Categories
Life

I’m a lucky bastard

Yep… I’m lucky.  Sure, you already know I have the smartest, most bee-you-ti-ful wife ever… but that’s not what I’m talking about in this instance.

Dublin is great… but there is some stuff you can’t buy in Ireland (a US power strip, for example).  As a result, when I come back to the states on business I always end up coming back with a shopping list.  This time I had some pretty random stuff on the list.  Being a guy (you know, never asks for directions) I just drove off into Redmond.

Randomly I turned right and hey!  A lighting store, perfect.  I needed 9″ harps to replace some which had been lost in the move.  Trying to drive out of the parking lot I was forced to turn right. A little down the street: hey!  Staples, I need 8.5″ by 11″ sheet protectors… and a power strip.

To make a short story long, by randomly driving around I never should have made it back to the hotel in under three hours with any of the things on my list. 

Swag, booty, haul

It took me 20 minutes and I got everything.  I’m a lucky bastard (did I mention I have a beautiful wife too?)

Categories
Life

Happy New Year!

It’s 2007, you know what that means?  My driver’s license expires this year.  I wonder of the California DMV will send me a new DL to my address in Ireland.

It is also that arbitrary time for a portion of the world to reset their calendars and reset their goals.  Yes, New Year’s resolution time.  Resolutions always feel artificial to me… and yet I cant resist the “clean slate” state they represent.  Here’s some stuff I’m going to do this year:

  • Join the gym (and use it at least twice a week)
  • Take more pictures (at least every other day)
  • Spend time reviewing my pictures (instead of just keeping 100% of them)
  • Get back on the Getting Things Done wagon

One of the things I rarely make the effort to do is to go through my pictures after taking them.  I should really get in the habit of tossing out the crap (I’m a horrible pack rat) and cleaning up the good pictures (below are two different compositions of the same shot, the second removes the distracting window from the bottom… though I’m still not sure which I like better 🙂 ).

Statue picture before editing

Roman statue

I hope everyone has a great 2007!

Categories
Life

Safe at home

We returned home last night from our Christmas trip to Maryland. 


Our trip out was not delayed (as we expected it might be) but our luggage was.  We left Dublin with two bags and arrived in D.C. with one.  Damn Heathrow!  We went the whole week with the baggage system saying “we have no new information on your bag”.  By the end of the week I was sure the bag had been stolen and we’d never see the stuff again (which sucked, Paula had a coat in that bag she really likes). 


When we arrived in Dublin we decided to check with the counter there… lo and behold! Our bag would be arriving tomorrow.  Even better… it arrived tonight!  As a bonus, the cheese and salmon we had packed in the bag as Christmas gifts hadn’t leaked (which would have sucked big-time… Paula’s pillow was in the bag too).


Ahh… vacation is over, we can relax now. 😀

Categories
Life

Five things people don’t… er… didn’t know about me…

So, having tired of chain e-mail, the net has now switched to chain blog posts.


five


So, the game is apparently quite simple, give 5 things that few people know about you, then tag 5 friends to have them follow suit.  Omar has dragged me into this… So here goes:



  1. I wanted to be an actor, a stuntman, a race driver and/or design cars… and no, that wasn’t when I was in 6th grade, it was when I was in college.  I chose UCSD because it was close to Hollywood (well, closer than Toledo, Ohio was) and had a good engineering program (which I thought would be good for designing race cars).  Partway through school I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer, I wanted to be a Psychologist.  Suffice it to say, I didn’t do any of those things.  I do, however, still want to be Paul Newman.
  2. I’m related to Orson Welles, distantly. We have the same great-great-great grandfather… I’m not sure what that makes us.  Family lore also has it that James Hadfield is a distant relative, but that’s unsubstantiated (and probably nothing to brag about).
  3. My feet are a wonder of nature.  I’m 5’9″ and my feet are size 13.  They are also on upside-down: the bottom of them are baby-soft and the tops of my toes have calluses.  Between the size and the extra hair you’d think I was an over-grown Hobbit.
  4. I’m obsessed with solitaire on my cell phone.  It’s how I relax (and give myself carpal tunnel in my thumb).  The result is I’ve learned interesting things like:

    1. If you hold the joystick up it will automatically put cards up into the Ace piles.
    2. If you win a game and watch the cards bounce around, you’ll see there’s a bug, the cards count down from King down to Ace… then the King shows up again.
    3. While the end of game cards are bouncing around pressing “draw” will start stacking them back into the pile.

  5. I hate dry wood in my mouth.  Chopsticks, popsicle sticks, anything.  Gives me the willies big time.  If you’re ever at a Chinese (Japanese, Thai, etc.) restaurant with me you’ll see the first thing I do is dump my chopsticks into my water glass and leave them there until I’m satisfied they’re good an soaked.

There you go, 5 things.  I figure that at some point down the road someone will have to start up a game of “Five more things people don’t know about me”… but until then I’ll have to pass the baton.  



  • I started at ResNova to replace Rob (can you believe it’s been 12 years?), I’m sure he has a tale to tell. 
  • Jason has taken on the awesome responsibility of caring for our good friend Leslie.  There was no application process so I’d like to learn more.
  • For a long time Tami has been my blog “pen pal”.  Let’s hear five things from her (or her cat).
  • Not everyone on the net lives in America… so let’s hear from Casper, a fellow Dublin resident.
  • An last, but not least, to Steve Davis, because I’m sure he has something funny to say (or at least, frightening).

Technorati tags: 5 Things, Five Things

Categories
Life

Lazy Sunday

Last night was the Microsoft Christmas Party (less concern of being PC in a Catholic country) which kept us up a little later than usual.  After sleeping in we started the day feeling productive, having a light breakfast and making a list of things to do. 


