In the interest of full disclosure

Howdy sports fans - I have some non-scandalous confessions and disclosures to make. I hope this post won't get too long but when you are weeks behind in posting then there's nothing like a lightning round post like this one. First up, the geeky stuff:

• I accepted an offer to join the RSS Advisory Board two weeks ago. I know what you are asking yourselves, 'Can I get a Friends and Family discount on angle brackets and rel tags?' Some of you might find my joining the board as odd since I'm one of the core folks to start the Atom initiative. However, Atom was originally started to help foster a universal publishing protocol in addition to it's better known feed format. I'm very proud of both and see a future where RSS is improved as a result of Atom.


• As a decidedly pro-Atom member of the board, I should mention that I designed (and pay the bandwidth bill) for atomenabled.org. I also designed the Atom logo and the associated buttons and badges currently appearing on blogs everywhere. No thanks necessary. Word on the street is that Mena Trott has an improved design for AtomEnabled.org. If any of you care to retool the logo yourselves here is the original Illustrator file - [Atom Enabled logo in PDF].


• Due to a recent minor medical procedure, I was required to stop drinking caffeine and alcohol for a week so it wouldn't thin my blood. I decided it would be a good time to kick the coffee habit for a while and now it's three weeks later and I still haven't had any caffeine. I also took the opportunity to change a few other bad habits and now I'm down 12 pounds and counting. It's pretty much the Eat smaller portions and more healthy food diet, which I recommend. I'm not sure how long the coffee drought can hold out - I have caved before, but for now my new addiction is getting healthy.


• I'll be in New York City for the Syndicate Conference next week. I'll be in town Monday through Wednesday, give me a shout at the conference or drop me an email if we should meet up.


• Speaking of addictions, I really want to trade in my Toyota Tacoma for one of those new FJ Cruisers. I'm doing my best to resist since I don't often need to cross a downed tree or gushing creek on my way to the Park-n-Ride.


• Did you see the new Google Reader module for the Personalized Homepage? Mihai Parparita did a kick ass job of taking a chicken scratch drawing I did on my TabletPC and coding it into existence. It's an excellent way to get a glimpse of your daily reads.


• Speaking of Reader, as of last week I switched teams. I'm now working with the New Business Development team at Google which seems to be a much better fit for me. Yes, that once again means I'm the right guy to field business development opportunities for Blogger, Picasa and probably more products over time. There is a new product manager in charge of Reader and there are still a few more features coming out that I worked on but can't talk about yet. Why the switch? It turns out I love doing deals and I felt like it was the right time to make the jump. It's a good thing and I look forward to being out and about a bit more too.

Hopefully that breaks the blog jam and I can get back to smaller bite sized postings now.