Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there in Internet-land! I’m feeling a bit like Lewis and Clark having traveled 3000 miles from home and settling down for a long, cold winter with unfamiliar locals. Well, my plight isn’t quite so intimidating and my voyage was nowhere near as dramatic — but you get the point. Anyway, I’ve been in my new town for two-and-a-half weeks and every single day I’ve had dozens of moments which have reminded me to be happy and thankful. The folks I’ve met here in Moscow are amazingly sweet and not in that syrupy, insincere way. Just down home folks who seem to share an innate belief that we are all valuable as human beings. It is nice, I’ll tell ya.

Life moves rather slowly here and progress is measured and deliberate. The original Pita Pit location burned down months ago and they have been building out its new location for most of that time. The University of Idaho campus is a peaceful study in non-construction. It is awfully nice to not have to compete with back-end loaders and dump trucks and jackhammers just to get to your workplace. And there is a distinct lack of that jaded cynicism which builds as you realize that your employer would rather spend $500 million on building renovations instead of providing you with a reasonable 6% cost-of-living adjustment.

2007 was an extremely stressful and difficult year for me. I blindly walked into a home renovation that blew up in my face and took away every dime I ever had. I endured caustic battles with my family members over the project management of said home renovation. I watched in fear as my available pool of close friends shrunk, most succumbing to pressures of marriage, family or career. And I suffered great bouts of self-doubt and depression as I was turned down by one good company after the other. I’m sure other stuff happened as well, but it was peanuts compared to that listed above.

Yet despite all the trouble and worry, I am thankful. For the record, I am extremely happy and thankful. While I still have lingering headaches back in North Carolina (house to sell, lawsuit to settle, etc), I am finally on a path that I can respect and appreciate. And I have not felt so free since I first went off to college. Besides having to please my new employer and making sure that my dog is fit and healthy, I have no responsibilities. This thought is always at the forefront of my mind and I am constantly seeking to further simplify my life. It has been a hard fought battle, but I’m finally starting to feel as if I am winning.

So, I am thankful for my awesome new job and the opportunity it provided me to enhance my career. I am extremely thankful that I actually get to do work which I find interesting and challenging. I am extremely thankful that on my busy days at work I can return home feeling like I learned something valuable. I am extremely thankful that I found a nice, small community to settle into which seems to acknowledge and appreciate my presence. I am extremely thankful to be in good health and that my loved ones are also doing well. I am extremely thankful that I am here — here on Earth — alive, employed, loved, missed, and still able to tie my own shoelaces.

For all those whom have helped me and supported me over the years – Thank you. I am extremely thankful for your assistance and patience. Along with my parents, I owe all of my success to you and it will not be forgotten. I am always happy to lay eyes upon old friends. Of which, several are already making plans to come visit me in Idaho. This is turning out to be a very good move for me. And I am thankful every day.

Purgative

The cat is finally out of the bag. I am moving to Idaho today and thus my life in Chapel Hill is coming to a close. It has been a pretty good decade, but it is time for me to move on. New town, new job, new challenges! I hope to be writing more about it soon, but I also think I am going to be very busy at the new gig. Well, the moving truck is here. Gotta go!

Brand New Kitchen

Well, the kitchen is finally installed. Ten months after the renovation began and only eight months beyond the scheduled move-in date! Not too shabby!!

If you are interested in learning more about the house and how you can purchase this newly renovated Chapel Hill estate, then visit www.726Bradley.com.

Progress

Finally we get to see what the cabinets look like when installed!

Countertops to be installed next week…

In Other News

I didn’t mean to be so grouchy in my previous post, but that is how I was feeling at the time. The Summer-Long Kitchen Project has really been frustrating, especially considering that I’ve been in renovation mode for almost ten months now. Hopefully the time of living with no kitchen is coming to an end (soon) and I can be done with home projects for a while.

August in North Carolina was hot. We had successive days of triple-digit temperatures and have been suffering a drought for quite a while. During the extreme heat, I noticed that the gas mileage on my Honda Element dipped to an all-time low of 16.7 MPG. Usually the vehicle gets between 22 and 24 MPG. I knew that a vehicle would get worse gas mileage under extreme conditions, but it was my eloquent engineer friend Nathan who said “hotter air is less dense by a linear factor, so you use higher throttle settings for the same output you’d have needed four months ago, but the stoichiometric ratio doesn’t change.” This combined with constant use of air conditioning would help drag us down to the sub-20 MPG club.

Also, the drought has been causing animals of all kinds to seek out other sources of food and water as their environs run dry. I have seen lots of deer on my property (usually, but not exclusively, at night) and found the dried skin shed by some snakes. Overall, I’d say that the brutal summer heat has been tough for everyone. Now into September, we are just starting to see relief. Ooohh, the mountains sound good right now! Time to plan a trip to Asheville. (Amy, I’m crashing on your couch! FYI.)

Until then, please join me in praying for rain!

