03.09.08
Posted in life at 10:36 pm by mridley
I find myself again in the job market, having been laid off from my super awesome job on the 26th of February. It bums me out, as I liked that job a lot. But it’s business. These things happen.
It didn’t occur to me to post about it here until I was discussing my situation with one of my friends who was saying, “Well I didn’t see anything about it on your web site” which reminded me that this place exists.
It’s an amusing paradox in that when my life is busy and interesting, I never have time to write updates here. But when I do have time, such as now, nothing much is going on. The daily job search isn’t really all that thrilling. I suppose the key is to find time when my life is busy and exciting to also post updates here. We’ll see how that goes. Past experience would imply it will not go all that well.
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02.24.08
Posted in life, tech at 10:12 am by mridley
Quick observation. I have a profile up on a number of the social networking sites. The only two that I really use are MySpace and Facebook. I was late to the game in getting a Facebook profile, and only did so after prodding from my friend Sean Parker. But some interesting behavior has emerged.
I’ve read a number of articles that compare the two sites. The general media consensus that I’ve read is that MySpace skews younger and more “blue collar” (whatever that means in the context of Internet-connected citizens participating in social networking). Facebook seems to skew “older” and more “classy”.
But my experience is different. I wouldn’t say that there is all that much class or age difference between my MySpace friends and my Facebook friends. But there also isn’t much overlap. For whatever reason, not intentional, my MySpace profile is pretty much just my social peer group (and is locked down accordingly). Facebook, on the other hand, seems to be my business/professional network. Not exclusively, but it seems to skew more along the lines of LinkedIn for me.
I’m not sure why this divergence occurred. It wasn’t intentional. Just something I noticed this morning while checking both of my pages.
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01.07.08
Posted in life at 9:37 am by mridley
Alas, life has gotten busy again. I haven’t had any time for updating the site since November due to starting this new (and awesome) job. But I’m finally getting settled in so hopefully I’ll have time for some interesting commentary (or whatever the point of this site is) soon.
Also cutting into my web writing time, I’ve gotten into the habit lately of old fashioned paper journaling. I’ve never put much of my private life on this site, for a variety of reasons. But I do enjoy actual journaling. I bought my friend Jessica an old fountain pen off ebay for Christmas, along with ink and a Moleskine notebook. I was familiar with the Moleskine zeitgeist (check out Moleskinerie if you’re not), but I hadn’t used one. So to be sure they are as cool as everyone seems to think they are, I got myself one before giving it as a gift. A notebook is a notebook, but they are pretty cool notebooks. So I have been inspired to make the most of mine by journaling in it.
Of course, that also made me want a fountain pen of my very own. I used to have several, but over the years I don’t know what became of them. I found an ebay store in the UK that sells astonishingly cheap fountain pens so I bought one. Alas my timing wasn’t the best, right in the middle of the Christmas season, so it hasn’t arrived yet. Hopefully it will this week. If it’s of reasonable quality I’ll post a link to the ebay store, as you can’t beat the price.
My holiday season was somewhat uneventful. Just the usual hanging out with people, a few parties, etc. I do have a few interesting things planned for 2008. I’m off back to California in a week until the end of January for work. I’m hoping this trip will go a little more smoothly than my November trip. Also, while I don’t believe in New Years resolutions, I am planning to join the gym by my house when I get back as it’s time to get in shape. And I have some volunteer work lined up with an interesting organization, SHARE of McLean, that I’m looking forward to.
2008 is off to a busy start. But for me, busy is good.
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11.13.07
Posted in life at 1:14 am by mridley
I don’t have time to write anything profound and interesting but I thought I’d publish a little follow-through/daily update. I found a problem in my post on using wp-amazon in newer versions of word press so I fixed that. Also after getting into Mona Lisa Overdrive I have discovered that I really probably should have read Count Zero first, as I’m probably missing some information I’m supposed to have. It doesn’t hurt the story though; the book stands on it’s own.
This whole trip to California has been kind of a mess, so I’ve started a little write up on the fiasco that has been my travel logistics. Because, after a certain point it’s just funny. At least the work part of the trip is going well. And that’s what really matters.
I’ve taken some pictures while I’ve been out here. Nothing that great, mainly buildings and roads and stuff. But they are buildings and roads that I have stories from when I lived here to accompany them. Hopefully I’ll get around to putting all that online when I get home.
I have found the time zone difference is inconvenient from a cell phone minutes perspective. My free nights and weekends don’t go so far when my nights don’t start until 10 PM Eastern time. Or more accurately, Eastern time free nights starts at 4 PM my time. I do think it would be a handy innovation for cell phones to audibly indicate, say for example by their ring tone, what rate plan the call falls under. Perhaps the Google Phone will tackle that one. Or perhaps not.
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11.11.07
Posted in life at 3:48 pm by mridley
I’ve again let this site go for a month without an update. I transitioned from my contract with the U.S. Courts and am now working for an up and coming network storage vendor. It’s an interesting direction for me, as it’s a level three customer technical support role. Although I have done customer technical support in the past, the last time was at Silicon Graphics which I left in 1999.
For the past 8 years after that I’ve been doing UNIX infrastructure work. Some of it has been managed services work that is customer facing but there’s a difference between maintaining customer owned infrastructure and strict product technical support. It’s going to be an interesting challenge.
One of the perks of the job is that I will be working from home. I’m not entirely sure where that’s a perk or not, since I suspect that will also lead to my working additional hours but I’ll just have to wait and see how that unfolds. I started the job last week and so I have been in California for the past week, returning home next Friday.
