Nice Christmas for us at the Prodromou homestead in Los Altos Hills. My brothers Nate and Ted spent Christmas Eve with us at the big house, and we hung out till late at night watching Leeroy Jenkins videos on YouTube.
The next morning, Amita June woke up early, oblivious to the importance of the day. My nieces Elena and Tessa had their initial gift opening at their house in Mountain View then came over to my Mom and Dad's around noon. So the rest of us played and chatted and had a nice brunch.
We had a good time opening presents, and Amita got her main wished-for gifts: lots of musical instruments, like drums, maracas, and a recorder. She also got some nice clothes, both from my folks and her maternal grandparents.
Altogether a good holiday, and as usual a watershed of stress. We don't have too much to do between now and the end of the year, so it's a good time to get caught up on some projects that need some attention. And, y'know, just rest.
tags: christmas prodromou family amitajune
Basecamp crazy
So, I really like the Basecamp project management service. It's a really intuitive system, simple to use, without a lot of project-management mumbo-jumbo that makes tracking your time and planning work too hard to do. It's nicely implemented, has a great UI, and does lots of neato Ajax stuff, so it's easy to use.
I crossed the rubicon from the gratis version to the low-volume personal version last year, making myself a whole-hearted participant in the freemium business model. A couple of days ago, I crossed another milestone: I had more than 3 concurrent projects going, so I had to upgrade to the Business version.
Normally I'd be pretty P.O.'d to pay for a Web service, but for one that has shown me a lot of value, and that I've moved into incrementally as I've become dependent on it, I'm more willing to pay. I'm not sure what that says about my values, about this particular business model, or just about the quality of the Basecamp service.
tags: basecamp freemium project management
One-time passwords
So, I'll admit it: I think one-time passwords are pretty hard to understand. But Nick Moffitt gives a very good description of OPIE (One-time Passwords in Everything) in his blog this week.
And, before you ask: yes, I am down with OTP. You know me.