Haven’t blogged in a while so I thought I would just give a shout out now.
So the last month has been great with the new DeskPro job. I can’t speak for Padfield of course, but from my end I think things are going pretty swell. The plan is to release the first public build of version 3 soon — so if you’re interesting then stay tuned, I’ll blog about it later 
It’ll be free to download (so not only for license holders) and Chris hinted that if people do really well helping us find bugs, he might give away a few free lics.
I’ve been up to a few different things other then DP. After finishing the work for the day I usually like to sit back and relax a bit (which all too often may include skyping with Floris, peterska2, Onimua and Pyro ;-)), but I do keep busy. For vbulletin-fans.com, I created a nifty little vBulletin 3.6 product that allows an admin to have a bunch of forums on a single install. Not so much a bridge between installs or a single userbase, but literally a single install. Using some various tricks and hacks and ideas form Floris, I managed to use the new infraction system to set some forum permissions depending on the domain the user is currently viewing. For example, if they are on domain1.com, then the script dynamically sets permissions so that all forums but the ones from domain1.com are denied — effectively making it seem like a different forum. We were quite pleased with our own ingenious ideas 
Also finished up some work I needed to do for Howard (which, ironically, included extending a ticket system ;-)). My part is finished I believe, now it’s up to Patrik to do the rest.
Then of course there’s TNT and WMT. TNT is coming along nicely, though still slow. I knew opening a forum in such a competitive and overly saturated market would be hard, so it’s no big surprise. DaveMo~ is an admin on another successful computer forum, so he’s got some good experience and connections that will surely help us grow. But I’m still trying to think of some ideas to put a little twist on things and create a unique spice that only TNT would have, but not much is surfacing.
I bought vBSEO a couple weeks back and am really glad I did It has some very good features besides just the obvious URL rewriting (ie. the (track|ping)back feature). They are full of ideas over there and I’m excited to see what they include next. The price point is still a little steep, but definitely a very good product to have.
WMT is the same as ever, nothing overly new going on. I completed the upgrade to vB3.6RC2 yesterday without a hitch. Upgrading templates from 3.5 to 3.6 was a complete chore though. There are many little things that, if missed, will totally mess things up. This is because of all the new Javascript stuff. I don’t mind, but it would be nice if they made a list of all the essential Javascript lines and where they need to go, and what objects need to be id’ed etc. This would make life a lot easier… But I used Beyond Compare to track down most of the issues. Combined with some help from peterska2, things finished up quite nicely.
We should be unveiling a paid ‘premium members’ package on WMT soon. Our first priority will always be offering free content for everyone, but we thought this might be a cool thing to have. I like to think of it as a donation which gives you some cool stuff Amongst the cool stuff is a private premium members lounge — but I won’t say more, since we haven’t revealed what we’re going to do yet.
My sister is going to college up north somewhere (4-5 hours away), so that’s one less person who’ll be in the house and 98% less phone calls (longish story). I’m going to help her move next (or next next?) week which is going to be harrrd since I’ll have to wake up at 6am Going to be weird not having her around though! I hope everything works out well up there for her.
My parents just got a laptop for themselves and are letting her take their desktop PC, so I’ve got to clean that thing up before she takes it and install one of those remote administration things for when she screws something up (oh, it’ll happen). But I’m glad I can still have access to a computer when I’m up there — even though it will be for a day or two A geek without his computer is nothing to joke about!
I’m not sure if I should get a laptop too. I may once the new core 2 duo chips are mainstream. I plan on getting a totally new PC about the time Vista comes out (which may or may not be ‘never’ ;-)), but I’d really like a lappy now. So maybe in a few months…
I’ve been saying this for a while, but I am doing it soon I’m going to register my business soon, so I’ll finally actually be ‘Outershift’ and can go crazy making business cards or something 
I’m technically working for DeskPro as a hired contractor (for tax reasons), so I can put down DP as work. The biggest perk of owning your own business is that I can write stuff off That laptop I want, or gas for the car, or that $699 for Adobe Photoshop etc etc I can write off and get a lot of it back at the end of the year when I file my taxes.
And I’ve also got to call the guy from my bank back so I can get a credit card finally. It’s so hard ordering online without a credit card! Though I’m worried I’m going to start going crazy buying things because it’ll be so easy… Like, I’ll check in a month and I’ll have 200 Amazon boxes or something
Anyway, that’s about it for today. See ya later