Being back in Silicon Valley brings back a lot of memories, since I lived here for almost 6 years. I’ve taken some pictures that I’ll post when I get back home. I’m glad this job is keeping me mentally occupied so that I’m not tempted to dwell too much in the past. Seeing some of the places I used to hang out makes me somewhat nostalgic, but not eager to move back. Besides, I have a busy life at home.
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10.09.07
Posted in life at 5:48 am by mridley
This may not be news for anyone else (see these old annoucements that I missed here and here), but I just read in this Washington Post article that CBS has some of their shows available on Joost. I’ve been a Joost beta user for some time (earlier review), but initially I felt that their available programming was rather lackluster which lead me not to use the service much. Also their earlier clients were incredibly slow on my computer. The latest version of the Joost beta software has gotten a lot snappier and now that they have content I might actually watch I’m a lot more interested. I have been catching up on their series Moonlight (which really seems a lot like Forever Knight) and while I’m not sold on the show, the viewing experience is very workable.
Tags: Joost, CBS
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09.19.07
Posted in business, life, tech at 2:37 am by mridley
I saw this article on VentureBeat that Mint, the online personal finance site, has launched. I have noticed press pieces about Mint off and on but I haven’t followed it closely. The idea is that you input your personal financial account information into the system and it then tracks and graphs your personal finances so you can determine where you’re overspending and where all the money really goes.
I haven’t decided yet if I’m all that keen to enter my personal financial login details into their site. Seems like a big target and one that’s as yet unproven in Internet battle. I may wait until the site has been up for a while without any security breaches.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of applying technology to personal finance. Of course this idea isn’t new; Quicken has been around for ages. What I’d like to see are more sophisticated financial modeling algorithms used by institutional investors and money managers made available in personal financial management packages.
I’m not sure what form that would take, exactly. Perhaps using some kind of Bayesian algorithm to compare financial instrument returns as compared to others available in the marketplace given a comparable principal balance? I’m not sure. But I think that technology has yet to finish revolutionizing personal finance; more is to come.
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09.11.07
Posted in life at 11:08 pm by mridley
I have been looking for employment recently as my last contract came to an end. In the process I have been talking to a number of recruiters. Several of them have commented that they have checked out this site, having seen the domain on my email address.
Of course I write entries here with the knowledge that anyone and everyone may read them, granted very few people actually do. But given the unknown audience and how it may impact me personally and professionally in the future, I try to keep this site fairly uncontroversial.
The problem with that is that it frankly isn’t very interesting and thus doesn’t have many readers. My life today is not all that exciting or scandalous but perhaps I’d have higher readership if I did include more about my personal life; yet given the sometimes high responsibility nature of my career I try to present myself across the board as professionally as possible.
I think the “best” personal blog site is Justin Hall’s old links.net. However even that site has become not much more than a billboard today. For a number of years Justin would write quite interesting accounts of his travels and daily life. It made for a compelling read and ultimately helped bring his name into the public consciousness (or at least the consciousness of the digerati).
Alas I am not willing to be as revealing as he was and from time to time I really do wonder what the point of this site is. Maybe some day I’ll take this site down, but for now I’ll continue with my sporadic and infrequent updates.
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08.30.07
Posted in life at 9:34 pm by mridley
This is not my summer for automobiles. My 1993 Crown Victoria had all sorts of problems; there was a coolant leak which had seeped through the spark plugs and gunked up the cylinders with antifreeze. So about $2000 later that was all fixed and while my emissions still failed I spent so much money that I got a waiver to renew my registration. Approximately two weeks after that the transmission overheated and burned up the clutch plates and simultaneously the air suspension gave out in the rear. Being fed up with the car I got rid of it and bought a 1990 Lincoln Town Car.
So far, so good. That was fairly reliable for a month or so, but then the other day I went to start it and the starter wouldn’t turn the engine over. I replaced the battery and was back on the road. But it turns out it wasn’t the battery, it was the alternator. Except, actually it wasn’t the alternator it was a short in the wiring harness. Which caught fire this morning as I was driving to my new job that I started this week.
I’ve never actually driven a car while it’s on fire. It’s not as fun as it might sound. Well it might be more fun if it’s not your car. When it’s your only car it’s less fun.
Luckily someone I knew was passing by when all this happened and she gave me a ride to work. And my other friend has let me borrow his car to get around for this evening. But it remains that I need to fix these electrical issues as I can’t be without a car.
So I called my friend who works at a dealership in the collision repair department to see about getting parts. Well it turns out there are a number of different wiring harnesses all of which are special order items from far away that will not be available before some time next week. So who knows what I’ll do between now and then. It will all work out, but it’s a frustrating way to spend the week and start a new job. Oh well.
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06.15.07
Posted in life at 5:10 pm by mridley
I wrote a month ago that I have been evaluating the Blackberry media player QuickPlayer. I think I’m going to cancel my subscription, as I don’t see the point. From what I can tell the content available on QuickPlayer is not really “premium” - it’s just a few selected podcasts that happen to be aggregated in their interface. I’d rather listen to podcasts on my iPod.
The fact that the audio content is available on my Blackberry I like, as I have my Blackberry with me more frequently than I have my iPod with me. Unfortunately the user experience with QuickPlayer is just not worth paying for. It’ s a streaming podcast system (along the lines of TiVo’s podcast functionality), but there is no rewind or fast forward. If I am interrupted in my listening and inadvertently close the application, I have to start listening to the program again from the beginning. Also, since the content seems to be arbitrary podcasts that the QuickPlayer programmers have selected, why can’t I add my own podcast playlists?
I like the concept behind QuickPlayer and I’m willing to pay for media on my Blackberry, but unfortunately this product is not yet mature enough to warrant my continued subscription fee.
Tags: Blackberry, QuickPlayer
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