I’m off this morning for Beijing, which is certain to set conspiracy journalists a-twitter about who else may be on the trip, and how it all ties in to the joooos….
In the meanwhile, the guest bloggers have been invited to stop by to keep things going. You can return the favour by popping back to their sites for a visit from time to time.
I’ll be back in a week, God and my Mossad agent willing.

As regular readers have no doubt noticed, the server interruptions here have become a significant issue, particularly during the mid-morning hours.
Good news, though – this evening SDA is being migrated to a new, more robust server. Let’s hope this solves the problem.
Thanks so much for your patience with this.

Update: I’m back up now, but the fix seems to have been spontaneous, according to the service guy. If things get really really quiet around here again, you’ll know I’m back down.
**********************************
Kate’s Internet connection is down. A service person is supposed to be out sometime today.
For the moment, amuse yourselves in this thread.
Cheers,
lance

Just like Saskatoon, except for …. everything.

I’m off this morning to the airport. I’ll do my best to send a few postcards and perhaps a blog post or two. Otherwise, I’ll see you all back here in 8 days time.

Most popular conservative blogs. Probably have some you’ve heard of!

Update: Hit fog on the road last night, so my return was a little delayed. By pupular demand, brand new photos of our two new champions, “Fly” …

… and “Dude”.

Lots of unpacking and rest to catch up on. I’ll be back later.
(Original post continues below)
With one day remaining here at the dog show in Denver, I thought I’d check in with a status report. Without putting too fine a point on it, we’re pretty much cleaning house. The first two days saw two new American championship titles completed – Am.Can.Ch.Minuteman All About Flyfishing and Am.Ch.Paragon’s Focus On The Gold, while my new puppy Minuteman Venus Flytrap started out by scoring both her “majors”, one with a breed win.
We’re heading for home tomorrow as soon as we’re packed up, and blogging should be pretty much back to normal by Wednesday. Thanks once again to the guest bloggers who keep the place humming along so well!

And so begins another road trip. The blog will be in the capable hands of the guest bloggers, while I do expect to be checking in once in a while. See you again next week. Same time, same station.

Growing legs: “Disappeared” – The Case Of The Vanishing Thermometers

In case you missed that: “Just 1 thermometer remains for everything north of latitude 65N – that station is Eureka.”

Richard Foote takes note at the National Post.

Victims of their own success;

We really tried to solve the resource problems with new ideas (such as cloud computing) this year, but ultimately we were not able to make things work to our satisfaction. I’m very proud of the voting platform we built for The Weblog Awards over the years, and the quality voting experience we’ve been able to deliver. The one thing I will not do is compromise that voting experience.
Rather than run a competition that had a high possibility of technically failing, the more prudent choice seemed to be regroup and consider our alternatives for hosting these awards going forward.
Thank you to those who have supported The Weblog Awards over the years, we appreciate your support, and our sorry we couldn’t make things work this year.

Meanwhile, waves of relief wash over Moronland…
(Thanks everyone).

Tired of maintaining your own blog?

Rather than worrying about posting enough quality information to maintain traffic to your site why not become a contributing editor to an entire conservative community. Post blog entries, upload videos and photos, create polls and events, and even add news items. Simply by becoming a member of “Canadian Conservatives” you have the ability to do all of this and more quickly and easily. Help make “Canadian Conservatives” the Canadian conservative portal. It’s free and easy.

Check it out.

Last road trip of the year. I’ll be checking in once in a while over the weekend, but will resist surfing or posting too much. It’s time for a mental break, and the insulated otherworld of a dog show is the perfect place for it. Cjunk and Lance will be keeping an eye on the place, and our other guest bloggers are invited to post of course.
To everyone who has supported the site over the past two weeks with your background information, reader tips, guest posts, emails, encouragement, donations and plain old “getting the word out” – thank you! I don’t say it often enough.
I’ll be back sometime late Monday, barring a sudden dump of Minnesota warming. With luck the cold front will stay down in Houston.

According to the experts, I “post too much”.

Note – an entry that was written, but held pending further information, appeared here for a short time when it was mistakenly auto-published.
Nothing in the information contained in the post has been challenged, but I’ve voluntarily pulled it in the interest of fairness, as we are giving the company involved further time to clarify what happened.
It will be republished if circumstances warrant.

We finished up hunting today with a tally of one buck, two does, and three of the luckiest moose ever to cross a field of wheat stubble. I considered shooting one, then ramming the carcass with my brother’s farm truck to plead “road kill”, but thought better of it.
It’s a quixotic place, this oil well riddled, environmentally decimated province. I can’t recall ever hearing of moose in the southeast, and neither can my father, whose lived here his entire life. Now, moose aren’t entirely uncommon – the unintended consequence of chem fallow and no-till. Thanks, Monsanto!
I’ll post a photo of the featured carrion when I get home. Tomorrow is a travel day, after which normal blogging will resume.
Thanks for your patience.

I’ve a lot on my plate today, so blogging will be a bit slow for the next few hours.
I will add however, that at some point later today SDA is likely to reach our 15 million visit mark.

From the comments – “That ‘lots on your plate’ wouldn’t have anything to do with opening day of whitetail season in Sask now, would it?”
Heh. 15 million visits, a “new” Ford 150, and the first doe of the season hanging in the shed. It’s a good day.
Kathy Shaidle sends a congratulatory email – ’tis the season!

Nominations are open.

And an internet censor’s wet dream;

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.

I’m back. Sick, aching, bone tired, and completely out of the political loop of the past two weeks, but I’m back. After four marathon days in the ring at Montgomery County, we pulled out of Philadelphia (with 13 dogs in the truck) on Sunday night and didn’t stop for more than gas and dog breaks until we arrived in Fargo late Monday.
To add to the excitement, somewhere in the middle of the trip we all caught a nasty cold.
It’s going to take a few more hours to finish unpacking and get some rest, but posting should be pretty much back to normal by tomorrow.
Many thanks to the folks who stepped in while I was away. Without you, SDA would come to a grinding halt during these trips. From what I saw during my brief moments on line, the quality of the posts were excellent – a little too excellent, actually. I better step up my game!