Category: Personal

Just one of the many decisions you make as parents …

Quick, which is better for the environment, cloth or disposable diapers? If you’re just not sure, you’re not alone. Despite reams of research, no one can give a definitive answer. [Wired News]

I am consistently amazed at how people behave around you when you have a small child. Hannah is 5 months and is always with us, either in the Bjorn or her stroller. We always run into people. I mean literally. People walking and even in cars seem to steer right at you. Every so often, you get surprised with a kind gesture or even a simple courtesy…

Saturday we were at Gramercy Park, which is usually closed (it’s a private park), and having a good time. When we left, I was waiting for my turn to push the stroller through the gate, when a woman literally squeezed in front of us to get in. It’s not like they were about to run out of free money… it was just a beautiful day outside.

On any given day, as we go in and out of stores, we find that 99.9% of people will not hold the door for you when pushing a stroller. It’s great when you have a door to push out and you are trying to manage an awkward load like a stroller with a small child… My favorite move is when the person actually visually acknowledges you first, then lets the door slam in your face.

Of course cars always have the right of way here, (especially when the walk sign is lit) but we find a pretty significant percentage of traffic likes to creep or speed up behind you so that you almost get side-swiped as they make their turn behind you.

Every now and again you get pleasantly surprised… today for example I was in the grocery store with Hannah in her stroller and was greeted at the register by a very helpful checkout girl, who took the basket from my non-stroller hand and then proceeded to efficiently zip me through the line and even packed the bag in a single, though full bag so I could cruise through and easily manage to maintain control of the stroller. Hannah was sleeping at the time so I seriously appreciated her efforts.

I’m sure I am noticing things more as a parent now, but it just continues to amaze me how people ignore that there are others around – especially here in NYC when you are only alone at home.

Leaving a reference to a post on another site is not just a good idea, but in my mind is a requirement – like citing a reference in a book or research paper. I’ve been trying to not only cite the quote with a (CSS) style on my blog, but also lead you to the page if you want to read more. I also use features of most blog systems called trackbacks which allows an auto-comment to get posted on the blog with a reference back to me and often a small piece of my post as well. There seems to be a derivative of the trackback called a pingback, which seems to just send a note back to the author without a post on the other site.

My point in bringing this up is that often times I will use a piece or even the entire post of another person here as my entire post making it as clear as possible that in fact I am not the original author.

Tonight I was browsing through my aggregator and was convinced there was a glitch as a post I know I read previously was showing up on another blog. I checked it out and sure enough there it was in full (and it’s long) with no blockquote styling, just a simple linkback (not even to the actual post, but rather the home page) at the end. Sure it’s judgement on how you do things, but it really seemed in this case that the post was being stolen – or at least used in a more than grey way.

This is not a post taken from my site and in thinking about it I think it gets to me more because I respect the person who wrote it and the information provided in the post itself.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

If you read this by RSS, you are missing a redesign in (serious) progress… Nothing too crazy but pretty good for my skillz. I honestly started working through the stylesheet and ideas I found within GigaOm so if if looks in anyway familiar that might be the case. My design is inspired by but in no way as elegant or complex as what is going on there… but I am working on it.

I’ve got a lot to learn in CSS land… just scratching the surface.

So I think the kinks are just about worked out and tests have been nuked. I was having some issues with MT but after some tweaks of the permissions we are all good. No idea why the files got off-center but all is good now. Posting will now resume!

Doing a bit of construction behind the scenes and looking to move this site to a new host very shortly. Not sure exactly when the domain switch will take place… I am still sorting out an import issue on my newer installation of moveable type at the future locale. Stay tuned… hopefully nothing will break down. I’ve got a very similar config going so my linkage from others and google will hopefully remain. Likewise with my email… fingers crossed!

This image is actually from right outside our apartment (though shot from the 20th floor). Lovely to wake up to … or nap to if you are a 3 month old.

Written while listing to — Bob Marley “ls This Love (Horns Mix)” from Songs Of Freedom (Disc 3) (1992).

Today we took advantage of the perfect weather (60, no wind and very sunny) and headed uptown to check out Central Park. Hannah rode the train once again up to 59th Street and from there we decided to check out the new Time Warner Towers… Inside (the part we saw anyway) is really an upscale mall with some serious restaurants. We were found a place to eat at Dean and Deluca within the Borders on the second level and enjoyed some sandwiches and amazing double chocolate chip cookies. (We’ll have to get more of those cookies!)

