filed under: dogs, kristina, life, pictures, truist.com

Posted 67 days ago

Two posts ago, I mentioned how we were stirring our lives up, in a number of specific ways:

• new job
• new car
• new house
• new dogs
• birthday party
• uncertain motorcycle

And I forgot to mention that Kristina would be starting an internship at Franklin Park Conservatory.

So, all that stuff happened. I have the new job (in Cleveland, so I’m traveling there 50% of the time), we have the new car (described previously), we found a house in Harrisburg (Ohio), we have two new Great Pyrenees puppies (details below), the birthday party went well, Kristina started her internship, and the motorcycle is still uncertain.

Yeah, it’s been stressful.

I don’t have pictures of the birthday party, although some of the guests will probably send me some of theirs. I also don’t have pictures of the puppies because the camera is still in a box somewhere, but you can see a picture of Kodiak (the 11-week-old) on this page (with the little blond girl on the right side of the page) and Sophia (the 11-*month*-old) on this page.

As you can imagine, we’re pretty much stressed out, especially Kristina who did everything I did, plus started the internship, plus had to be home a few days with the dogs without me. But we’re getting through it.

Oh yeah – and some guy called me and offered to buy truist.com. I think I’m going to sell it to him (he offered a lot of money). I’ll post about that soon, but for now – I need a replacement domain name, and I’m running low on ideas. If you have any, please email me or post them here as comments.

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filed under: business, dogs, family, kristina, life, travel

Posted 125 days ago

Four weeks ago, life was pretty simple: I was comfortable (but not really happy) in my job, we had a nice apartment, our expenses were low, we had a fairly stable plan for the future, and I was planning on buying a motorcycle. Now, though, everything is different: today was my last day at NetJets, we just bought a car, we’re looking for a new place to live, the future is very uncertain, and it’s not clear if I’ll be getting a motorcycle.

And yet, still, I think today is better than four weeks ago. Crazy, huh?

The story goes something like this: Five weeks ago (to the day), I finally realized (after much prodding from my wife) what I wanted my next career move to be. I wanted to be a Product Manager for a software company, much like I was back before I left Noteworthy Medical Systems, four years ago. I realized how important it is for me to have my hands on real problems that I get to solve myself, and how important it is for me to be on the front lines rather than in an IT department (“in the business, not serving the business”). Nothing against NetJets – they have a truly amazing IT department! – but having tasted life in a software company, I wanted to get back to that. The problem was (five weeks ago) that it’s extremely difficult to get a job as a product manager in a software company, especially in Ohio, so I essentially put that plan on hold for “someday”.

So then four weeks ago (to the day), an old friend/coworker from Noteworthy called me up and basically said “we need you to come back and be a product manager – are you interested?”. Huh, funny how these things happen. I told her I was maybe interested, and spent the next week talking to her, going to Cleveland for interviews, and trying to figure out what had changed since I left. After about a week of this, I was convinced that Noteworthy was in good shape, and that this was a legitimate opportunity, and that I’d really love going back into the product manager job.

So it was easy for me to say yes to the offer – except that Noteworthy is in Cleveland, and we live in Columbus, and Kristina is very happy as a student at OSU. So I was going to have to travel to Cleveland for this job, leaving her in Columbus, and we both know that we don’t do well with full-time travel. So I managed to work out a deal with Noteworthy to travel half-time, working from home the other half, and after much discussion we decided that we could handle that, and I said yes to the offer.

That was two weeks ago (to the day).

So I put in my notice, and we started making plans for how to make this all work. First, obviously, we needed a second car. We’ve never had a second car – our lifestyle just never demanded it, and a car is a huge expense. The question was, which car?

