There’s always something to howl about.

Mashterpiece: The return of the prodigal programmer . . .

Those are the Swann Boys in April of 2001. My father, James Swann, is to my right, my younger brothers, Matthew and Michael, are to my left, and my son, Cameron, is the little kid in front of me who is being so lovingly coerced. I use a thumbnail of me from that photo in all of our marketing stuff for four good reasons: I’m always going to look like Fred Flintstone no matter which photo I use, we don’t do personality marketing, so it doesn’t matter, Cathy and Odysseus are the cute ones anyway, and that was a very happy day for me.

Cameron is almost 15 by now. That’s him to the right — an astoundingly large specimen, considering that I used to hold him in the crook of my elbow.

He just got back from spending six weeks with his mother in Seattle. When he left, I was just putting BloodhoundBlog together in WordPress, so he came home to a lot of changes. Cameron is our better, smarter programmer. He wrote the current versions of most the software we use to drive our web sites. But while he was away, I discovered dozens of new projects I want him to undertake, starting with this.

I’m curious to see how all this works out. When I was Cameron’s age, I was a teenage photo geek, so I always made good money on the side. But my son is a web programmer growing up in an environment where he has plenty of opportunities to make a whole lot of money (for his age) doing really interesting projects. I can’t do the same quality work he can do, but I can design, manage and test the work he does, and I can direct his efforts toward the best profits for all of us.

It’s kind of a mash-up of disparate skill-sets, and I’m interested to see where he can take it.

Further notice: If you sneak over here, you’ll see the work in progress. As I write, when you zoom in, you’ll end up right over our house. We’re the brown roof, three homes in from the corner. If, by the time you get there, there’s a marker, click on it. I think by the end of business, we’ll have something functional.

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