The Contrarian Technologist

Category Personal loss
So far I am sticking with my exercise and dietary changes (mostly - just not eating cookies in the afternoon and a chunk of cheese in the evenings) and I am now down to 190 pounds. The best part is feeling better - I have a lot more energy and I am enjoying the exercises. The plus side (for Maggie) is that I seem to have taken over all of the cooking. I started doing a lot more cooking when she was in class a year ago and continued this when she became professionally busy. Now I seem to have more free time (less time on facebook - and few billable hours) I'm doing the menu planning, shopping and cooking. The difficult part is that while I have always taken on a share of the culinary duties over the years, I cooked "man food" (i.e meat and potatoes) now I am trying to eat semi-vegetarian (meat stock is OK or meat can be used for flavoring) during the week so it means I have to learn how to make vegetarian meals which are outside my cooking comfort zone. I certainly think I have mastered Risottos, but I have yet to make the perfect paella (although I am getting closer and closer)

Posted by Kit Davis At 8:22 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (1)

Category
Discovering that our passports were due to expire we used some Amex points and made a quick trip to Florida. We made reservations at two resorts through Amex, one was a Starwood, and the other was a Marriott. In both cases because Amex made the reservations, neither hotel knew anything about us - Amex didn't ask for and didn't use any of our frequent user numbers etc. In both cases we paid for an upgraded room. The room at the Starwood hotel was supposed to be in a "quiet annex" but instead was just along a long corridor. Even though the hotel was less than 30% full, we discovered that we were given a room on the one floor that had yet to be refurbished. When we grouched about this on the last night of our stay to the bar tender he arranged to have us moved to a nicer room on a floor with freshly painted rooms etc. In contrast, when we arrived at the Marriott resort they upgraded us to a suite because there were not completely full. Two approaches to customer service - I can tell you which one worked to earn my loyalty.

Posted by Kit Davis At 3:49 PM Location Florida | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Tech
I have been working for the last several months with two open-source products that are nothing but phenomenal - pfSense and FreeNAS. Both products use the FreeBSD platform, work on last year’s hardware, load and install easily and just plain work. No muss no fuss - and very stable. If you are in need of or interested in either a Firewall product or Network Attached Storage solution I would highly recommend these products.

pfSense is available at http://www.pfsense.com

FreeNAS is available at http://www.freenas.org

Posted by Kit Davis At 7:50 AM Location CB | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category
Why is it that we (or perhaps just me) can mess up relationships so easily? I don’t mean messing things up like politicians and certain other high profile people do, I mean the little tiny seemingly insignificant things that always seem to go wrong that keep relationships from being perfect. It seems that all these many years, the things that are the most important in our lives ought to be the things we get right most of the time. It’s the things that get misinterpreted or taken out of context etc. that should be so easy to avoid but never seem to be learned. I know there are certain things I say or do that will drive someone around the bend, but do I ever seem to learn not to do them? – of course not. I repeat the same mistakes over and over. Yeah, I know maybe it is the nature of the dog, but I have always been good at modifying my behavior and relearning things when needed, why do I find it so difficult to just remember to keep my mouth closed once in a while? (The old think before you leap adage).

Posted by Kit Davis At 12:47 PM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Work
As I alluded earlier, a year ago I was involved in a project that really didn’t work out very well for me. In fact it became the first time in my life that I have ever been “fired” from a project. We have all worked on a project or a job that just wasn’t suited for our skills or temperament, but this was something I really believed in and actually fought to make happen. I was already a proponent of the solution when I stumbled on to the project volunteered to provide insight and review expertise for the proposal. Ultimately I ended investing 2 months of full time effort writing the bulk of the management and delivery sections and desperately trying to instill some proposal management.


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Posted by Kit Davis At 8:19 AM Location Home | Permalink | Comments (0)