Update: Monday 9/11/06 10:00pm
Here’s a few more notes:
1) I’m not taking the site down. The archives will be up indefinitely.
2) I’m keeping the domain name too. When she wants it, I’ll give it to her. Check back in 5-10 years. It will be Trixie’s own blog then
3) Thanks to everyone for all the heartfelt comments. It really means a lot.

I’ve learned that creating a new business and and introducing a completely new type of service is no cake walk. The design of the software was the fun, creative part. This is the nitty gritty part. I have to let new parents know that Trixie Tracker exists, and show them that it’s an insanely helpful and cool new way to understand their baby’s daily patterns and needs.

I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out. Can you recommend the site to family, friends and co-workers? Or are you an active participant on a parent’s message board or forum? Encourage folks to come try out the free trial. Thanks in advance everyone!

Two things I’ve learned in the 23 months since starting Trixie Telemetry LLC (in April of 2004):

1. It’s really hard to do anything else when you’re taking care of a baby/child/toddler
2. I’m extremely bad at estimating launch dates

For almost the first year of the company, I was still taking care of Trixie all the time. That’s when the real progress was made. I could reliably count on writing about 3 or 4 lines of code a week. Extrapolating this work schedule would mean completion of the software some time after Trixie finished college, got married, lived in the Bronx for a couple of years, moved back down to NC, and then had a kid of her own. Add a few more months, say when the kid was 10-11 months old, and then the beta would probably be ready. Probably.

Instead of projecting a launch date in late 2020′s, I clung to the following rather optimistic estimates:

Actual launch March 8, 2006

Some of these launch dates were public, some internal. I stopped projecting after February, which is really too bad because it was fairly close at that point.

Things started moving a little faster after Trixie started part-time, morning school in Feb 2005 (at 18 months old). We launched the Beta two months later in April. I loved the concept of working on the Beta. It’s a constant design-in-progress with real time feedback as soon as you roll out new features.

That’s about the time that stories stopped here on the Trixie Update. It was just too much to juggle, and the dirty little secret is that I was managing another blog — the company beta blog — which racked up hundreds of stories and thousands of comments on its own. I couldn’t do both, so TTU took a hit.

By summer we had moved Trixie up to three-quarter time at school, and things started moving much faster again. Fast enough to fuel more wildly inaccurate launched date estimates. It was at this point that Jenn took a somber tone about the whole project. I acknowledged her tone and solemnly promised we would launch in November.

I’ll spare the excruciating details of the dark months of November and December. But January was a new month in a new year. An excellent developer (James) came on board the project, and started cranking out the missing code we needed to launch. He knocked out a permission based user management and public/guest access scheme which allowed our beta testers to finally share their sites with their friends and family. We wrapped up all the loose ends the next 2 months and finally launched last week.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing (and catch up on sleep). I’ve been working on this thing for so long, it’s hard to come down off the programming high. I’ve also been extremely irresponsible in my personal correspondence. I have a stack of letters and emails that date back to last summer. I kept putting things off because I always thought I’d be launching in the next month. I’m going to be working on all that stuff now, but if you emailed/wrote me and didn’t hear back, that’s why.

Thanks to you folks that still visit. I really appreciate it. Even though I wasn’t writing stories, I did feel pressure (good pressure) to do the TPODs. I’m glad I did, because I like looking back on the picture record. And there were times when I was ready to drop the TPODS too because they take about 5-10 minutes to prep every night. And sometimes 5-10 minutes seems like too much time.

Anyway, I think the Trixie Update is back. Thanks for sticking around!

2) Why were we at the book store? Because we’re popular! Popular Science, that is. We’re mentioned in an article about setting up your own blog, and they like our telemetry and metrics. Thanks PS!

Interesting side note: this is the first issue of PS I have ever seen that doesn’t feature some kind of flying car on the cover.

*One small correction to the article. My last name is spelled with eight ‘L’s, not one. It’s MacNeillllllll.

UPDATE 10:00pm Haha. Well, I was under the impression the piece was going to be a littttle bit longer. You wouldn’t believe how long they filmed here. It was about 6 hours, plus another at the hospital. I’m just glad we weren’t on the Oddball section. We weren’t, right? And yes, Trixie went bonkers when she appeared on TV.

We really appreciate all the support and well wishes. Thanks guys. We’re feeling a lot of excitement, stress and terror all rolled up into one. The shooting was fun, but it was a huge relief when it was over.

Now we’re just waiting to see how it comes together. It still seems crazy that there’s going to be a piece about this site and our family on TV tonight. I suspect you’ll see a lot more about us than you could ever want to. But the reason we did it was because it sounded like a lot of fun. I hope that’s what comes across in the show:)

Trixie was awesome for almost the entire time. She woke up with a giant camera in her bedroom and she barely batted an eye. I have no idea why she wasn’t more freaked out.

In contrast, we were nervous in the beginning. For example, I made a pot of coffee — without the pot. I don’t know if they’ll use it because there might have been cursing involved (I can’t really remember). Also, speaking of memory, neither Jennifer nor I remember anything that we said, so pretty much everything on the show will be a surprise. Although I vaguely recollect one of those gotcha moments where I might have admitted on camera that I do love my daughter.

We’re definitely letting Trixie stay up to watch it. When they were setting up the camera and lights there was one point when she was able to watch me in the monitor and she was hooked. It was nonstop Daddy TV. I’m pretty sure she’s going to freak when she sees herself tonight. I’ll try to get a reaction shot.

We’re super excited to announce that a segment about the Trixie Update is currently scheduled to air this Friday on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”.

Right now it’s scheduled to air Friday, Jan 28, 8pm EST. Countdown broadcasts live in all time zones, so that’s 5pm for the west coast. And we’re the second half of the show, so it will actually be 8:30-9:00 EST. This could all change at any time, but I’ll post an update here if it does.

We’ve had a camera crew in the house since 7:00am this morning up until a little while ago. Trixie just collapsed into a nap, dead tired from all the extra (and fun) stimulation. And I still can’t believe it, but I wanted to go ahead and share the news. Also, thanks to everyone for visiting and for all your comments. You helped make this happen

What’s your closest connection to Trixie?

Mitochondrial DNA: 5
Blood/Family: 13
Friends of the Family: 11
TTU Local: 33
State (NC): 16
Time Zone (EST) :158
Country (US): 158
Hemisphere (Western): 19
Planet: 9