The Moore’s

My friend Alan Sauk had his 40th Birthday recently. I didn’t take as many pictures as I wanted to, but here are a few…

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We had a great three days. We found a great new bar cal Tony’s Island Bar where We hung out for a while. In the meantime tone of our neighboring fire departments came in and got mildly rowdy…

Here’s Jen & Jarod looking happy…
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Then I walked around a while and looked at some equipment.
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We’re off to Wildwood without the kids for the first time. Looking forward to a couple of days of unbridled fun with 10,000 of New Jerseys most selfless people.

Its a little after 7 AM and I’m listening to the giddy sounds of the kids getting ready for their first day of school. Katie is going into 8th grade and Victoria 5th. Somehow we have managed to keep them both excited about going back, starting fresh and the excitement of learning. Or, maybe its just the excitement of change (any change). They certainly seemed to have a fantastic summer this year. A new house with new things to do may have contributed, but they are happy and giddy today in a way that only a return to seeing friends and teachers can create.

In a few weeks (or days) the happy mornings may give way to cries of “Do I have to go to school?” but for today its a great way to start out!

WOW, I have been an IT professional for almost 20 years now. And Although I find this thought alternately depressing, scary, unbelievable and exciting, I have somehow managed to avoid the future for all this time. My definition of the future is that horrid 7 letter word “Manager”. Somehow I have managed to eshew project plans, budgets, deliverables, production support and everything associated with “ultimate” responsibility for much of this past 20 years. I’m not saying I haven’t spend my share of weeks working over 120 hours. I think anyone in IT this long has had their share of those. I’ve also had time where I had to support the clients from hell. But overall I have managed to shift responsibilities often enough that I never had to settle down and get upset about what I was doing or where my future lay. The last 3 years at my previous employer were closest to driving me insane and out of IT, but not because of anything bad that happened but rather because of being lost in the soup, so to speak.

Now I have a new job and I really rather like it, and the company. It is definitely different than anything I have done before, but some of what this job entails really distresses me. Not a frightened scare out of your mind way, but rather because it seems I am on the trail I have feared traveling more than anything else in my career. The management trail. However, at this exeact moment it really seems unavoidable. As an industry observation I believe that their is now an inevitable downward spiral that has been created by IT offshoring and that this is going to continue to force many people (not just me) to make the management decision. Now, and for the foreseeable future, the other option is to find some entirely new vocation. I see evidence of this everyday with friends and past co-workers switching out of IT.

Since I still enjoy this field enough I am not going to give up on it quite yet. It isn’t whether or not I have given real thought to getting out of IT altogether, as I have, but the jury is still out on this one and only time will tell. In the meantime I have options.

Anyway, my real point is that I am not sure I really want to do all this responsible management stuff. Somehow watching the people that work for me or planning and evaluating their careers doesn’t have the same allure that working with new and exciting technology has had. Developing Project plans that rely on the strengths and foibles of others scares me. A future of constant politicing in order to make sure everyone (or most people) stay happy is a daunting challenge. One that requires a certain dexterity and savoir faire that I am not sure I possess. Its a grand game, one that I am naive at, and in fact I’ve been rather blissful in my ignorance for it for all of this time.

Why would I want to change? That is the question, and I am still contemplating the answer.

We have lived in the Historic District of Hope for about the last 15 years. That Home is now up for sale and we have been able to move to a slightly more secluded spot with plenty of room for Mary, the kids, the dog and me.

We love the community where we live and both of the kids are doing great in the schoool system here. We are all very active in the comunity and it really is a wonderfully safe and secure place to raise a family.

There are some pictures here

So this Sunday was perhaps one of the most beautiful weather days we have had this summer. Normally I’d be doing yard work, or would like to be hiking one of the mountains of western New Jersey (which I really don’t do much anymore). However, I wanted to make sure the kids got to NYC at least one day this summer and we the city is certainly more enjoyable when it isn’t 90 and 90.

We had a purpose and wanted to go see all things egyptian in NY. We took the ferry, went across down and walked from 56th street up to 86th in Central Park. The park is really one of the best features of NY because from most places you really can’t see the city through the trees. We walked up the the rear of the Metropolitan Museum to see the oldest manmade structure in the United States. An obelisk that was originally erected in Heliopolis Egypt in 2600 BC by Pharoah Tutmoses II. Around 26BC it was moved by the Romans to Alexandria, where it stood for 1900 years until it was given to William Vanderbuilt as a gift for New York City. How it got to the city and Central Park is a story in itself, but it has been standing in the Park since 1880 when it was the highest point it in the city.

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All of the news articles I have seen in the past 24 hours talking on the subject of Still governor McGreevey in New jersey are focusing on his statements, rather than the facts. Sure he is gay, sure he had an affair. Many people in many other areas of life face these situation every day. Foremen, laborers, CEOs, Presidents all have indiscretions, and the American people tolerate, or have at least have become anaesthetized to such questionable behavior. I agree that much of this is just human nature, but those elected to represent and govern us ARE held to a higher standard because their position and responsibility demand it.
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I haven’t posted in well over 2 weeks. The first few days things were just boring and there wasn’t anything worth posting. However for the past eleven (11) days I’ve been thnking about what to post about my dad. I’m still thinking about it, actually, because there are so many things I could say. For right now lets clarify that he died on the 24th of July, 2004. His death was completely unexpected, unanticipated and will have a long term impact on my life and outlook on everything.

