to write some more for my Weblog anyways, I think it's opportune to include my observations on keeping a Weblog - it doesn't take the place of a phone call or conversation. The reason for this is that there's no feedback. Maybe that's because I told everyone that I couldn't respond to email. But I don't think email would be enough. But how can you form a community around micropayments? And how do you reconcile the ISP industry switch from pay-per-hour to flat-rate dial-up access with peoples refusal to pay for subscription-based Web sites? Where do micropayments fit in? Do they fit in?

10:27 PM 6/12/2002 - More on life in the Bahamas

Rain. The past few days have consisted of little more than work and rain. I went diving Sunday morning (much more on that later), and the rain started during the bus ride back to my hotel. I'm not exaggerating much when I say that the rain didn't stop until this afternoon. Blech! Sure, I could have paid about $15 each way for a taxi, but when it rains all day, there's not much enthusiasm for going out at night.

I should say more about going out at night. First, let me apologize if I repeat. I don't have the benefit of re-reading my past Weblog entries while I write this. I'm sitting in my hotel room writing this on my laptop, and I plan to email it to Victor when I have some spare time tomorrow.

Going out - The first thing you must understand is the geography. To my tourist sensibilities, there is basically one road on this island. It goes from somewhere past downtown Nassau to the East, thru the central jewelry and t-shirt tourist district, past a series of beaches, hotels, timeshares, and condos, then past the Cable Beach strip, and then past the two hotels I've stayed at so far and then further West on the island. There is a bus route that runs from West of me to downtown. There are other bus routes and other roads, but they don't really matter to the tourist.

There are a few points of interest: Paradise Island is great if you're staying at one of the hotels on the island, but I hear that they're very strict about keeping non-paying guests off their property. If you just want to spend the day enjoying the pools and beaches, you actually have to pay for a day pass bracelet. There are also no busses that go between PI and the mainland, so it's taxis or a long walk over a tall bridge. So far, I've only made one trip to PI. It was on the complimentary shuttle bus for the Junkanoo in June festival. I took the bus from the festival, to PI, and then right back. I got the bus driver to drop me off on the Cable Beach strip before he headed back to the festival for another run.

The strip - What I refer to as the strip is the section of Cable Beach that contains the Crystal Palace casino, Radisson, Marriott, and Nassau Beach hotel. On the ends of this strip are Sandals and Breezes, but Sandals doesn't seem to welcome pedestrians and Breezes wasn't too impressive. Besides the casino (I don't gamble, so this isn't to interesting to me), there's a very nice pool behind the Marriott. I haven't had a chance to go on a Saturday afternoon to enjoy it but I'd definitely like to. In front of the Nassau Beach Hotel is Johnny Canoe. This is a really great bar/restaurant. If you go, definitely try the Guava Duff for desert. There is also a Sbarro's if you get a craving for U.S. junk food. Inside the Marriott and Radisson are lots of expensive shops similar to what you'd find downtown, but the whole place is air-conditioned, much less crowded, and a lot closer to my hotels ;)

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday I went to Johnny Canoe's for dinner and/or drinks. Fridays was pizza at Sbarro's. As I think I mentioned in my last entry, I went to the Junkanoo in June festival early Saturday evening. The step-out (parade) was really nice, but *really* small. I think it's worth doing, but it just whets my appetite for coming back for the real thing in December. I got a daiquri at the famous Twin Brothers hut on Arawak Caye, but I didn't realize I needed to order it with alcohol. I'll know better next time. Speaking of Arawak Caye, I'm a little confused. The Junkanoo festival is supposedly on the Caye, but I never left the mainland. I think there *was* an island just behind the row of bars, but what little I saw didn't seem to be of any interest. Maybe I just don't understand the meaning of Caye--I thought it meant island.

By far, the best thing one can do in the Bahamas is go on a shark feeding dive. That's what I did Sunday. For the low low price of $130 (plus there's a $7 off coupon in one of the tourist papers), you can spend about half an hour kneeling on the sea floor 50 feet below the surface surrounded by about 30 reef sharks. When I say surrounded, I'm not exaggerating.

There are a few different points when you actually think about the risks involved. I did the dive with Nassau Scuba Center, and they have a pretty good system for settling your nerves. The first and second dive are in the same basic location, with the feeding happening on the second dive.