After lunch, we crossed Columbus Circle again and headed into the park. We saw many strollers along the way though Hannah got a good nap in for most of the walk. We snapped a few shots and just casually strolled along. On our way out, we noticed the Central Park Zoo and the Tisch Zoo for Children, a place we’ll be sure to visit again when Hannah can really appreciate the sites.

We took Hannah and her Aunt Whitney to Brooklyn Heights today to see Dan Zanes play at the PaddleWheeler Festival and Book Fair at PS 8.

It was quite a day for us… First Hannah rode the subway for the second time (the first was yesterday to SoHo!) and even did a pretty long transfer at Fulton to get the proper train for Brooklyn. We walked to the school and enjoyed a nice set of music along with a full auditorium of people.

After the show, we took advantage of the great weather and walked to the Promenade where we saw the Statue of Liberty while taking in the view of lower Manhattan. We met up with some friends and continued on… walking over to Cafe Boo Bah for a late lunch before walking back to the subway for the trip home.

Everyone enjoyed a good nap upon our return.

Like Father, like Son
: I watched Mel Gibson’s interview on ABC the other night and came to the uncomfortable feeling that Mel’s a bit crackers. He has that scary stare and set-in-stone perspective of a cultist.
Now we see that his father — already known as a Holocaust-denying nut, whom Gibson angrily protected in that interview — can’t keep his spittle-spewing yap shut.

In the bizarre interview, Gibson also said Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan should be lynched and called for the government to be overthrown….
Some of his most outrageous rants focused on the millions of Jews exterminated by Adolf Hitler.
“They claimed that there were 6.2 million in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 – therefore he must have killed 6 million of them,” he said. “They simply got up and left! They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles.”

[BuzzMachine]

Happy New Year!

We had a nice quiet night at home…cooked a nice dinner and watched the ball drop.

Looking ahead to this year is exciting — many changes await around the next corner. I can’t wait!

It’s hard to believe that the end of the year is here already…. so much has happened and there is so much to look forward to. One significant piece of unknown for me, is what’s next career-wise. Since I can’t earn a living as a stay-at-home dad, I need to get this squared away soon. The trick of course is figuring out what to do next.

I’ve worked in a start-up which was exciting and cool, though it was clear (in that case) that the money was not going to be earned by me in the end. I’ve worked for a mid-sized company which was then acquired by a mega-corp, which after many changes eventually led to my current situation. I like the small and mid-size thing… Once you get to the mega-corp, it’s very hard to see your impact, even if you have senior level visibility and responsibility, just given the size of the company and the way things tend not to change.

More to think about certainly…

The best advice I can give anyone is to burn no bridges in life unless absolutely necessary. You never know what’s going to happen and the world is a surprisingly small place. As I exit my current company, I am amazed at how many people I have previously been in contact with are looking to help and offer advice. These are people I used to work with, currently work with and some I even just met.

Feeling good about my resume now so I’ve started to send it out… working through some personal network contacts as well as the job boards and a few “love to work there” companies. I’ve got nothing to lose so I am casting a pretty wide net.

One thing I’ve noticed is that you could easily surf the posted jobs for along time. Monster came up with about 100 pages of marketing jobs… of course many of them are lame, repeated and blindly posted by some seeming shady organizations, but there are many good job descriptions out there.

It’s amazing how differently people use the same words… You can find Director or VP level jobs that range in income by over 100K. Not the salary at $100k, the difference between them. One “high level” job listed cell phone benefits and a car allowance. The salary maxed out a $45K. Not exactly high level.

I can relax a bit now that my resume is up to date – at least from that perspective.

Now my leisurely walks with wife and child don’t have anything waiting for me to complete. Today looks to be a beautiful day – not too cold – so we are definitely going for a long one.

I was officially restructured out of a job today…

I will actually be fully employed through the end of the year, with severance to follow for a few months beyond.

This is sure to be an interesting opportunity for me. I’ve basically worked for the same place (even through quite a few structural and ownership changes) over just about 8 years…

I’m completely open to what comes next and will need to think seriously about what that might be… My experiences will hopefully be a benefit, though I have no idea what the current job market is like.

So if you know of any opportunities, in wireless, entertainment, technology, marketing or advertising, this is one always-on marketing savvy technophile looking for work. You can email me directly (link on my sidebar or leave something in comments).

Time to work on my resume and spend some quality family time.

Working on minimal sleep today… should be interesting. For some reason I was not able to get to sleep even though Hannah was ready to go for 5 hours again last night.

After much high test I am still groggy. Perhaps after lunch some faculties will return.