Now that's change we can believe in, my friends

Under the Bush admin, the whitehouse.gov site had more than 2,400 search engine exclusions (no doubt after too many blogs exposed stuff like them messing with their Mission Accomplished video). Lots of people noted how quickly the site changed today, but the real change is here. Mark this as the first move toward transparency after eight years of resolute refusal to have the people watch any part of their illegal business.

I am getting verrry sleepy

Actually, I'm not, and therein lies the problem of late. I'm locked back into my night-owl habits, way off any healthy circadian rhythms known to mankind in general. This is not good because I'm up somewhere around 6:30-6:45 am six days a week to post print stories from the paper (the system's not good enough to automate it), after which I invariably have to crash again. Split sleep really isn't healthy. I can blame the Red Sox' playoff run and, to some extent, Obama and McCain for this state -- it was the consistent night filing during the playoffs and debates that set me into this cycle.

Fortunately, it won't persist, because we'll be moving to a posting schedule during the day/early evening sometime in the fairly near future, but I do have a choice to make. My hours will shift for a while to roughly noon-9 pm while I get that new posting system in place and train colleagues. Do I wake up early, use the morning, go to work, come home and crash? Or do I stay up from work into the night and get my sleep into the morning? Each has its strengths and pitfalls, and I haven't decided yet. But I pretty much have to pick one and get myself back on a regular, non-interrupted schedule. "Repair the damage," indeed.

Meanwhile, colleague Chip, at his desk, muttered as I was writing this, "I'm falling asleep here." Bastard. :-)

Even though it's not time yet: Resolutions for a year

Things don't begin and end just when a calendar says so. This is classically true in the case of decades. One could argue that the '50s didn't end until the inauguration of Kennedy, and perhaps even until his assassination; the '60s certainly didn't end until ... well, when? Kent State? Nixon's resignation? The last chopper off the roof of the embassy in Saigon? You can see how things don't always have a bright line. Sometimes they do: The '80s didn't really start on 1/1/80, but on 8/1/81. when MTV launched with this:

(Although my '70s ended approximately 11 months earlier than that, when I saw these same Buggles posing as members of Yes at Boston Garden.)

The point being, things don't always get going on the day they're "supposed to." Which brings me to the Dreaded New Year's Resolution. Those certainly shouldn't start on the 1st, right? Not in my case, anyway. I spent a delightful day today filled with socializing, munching, wine-drinking and the like; my old friend Bill's sister Sarah lives nearby, we've heard about each other for some time, and so it was that I ended up dropping by to visit her and her husband, gabbing with Bill and lots of cool people I hadn't heretofore met, and just relaxing. (Which should always be resolution #1, perhaps.) A perfect start to the year, untrammeled by any consideration of oughta and shoulda.

But, there are resolutions nonetheless, and another old buddy, Keith (who, I resolve, will be getting an overdue visit from me imminently now), tweeted a nice link to 10 ways to make a resolution stick. They made a lot of sense, and the first suggestion was to Write Them Down. So, here are my basic ones for 2009:

• Be great. Hey, why not? We all have the seeds of greatness in us, and sometimes we let those seeds blossom. I've had years where I'd felt I'd been great, and I have the sense that this could be another.
• Repair the damage. That will take many blog entries and much time to explain and execute. But, duly noted.
• See more live music. Less lofty and more specific than the prior two, but nothing is better for the soul -- my soul, anyway -- and this is really a reaction to the year just ended, my lamest one for seeing tunes since I started concert-going. What I saw was fine; there just wasn't enough of it, and a couple of particular misses that I'm going to regret for a long while yet.

So there, I have them written down, where anyone can see them and check in on me. And I do have specifics in mind for the first two there, just not ones I'm going to set down at the moment.

Oh, yeah, there's a fourth resolution -- keep avoiding the newest poseur version of Yes with the fake "understudy" lead singer. Sorry, but no Jon Anderson, no Yes.........