The first dive was another wall dive, but I was buddied with much more competent divers than last week. I was buddied with two guys who were already dive buddies; I think they were on vacation. Although dive buddies are legally responsible for each other's lives, I don't think I even asked them both for their names. We just established that one of them would be the leader and the other two of us would follow him. Everything else worked like clockwork (which sounds pretty redundant).

For the first dive, I had 39 minutes of bottom time and a max depth of 83 feet. At the end of the dive, there was a wreck to explore. I think we saw 3 or 4 sharks at the beginning of the first dive, but there were at least a half-dozen swimming lazily around the boat at the end of the dive. Back on the boat, as the two customers who had decided to pay the mega-bucks to actually feed the sharks (I'll refer to these guys as "the feeders" throughout the remainder of this tale) and the divemaster were being dressed in their chain-mail suits, I took some pictures of the sharks swimming around the back of the boat. When you see the pictures, remember that those sharks are swimming in the exact spot where we were about to jump into the water. There were about a dozen sharks just swimming around the back of the boat that I could see from the surface.

Having done a shark dive about a year earlier in West Palm Beach, I wasn't nervous about swimming with sharks. But the scariest point for me was about 2 minutes into the second dive. I was following the camerawoman from the dive charter with my two buddies off to the side, and I almost bumped right into a 5-7 foot reefie (shark). I think he was only about 2 feet in front of me when I noticed him (remember, masks cut off a lot of your peripheral vision). I shuddered for a second when I thought about him biting my head off if I had been swimming just a bit faster. I realized that was pretty irrational, but then so is intentionally swimming with 30 sharks. From that point forward, I was constantly scanning all around me.

We got to the feeding area and took our positions. The other 4 observers and myself were directed to kneel in a line as close together as possible. The camerawoman directed us to the right spot, and we seemed to get settled just in time. The feeders and divemaster weren't too far behind us and they were bringing a crowd of sharks.

The one thing that was stressed the most during the pre-dive briefing is that we observers had to keep our hands to ourselves. We were told that if any of us was seen trying to touch a shark, we would be immediately sent to the surface. I'm not sure how they'd handle that, but I didn't want to piss off the staff or loose out on my $130 adventure. I can always pet sharks at home in Ft. Lauderdale ;)

The two feeders just stood by a big basket that the divemaster brought with him. They were each given a long metal rod with a handle. The divemaster would then stick a dead fish from the basket on the end of a feeder's pole, and they would then hold it up for the sharks to eat. It wasn't a feeding frenzy, but it was fairly close. The most amazing part was when the divemaster would take a fish and swim over to about 6 feet in front of us observers. He would wave the fish around in front of him until the sharks were literally coiling themselves around him to get at it. It was either experience or very intelligent sharks that prevented him from being bitten. Of course, for all I know his hands did get some nips. I just didn't think to ask after the dive.

Once a shark took the fish, the divemaster would grab the snout of a shark (I'm not sure if it was the same one each time, or whether it was the shark that he had just given the fish to) and pull it to his chest. It looked like something between alligator wrestling and cradling a baby. He did this a number of times. I wasn't sure if the sharks were going into a torpor (hypnotic state) like I had seen in two National Geographic/Discovery channel specials. They definitely weren't attacking him. After holding the shark like that for a few seconds, it seemed like the divemaster let them go. I guess he didn't want to push his luck an further.

There was another moment of truth during the dive when a shark swam very close to me (I was on the end of the line of observers) and then turned behind me. I made a conscious decision to turn my back on the shark that I knew was only a few feet behind me. After this happened once or twice more, I could ignore the sharks as they went behind me *almost* without a second thought.

Lest you think I was the only lunatic in the water, I need to tell you what happened when the food was all gone. The divemaster took the rods from the feeders, stowed them in the basked, and then took the two feeders by the hand and brought them in front of the basket for a great big bow. After all the warnings about keeping our hands to ourselves, the dive master had the two feeders raise their arms and take a bow for the camera. Ironic, don't you think?

After the bow, the dive master retrieved the basked and headed back to the boat with the feeders. It was mentioned during the pre-dive briefing that us observers would then have a chance to search the bottom for shark teeth, but we didn't when it was "safe" to break formation. When the camerawoman put her camera down and started looking for teeth, we all kind of looked at each other and then joined it. At this point, there were six divers with their heads almost in the sand with at least a dozen sharks still swimming all around us. The sharks seemed to be keeping about 5 feet away from any one of us, but a diver accidentally bumping into a shark (or vice versa) wasn't out of the question. I seemed to be the only diver who was interested in looking at the sharks at this point.