Well, that gets to the next decision, which was to get a dog. As part of agreeing to the travel, Kristina and I made an agreement with each other that we’d get a dog for her, to help keep her company while I’m gone. Well… she wants a big dog. And I think that it’s always better to have two dogs, because they keep each other happy and healthy. And we happen to know of a breeder who has Great Pyrenees puppies for sale, and that happens to be the particular breed of very large dog that we had our eye on… so the plan is to get two huge puppies. Oh, the changes…

So back to the car. Between the two new dogs, and the fact that Kristina is a horticulture student who regularly carries plant stuff around, we decided that we needed a car with lots of space and that’s easy to clean. Minivans were right out, jeeps weren’t big enough, and SUVs are generally a waste of money, so that left the Honda Element – a perfect car for this situation, and one that we really liked. But then that got tough – we were trying to keep the cost low (so we needed a used car), but we like having convenience features (power mirrors) and a nice stereo, and we both like driving stick-shift cars, and we didn’t want one with a ton of miles on it. It is possible to get an Element that meets all these criteria, but we couldn’t find one in Columbus. So we went to Pittsburgh (Monday night) to buy one that we found there, and so far we love it. It took a lot of work to finally settle on that car, and to get the financing sorted out (without having a used car dealer screw us), and get a price negotiated, but it was worth it.

But wait, there’s another consequence to getting these dogs: our current apartment doesn’t let us have pets. (And I wouldn’t put two huge dogs into our place anyway.) So we have to find a new place, preferably a house with a large fenced yard. And we need to rent it because we’ll probably move in two years when Kristina graduates. And our current rent is quite low, and we don’t pay our gas bill, so our housing expenses are about to go way up. And we’re probably not going to find something close to campus with a large fenced yard in a safe neighborhood that’s not too expensive. So that search will continue :)

And finally, all these increased expenses may mean that I can’t get a motorcycle. I have my license (took the class last fall) and a helmet (birthday present, a week ago) and a riding jacket (another birthday present), but no motorcycle. More on this as events unfold.

So, to summarize: new job, new travel lifestyle, new car, new house, new dogs, maybe no motorcycle. Oh, and Kristina’s 30th birthday is in June, so I need to plan that. So yeah, things are a little stirred up around here :) But they’re good.

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filed under: driving, kristina, life, pictures, reviews, travel

Posted 359 days ago

Kristina and I took a vacation in Oregon this August, and as expected, we fell in love with it. We’d both always had this idea that we’d like Oregon, and one of the people on my team at NetJets lives out there and invited us to visit, and this year is our fifth anniversary, so we decided to go. With the help of a few borrowed guidebooks and the advice of a local, I did a lot of planning, made a loose itinerary, and booked the flights and hotels.

I’ve posted about 500 pictures over in the gallery, and they tell the basic story. (I know, 500 is way too many… but we took 1300 originally so this is a huge improvement.) We started in Portland and wandered all around town on the very-well-done public transportation. While there, we went to the world’s largest bookstore and went there again to stand in line for the midnight release of Harry Potter. We also went to the stunning Japanese Garden and the much-less-stunning International Rose Test Garden. From there, we got on the road and happened to pass by (and stop at) an aviation museum that houses the Spruce Goose. We then drove down the coast to Yachats, which is now the easy winner as our favorite place to vacation. I was a little sneaky and had rented a room with a view, and we spent a lot of time exploring the rocky coast and playing in the tide pools. Driving around there, we saw these cool Tsunami Hazard Zone signs, went to the famous Newport Aquarium (and stopped by the headquarters of Rogue Brewery), and took a few long-distance (but free!) pictures of the Haceta Head Lighthouse. You can see our cool Mustang convertible in some of those pictures :) Sadly, we eventually had to leave Yachats, and we semi-intentionally ended up having a crazy driving adventure through deep forest roads housing scary people who really, really don’t want visitors. From there we visited a few waterfalls and drove out to Bend. (Bend is the town where the person I work with lives.) Somehow, we don’t have any pictures of Bend, but we really liked it there. We do have pictures of our canoing trip and a trip we made up the Mt. Bachelor ski lift to try to eat dinner, but we ended up not eating there. Finally, we drove back to Portland, did a little more sight seeing, and flew home.

Phew!

