Here’s another shot of Hannah cruising along ….
Hannah Loves Vermont!
Hannah continues to amaze! At 9 months she is walking and getting seriously good as each day passes. She’s pushing our hands away now to walk on her own and has easily gone 10 feet or more… whoa! Do we have some serious baby proofing to do when we get back home…
Getting re-acquainted with the other 97%
Today I officially started my new contract (aka Freelance) position and was issued an IBM T41 laptop… It’s been quite a few years since I switched to Mac and needless to say it’s taking some getting used to in order to adjust to some of the differences. The damn second mouse button keeps getting tapped and the trackpad automatically being activated as a clicker are two things which have busted me continuously today. All in all, it’s not that big a deal to switch though many of my core apps are no longer around or are quite different.
Office is similar enough, but now I am in Outlook and not Apple’s Mail or even Entourage. One thing, when you are on an exchange server, you’ve got to hand it to MS, the damn thing works pretty well. I was able to defeat the IT lack of support for Palm, by using T-Mobile as my remote mail proxy for wireless access which rocks. It’s only POP3 rather than full outlook, but it works and I can easily receive mail when away from the VPN. This company only supports blackberry officially… Palm is on your own and yet it took about 10 minutes for me to rememeber tha TMO was capable of this trick. I last did it with Lotus Notes… nice.
My main organizational stuff is what I am immediately missing. OneNote looks good… have to check the demo to see if it will do what I need for meeting minutes and project organization. I’m used to Notetaker as a mainstay and will definitely miss it’s capabilities. I will also miss NetNewsWire for my RSS feeds… I’ve been messing with FeedDemon which is close in how it works, though it feels more liek Shrook to me… I may end up going over to Bloglines so I can view everything through Firefox.
One thing I like a great deal about this Thinkpad is the keyboard… it’s got excellent feedback. the battery also seems to be better than my PowerBook (not too surprising there)… have to see how it handles an extensive day of being unplugged through some meetings and using wireless.
So far so good here on the left coast…tired tough. Time for some reading and sleep.
San Fran
Just arrived in San Francisco…
Have a kick-off for a contract job I’ve accepted and will be working in the Bay Area this week. Feeling excited, tired (early, long and crowded flight) but pumped to start something new.
Been a while since I’ve been out here, feeling good about being back. I can see the bay from my window at the moment and will be checking into local time after a quick refresh. Blogging may be lighter this week… we’ll see. I’ll probably pop a few shots into the sidebar via Buzznet and Flickr.
She Walks!
Tonight before Hannah had her bath, she took a few steps!! It was amazing…
She stood for a few seconds before taking a few steps and then crashing lightly into Ashley’s lap!
Hannah has been pretty demanding lately… wanting to use us as a human crutch to stand and walk about the apartment. Tonight though, we thought she might want to try going for it after having stood a few times on her own. Well… she did it!
(Hannah will be 8 months on Monday…)
I know I don’t post too many personal items like this, but as a proud father, how could I resist!
“On My Dime”
Just a phrase that really irks me in the days of flat-rate unlimited phone pricing…
Car Bloggging
Just sitting outside a Borders in Connecticut in my rental car pre-interview — pulling down some email and checking in with the world… Gotta love hotspots that reach beyond the physical structure!
Thank you my friend…
Last night I learned while speaking with a recruiter that my resume had already been passed to the company we had started to discuss, yet I have no idea by whom… if it’s you, thanks! And by the way… who are you?
Being smart when interviewing
I’m not exactly a sales guy, but I’ve certainly spent more than enough time selling services to clients and potential clients. This article on CareerJournal at the WSJ is a good read for 10 points on how to interview smarter. One thing I’ve realized in my travels is that while they might be interviewing you, you are also interviewing them. Be sure not to forget that and try not to get sucked into just providing the right answers… the right questions can really give you much more information and help you decide if you are in the right place for your next move.
Salespeople are prone to accepting the wrong jobs. Maybe it’s because they tend to be overly optimistic and see only the good until it’s too late. Or it may be because they’re customers at heart who appreciate a good pitch. [
CareerJournal]
Good Year Blimp
This picture probably doesn’t do it justice, but the Good Year Blimp just passed by our window. I happened to turn to close the shade which was causing some screen glare and there it was! Unfortunately I don’t have much of a zoom on my digital camera so this is as close as I could make it.
Are you addicted to blogging?
I don’t know whether I am addicted, but I’d have to say that I feel the urge (so perhaps it’s just a compulsion…) to track, report and discuss what I find. I do feel more “pressure” to read what’s new in my aggregator than I do in my email these days and this often leads to more posts…
Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion, pointed out an article today at the NYT which is an interesting read on the topic…
Best Job Posting Yet
I’ve been crawling through job postings on various sites and found an absolute gem…Rather than post a link to it (I don’t need any more competition!), I’ll just leave this highlight:
In view of the fact that you will effectively be selling your soul, you will be well paid. The only downside of the job is that you will be working for an inconsiderate, insensitive and demanding swine. Still – you can’t have everything.
At least they’re being honest. 😉
Happy Birthday to Me!
Feeling good about where I am today…
I’ve been happily married for 3.5 years — Could not be better!
I’m a new dad — Hannah is just about 6 months old!
I’m looking for my next career — Very excited about what happens next
This year should be great… We already had our first Mother’s Day, our first Father’s Day is coming up next month and in the fall Hannah will celebrate her first birthday! We are looking forward to what happens next on the job front as well. Whatever it is will most likely set a new course for where we end up… New York, Philadelphia, California?? Who knows… it’s unknown but exciting.
