I’m giving away 3 free GMail invitations over on EnchantedCeiling.

Ready? GO!

UPDATE (29-June-2004):
All the invitations are gone now. That took a lot longer than I expected. I guess GMail accounts aren’t as hot a commodity as they once were.

Growing:
A) EnchantedCeiling has gotten a lot of attention this month, and I have had a lot of fun keeping the site running smoothly and helping all the new visitors get their photos on the site. I truly mean that– I am not being snarky.

B) I also got to do some new things at work this month. We do some pro-bono work for some local clients, including a series of silk-screen posters for a community theater called Broom Street Theater. I volunteered to do a poster this year, and then I got volunteered to do the first one of the season. Since I am employed as a programmer, leading off a series of graphically-designed posters was a little intimidating, considering the caliber of design work my coworkers usually crank out.

C) And I think I have a children’s book manuscript I can work with. I’ve been writing some silly short poems and doing drawings for them over at Cereal & Milk, and I took one that had started off well, and fleshed it out into something I can span over 32 pages. You won’t find it there, by the way– I kept it under wraps in the hopes of turning it into a publishable book. More to come on this one, I am sure.

Pains:
1) Getting chosen for Yahoo! Pick of the day was awesome, but it meant that the site ate up all my bandwidth. I actually had to upgrade my hosting, which will cost me more money. I was planning on upgrading eventually, but I was forced into the decision a little early. Fortunately, I had some frequent visitors and contributors offer me some cash money to help pay for the extra hosting. They inspired me to beg for more from the rest of the multitudes.

2) And if you have ever pulled 100 19″ x 25″ screen-prints with three colors, you know it is back-breaking work. Jimm L. and I coated and burned the three screens and then printed the first color on Sunday night. When I was getting ready to head back to the print shop Monday night, my back went into some nasty spasms and had me rolling on the floor in the fetal position for 15 minutes before I could get into the car. In the end, the prints turned out really nice, and C. helped my get my back to settle down after I came home.

3) Finally, there is no significant pain with the manuscript project, other than the fact that with all the other things I am doing, it is pretty difficult to find the time I need to continue with storyboards and mock-ups necessary if I ever want to submit this book to publishers. And Frisbee season is just around the corner.

EnchantedCeiling was selected as the Yahoo! Pick of the Day for February 6th!

I was trying to figure out why there were so many people posting photos to the site all of a sudden. Usually I see maybe two or three posts per week, sometimes interspersed with bigger bursts. But yesterday and today, I have seriously had almost 100 posts to the site! A lot of them were new posters, so their images didn’t fit the format of the site, but I easily added 60 photos to the site in the past two days. I had to check the site’s referrer logs to discover where all the traffic was coming from. Just amazing!

Now I have to keep a close eye on my bandwidth to make sure I don’t get stuck with a gigantic hosting bill. I feel like I have been slashdotted! Although I never noticed a significant slowdown on the site, so kudos to Insider Hosting. Consider that a hearty recommendation.

Thank you to all of my regular posters and to Yahoo!, and welcome, all you newcomers to the site. I am honored and humbled by the attention.