Category Archives: Personal

I Went To Denver and Changed a Diaper

I’ve been a bit light on the posting lately. The town budget cycle keeps me busy with a few meetings every week, plus work of course. Last week was particularly busy in all respects. At least I remembered to take pictures. Here’s your chance to catch up: two tabblos and a post on the Tabblo corporate blog.

John and Carey got to Denver on Wednesday morning. They had an empty both, a black rug, and a few large boxes waiting for them.

See more from Denver

Just before I went to bed last night, I got a call. Sarah was having contractions, could I come spend the night with Max?

The good news is that he pretty much slept through the night.

Just as Max woke up, Dan (Max’s dad) called. Max has a baby brother, Theodore Bridges Sheldon! At 4lbs 15oz, Theo and mom are doing OK. I told Max, and he seemed pretty cool about it. Perhaps even “indifferent.”
… See more with Max

Happy Truck Day

As always, Soxaholix has a finger firmly on the pulse of Red Sox Nation (the good one, not Lucky Larry’s commercial RSN doppelganger). And Eric Wilbur managed to drag up an excellent quote from one Dr. Charles Steinberg:

In any baseball city, the truck’s departure for Spring Training connects with a lot of fans. In Boston and in New England, that is magnified so many times over. Instead of just making it our little private fireplace of warmth, you want to connect with the fans, resonate with the fans, share it with the fans, give them a chance to celebrate spring as well.

When you see the images of snow at one end and sunshine at the other … this trip is a metaphor. Winter is going to end. Spring is going to come. And baseball is the robin. Baseball heralds spring. You want to celebrate that.

Truck Day is here.

Red Sox Ticket Lottery

I considered not making this post. The fewer people that enter the lottery, the more likely I am to win, right? But then I realized that if you win, of course you’ll thank me by taking me with you! Right? You will, won’t you? Take me to Opening Day? Or the Green Monster?

Enter online before Monday at noon.

Fios Installed!

…..

I worked from home today while Verizon installed Fios service into the house. Did we really need to upgrade our internet service? Of course not. But since we could, of course we had to! I actually think we’ll save money in the deal, too.

On the left you see what’s in our basement now. The black cable coming down from the top is fiber. It loops into the white box, and the white box spits out a regular phone line and an ethernet cable that is plugged into a router. Below the big white box is a battery backup. The smallest thing there is just a powerstrip – Verizon felt like it had to install it’s own.

I think back to the late 90’s living in East Cambridge dialing into MIT when I wanted to check my email. The cable company (Comcast?) had a map of Cambridge divided into zones. White meant no coverage, pink was in progress, and purple meant that broadband was available. I must have reloaded that map 200 times over most of a year, waiting for my zone to light up.

Less than 10 years later, and I have a F******* FIBER OPTIC CONNECTION IN MY OWN BASEMENT. I love progress.
… See more

Weather on Mt. Washington

Most of you know that I enjoy experiencing the extremes of weather – particularly when those are the winter extremes. I’ve always been fascinated by Mt. Washington in particular. I remember being a freshman in 1990 and finding that I could get up-to-the-hour weather updates from the mountain, and configured my Athena account to tell me the weather. Now, I’m a regular reader of the Mt. Washington Observatory blog. And maybe I’ll go on one of those EduTrips some day. . .


Until then, I’ll have to visit vicariously with YouTube. Here are 2 minutes and 6 seconds of frozen hilarity:

US Senate Bill 1: Registering Bloggers

There’s a bill moving through the Senate updating the requirements and restrictions for lobbyists. The update includes a section that affects certain bloggers. I have contacted my senators asking them to join the oppostion to the blogger section, and I encourage you to do the same.

The change is aimed at bloggers that receive money in order to encourage “grassroots” movements. Slashdot is talking about it, so is DownsizeDC, the Center for Competitive Politics, and a number of others. When you read the discussion about this bill, the debate seems to go like this:

Jane: They’re requiring bloggers to register as lobbyists! That’s crazy talk!
Joe: Don’t worry, it’s only bloggers that receive money. Most bloggers are unaffected.

I think this dialogue misses the point. To me, a lobbyist is someone who reaches out to politicians and office holders and tries to change what they think. If someone asks voters to contact their representatives, that’s not lobbying. When (if) the voter makes the call, that’s not lobbying either – that’s a voter expressing an opinion. This isn’t activity that should be regulated.

You can see the actual language of the bill here; click on Section 220. Check out the section about “registrants” in particular.

By the way: I wasn’t paid to make this post.

Windows 386 Saves The Day

A friend from work sent this one along. You’ll need Google’s video client to view it.

As the poster put it, “Microsoft sent this tape to retailers to explain the benefits of Windows 386. Boring until the 7 minute mark when the production is taken over by crack-smoking monkeys.” It’s easy to fast forward to the key point.

What a Day, What a Year

New Year’s is typically a time of reflection for most people. It happens on a schedule and is pretty unavoidable (birthdays too, I guess). You get close to the day and say to yourself “huh, these things have changed since last year” or maybe “I can’t believe it’s been another year and I still haven’t dealt with this issue.” I didn’t have that instrospective moment this December 31. I think it was because of work, mostly. I was very focused on short-term tasks and that kept me busy. The holiday rush was all new and all different and didn’t lend itself to deep thought.

Until tonight. I went out for a beer with people from IMlogic. It started my brain going and now it won’t stop. A year ago yesterday we got acquired by Symantec. A year and two days ago I had to have my dog put to sleep. I changed jobs, moving away from these people that I’d worked with more than two years. I started the hard work of building relationships with a new set of colleagues. I lost 15 pounds. I started working with the fraternity again. I watched friends have kids and lose parents.

Before I saw the IMlogic people, I was burning with thoughts about work. I’ve had a blog post idea on the back burner for a while about how hard it is when smart, well-intentioned people disagree. It’s one thing to be frustrated at a big company where it’s easy to show that you’re right, but difficult for any change to come out of it. It’s much more difficult when these smart, well-intentioned people have different ideas about direction and execution. My writing fails to describe what this is like. It’s hard. It takes everything you have. The specific issue today isn’t relevant. All that matters is that it’s important and defies easy resolution, so I keep turning it over in my head, trying to find the way through it.

The year-end thoughts didn’t displace the work. Everything just added on top. So, here I am at my keyboard when I should be going to bed. 2006. 2007. Grizelda. Friends. Where should the company go. What can I do to help it get there. How much of myself do I put into the job. What do I want out of the job. What do I want in the big picture of life.

How much thinking can you do about one day? About one year?