The problem of the day, however, ended up being physics.  The pure mass of our couch proved to have entirely too much gravitational pull and we succumbed to the inevitable, curling up for a little TV and a light nap.


Comfy couch
hard to resist


The day wasn’t, however, a complete waste.  We did something we’ve always wanted to do… figure out what the heck this “cricket” thing is all about… roughly.  I’ve studied the basic laws of cricket from the BBC web site and now think I could watch a little bit of the sport and kind of understand what’s happening.  I’m still not sure, however, if I could sit still for the full six hours of a professional test.

Categories
Life

Economist: Ireland is the best place to live in the world

Lighthouse at Hoth

The Economist’s review of the world for 2005 has Ireland ranked as the best place to live in the world based on quality of life indicators.  The US failed to break the top ten but wasn’t far off at 13 in the survey of 111 countries.

You know the reason, right?

Guinness Brewery Entrance

Via BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4020523.stm (thanks for the pointer Laurence!)


Update: A link to the full report thanks to Casper: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf

Categories
Life News

Paula and I made the WSJ

PaulaAndReevesPseudoHedcut.jpg


The Wall Street Journal today had an article about US citizens moving to Ireland and it leads off talking a little about Paula and Me!  It’s really bizarre to see your name in print like that (and amazing to see how fast it gets forwarded around the office here in Dublin). 


If you receive the US edition you can find the article on page B4 of the October 31st issue.  In the European edition it takes up most of page 3.  I encourage you to cut it out, frame it and put it on your wall.


In other news my ego can now be seen from space.


satelliteego.jpg

Categories
Life

A neat bit of fun

DSC_4987.JPG 

Walking home from work on Wednesday (well… walking home from the train) I noticed a sign: “Dublin City Marathon Course Route, expect delays”.  Huh, what do you know?  The Marathon course runs right in front of our house.

Here we are, right between miles 18 and 19:

MarathonMap.jpg

It was very cool.  Lots of people lined the streets and cheered every runner as they went by.  Apparently people line the entire course (the Dublin Marathon is internationally known as “the friendly marathon” 🙂 ).

Categories
Life Weird

It’s official: Lawyers have now ruined childhood

ellen%20tackle.jpg

Not satisfied with taking the fun out of most everything else, lawyers have now turned their attention on that most sacred of childhood pastimes: a good game of tag.  Schools, for fear of being sued by parents, have now started to ban any game in which a child might possibly get hurt.

Lawyers, be forewarned: when I become all-powerful (it’ll happen any day now, I’m sure) I’m going to stick you in a very small room with the guy who invented those wretched plastic clamshell security packages and Corey Feldman.  In that room you will be locked for all time, fed only Oreo cookies (without milk, of course) and forced to listen to a never-ending stream of Celine Dion ballads.

Link to School bans tag, other chase games – CNN.com

Categories
Life Microsoft

How to change jobs… and how not to

While flying home to Dublin from Redmond I was doing a little blog reading (hooray for SAS and airborne broadband) when I came across an interesting post on Dare’s blog regarding the Microsoft policy of needing permission from your manager before you can interview or a different position within MS.  It’s a policy that leads to a certain amount of discomfort for any employ who wants to change jobs.  Going to your manager for permission is tough, but here’s a promise I’ve made to myself which helps me (and works if I’m at Microsoft or not):

I’ve promised myself I won’t ever leave my current role – I will always go to a new role.

Here’s the big issue for me: when I’m fed up with work, my boss, my hours or whatever, any job will look good to me.  As soon as I’m in flight mode, trying to run away from my current position I am super-likely to be simply abandoning the frying pan.  There are always times at work where I’ll be pissed at my boss, annoyed at my coworkers and/or think the product has no chance of succeeding.  When I get to that point I always take a deep breath and try to figure out if a) it’s something I can correct and b) if it’s something I think will last.  It sounds pretty silly advice,  but don’t ever leave a job you hate.

So, what should someone do if they hate their job?  In the ideal world one will have picked a cool group at a cool company working on a cool product.  Chances are there’s something you like about your job, find it and focus on it.  You also have to decide you’re not going to adopt a victim mentality (it’s your bosses fault… your coworkers stole the credit… it will ship if test would find the bugs).  Don’t ever think that you can’t make your situation better because that will sink the ship fast.  Figure out what is broken and what part of it you can fix.  Once everything is sunshine and roses you can move on (sure, I’m an idiot… but I’m an optimist).

I am totally comfortable at any point in time going to my boss and saying “Hey, I came across this internal job listing and it totally sounds like something I’d really like to do.  Things are going great here but I’d really like the opportunity to go do this cool thing.  May I please?”  I may actually be happy in my current role or I may not… but if I actually honor my promise to myself I’m actually highly likely to be in a role I enjoy before I leave for one I’m going to enjoy even more.

So, what does this have to do with the Internal hiring policies?  Here’s the thing: I feel if my manager thinks I am a good employee and honestly excited about going to a new role they will be disappointed to see me go but genuinely interested in helping me succeed.  If I get the job I wanted my manager will be happy because they know I’m going to an exciting opportunity.  If I don’t get the job my manager will be happy because they don’t loose me.


Afterword
I’ve been at Microsoft for almost ten years and been a manager on and off for roughly half that time.  I’ve applied for internal positions and moved groups.  I’ve also applied for jobs and not been hired.  I’ve had employees request permission and I’ve granted it every time.  Microsoft has policies about when a transfer can be blocked or delayed and are very reasonable.  Always if your manager blocks your move and you think it’s unreasonable you should talk to your HR rep as they can help you to work through it.