Actually, it was great. We had 9 days, and no set schedule except for the hotel bookings. We were able to take our time and do whatever struck our fancy, from a big menu of previously-researched sights and activities. It’s my new favorite way to take a vacation :)

I have a few lasting thoughts / advice that I want to save, also:

• Portland was an OK city, but we didn’t really love it. The highway traffic sucks, and the sky is always gray. It does have some great vegetarian food and good public transportation, but it just didn’t grab onto us the same way Chicago did.
• The Japanese Garden is truly incredible. Wandering through there, I could help but feel awe and wonder, and be inspired by the talent and energy and time that went into making it. I will go back.
• The International Rose Test Garden was boring (for me). It is just row after row after row of roses. If you really love roses, maybe you’ll like it.
• Voodoo doughnut is only going to seem cool to you if you come prepared for it to be a dingy place from the 70’s.
• When you think Portland Saturday Market, think “flea market” and you’ll have a good idea what to expect.
• The Newport Aquarium is well worth visiting, and it’s even worth the price of admission :)
• Never, ever, ever go to Yachats. If you do, you’ll be tempted to stay, and then it will be more crowded when we retire there ;) If you must visit, it’s well worth the money to stay at the Overleaf Lodge. You should also eat at the Drift Inn Restaurant (we ate there five or six times) and at the Yachats River House.
• The best thing about Bend is that you can drive 30 minutes one way to be in desert, or 30 minutes the other to go skiing, or you can just stay in town to have great weather and lots of cool things to do. It’s the ultimate in micro-climate adjustability!
• The Mt. Bachelor twilight dinner is a giant rip-off. We thought it would be really nice, but it’s really just a cheap ski lodge trying to sell fancy food. We tried to eat there, but they didn’t have anyone to seat us, didn’t have a table ready for our reservation, don’t have a good wine or beer selection, and ran out of steak (one of the four dinner choices). We left, and ended up at the Seasons restaurant in the Seventh Mountain Resort. It is now at the top of my list of all-time best restaurants, for service, atmosphere, food, and wine. Dinner there was absolutely amazing.

Anyhow, the trip was fantastic. We will go back to Oregon, maybe this winter. We want to see what it’s like in winter, and we’re already wishing that we’d brought back some good art from there. If not soon, though, then someday.

One last thing: I’ve put together a folder of favorite pictures, suitable for framing or giving as gifts ;)

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filed under: life, links, pictures, travel

Posted 359 days ago

I finally got around to uploading all my recent pictures to the gallery. “Recent,” in this case, is defined as “in the last 8 months.” Before this I hadn’t uploaded anything in 2007, even though I’ve been taking pictures all year. So without further ado, I present:

• Some random flowers
• Jeff & Elizabeth’s wedding
• Anya’s graduation from American university, sadly without many pictures of Anya. We had to leave immediately after the ceremony, so we didn’t get to participate in the normal round of post-ceremony pictures. Sorry, Anya!
• And a few pictures from my first and second Lisbon trips. I’ve gone twice now for work, and am going again next week. I’ll also probably go to London at some point. Sadly, there’s very little tourism involved in any of this.

I’ve also uploaded pictures of our recent trip to Oregon, but I’ll be describing those in another post, momentarily. We also (also) have pictures from Kristina’s trip to Richmond, VA, but those haven’t been uploaded yet. Maybe they’ll make it up before Christmas ;)

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filed under: guns, life, politics, terrorism

Posted 446 days ago

From time to time, I add a quote to my quotes list. When I find a quote that catches my eye, I usually sit on it for a week or two to see if I really agree with it. That way my quote list reflects the ideas I truly hold dear, and not just the things that sounded good at the time.

Recently, a friend sent me this quote:

There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. — Ed Howdershelt

I’ve been holding on to this quote for a while, trying to figure out what I thought about it. It didn’t really inspire me, but I couldn’t figure out if I agreed with it or not. Just tonight I realized that the quote is based in the notion that the first three ideas can come before the fourth. That is false. Without the power of force behind them, the other three don’t survive. It’s the basic ability to defend against aggressors that enables peace among those with that power. The quote works within a society that has already created a basically peaceful and just environment, through force or the threat of force. (Note that an unjust society can also be created through force; the force is merely the means to the end, not a guarantor of it.) In the raw world, without the protection of pre-existing force, the quote seems almost quaint.