I half-heartedly looked for teeth, but I must explain that the bottom was covered with what looked like broken bits of coral, rocks, and shells. While everyone else started their search directly in front of them, I swam the extra few feet to where the basket was during the feeding thinking that I had a better chance of finding teeth there. But after a minute or so of searching, I wasn't sure of where to look. Maybe a minute before the camerawoman signaled that it was time to head back to the boat, I somehow found a tooth. It was a very small tooth and the end was broken off, but I was happy to have a reminder of this most excellent dive.

There was a hang bar 15 feet below the boat for the divers to do our safety stop, and I hung on that bar until almost everyone else had gotten back on the boat. At this point, there were probably about 18 sharks still swimming around us, but they had backed off another few feet. Even though I was still only wearing my spandex dive skin, I spent 51 minutes down with a max depth of 51 feet.

I am definitely interested in trying the role of feeder on a future dive, but I don't have the equipment (full wetsuit, hood, and gloves) to do it this trip and I think I'd like to bring a witness with me. I came away from the experience with an even deeper awe and appreciation for sharks.

Watching the evening news the day of the dive, I heard about another shark attack off the West coast of Florida. The attack was on a small boy in the surf zone. I am convinced that I was less at risk of being attacked during my dives that that boy or any other child is when playing in heavy surf.

Assuming it isn't raining tomorrow (Thursday), I plan to check out the lounge-style night club in the Nassau Beach Hotel called the Living Room. Friday, I'll check out a beach themed party club called the Zoo, and I hope to go diving again Sunday. Next week, I'm told that I'll be at a hotel in downtown Nassau. I'll try to do some shopping, check out the pirate museum, and maybe the library (which used to be a jail). After next week, I'll be spending 3 weeks on Andros island where there is a lot less development. I hope to do a "blue hole" dive there. Blue holes are extremely deep holes in the ocean floor of a small diameter--may a few hundred feet. That's about all I know of them.

I'm now about half-done with my last day at the first hotel. We're still waiting for the hosting company to get us the info we need to upload the files to the account, so you won't see anything on the new site just yet. I'm planning to see the Junkanoo in June on Arawak Cay tomorrow evening. I'll bring my camera, but I don't know when I'll be able to upload the pictures. I also hope to go diving again on Sunday.

I went diving last Sunday with Stuart Cove (the name of the dive company, not the name of the guy I went diving with). The dives were nice, but I've seen better. The real bummer of the day was the fact that I was paired with a complete air hog named Larry. The first dive was on the big wall--the continental shelf. I had a max depth of 76 feet, and yet the dive was only 19 minutes long. My "buddy" burned up his tank while I had about 1700psi left at the end of the dive (that's over half a tank for you non-divers). The second dive was even more of a tragedy. The dive boat anchored to a wreck in about 45 feet of water, and after about 25 minutes, my buddy wanted to end the dive. We were literally right under the dive boat and could see it above us, but he was "bored" and wanted to stop. Personally, I would have been happy just sitting on the wreck for another 20 minutes until my tank was empty. Hopefully I won't have another sob story after this Sunday.

I'm now on day 4 of my first assignment. I've been training the daughter of the hotel manager on FrontPage and re-designing the hotel's Web site in the process. The current Web site is at http://www.bahamasnet.com/casuarinas, but the redesigned site will be on a new domain at http://www.casuarinashotel.com. If this system supported it, I'd love to allow comments from you on the site.

Gotta get back to work now...

Like father, like son I guess. I arrived at about 1:30pm today, and not 6 hours later we find the intrepid traveller sitting in an Internet Cafe. But it wasn't my idea. Tray, the other OAS/STEP/Net Corps participant who is working in the Bahamas, saw that there was an Internet Cafe literally in the lobby of his hotel, and he had to check his email before we went to dinner. Personally, I just want to eat!

More background: This is the 5th "deployment" for this program, and there are a total of 8 people participating. Seven of us were able to spend last week in DC for an orientation session. That's where I met Tray. I knew his flight was arriving an hour after mine, and when my flight was late, I suggested to the coordinator that met me at the airport that we wait for Tray instead of letting him languish at the airport while she drives me to my hotel.

I will be spending a week at the hotel that I'm staying at, and Tray is just staying one night at another hotel. He's taking a 6:30am flight to Andros Island. I'm spending 3 weeks on New Providence (most people think that the whole island is called Nassau, but it's actually just the main town) then flying to Andros.