(not so) Great Customer Service
My most recent customer service adventure happened last week when I finally had to call T-Mobile and find out what the heck was happening on their network that was not only asking me to confirm timezone and time changes, but doing so multiple times in succession and even suggestion new timezones for me to try.
When I called TMO, I was greeted by a friendly helper who suggested this behavior happens when you travel between time zones. I agreed with her that in fact does or should happen, though perhaps it should not happen when I am in my apartment or having lunch — not traveling at all – in the same city.
(now the good part…)
She asked me if I was sure I was in fact in the same time zone throughout the city. When I mentioned I lived in NYC, she suggested it was possible for multiple time-zones to exist within a city. Perhaps, though …It’s not only the same timezone throughout the city, but through the entire east coast of the country. Completely undettered, she asked if I was sure and suggested again that there were cities in which parts are actually in different zones. I casually and politely (ok I was an asshole, but come on!!) suggested she might want to better familiarize herself with the country we are living in.
I was not able to detect any accent with this person, so I am assuming she is a citizen and living in the US. Just an idiot as far as I can tell… but at least she was not reading from a script — though perhaps in her case improvisation is not the best course.
At least I know I am not alone in my experiences with stellar help —
But in the midst of that conversation, George informed me (reading from boilerplate) that Sprint “cannot guarantee that your phone will work in an office building, in your home, or when in a moving car.” Are you kidding me? Who is this service designed for, the Amish? “Never a dropped call whilst thee is standing outdoors in a flat plain, scything wheat.” [ZDNet AnchorDesk]
PS – My phone still gives the updates a few times a day – I did not have the patience to wait it out with her on the line and have yet to call back.
An interview a day
Keeps the job hunting blues away…
A good week. Interview Monday, Tuesday, phone interview/discovery Wednesday and an Interview on Friday. I also had a brief call with a recruiter today for a job that unfortunately did not match up. It was too technical, though I am not sure a person like they are describing truly exists. We’ll see if that one circles back.
Most weeks are far from this active. It gets hard, but it’s good to know there are always options. My plan is and has been to find the best fit for where I can spend some time, not just pass it.
All Hail the Mighty Google Cache!
As I mentioned, last this week I had a database blow-out and lost about a month of posts. While certainly better than losing the several years that have accumulated, it still sucks. I knew Google had been generously running through my site for quite this whole time, so I’ve been actively looking through my logs to find urls of pages that have been cached. It’s a piece by piece rebuild, but is working great actually. I’ve reposted quitee a few and have luckily found my longer ones. Some of the link oriented ones may just fall off…
WordPress is great for this process as it lets me easily edit the date and time to match what was originally in place. I can’t rebuild the comments that were lost and over the past month there were actually some good ones…My issue now aside from not finding all of them at once is that some of the incoming links are based on the php to db code rather than the nicer cruft-free permalinks. Hopefully visitors will use the handy search box on the sidebar and find their original query.
Stuyvesant Cove
Amazing! I’ve lived in the same place, near Gramercy Park and Union Square for almost six years and I never knew Stuyvesant Cove existed…
We walk a lot — not that uncommon here in NYC, but with a baby, I think you walk even more. We have our usual routes… to Madison Park and around Gramercy Park which are always nice. Recently though we’ve been enjoying Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village which is close by and very quiet once you get inside the community. On a recent loop around Peter Cooper Village (the northern area) I noticed what looked like a path over by the East River…and sure enough there is one!
Hannah and I crossed the FDR at 20th Street and found ourselves in a small oasis away from the rest of the city. It’s far from a true escape (and you’ll be able to tell that especially from the pictures I snapped), but it’s a great safe place to walk. The path is well maintained, planted and uncrowded. We saw a few runners, skateboarders, bikers and fishermen and even another baby in a stroller with her parents.
While far from Battery Park, it’s really easy to get to (no cab or subway required) and you do get the sea breeze, even if it is the East River based… I’m sure we’ll be back to watch more sea planes and boats pass by. If you are in the ‘hood, be sure to check it out.
Here are the pictures I shot while on the move. I captured the full essence of the place, including the cars and Con Edison.
working on it…
bringing the site back to life…
re-imported posts from MT which covers the bulk of my history (goes back to September 2002) and am still working out some kinks with permalinks and some older posts. I was able to recover the most recent stuff, but think a few weeks may have been lost in my migraine induced haste last night. I ended up doing a nice clean install of the latest nightly of WordPress which offers some nice feature enhancements as well as some tweaks. Hopefully this will be my last crtical stupid mistake.
Have to work out a more robust backup method for all this…
Coming soon… the return of my sidebar with links and photos.
You’ll notice the clean look…
Well – lesson learned.
I will not mess with things not broken (much),
I’ve lost a great deal of history here and am trying to restore things … for now I am leaving this clean installation up and running until I can recover. My head hurts too much at the moment to do much more
Migraine!
I got a whoppper of a migraine today… Only my second one and the first was about 8 years ago. It’s hard to describe really but the pain was an intense throbbing on the right side of my head near by temple accompanied by a pounding behind my right eye. I first noticed something was going wrong when my vision became pretty blurry just prior to the pain and I was literally unable to focus or read. Pretty disconcerting considering I don’t wear glasses and generally have good vision. As I became incredibly sensitive to light (sun and light bulbs) I realized what was going and with some help from Ashley was able to lie down for a bit.
I managed to get out briefly and even eat something which was good, both for the air and to just get out. I found Excendrine Migraine at the drugstore, which I took with lunch followed by an hour-long nap. I definitely felt better when I woke up but far from great. I don’t really feel perfect now either… I still have a pretty dull headache which some Advil is working on now that we’ve had some dinner.
Needless to say it’s been a rough day.