Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I promised a new Kernel Panic comic this week. This was the very last day I could have made good on that promise (technically Saturday would be the very last, but when it comes to the comic I tend to think in blocks of Monday through Friday) but I did deliver. The real question is whether I can continue to deliver. I don't want Kernel Panic to be an "updated yearly" comic, it just seems to work out that way.

I am currently extremely busy at work, putting in long hours to write brilliant documentation for complex and arcane things, and that has choked the life out of the streak I started in January. Work ethic has never been a problem for me but time management certainly has.

In other news, on March 31 Help Desk will turn 14. Any thoughts on an appropriate way to celebrate this milestone?

Over the last week or two the site has been hammered by blogspam, and the Spam Filter has been pretty good about blocking it. Unfortunately, it has also occasionally decided that a few of you legitimate commenters are spambots as well... even one or two of you who are posting from registered accounts.

Drupal comes with two default types of users: Anonymous Users, who don't have an account on the site, and Authorized Users, who have created a an account and post/browse from it. I have now added a third account: "Verified Users." It is identical in every way to Authorized Users, except that it has been given the additional privilege of being able to completely bypass the spam filters. Those of you being tagged by the anti-spam module in Drupal who have an account will be able to be upgraded to Verified user status and (hopefully) avoid the problem in the future.

The first person to be raised to Verified User status is the long-suffering David Nale, who has been tagged as spam (with a 99% probability, according to the spam logs) so consistently that I almost considered naming the new user status a "Nale Account" in his honor.

If it works for him I'll start updating Authorized Users to Verified User status when I notice them running afoul of the spam module...

I'm sitting in an airport terminal typing on a ridiculously small netbook (running Kubuntu Karmic, naturally) waiting for a plane to take me to Charlotte, then to Jackson, all so I can wind up in Monroe, LA tomorrow. That is when and where we finalize the adoption of our daughter.

Still no Internet access on this Tuesday the 8th of December, the Year of Our Lord 2009.

I hear the distant beating of drums.