Not much else to say, but there's a half-hour minimum for Internet usage. For those who have nothing better to do, I guess I can go into more detail. You've been warning that this is some pretty dry stuff.

The DC orientation did a good job of preparing us for living in a very different culture. I think I've got the easiest assignment. From what I've heard, the largest settlement on Andros island has few than 1000 people. Tray is spending 6 weeks all over the island, and most of the hotels are probably the only thing around. There are four participants each going to different areas of Jamaica (Kingston, Montego Bay, ?, and ?), one going to Belize, and one going to Trinidad and Tobago (2 islands united as a single country).

After I arrived, got my baggage, and got Tray, we went to my hotel. I'm maybe a quarter of a mile from a row of super-hotels on Cable Beach, Nassau. Nice! The beach is right behind my hotel, and I plan to do a lot of snorkling--hopefully I can fit in some diving. I'm jealous of Tray's new Canon digital still camera and underwater housing. I decided that I couldn't take my video camera and underwater housing, and it was the right decision. My suitcase weighed in at 57 pounds, and I doubt many of the hotels I'm staying at have elevators.

I dropped my stuff in my room, and then we ran errands. Clarisse, the local coordinator is a very nice lady. We stopped by her house, met her two sons, dropped one off for a haircut, went to the mall, then went to the local supermarket. It was called Solomon's, but I'm convinced it's owned by WalMart as all the signs had the same coloring and style. The employees all wore blue shorts with big "I CAN HELP, ASK ME" or something written on the back. After Clarisse did her grocery shopping, we picked up her son from the barber shop, and then went to Tray's hotel. And that brings us back to me sitting in an Internet Cafe, listening to TLC's "Scrubs" over the sound of my stomach growling. And yes, my back is to the setting sun.

Tray just said that he's got 5 minutes left on his half-hour, and I can't wait to get out of here.

I should also mention that while I'm in the Bahamas, I don't expect to have enough online time to read (much less respond) to any email sent to me. That's why I've got Victor doing the email-to-Web thing, because I can hop online, shoot off an email, and then disconnect before incurring huge charges.

If you send me any email, it will be saved and eventually read when I return. I can't promise a reply. I will also not be able to return any messages left on my cell phone as they will probably be deleted way before I get a chance to check them. Sorry!

I guess I should also explain that most (if not all) of the following posts to the Weblog will be posted by my good friend Victor Vergara, who has graciously agreed to be my human email-to-Web gateway. Rest asured, the insanity will be my own.

My itinerary:

Saturday, June 1 - Fly to Nassau and transfer to Casuarinas of Cable Beach (on the island of New Providence; the same island the city of Nassau is in).
Saturday, June 8 - Transfer to Sun Fun Resort (also on Cable Beach, New Providence).
Saturday, June 15 - Transfer to Park Manor Guest House
Saturday, June 22 - Fly from Nassau to Andros Town, on the island of Andros. Transfer to Conch Sound Resort.
Friday, June 28 - Transfer to Green Windows Inn in Nicholl's Town.
Saturday, July 6 - Fly from San Andros to Mangrove Cay (pronouced 'key') on the island of Andros. Transfer to Moxey's Guest House
Friday July 12 - Fly from Mangrove Cay to Nassau International Airport. Transfer to West Bay Hotel.
Saturday, uly 13 - Transfer to Paradise Island Airport. Fly on Chalk's Ocean Airways flight 522 to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I guess I should give a quick overview. I just finished my first year in the CCT Masters of Arts program at Georgetown University. During the summer, I will be spending 6 weeks in the Bahamas as a Net Corps volunteer. I fly to the Bahamas June 1, and I will be flying back to Fort Lauderdale, Florida on July 13. I will spend the first 2 weeks of my time in the Bahamas on Nassau, and the remainder of the time on Andros island.

So I raced home, missing the end-of-the-school-year CCT party so I could see my parents before they left on vacation. I hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving, and I was actually starting to miss them. I spent less than two weeks with them before they left for 2 weeks in Alaska. As far as I can tell, all they've done in Alaska is search for places with Internet access so they can send me emails complaining about the fact that I haven't emailed them.

If they wanted to see me, they could have scheduled their vacation to start a little later. I also didn't expect them to be checking their email so much on their vacation. They're in frickin' Alaska!!! When I'm in the Bahamas, I don't plan to check my email at all. I'll just make a few posts to my blog for the fans, and leave it at that.