Within such an already-stable society, though,I agree that force should generally be the last defense of liberty. But I don’t agree that it should only ever follow after the first three. I’m not going to wait for a speech, a politician, or my neighbor to stop the man intent on killing me.

I think a better quote would have been one that demonstrated that each of the first three ideas depends on the last. That idea rings true with me, and ties strongly to why I believe in guns as a good thing. Without the ability to defend ourselves, and our ideas, none of the rest of it is possible. Guns are simply an effective tool for earning and preserving freedom. Without them, the rest isn’t possible.

As you can imagine, I’ve decided not to add this quote to my quotes list, but I am very glad for the intellectual push. If any you readers care to comment, I would love to hear it. Please just post something here, and I’ll be sure to think, and to respond. Or send me a quote :)

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filed under: books, flying, geek, guns, life, links, reviews

Posted 487 days ago

It’s been a while since I wrote and I have a small pile of small things that I wanted to write about, so I’m posting them all at once. In chronological order:

Cool blog / cool book

In my first case ever of one blog leading to another, Amitai’s blog led me to Bil Stachour’s blog, Journal Wunelle, on which I found this awesome post about evolutionary psychology and the book The Moral Animal. Bil writes intelligently, often, and interestingly, and his writeup of the book has led me to put it on my wishlist.

A combination street car and airplane

Check this out. Terrafugia has announced that they plan on creating the first commercially available flying car, called the Transition. I like living in this age :)

Buckeye Blast

On April 1st, I attended the Buckeye Blast, a fun-day shooting event put on by Buckeye Firearms Association, an orginzation heavily involved in passing the concealed carry laws in Ohio, and of which I am a member. The event is a fundraiser for the organization, and my wife bought my ticket as a birthday present.

The day was a blast! (ha ha) I learned more about real-life shooting in that day than I had in all my previous training and shooting, and greatly improved my shooting skills. I met a bunch of new people, and even got my picture taken. The event was held at the very impressive Tactical Defense Institute – I highly recommend them.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

One of my birthday presents was an awesome book called The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. For years the “designers” have been saying that the “coders” can’t learn what it takes to design great websites; this book tries to prove that wrong. You can judge for yourself when I update this site’s layout :) (someday soon…)

The shooting on my birthday

The Virginia Tech shooting happened on my birthday. It’s a very sad, tragic event, and I’m sorry that such things happen in this world. It was initially reminiscent of the Case Western shooting which was a little closer-to-home for me.

My mom asked me what I thought about the shooting, and my response sums up my whole belief about the issue: “if someone there had had a gun, they could have stopped the attacker.” It’s a shame that Virginia Tech (like Case Western) has a ban on all firearms on campus.

I know this is a big issue, but I don’t want to dwell on it. My middle sister (privately) wrote a great piece about her feelings and reflections after the event, and there’s a lot more like that on the web. I’ll leave it to others to hash out all the nuances, but I did want to get my broad-stroke opinion out in public.

Other

There is other news, about life, work, and family, but most of it isn’t really good fodder for a public forum. Suffice it to say that all three have been interesting, hard, and good. This is a good time, for me.

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filed under: christmas, life

Posted 628 days ago

I like giving gifts. I like it a lot. (It seems to be one of my love languages.) Like most things I care about, I want to be good at it. In this case, I’ve learned a few rules for how to be good at it, and Mom’s post below has inspired me to share them.

Some of this is basic stuff; some of it will help you choose gifts that will succeed wildly. Either way, following these rules will help.

In order of importance:

Put some energy into it

If you only follow one rule, let it be this one. When choosing a gift, make sure that you take the time to do it well. It doesn’t matter exactly what you give or how you give it, so long as you care about it and work (even just a little) at it.

Be thoughtful about what you’re giving

Give gifts that actually reflect the recipient’s individuality. Give something that relates to their life or their situation, or that involves something they care about. Personal gifts demonstrate that you put some energy into choosing the gift.

Give something they want

This one is subtle: give something that the person is actively thinking about or wishing for. A gift that everybody likes is much less exciting than a particular thing that the recipient really wants.

