Kyle will be speaking:

at Google on Thursday, April 10
at Penguicon at the end of April
at LinuxWorld next August.

… and possibly others.

I probably won’t go to any of these talk. For one thing, two of them cost money to get into. For another, watching Kyle speak makes me a nervous wreck. I really can’t stand it. I get empathetically nervous or something. In fact, I get more nervous for Kyle when he is about to speak than I would be if I were going to give the speech. It’s silly because he is an excellent speaker. Still… yikes.

Kyle is also writing a column for Linux Journal. This month, he wrote about PXE Magic: Flexible Network Booting with Menus . Doesn’t that sound important?

UPDATE: Kyle has published another article for TechTarget called Stop server monitoring tools from crying wolf.

I am doing a lot of writing lately. For example, I’m writing book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and PopMatters, an article on Pacific Leatherback Turtles for Bay Nature, an article on product placement in fiction for The Writer, I get to see Billy Collins read (again) for an article on poetry I’m writing for the Pacific Sun, I’m going to be a judge for a book contest run by Writer’s Digest, and so on!

On top of that, Marcia and I are thinking about having a second Word Pirates reading sometime in May. Last year’s event was a big success. There was even a pirate dance. So, as Word Pirates nears its second birthday, it seems like a good thing to do again. You are invited! And it will be free.

Other new ventures include writing for the The Compulsive Organizer, which I blogged about yesterday. But tomorrow I plan to post about making vegetable broth! (UPDATE: post here.) Kyle and I have also been very social since getting our dishwasher. Apparently, doing dishes was the major reason I stopped having people over before. Now that that’s not an issue anymore, my house has turned into Grand Central Station.

And yet somehow I had time to make some jewelry to list on my Etsy store. Here’s a pair I plan to list sometime later today:

I like when life is busy like this.

I’m going to be posting over at the Compulsive Organizer blog now and then. For instance, I just posted an entry about how to look up the cheapest gas prices in your area.

Don’t worry, I’ll still be posting about my house and remodeling over here. Now there’s just more of Joy’s housekeeping thoughts to enjoy.

These ants have invaded my vegetable garden. They are streaming through my carrot seedlings. I went out this morning and caught one in the hopes that if I identify them, I can more effectively get them out of my garden.

The ant has long antennas, a light brown trunk (the center part) and a darker brown/black head and metasoma. They are about one-quarter of an inch long. I live in the Bay Area of California (Petaluma). I am thinking it is some type of Wood Ant or an Argentine Ant.

I believe I had the same type of ants at my last house. Those ants came inside during the winter and ate the roots of my potted plants and some gunk around the window sill. They ignored the kitchen and I never saw them interested in sugar. During the summer, they stole pollen from my zucchini blossoms, leading to a far smaller crop of zucchini last year. I wasn’t able to tell if they were doing anything with aphids.

If you, dear Internets, can tell me what kind of ant this is, can you also tell me:

I thank you.