My mom passed away about 19 months ago, and during the time in between I tried to get closer to my father. I wanted to become his friend as well as his son. For reasons beyond my understanding this did not happen and instead we wound up farther apart than we ever were. I know that my mom’s death affected him more than he ever let on, and even though he was in generally good health, and had no problem taking care of himself, I think maybe he became lost in trying to deal with the way things happened.

My father and I never had more than a minimal Father/Son relationship and we never became friends as adults. This may be in part because of his upbringing and beliefs, I’ll never know for sure. I’ll always love him, I’ll miss him also, but you should know that I missed him while he was alive as well because we had no real relationship, and I wanted one.

Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll probably write about a few of the following things, and why they were so. It might be today or maybe over the coming days and weeks. Whether anyone will care about or read them I can’t say.

• My dad was billiant, one the smartest people most people ever met
• I have primarily good memories of my dad from childhood and bad ones from my adult life
• He loved me but he could never accept me as an adult, and so I couldn’t like him.
• He had more people he called family than anyone I ever knew, but the word family had no significant meaning to him
• I hadn’t spoken with my dad in six (6) months, and why I am still ok with that

I haven’t posted anything recently, there have been some family emergencies. I have something in the draft state.

Please check back soon…

I may not be happy about the state of the Presidential election and choices, but I have made up my mind who am not voting for.

I spent almost 20 years of my life in the Commonpoor of Taxachusetts. I lived through the “Nixon 49 - Massachussetts -1″ Bumper stickers during the McGovern run in ‘72. (I don’t know how its possible, but you still see people with that on their cars :shock:)

Anyway, back to thed point of this post. I volunteered to help out at the RNC in NY next month and the orientation takes place tomorrow. I’m not sure what their criteria was or how they are handling all of the security aspects of this, but I am going to NYC tomorrow night for an orientation session where I guess they are going to tell us all about this. I’m not doing this because I am pro president Bush:oops:, rather its because I actively support any type of political activity, and I happen to be reasonable close to NY.

More information will certainly follow on this topic

This morning I am meeting with our CIO. I have found a few articles that were interesting this one and an older one. From what I’ve heard he is quite a guy and I’m looking forward to the meeting. The project I am leading was mentioned here , so…, its probably important to leave a good impression this morning.

On an entirely different topic, this has to be the funniest and most poignant politcal animation I have seen to date. Sadly, this pretty much says it all about the current state of the US presidential campaign. Personally it doesn’t matter which candidate I’m in favor of, or which you support. You’ll probably agree with everything in this satire.

So I was really really looking forward to collecting at least one unemployment check in between jobs. All these years of paying in and I get severed from Altria and a I have almost a week in between jobs. So I went online to collect NJ unemployment and then today filled in the form for weekly benefits. I guess people make too much money nowadays because working 2 days my last week and three my first at the new job I got disqualified for a check. I’m sorry but that just really pissed me off. F*&^g government :mad:.

So I’m not sure what is going on but my work email communications could become a pia. Some of my friends may have already become targets of their spam filtering although I have not had this confirmed, and at least one source has denied this happens. From one source I was told that they do not want personal correspondence taking place from the workplace. Since I draw such a nebulous line between work and personal this is going to be interesting. I send questions and get valuable feedback from non-office people on technical questions all the time. Isn’t knowledge sharing and its effects part of the what has made our professional spheres of influence and our cumulative knowledge so valuable and our relationships so beneficial. If I can’t find a way around this I am going to shoot myself.

So today I had employee orientation at my new job. So many times its just the same old thing, but Tiffany & Co.’s orientation had a new twist at the end. Everyone had to learn how to tie a Tiffany bow. I kid you not… So in case you ever want to tie one, here is how:

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Hold box so that Tiffany & Co. appears vertically.
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Our new Kitty is named Bailey. He is a cameo dollface persian. He is absolutely the funniest cat. Our other two just kind of tolerate him, but he won’t stop thinking that their tails are his toys. Here a few shots from when we first got him.

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The breeder still has a few from the litter that are available.

I was unemployed for a total of 4 days. I started at Tiffany & Co today. They have been really great to deal with through the past 7 weeks since I initially interviewed. I am going to be a project leader for them on some key initiatives over the next 2 years.

Proving that IT is the smallest community I have ever known, one of the people I used to work with at my last job now sits right behind me

Here are a few pics of the fireworks set off at our lake associaton on the 4th. The show lasted for nearly 45 minutes, and the kids were totally amazed that we were sitting 100 feet away from one of the best fireworks displays I have ever seen.

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I have obtained a new hosting service that seems to be one of the best I’ve encountered. Only time will tell. Anyway, I now have a real photo gallery service up and running on my site. I am using coppermine and you can see my implementation here.

I hope that soon (in the next few days) I will have the gallery completely integrated with this blog using a plugin for wordpress that is available at idahocline.info

Today is my last day working at 7 Campus Drive. While there I have worked for:

• Nabisco
• Kraft
• Phillip Morris Management Corp
• Altria Corporate Services
• TEC Works LLC

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