About me, my life, and my family
Those who know me know that I am not a fan of Time Warner Cable, so when Verizon started offering FiOS TV in my area, I quickly signed up.
This may sound odd, especially considering I’ve blogged quite a bit about Verizon in the past, and didn’t always have flattering things to say. Still, Verizon is orders of magnitude better than Time Warner, and over the past few years their customer service has typically been very good.
So, how has my experience been so far? Quite good!
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I recently ordered Verizion FIOS TV. Since I already have home phone and Internet service from Verizon, and wireless service from Verzion, I wanted to make sure I am getting a bundled rate. (They offer a bunch of “bundle prices”.) I went into an online chat with a Verizon customer representative. Here’s what happened.
OK, it was about a week ago, but it was an experience I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article, The Greenest Show on Earth: Democrats Gear Up for Denver, which highlights the attempts at the Democratic National Convention to run “the greenest convention in the history of the planet” (at least, at bequest of Denver’s mayor, John Hickenlooper).
Read through the article and you see how difficult it is to focus on green, renewable, carbon-free, Union labor for everything.
More interesting are the points the article didn’t make…
A friend of mine has returned once again to a place called “career second-guessing.” He’s an IT guy who’s comfortable but not “happy” with his current employer or work situation. (It’s a decent paying job with little surprises but no room for growth.)
We’ve been bantering via email about what he should do. My last response was something that may be of interest to others, so I’m sharing it below.
“Do what you love” is probably the wrong thing to say. The correct thing to say is “Love what you do.” There are huge differences. Sounds almost the same, and it is — the difference is the chicken and egg.
If you believe, “Do what you love,” you must first figure out what you love — something that’s not easy to do, because we don’t know what we love until we find it. Think about the time before you met your significant other… If you had to describe your perfect mate (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.), it wouldn’t necessarily describe him or her (at least, not in all ways). It’s no different with work.
Consider how many times we’ve said, “This is my dream job / mate / situation.” How many times has that panned out? Odds are, it flamed out more often than it panned out.
Some people get lucky and love what they do early in their professional career. Sometimes, over time, you fall out of love with what you’re doing. When you’re not loving what you do, it’s time to move on — just like it’s time to move on when you don’t love your mate. You’re fooling yourself otherwise.
I’ve changed jobs more times than most grown men can count (more than a baker’s dozen jobs since college). I average 1 1/2 years between job changes. For a period of time at each new job, I love what I am doing because it’s exciting and new, like a new girlfriend, or a new video game. Then I fall out of love, and I move on.
Your challenge is to find the thing that you’ll love to do, then hope that it’ll continue to keep your interest. If you don’t have it now, it’s time for a new job, where you may find it. If you don’t find it at the next job, then try again. Don’t lock yourself into something you don’t love to do.
I woke up this morning and everything was going fine until my paper boy rang the doorbell.
No, my paperboy didn’t deliver a bad newspaper — but he did deliver bad news, related to the condition of my car, which was parked in front of my house.
At 9:30AM, I called the police, who still haven’t showed up after 5 hours. At this point, the car is already gone. The incredibly friendly and helpful people at Geico coordinated the towing of my car to an auto glass repair shop that can fix everything today. To top it off I also had glass coverage, so no out of pocket expenses. (I was ready to start calling junk yards, as the car is eight years old, and I have no problem with previously used windows.)
This is the first claim ever on my insurance with Geico (over ten years!), and I have to say I couldn’t be happier with the level of service they provided. Great rates and great service! I highly recommend them.
While I was writing this post, a fellow who lives a block away rang my bell and told me he saw the whole thing (he happened to go out for a cigarette at about 3:00AM). Apparently two punks (the only proper description of them) with sledgehammers jumped out of a Jeep Cherokee, smashed the front and back windows, and drove off. The guy down the block was too far away to get a license plate number (damn!), and couldn’t get close enough to see it before they drove off.
What many are probably thinking (and what the sanitation guys said when they saw me outside this morning pondering the mess) is, “Who did you piss off lately?” The answer to that is no one. I can’t think of any enemies I have, or anyone who’d be so perturbed with anything I do (which isn’t all that much as it is) to do such a criminal act. Maybe it was a disgruntled CSFBL user? Nah, I don’t think so; they’re better people than that.
How do you describe people who commit these acts? Cowards. They are a blight to society, an embarrassment to the human race. You get your jollies bashing windows with sledgehammers? I’d have more respect for you if you rang my doorbell at 3:00AM and asked me to come outside to slug it out Ultimate Fighting style. At least in the latter case you’re willing to show your face to your victim.