The Silence Of The Cabinets

The new kitchen cabinets arrived exactly a week ago. In that time, they have taken up a lot of space in my living room and done nothing for the storage/organizational potential of my kitchen. Although Lowe’s promised a ‘cradle-to-grave’ sort of project management, I have had to chase them around at each stage and make literally dozens of phone calls each week. No one ever calls you back and when you call them, you can expect to be on-hold for hours. Courtesy is not the hallmark of the construction industry and its associated building services.

One cabinet was built incorrectly and somehow got past Quality Control. Another cabinet and a piece of toekick molding did not show up at all. I now have to wait another week for those to show up before they will even schedule my install. Want to re-do a home? Here is my advice. Save yourself a lot of trouble and worry — Never renovate anything! Just buy something functional that you can afford. Otherwise you may wind up with more problems than you’ve got time to solve.

Lonely Appliances

The folks at Lowe’s said I had to have all the appliances on-site so that the cabinet installers could make sure things fit properly. For the past few weeks, I’ve had these sad, lonely appliances sitting around going unused. A gas range that can’t cook. A dishwasher that can’t clean. A sink that doesn’t exist. And a refrigerator that can’t produce filtered water & ice (because it needs the sink installed first).

Kitchen Cabinet Sonata No. 1

I am walking on Cloud 9 today because I finally got to order my new kitchen cabinets and countertops!! And it only took two weeks of going to Lowe’s every day for hours at a time to get this done!! When I walked out of the store after having put in my final orders for everything, I was radiant with joy. Then I got in the car and my iPod was playing one of the pieces from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. So there I was driving home, beaming and bouncing my head from side-to-side as if I were directing the orchestra with my head movements. It was rad!

A functional kitchen here someday will be!

Virtualize Me

So here I am in New York City attending the 2007 Virtualization Conference (a part of the larger 2007 SOA World Expo) and trying to learn a bit more about the future of enterprise computing. I had not done any traveling in a while and also had not been to a conference in ages, so I’m feeling very lucky to be here. And while this is essentially the premier SOA/Virtualization conference in the States, I still find the ambiguity of conference speakers to be frustrating.

I am so used to hands-on techie learning (a la SANS Institute) that to hear everything abstracted and spun into business-speak often leaves me less than satisfied. Thankfully, the speakers are not solely focused on plugging their companies and products. And from what I’ve heard so far, most of the large vendors are working together (via a SOA Best Practices Working Group) to make all of our lives easier in the future. (*fingers crossed*)

Regardless, New York City is beautiful right now and I’m enjoying it as much as possible. Nice sunny days and warm nights without the brutal humidity that usually keeps folks locked up in their air conditioned spaces. As a bonus, I got to take in a good portion of the massive Gay Pride Parade that took place yesterday. It was totally awesome to see so many happy dancing and smiling people flooding the city. When I get home I will post my photos to flickr, so please check back for that link.

US Postal Stamp Futures

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am totally into financial market analysis. And as the sharp analysts acknowledge, there are markets everywhere. Some of these markets go unearthed for decades until someone like Bill Gates or Donald Trump figures out how to make money off of them. Other markets are so large and encompassing that they are right in front of our faces, yet we often fail to acknowledge them.

Last week I went to buy some stamps from the US Post Office. When I ordered, the young lady asked if I wanted “The Forever Stamps” to which I replied “What is that?” Well, the Postal Service has finally figured something out. People absolutely hate the fact that USPS keeps raising the price of stamps, but never seems to add anything of value to either their service or to their customer service offerings. People also seem to abhor having to purchase new, more expensive books & rolls of stamps every year or face the nightmare of matching one, two, or three-cent stamps to their existing, now-non-compliant stamps.

Viola! The Forever Stamp is born!! They cost the exact same price as the 41-cent stamp, yet the Post Office makes the outlandish claim that “These stamps will work forever — no up charges, no extra stamps to buy.” I was inspired by this massive technological advance in USPS technology and at the same time dumbfounded by the fact that one stamp could remain functional forever, while the ones sitting next to them will be useless in 12-18 months. “Yes, I will take the Forever Stamps,” I said in the carefully balanced voice of a hypnotist.

Since that fateful day at the Post Office, I have spent countless hours marveling at this bold, unexpected maneuver by the USPS bean counters. Yet often I wonder “Did they do the math right?” I mean, a speculative buyer could literally make millions in future trading on the Forever Stamp market.

If we bought just $100,000 of these Forever Stamps, then in 10 years we could reap profits near $1.7 Million (based on current upward stamp cost projections). We all know that stamp prices go up. None of us knows why exactly, seeing as they occupy the same musty buildings and employ the same curmudgeonly staff from year-to-year. Highly doubtful that any of their overhead costs mushroom at a rate comparable to the stamp prices. Thus, via this estimation, Forever Stamp futures is a strong place to stow away equity for a rainy day.

Who would like to go in on this guaranteed money-maker with me?