I have seen Jeff Jarvis reference the startup he is involved in, Daylife, a few times. Today I decided to click through and see what it is all about. Clearly they are in a private stage and are not ready for the public to see. Most sites go through this and many are used to the “Sorry we are not ready yet, leave your email address and we will let you know when we are ready.”

Not Daylife. I clicked on the Sign In link thinking there would be a sign up page or leave your email for info. But instead is one of the most unfriendly “go away” messages I have seen on a startup.

Here is what you are greeted with

Granted I do not know who the target audience for Daylife is. It may not be the general public. But I have read and agreed with many instances of Jeff telling corporate America to throw off the protective coverings and open up to the public. Let the public be more involved, let them have a seat closer to the editorial table.

Well now I have to delete any bookmarks to the site? How does that let the public stay close and watch? Does that mean I can’t mark the site with Delicious, is it not a social bookmarking site? This blurb is too much like corporate RIAA speak, not like a web company that wants to engage the public.

My advice? Throw up a sorry we are not ready to show off our stuff type message. Included in that blurb you can put a very nice message that says our site is currently only for the use of our private testers. But encourage me to hang out and stay. Don’t try and scare me with a delete all bookmarks and you are “logging me”. How big brother.

Those of us in the IT world know we are logged, that is where all the metrics come from. But I just am surprised at how a lawyer can make a site so unwelcoming.

Jack came home from a day with Grandma and Grandpa while April is in California.  I sat down with him and asked “what did you do with Grandma today?”  His answer? “Cake and chips”.  Ahh yes, caught Grandma spoiling her grandson again.

I need to give credit where credit is due. I got the quote in the header from Doc’s weblog. The minute it came across my aggregator I knew it would stick.

Today April took off to help her dad recover from major surgery in LA. This is the first time she has been away from Jack for more than a few hours.

I don’t think Jack really “got it” until dinner time. It still amazes me to see what triggers his little mind. Tonight, it was setting the dinner table. Jack’s job every evening is to put out the napkins. This evening I told him he only needed two. He then realized why I said we only needed two and his eyes welled up with those heartbreaking alligator tears.

He worked his way through dinner and the rest of the evening was pretty normal. Prior to leaving, April recorded herself reading his favorite story and singing his favorite song. I surprised Jack as he got into bed with the recording. As down as he was at dinner, he was twice as high as he laid in bed. I can’t find the words to express the look on his face.

He has one of the all time best moms in the world. Tonight, he realized it to.

The painstaking checklists that were required to even look at a Tomahawk cruise missle were crazy on the boat.  They were a good thing overall, but no matter how careful you are you can’t prevent everything.

Hat tip Wonkette.

James was kind enough to offer up his atom templates.  He was also nice enough to put up with my harassment over getting them.

I updated them to include my specific info.  One change I did make was to update my wp-feed.php file to serve up James’ templates when ?feed=atom or ?feed=comments-atom are passed in.  I wanted to keep with the WordPress “standard”.  I can offer that file up if anyone wants it.

So after seeing Sam’s various musings, I have finally installed my own planet. I got mine from Sam’s branch.
Let’s see how it goes……