Months back, my brother made news by going outside and helping his neighbor accost someone breaking into a car on his block. I only wish I’d have been as lucky to wake up to the noise early this morning.
Then again, maybe I’m lucky I didn’t wake up — running outside wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts as two guys with sledgehammers bash my car doesn’t give me very good odds… but if they are truly the cowards they are, they’d have driven off anyway, and maybe I could have caught that license plate number.
Anyway, today, we sadly get to chalk one up for the bad guys.
Due to a failure of our router that connects us to the Internet, CSFBL is temporarily unavailable. A new router is expected to be received from Verizon on May 2, and we hope to be back online by the weekend.
To be specific, the router didn’t completely fail. The router’s external interface (to the public Internet) works fine, as does its wireless connectivity. What failed was the router’s four Ethernet (wired network) interfaces.
After 45 minutes on hold for a Verizon tech (and being disconnected once), I got a person who was able to confirm that my model router had a known problem where the Ethernet interfaces fail. They were nice enough to offer to ship a free replacement in two days (but were unable to ship it any faster), but couldn’t explain why they didn’t proactively replace customer’s routers who had this known problem. (He was able to tell based on the serial number of the router.)
Either way, this issue — and the fact that the current CSFBL server now has insufficient disk space for all the necessary databases and one week’s worth of backups — is forcing me to recognize that the days of self-hosting CSFBL in my basement are long gone. Managed dedicated hosting is the only long-term solution, albeit a pricey one (up to three times more per month than I pay now).
Oh, and for those who are curious — I will disable the CSFBL sims as soon as I can get access to the console. You see, there’s no keyboard or monitor hooked up to the box, and everything is controlled through the network — a network I can’t connect to right now.
As reported late last night on The Guardian Online, Gary Gygax, co-writer of Dungeons & Dragons, has died.
Say it isn’t so! What a sad day. Gary Gygax has no idea how much he influenced my childhood. I’m proud to say that I still have my original AD&D Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide. From time to time, I crack them open, taking myself back nearly 30 years in time.
Those books truly were a work of art (and, you may recall, dungeon mastering is both an art and a science). I can only imagine how different I would be today if I never found them. Without a doubt, Gygax’s skill as a writer advanced my reading skills by leaps and bounds, and the countless hours I spent in the worlds he created enhanced my imagination.
So much of what is in those books is burned into my mind. I can still tell you, with a high degree of accuracy, the experience point requirements for the first few levels of most classes and the THAC0 advancement progression by level and class. I can also picture in my mind some of the many cartoons scattered throughout the books. (There is no honor among thieves, and We pretend we’re students and businessmen in a technological world — or something to that effect — come to mind.)
I have a funny feeling I’ll be browsing through those books tonight, just for old time’s sake. Good night, Mr. Gygax, and thanks for all the memories. My Illusionist’s Phantasmal Killer tips his hat to you.
[P.S. Thanks to Scott Berkum for being the first one to bring this to my attention, via his blog.]
For the past month I’ve tried to find a few people to work with me on some projects — between 10 and 25 hours a week, maybe more, for up to three months, maybe much longer. It’s very flexible work — you tell me how much time you can dedicate and I’ll work with you. I don’t care where you work or where you live, so long as you are willing to communicate with me effectively.
So far, two people have been absolute failures, one is still a work in progress, and one has worked out perfectly. Amazingly, the guy who worked out lives in Spain, and we never spoke a word to each other — all our dialogue is via IM and e-mail.
The right candidate should:
If you can fit part of that bill, please let me know. All work would be paid as contract labor (either to your company or to you as an individual; the latter would require you to receive a US 1099 income form at the end of the year), and there may be good room to grow.
Please email your desired compensation (hourly rate unless you prefer project rate) and resume/credentials to bdemarzo@gmail.com.
On Friday, I received my iMac, bringing me back to the world of the Mac OS for the first time in about eight years. The iMac is not my main rig — I still use a “Wintel” PC running Windows XP for work — it’s a replacement for my home computer (though I eventually hope to expand its use beyond pictures, movies, and World of Warcraft).
So, what’s the initial reaction from a guy who was very entrenched into Windows, but has a solid Mac history?
I’m enjoying the Mac experience so far. It’s definitely something to get used to. My fingers still stumble on the Mac keyboard a bit, and there are some things I miss from Windows-land.