Archive for January 2006
January 30, 2006 - 02:50 PM
Time has gotten away from me... I spent a lot of it cleaning
Clay Cottage Harmony House this weekend and having a guest. (Do you think those two facts might be connected?)
I had wanted to put together net next 'history' installment, but I realize it's a lot larger than I thought. Thus I'll be breaking it up.
Some of it will require some memory digging... I'm going back almost 15 years for the first chunk, and I want to remember the fun details - not just "I went here and it was like cool & stuff."
I'm on it!
[UPDATE: I seem to keep forgetting what the house is now called. Having received appropriate censure, I have appropriately corrected the post.]
January 27, 2006 - 04:19 PM
I've been to five countries outside of the US, and lots of places within the states. But I haven't ever lived outside of a 45 mile radius of...
- Philadelphia - 1968, only I was just born there and never really lived on the Pennsy side of the river. I love the food, museums, and historic sites. Not much use for anything else unless there's a concert going on. I didn't cry when they "asploded" the Vets Stadium. (After they needed to install a jail in the basement, it kind of lost the magic for me. Philly kinda feels that same way overall.)
- New Jersey ('68-'87): Willingboro, a far-away-ish suburb of Philly. It was "a great place to live" (I think that was the motto at some point) when I was a kid. Went downhill though. I lived on the corner of a cul-de-sac. That's what I call it now that I'm older; before, it used to be a dead end. At the end of said dead end, there was the fence surrounding the playground & pool of my elementary school. Not a bad walk to school for six years. I walked to my junior high & high school as well, uphill with bear traps for shoes, etc. At least until I had a car - shortly after my license I think. Lucky boy, I was.
- New Jersey ('87-'95 - college & somewhat beyond): Various spots in & around Trenton: Ewing, Trenton, Hamilton, Ewing, Ewing. We had sometimes fantastic, sometimes okay, and occasionally terrible neighbors. We got beat up once by some crackheads down the street (I had a concussion and my jaw didn't open much for a while) - it had been a pretty decent neighborhood until then. This wasn't downtown Trenton, but a somewhat rowhousey and certainly far from affluent spot. One of our neighbors on that street was 90+ years old and remembered when it was all farmland. I can't imagine it.
Sometimes we lived near a bunch of Gladys Kravitzes, watching those darn college kids come and go with suspicion: "It's the MIDDLE OF THE AFTERNOON FOR GOODNESS SAKE! Don't just sit there Abner, call the police!". For a while, we lived in the Italian section, more or less. That was probably the best experience. I miss the ethnic parts of Trenton. There are some amazing people there, and some amazing restaraunts, assuming things haven't changed completely. (Jerry's Tavern on Hamilton Avenue was a favorite; alas, it is no more.) If you are ever there, go eat at a little place called Malaga on Lalor Street. Magnificent Spanish food, or at least it was in '96.
- In '95, I moved down to Delaware (which despite popular belief is NOT a small town in Iowa) when I got my
2nd real job. I lived in the same apartment from '95 to '98. Maren moved in with me when we got married (not before... what a strange world we two live in, huh?) and we bought a house in '98.
- Maryland ('98-now): Clay Cottage, as we call it when we are trying to sound sophisticated and British. Or, Harmony House as we have lately dubbed it. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, grading problems, 50,000 daisies, and a very large
rock. We had one cat - long gone, thankfully; she was a beast. We have far too much stuff, due to the fact that we both had far too much stuff separately before we got married. We've cleaned out majorly (and were ruthless with our discards) several times, but we are apparently not ruthless enough. The front room faces east, has a huge palladium window, and deep red walls. It's amazing in the mornings.
- Next (??): If we ever move, we'll hopefully just pack up a week's worth of clothing, the pictures/memory books, computer backups, piano, and... let's see... oh yeah, Reilly. And go, leaving the rest to be swept into a dumpster (imagine something like a human dragnet sweeping through the house, pushing everything out the garage door).
I've always liked the idea of living in northern New York - we always enjoy visiting West Chazy, and not just because of the fun relatives. Sadly, IT jobs don't exist in such areas. I guess I'll have to wait on that idea. Then, of course, it blizzards from October to April (or so it would seem to this comparative southerner). That's okay, I'm pretty much a homebody anyway. We'll turn up the fire and have afternoon tea with
these three.
It's Friday, and a busy weekend ahead. Hopefully I'll get something more up Monday afternoon.
Keep warm!
January 26, 2006 - 11:29 AM
I was asked ("tagged", I assume that means like a deer or something) to do a short-form version of this, but what the heck... let's be needlessly wordy and drone on for a while:
- Supermarket peon/bagger/cart guy. It was summer; I spent half my time in the freezer cooling off from pushing carts around. This lasted three WHOLE days, until I got an offer to work at...
