Greetings from the sunny and hot-nerd-filled Lakeview neighborhood; today's entry is being written at Intelligentsia Coffeehouse at Broadway and Barry, where I am currently enjoying an extra-large iced Americano (brewed coffee with ice, that is), and having some rather naughty thoughts about all these hot nerds who keep passing me every ten seconds, not wanting anything to do with me. Sigh! Is a little casual sex in the middle of July too much to ask? Regular readers, of course, will know that I don't usually post original content on a Saturday; I'm in the middle, however, of the Grand Switchover of 2005, taking place this weekend, and am a little mentally exhausted from just completing step 1, so thought I'd sit here and do a little light and frothy writing before starting step 2. (Hey, it was either that or look at porn - which, by the way, the Palm Treo is surprisingly well-equipped to deliver. Think of thumbnail-gallery preview sites, and how naturally they're already set up for mobile devices, to get an idea of what I'm talking about.)

For brand-new readers, I should explain what exactly the Grand Switchover of 2005 is; it's the moment I officially move my personal online journal (known by those hipper than me as a "blog") from the Geocities page where it's been located its entire six-year history, to the root level of my personal website (which is where you are right now, unless you're reading this through a feed aggregator). I've been meaning to do this for years, frankly, but kept putting it off, because it involved two things that are indeed proving to be the giant pains in the ass I expected them to be: 1) learning MovableType from the ground-up; and 2) actually importing the million words of archived content I now have, along with 600 photos, a couple dozen audio files, a couple dozen electronic books and even a handful of video files.

As a matter of fact, it was the ownership of this Palm Treo of mine that finally pushed me over the edge of actually getting off my lazy ass; specifically, it was getting a full-sized portable keyboard earlier this year for this Treo of mine, as well as a piece of freeware that lets me post entries to a MovableType blog straight from my Treo, that finally got me off my ass. And that's because I have neither home internet access through a desktop or a day job with office access, so am actually doing all my web interaction exclusively through my Treo (and thank GOD for those T-Mobile flat internet-access fees); with the new blog I'm now able to write and post entries straight from my device, while with Geocities I would always have to pay extra money to get on a desktop at an internet cafe to do so.

Anyway, there are three basic steps involved with the Grand Switchover, taking place this weekend, with me like I said just finishing step 1:

1) Figure out what's still left to do;

2) Do it;

3) Get it all posted live to the web.

And so that's what I just did - I loaded up all my templates one at a time on my device, and wrote down each and every of the 75 things left to do before they'll be "official" and ready to go. (It's too bad I forgot my expansion card - the two pages of my paper notebook where I wrote all this down look like the notes of a madman, and I'd love to post a little photo of it.)

Anyway, I ended up with a list that's split up into three basic sections: new content still left to produce (like the 'about' and 'contact' pages you see linked at the top of the page); final changes to the templates (mostly minor tweaks to what's currently there, plus a couple of new templates that still need to be created); and things to do at the actual internet cafe (like uploading "this page has changed location" notices at all my old sites, the actual move of this new page from the '/blog' folder to the root of the site, etc). And so once I get done gawking at all the hot nerdies down here in Lakeview, I then go home and tackle the next step - I get insanely high and actually institute all these new changes and content. (Thanks again, F., for the weed - it'll make this process fly by much faster.) And then tomorrow, I sit down at the internet cafe with an SD card full of new files, and an access pass that still has four hours left on it, and hopefully by the end I will have all those new files successfully posted to the web and all the proper new configurations enacted.

Anyway, I think my break is over; I better get back to it all, if I want any chance of having all this finished by Sunday evening. I hope you'll come join me again on Monday, when the Grand Switchover of 2005 will hopefully be finished. And if you've got a little nerdy friend in Chicago who's always complaining about how she never gets laid...um, send her a link to this site! It's not like I'm Jason Kottke, after all, getting paid to do all this shit - I'll take blog benefits where I can get them, man.