Give something they wouldn’t get for themselves

The gifts that really make people happy are the ones that are just out of their reach. Giving them something they want but weren’t going to get for themselves is almost a sure-fire way to make the gift a success.

Be sincere in your presentation

The actual presentation of the gift is at least as important as the gift itself. Depending on the situation, you may just need to take the time to wrap it or you may need to work some magic and make the presentation truly exciting. Either way, use your preparation, words, and actions to indicate that you are giving the gift because you really want to, and not just because it’s the right thing to do. This ties back to “it’s the thought that counts” – the “thought” is expressed more by your presentation than by the gift itself.

Give something useful

There are a lot of gifts that seem like a good idea when purchased but then end up in a drawer or closet, forever. Such gifts aren’t as effective as gifts that end up in frequent use, over a long period of time. Take the time to consider whether your gift will have staying power.

Note: flowers, art, and charitable donations all break this rule (somewhat), and yet they can all be great gifts. That’s why the rule is near the bottom :)

Don’t give money

It’s almost impossible to give money and live up to all the rules above. Instead, if you can’t do something better, give a gift card to a store that will let the recipient get something that meets the rules above. Be careful, though, that they don’t end up buying socks when what they really want is a sweater.

Happy gift giving!

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filed under: christmas, family, life, religion

Posted 628 days ago

I occasionally ask myself why I celebrate Christmas, because I don’t really focus on it as a celebration of the birth of Christ. The general answer that I give myself is “Christmas is about people,” and I’m very happy with that idea. But I’ve never thought it out, or written it down.

My mother, on the other hand, has. She apparently got into an email conversation with someone who isn’t giving gifts for Christmas because they feel that it is too commercial / expected / etc. (I don’t know the details.) Mom replied with a detailed writeup of how she felt about Christmas, and then forwarded bits of it on to me.

It’s quite impressive, so (with her permission) I’m quoting it here, for anyone who needs it. (She’s a teacher, so she mentions the school(s) that she teaches at occasionally.)

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filed under: geek, life, pictures

Posted 646 days ago

Just a few quick updates, between work and sleep:

Fun Stuff

At work the other day I spotted a background image that I really liked on a neighbor’s computer. I tracked down the source and discovered a treasure trove of fantastic backgrounds. The best ones are found by clicking the “Flame Favorites” links on this page (try this set, for example). You can learn more about Flame Fractals at lines and colors or flam3.com.

Work / Life

Work has been relatively insane the last few weeks. That’s the biggest reason I’ve been offline so much recently. On top of that, we’re hosting Thanksgiving Thursday, so we’ve been doing a lot of work to prep for that. The craziness will continue until about the end of the year. It’s good work, though, and I’m enjoying it.

Software

Joel has posted a rather amusing article about usability in Windows Vista, Microsoft’s next version of Windows. He demonstrates the type of thinking that’s necessary for making great products. It’s also the type of thinking that makes great Business Analysts :)

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filed under: life

Posted 704 days ago

How many pennies in this jar? (Click the image to see a bigger version.)

Make a guess and click here to find out!

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filed under: family, life

Posted 828 days ago

Anna Torontali

Born
March 4th, 1930
Budapest, Hungary

Passed
May 20th, 2006
Cleveland, Ohio

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filed under: business, life

Posted 887 days ago

About six weeks ago my brain caused my body to write down a list of roughly-categorized questions, all vaguely related to “optimizing my ability to make things happen.” I’ve been sitting on those questions since then, trying to figure out where they came from and what they’re for. I’ve puzzled over it multiple times and not gotten any clue at all.

It’s fairly obvious to me that they all have a theme. They’re all questions about issues that I focus on all the time, and they are all a part of what makes me good at what I do. I just don’t know why I wrote them down.

So I’ve decided to post them here and see if any of you, my dear readers, have any ideas about them. Maybe this is the seed for some grand idea that will change the world someday, and I’ll later come back to here and realize that this was the beginning of it. Or maybe this is just what it seems: a list of questions that will help you focus on the right issues, so you can make things happen.

