Well its election time again, posters are starting to go up 5 months before the polls go on. This is also the case for gentoo, elections should be upon us. A overly boring time for gentoo as no one wants to be involved with the foundations work. As I’ve discussed previously, that’s because no one thinks about the importance of what they do. Notice how I keep harping on this point?

The 501(c) is progressing slowly, and hopefully we’ll be a full non profit soon, one which donations will be tax deductable for people who always end up paying (like say me!). Its also a nice way to say where the money that would go to the government..goes to someone who you would prefer. The bank moving is where it was last I heard. I was supossed to get some info which hasn’t happened and don’t think will be coming. Grant hopefully has the issues with paypal resolved and will be getting out the previous quarters funding information out relatively soon… These are all fairly important if “boring” things. Finally, there’s finding a home for the foundation. Which reminds me to write back to another organization that as kind enough to give me some information about how to go about a few things. (Note to self: email Daniel about this as well)

In other news as most people who follow a few of the mailing lists have seen, I’ve become the colead of userrel. In the slightly odd move as I tend to not like being a person at the front of stuff. I prefer working in the background and be the silent hand leading. No I’m not a puppet master! *kicks the marionnette setups under the couch* Ahem, part of the reason I am doing it is because I enjoy interacting with users, in some cases much more then developers. It will however get me more involved with the politics that run through any organization. Userrel is one of those projects that people will either love or hate, depending on how they view opensource. The naysayers will talk about the fact that users can talk to the dev’s directly without fear. While true, as some people will say, we have developers who are quite easy to talk with..but quite busy at the same time..and then we have equally busy developers who have social skills that are on par with a sloth toed lemur. The former are quite easy to talk to as a user, the latter well leaves you coming away with a bad taste in your mouth possibly.

What’s all my animal analogy have to do with userrel. Well for one I’d like to help gentoo return to the tighter knit community between developers and users. One which users won’t be afraid to come talk with us and fear getting bamboozled or worse ashamed of having asked or suggested something. It took me a good week of thinking heavily about it before I decided to become a member of the project. I still have a lot of concerns that I hope to address; and the changes will take time, lots of it as it will all be slow changes in minor ways. Don’t look for something overnight. Its a delicate path that has to be taken.

I’ve wanted to work on my website for a while now and add a new theme that I’ve had in my head for a while. I started a new skin for it this weekend and ended up tossing it away. Mostly because I learned that the banner/logo ends up being the basis of my designs for colors etc. I tried to do other aspects of it and ended up disliking it and junking it all. Guess I should learn to do things in the order that works for me on design.

Edit: I’ll be in Toronto for the beginning of next week, if any devs are in that area let me know. I’d like to meet ya, assuming the business I’m up there for doesn’t go into the wee hours of the night.