Sorry it's been so quiet around here lately. After the PMC I helped photograph a friend's wedding, spent almost three full weeks processing about 1100 offers for software bundles, and since then I've been trying to catch up on work.

I've been too busy to mention that BBEdit 9 was released, even though that's a big part of what kept me so busy! Too busy to mention the Westerly Fall Fraternal with Bob Lloyd. No mentions of my cycling. Went to the Taste of Mystic festival again this year, but didn't write about it. Shot lots of pictures of Lauren — and managed to post them (eventually) on Flickr — but didn't write about it. We've had a big camper parked in our front yard for almost two months now, but I haven't mentioned that either!

OK, maybe "I'm busy" is a lame excuse. I fell out of the habit of writing. Let's see if I can ease back into it.

Shane Michael Ray Kilhefner should have been twenty eight years old today.

One would expect today to be one of the most difficult days of the year for Corinne, but it's actually somewhat cathartic. More difficult are the six weeks leading up to his birthday. I can't say that she thinks about him more during those weeks, it just seems that the anticipation of his birthday is worse than the day itself.

What's hard for me is to hear her reminisce about being pregnant with him. Those last six weeks of pregnancy when she just wanted to meet him and was so excited about it. When she could feel every kick, every turn, every hiccup.

Hearing her talk about it chokes me up. Just thinking about it chokes me up.

Anyway, as I've suggested, Corinne seems to be dealing with it fine today. She's out with Lauren for the day, and will spend some time with Ellyn before bringing Lauren back so they can both have their naps.

I"ve raised over $10,000 so far this year. That was my goal.

Up until a couple hours ago I was planning to shut the site down tonight. However, I just found out that a friend, Chris Rawson, is having a hard time meeting his fund raising goals this year in the PMC.

So, I'm going to keep it running for a few more days. When I agree to a bundle, I'll just give the buyer the URL for donating through his PMC account instead of mine.

Since the post went up about building your own software bundle, on Monday, I've had at least 600 offers come in.

Probably more than that. But I've lost count.

I do know that, right now, I have 341 unprocessed offers. Offers I haven't even read yet.

The thought has crossed my mind more than once that I may have made it a little too easy to build a bundle this year. :-) I can't possibly keep up. Eventually everyone will hear back from me. But it'll take awhile. Next year I need to more fully automate the system. (Duh.)

Since we went live I've added at least ten new titles to the list of what's available. Also, I ran out of the most popular apps in the first couple days, but many of them are back in the bundle builder again because the donors stepped up with larger donations! Yay!

I'm two thirds of the way to my $10,000 goal, and all but the first $1,000 of that is from selling these bundles. (That total doesn't include the $700 or so that I got for the two Adobe apps that were auctioned on eBay. Those haven't been credited to my PMC account yet.)

For the third year, I'm selling thousands of copies of mac applications, to support my fund raising efforts in the PMC.

I'm running a bit late this year, but I think I've found a great way to present the software that's available, and to make it really easy for the buyer/donor to choose what he/she wants in a bundle.

I have three targets to meet before we're done:

• $4400 by the end of September (I'm "legally committed": they'll take any balance from me, personally)
• $6700 by the end of October, to meet my "Heavy Hitter" commitment
• $10,000 by the end of December, to meet my personal goal for 2008

Please go build a bundle and make me an offer, and tell people about this however you see fit: twitter (where I am sethdill), digg, your own blog, StumbleUpon, smoke signals... whatever.