Dear Speakeasy Members,

Today is an historic and exciting day for Speakeasy.

I am pleased to announce that Speakeasy has been acquired by Best Buy, an innovative and growing Fortune 100 company and the top consumer electronics retailer in North America.

About two weeks ago, I was singing the praises of mutt, patting myself on the back for improving my mail toolchain configuration, and complaining that GUI mail apps always make me feel stifled. I was asked to elaborate, so here goes.

We’ve had a lot of people tell us that they really like Martha’s name. I’m not sure whether this is usual and meaningless, but I like to think it’s because Martha Josephine is a good name. It’s not weird, it’s not boring, and it’s classical without being archaic. Quite a few of my friends asked me how we chose it, so I’m giving a little explanation.

I got an instant message yesterday at 16:59, about when I was getting ready to leave work: “I think my water just broke.” I headed off to the bus while Gloria called the midwife for advice. The next time I heard from her it was almost six. Her breathing sounded pretty labored (no pun intended), and she said that she was going to try to finish preparing food for the pigs while for while we’d be at the hospital. My mom and dad were on their way over.

Martha Josephine Signes was born at 21:21, 21 inches long, 8 1/16 pounds.

For as long as we’ve lived together (and before that) Gloria and I have had to leave home to do our laundry. At BU, I’d take my laundry to my brother’s place or my sister’s place. In Somerville, we’d walk about a block to what is now called the Showcase Laundramat. When we moved into our old apartment in Bethlehem, there was a washer in our apartment, but it wasn’t hooked up. We hoped it would be put in the basement and turned on, but it was eventually removed and sent to who-knows-where. For as long as we’ve lived in Bethlehem, Gloria has taken the laundry to the Linden Tree Laundramat or to my parents’ place.

It seems like everyone I know is using Thunderbird or Apple Mail, these days. Sometimes, I feel a little left behind. I still run mutt. Then again, every time I try to use a GUI mail application, I feel stifled. It just isn’t smart enough.

Lately, I am getting a lot of incredibly annoying email from Amazon. Worse, it’s email that requires that I repeatedly go log in and click buttons, just to get what I ordered.

Despite the fact that it is mostly superseded by Email::Filter, Mail::Audit is still used by a bunch of people, included $WORK. To aid my sanity in maintaining it, I’ve begun splitting off some of its plugins, especially those with extra prerequisites. The latest Mail-Audit removes Mail::Audit::List and Mail::Audit::PGP and Mail::Audit::Razor to their own dists.

There are a number of Mario and Luigi RPGs, and I’ve enjoyed just about all of them until just about the end. Like most RPGs, the end with the Big Boss Battle Fake-Out. You reach the Sacred Destination and engage in battle with the big scary monster (or person) you’ve been following (or fleeing) for most of the game. As soon as you defeat that monster, another, scarier monster appears and you must fight it immediately, with your supplies now quite low.