- Service Drugs, across from my high school. I did everything here except sell jewelry and dispense drugs. Easiest job I ever had.
- Office mover (the brick ones are heavy) and house packer. Summer job. Learned to drive stick (sort of); spent one afternoon on the clock bowling, one at the driving range, and one napping in the back of the truck in NYC. What a weird, and crappy, job.
- Draftsman for a company that made huge-mungous power supplies for smelting furnaces. Transistors bigger than hockey pucks. Sounds coming from the test lab in the next room included: "hummmmmrrrrRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRR", "
*BOOM*", and "
!@#$%^&*!!!".
- Drugstore clerk for a different pharmacy. Summer job. Now with the delivery lackey bonus work. HINT: people don't tip you for delivering something that's not food. Also, the owner wanted me (when it seemed the other work was done) to get out the 20' ladder, take the ceiling tiles down one by one, and... wash them. No kidding. (Someone found something else for me to do, luckily.)
- College job 1: The guy who hands out power supplies, oscilliscopes, and parts at the EE lab. I spent more time doing homework than anything else.
- College job 2: PC/network monkey. Hauled around PCs and installed/fixed stuff. Did some side work ($ching$) for the boss* sometimes. We had a great boss, but he didn't like me and this other fella as much as his favorite student worker, so he had us go and work for the electricians for the summer to annoy us and get us out of the way. Easiest summer I ever had... work one hour, break one hour, work one hour...
- IT consultant/lackey for a small company whose owner didn't have much in the way of growth aspirations. I learned a lot about technology, people, and business, had a great time, and put 35,000 miles per year on the car. I only lasted there for three years before I realized I'd have to kill the boss and inherit the shop before I'd get any kind of promotion. So, off I go to...
- Delaware! to work for a Fortune 500 company as Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy. I managed
a cast of characters some people for a while. (That was an
amazing experience; it really warms my heart to look back and know that I will never, ever, have to manage people, ever again. I hope.) I've been with this company for over ten years, and good Lord willing for a while longer yet. I'm now in an engineering position, waiting to find out what I'll be doing for the new landlords.
I think that covers all of 'em. Tune in tomorrow for more rollicking fun when I cover 'places I've lived'. (Next week: pet messes I've cleaned up!)
* Sadly, as I came to find out just a year or two ago, he passed away a short while earlier from a heart attack. He was last working as the IT manager at our local Easter Seals office. Rest in peace, Larry. "CHING!"
January 3, 2006 - 02:06 PM
Fired off an email to Instapundit the other day, or should I say 'spun off'. 'Fired off' sounds like something you do with a gun; when you fire off something you expect to have a certain result. 'Spun off' is more like it, because it has that feeling of roulette: you will most likely walk away from the table thinking, "Well, I gave it a shot."
So I spun off an email to
Instapundit the other day. The
Blogfather. He's one of the original mainstream bloggers, and averages about 100,000 visits per day. I average about 2. I figured the chances are one in some large number that he would respond at all. I had enjoyed his post about the new hard drive he bought, versus an experience several years ago. So I said as much and sent him a summary of a
similar post I did back in August, and don't you know... he linked it.
This will normally provide what some folks call an 'Instalanche' of visits to a site; in this case it was more of an Instsa-rockslide. Nothing that the server would break a sweat on. But still I really appreciated the fact he did that. (I sent him a follow-up note thanking him for the link. Do people do that these days? It seemed the right thing to do.)
I had my 15 minutes of internet bloggy fame, though; it was fun. It actually lasted for roughly two days, during which I got about 20 times the normal amount of visits. Even had a few comments from folks I
don't know, which is new. Inasmuch as any of the new visitors will have found this stuff interesting/amusing/thought-provoking/etc., I'm happy. That's why I do this, anyway.
New Years Eve. I haven't made it to midnight in a few years, and I've eventually stopped trying. No need to stay up so I don't miss it: I know I'll end up awake at midnight because someone will decide to yell, shoot off fireworks (what we had this year) or bang pots & pans.
We used to do that when I was a kid, but I can't imagine it now. I wonder what our neighbors thought at the time? I must be getting old at heart, because I'd be annoyed. I need to young it up a bit.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Ditto the new year. It doesn't feel different yet; well not much anyway. There's just a dim awareness of a lot of interesting life to come in '06.
Including the new boss; my company is now officially owned by another corporation. Time will tell how that will work out for me; hopefully they will need my abilities here where we are for the forseeable future.
Have a happy Tuesday.