Here they are:

• audience: who needs this information, and what for? what are their key issues? who else will eventually use this information?
• effort: is it worth putting this much effort in, at this point?
• perception: how will the audience perceive this? what will they think? how will it affect their attitude? what questions will they probably ask?
• purpose: what is it that I’m trying to accomplish? does what I’m writing accomplish that?
• core issues: who feels the pain / wants this done / cares about this? are they the ones driving the solution / issue / work? are they getting what they want? is the work that I’m doing going to help resolve the core issues?
• image: does my audience trust me? how do I get them to trust me more? will this help our trust? do they think they can rely on me? do they think I have their best interests in mind? am I doing work that doesn’t have any value except to my image?
• understanding: how well do I understand my customer? do I know what is relevant, and what is irrelevant, to the decision/direction/solution I am trying to make?
• value: what do I bring to the table – why am I needed? does my audience understand that value? am I maximizing that value? am I letting others give their value? am I doing work that doesn’t support me adding that value?
• listening: does my customer feel like he has been heard? have I made sure to give them time to explain their needs/issues/wants?
• focus: does what I’m writing solve the core problems? does it also try to solve other problems? is there content that doesn’t lead to solving any particular problem?
• knowledge: do I know what I don’t know? have I asked for help / more information whenever I needed it? do I have enough information to solve my problem? have I identified which information I need, and which information I don’t need?

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filed under: life, rainskit.com

Posted 937 days ago

1. I’m not reading any of my (30) RSS feeds any more. (It’s amazing how disconnected I am from the geek world, now.) I’ve stopped because I can’t find a decent web-based feed reader anywhere. I usually use Thunderbird, which does it just right, but then my feeds are tied to a particular machine and I switch machines (and logins!) too often for that to be acceptable. In the meantime, I’m working on writing my own web-based reader and once it’s done I’ll switch to it. (If you’re interested, my reader is written in Ruby on Rails, and it will work much like Thunderbird, but in a browser.)
2. Matt and I are slowly working on a wishlist app so we have a good way to keep and publish and track our wishlists. This seems like an obvious thing that ought to already exist, but it doesn’t. I’ve been using Amazon’s but they seem to enjoy making it less-useful occasionally, and it won’t let me track things that aren’t available on amazon.com. So again, once this new one is developed I’ll switch to it.
3. I will eventually be converting my existing gallery to ZenPhoto, because Gallery sucks. The only reason I haven’t switched before this is that there wasn’t a better product out there.

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filed under: life

Posted 951 days ago

We signed a year lease this evening. Not very exciting to most, I know, but it represents a year of certainty to us – and that’s huge.

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filed under: life

Posted 956 days ago

My life has been nothing but changes for the last 20 months; first, a new job with ThoughtWorks which meant a new lifestyle of travel and consulting, and then a series of projects and cities and travel arrangements that is still making my head spin. (The final count is six projects for five clients in five cities).

My wife and I aren’t really the right sort of people to enjoy a travel schedule like that, so we spent most of that time trying to find a way to mitigate the discomfort that it brought, and in the end, gave up. And thus that time of change has ended: I am no longer a ThoughtWorker, as of last Friday.

But that, of course, brings about a new time of change. I start tomorrow (Monday) with NetJets, which I’m really excited about (although they may make me wear a suit). Kristina and I have found a very nice apartment in Columbus, she’s looking for a job, and we’re both re-learning how to live with each other. It’s another time of change but we both believe that after this one our lives will settle down to a normal pace-of-change, and we need that.

To add to the changes of this time, I’ve re-implemented this site in TextPattern, mainly so I can start blogging, as I am now. This is a long-overdue task, and I’ll be posting soon about why it was overdue and what made me finish it. I also hope to post on other topics such as insights about life, goings-on in our lives, the tagging plugin I wrote for textpattern, etc. etc. etc. We’ll see if I keep it up :)

For those of you who want to follow along automatically, the preferred way is to use the Atom feed (or the RSS feed, which doesn’t validate), but you can also sign up for email notifications using the form over in the sidebar.

So Hello, World. Here’s hoping that this more-sane travel schedule will also mean I have time for more of the things I want to do.

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