My reservations about the ending of the Pirates of the Caribbean III have been taken care of.  If you saw the movie and (like me) didn't stay past the ending credits, you should definitely look up what happened (and the implications).  I hate spoiling things for people, so I'll say no more about that.

Most of you probably know that I have an online NFP Charting website.  Just an update on that... I'm just under $10 from breaking even.  This means I will have paid back (to myself) all of the initial startup costs, including $50 for a logo, $20 worth of business cards, and hosting until August or so.  We have 12 users that have logged in since last Wednesday, 4 of whom are NFP teachers.  The teachers get permanent free accounts, but they are also the sole source of advertising.  I have 6 users that have purchased 6 month paid accounts, and one that is using the monthly subscription.  To cover ongoing hosting fees at the current volume of data we're doing, I only need a total of 3 active users to stay in the black.  So, things are going well!  :-)

Today is my first day back at work after 10 days of vacation.  We toured the city of Memphis (the region where we live), and got to do several things that we haven't had the chance to do.  Some of the things we did were:

• Graceland (of course... Alison's first time)
• Took a riverboat ride in the Mississippi river
• Rode the trolley downtown
• Spent a day at Shelby Farms
• Ate at the Bigfoot Lodge, Benihana, El Porton (at the same location I first remember meeting Alison), and the Rendezvous (the restaurant whose waiter provided my name)

In the meantime, the NFP Charting site is taking off.  18 users have signed up (most of whom are teachers), and the response is very enthusiastic.  I have overhauled some of the functionality and created separate classes of users (teachers vs. students.)  The students can select their teacher from a list, and the teacher has a list of their current students (and the ability to check on their charts.)  Users can still make their charts public if they wish, but it is no longer a requirement in order for their teachers to be able to check on it.  The US director of the Billings Organization has been replying to e-mails about it by basically saying that although she can't "certify" or "approve" the site, teachers should check it out and decide for themselves if they find it useful.  This has the potential to be really huge...  :-)

The people at WOOMB decided that they really shouldn't certify any website that isn't directly under their control.  That makes sense, because someone could get certification and then change the site.  So, my site doesn't have "WOOMB Certification", but neither does any other site other than their own.

I showed my site to several NFP teachers, and one in Canada really likes it.  I gave her and as many of her students that want it a free month of access.  I set up a method for the teacher to check on her students' charts remotely (with the students' permission, of course)... and she said that will really help her with her "remote" clients.  In the past, she had them manually type up their chart in an Excel spreadsheet (that looked awful.)

Anyway, the site has its first two users, and both of them are very satisfied right now.  My next job is to automate a lot of the things that I do manually.  I have already completely automated password resets, and I'm thinking about automating the free month.  I'll probably wait until I feel like the stream of newly registered users is coming in too fast.  :-)