Category: Personal

As you probably know by now the power is out in all of NYC. I am in DC and my pregnant wife is “trapped” at our apartment. The good news is that she is OK but has been extremely freaked out for the past few hours as without power there is no news update. She climbed down the stairs (20 FLOORS!) to find company in the building staff – bless those guys – but can only think to head back up (slowly) to try and relax in quiet until the power returns.

There is literally nothing I can do. There is no power in the entire city and it seems to be affecting 5 states! I can’t get back even if I wanted to as there are no flights and no trains… there is nothing. We have only cordless phones and the cellular networks are completely overrun. I’m glad that at least we were able to speak on the phone twice – once from her cell (of course low on battery!) and once from the lobby phone. She is at least getting a low-tech phone from the local Duane Reade (I hope) which should allow us to speak again later…

Stay tuned…

I’ve got Jury Duty today… It’s the third time I’ve been picked in about a year and I have yet to serve. The first two cases were for Special Grand Jury but today is for Grand Jury… I have a feeling that today is my day – at least to go through with the complete service (I may not have to serve on a jury but can still get credit if I volunteer).

OR NOT! I totally missed this by a day. I had to reschedule (again) for October…

I’ve really been burning it at both ends lately. I’ve not blogged much in that time and am hoping to get back to things promptly. Today has been spent sleeping in, reviewing a filing much email that has been collecting and just trying to re-wrap my brain around. Feels good to finally have some R&R and looking forward to seeing some friends this evening.

The NYT reports that 20-somethings are enjoying an extended adolescence they didn’t have a generation ago. No one has to… [Gawker]

So, I was off by one…

In the past few weeks a lot has changed at work.

First, I was transferred to another company within our holding company, but I still maintain full contact (as you may or may not expect) with the previous organzation. We are actually trying to work even more closely together and my move is an interim step if anything.

My role, however is evolving on a weeekly basis. We have a very different structure in the new organization and I am now finding myself within our technology group, which is perfect for me. As you might gather (if you’ve read more than this post) that’s a good fit. I will be bridging technology to marketing and back again, across clients and within companies globally as well. It’s an exciting time for sure and only time will tell where I’ll end up.

Part of moving involves not only my physical shift (across the street), but also how basic apps are used. In my previous world, I used Entourage to do POP3 messaging and Meeting Maker for shared calendaring. I synced all that to my palm…

Now, since we are on Exchange, I use Entourage in IMAP mode to read and keep synced with my Outlook desktop which I use when remotely connected to the office. IMAP is pretty cool and something I finally get since I am actually using it. If you like (or have) to do email from different machines, as well as the web, I would highly recommend it. It keeps folders of your choosing synchronized across points of access. You can store copies of messages locally on your main machine so you don’t have to worry about not having things while in transit – a place I often find myself. I’ve also stopped using Meeting Maker completely and now just sync everything through the rest of the modules within Entourage.

Of course now that I am adjusted to the new way to work, I have to get ready for a much more drastic shift… Notes. By the end of the summer, we (all companies in our group) are moving to Lotus Notes. The adventure continues…

This weekend we have been doing some serious reorganization around the apartment. I’ve added an airport card to our iMac and now have everything running wirelessly throughout. I re-split our cable in the living room and as a result was able to run the SliMP3 directly from my router which now sits hidden in the TV stand along with our Linksys router and Airport base station.

Having the home computer out in our main room is a nice change and makes the experience of computing far more social than when things were set-up within our second bedroom/home office.

Good to be back after a nice long weekend… Feeling refreshed after some sun and fun.

Should be an interesting week, full of many potential changes at work. I can’t quite go into the details yet – at least not officially…

When you know someone is going to phone in to a conference bridge, make sure they have the materials (ppt deck etc…) in advance or at least during the call. Otherwise it’s a complete waste!

Yes indeed I am listening right now to a room of people discussing a deck they all have in front of them, yet I am on audio only mode, due to my travel schedule. As you can tell by this post, it is not exactly a helpful call for me on my end…

I took advantage of the rain (yes again) this weekend and made some tweaks to the home page. I added a nice Google search reference which highlights incoming search requests as you land. I also added a Category listing on the sidebar for those interested with what the main topics are around here. Lastly I wrote a quick error page which will hopefully help re-direct people coming in on old links from the search engines. While my content is here, it is quite frustrating that my old links have changed even though my installation of MT is basically the same.

As I previously noted the Google Dance is on (might be over now) and page rankings get updated and adjusted. Doing the usual vanity search to check myself out I now see that I am no longer #1 with this site but actually #2 — knocked out by my own previous and long outdated blog. Radio got the last laugh on me… for now.

So the Google Dance is on again which means PageRanks and backlinks will continue to be weird, so don’t be worried if they’re not what you expect.

[Google Weblog]

Hopefully I will get fully re-indexed and the old links listed will update with the newly installed pages

All is good… on the new host now with domain name. Please let me know if there are issues with archives or any other details. In theory this should be exactly the same (but infinitely more responsive) than the previous home. I rebuilt the MT install after tweaking a few options for my revised host and it seems to all be good.

btw – I guess advertising works. I chose to go with Hostsolutions which has an ad within the MacUpdate menu widget. They are as well the same place (and I think company) as Macupdate. So far so good…

PS – Initial DNS propagation took 23 Hours, 20 Minutes and 7 seconds.

Just another test

Everything is here at the new host and hopefully will last and play nicely…

just testing

I am in the process of moving things… found a good (I Think) host and have almost completely migrated the site over. DNS will have to update as well so if you experience any outages, that is the reason…hopefully everything will resume as we last left it with addressing the same and archives all good.

I am currently looking for a new host for this domain and blog. I’ve had a bunch of issues and outages and can’t take it anymore since apparently it is only happening on my end (though any other site loads at those times). Ideally I’d like an economical host that I could place this blog as well as a second soon to be launched personal site.

Any ideas or experiences would be welcome.

I am quite sure this is legit and something you can do quite easily to
protect your personal privacy. It takes about 5 minutes…

Your credit info goes public July 1, 2003

Your Credit: Personal Information goes public Starting July 1st,
2003, the four major credit bureaus in the US (Equifax, etc.) will be
allowed to release credit info, mailing addresses, phone numbers, etc., to
ANYONE who requests it.

If you do not want to be included in this release of your personal
information, you can call 1-888-567-8688.

Once the message starts you will want option #2 (even though option#1
refers to this email, push #2) and then option #2. Be sure to listen
closely, the first option is only for a two-year period. Make sure you wait
until they prompt for the second option, which opts you out FOREVER.
You should receive their paperwork in the mail confirming the
“opting out” in less than one week after making the call.

UPDATE – Here’s some more detail on this and a correction on what is going on…

A good friend of mine commented that his father recently said that 30 was the new 20. I like that — especially since today I am 30… I’ll keep you posted!