Hey, a blog!
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Posted:Jul 7, 2019 11:47 am
Last Updated:Jul 15, 2019 1:09 am 3611 Views
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I probably won't write much here but figured I might post something help people get know a little.
For the past 12 years I have been a sole-custody single parent after the unexpected passing of my wife. My youngest is now over 18, has a job, has his own car, is getting ready to start college in the fall, and I can get a little "" time now. I have two , both are still living home but the oldest only off and on. She will be moving into the dorms college this fall as she transitions from the local community college the University.
Politics: Is boring. My grandfather and father were both small business owners in a rural area about evenly divided politically. Their politics was private between themselves and the voting booth. this I have no idea which party either of them belonged. My views come mostly from my dad. He said "there is more that binds us together as community than divides us through politics and there is no sense in alienating half of the people around you". We took both a right leaning and a left leaning paper when I was a . I once asked my dad why we took two papers. He said "because both are lying to you, mostly lies by omission. So you have to take both papers to find what the other one isn't telling you."
I enjoy travelling but haven't had a chance do much over the past several years. When I was a young man I spent several years in the Army and most of that time was spent in Germany (both what was at the time West Germany and Berlin). In my 20's I often vacationed in Florida, usually in May before the schools let . that time I was living in the Washington DC area. I then moved to Southern California before going back home when my dad became ill with cancer. After he passed, I moved to the "Silicon Valley" area where I have been living since 1996.
Now it is time to get out a bit and enjoy life.
Personality: I am a fairly stereotypical Myers-Briggs ENTP personality type. I don't do dogma very well. "Consensus" doesn't carry a lot of weight with me and I don't feel a need to go along with positions just to be accepted by a group. Thinking more along the lines of that of Richard Feynman gets more respect from me.
Interests: Arts of just about all sorts. History, especially contemporaneous histories of events written at about the time events occurred rather than histories written years later colored by cultural changes that have occurred since. We too often judge past events by today's cultural standards and fail to view them by the cultural standards in place at the time. I tend to go into pretty deep independent research on subjects that interest me when I have the time. One of my interests right now is the conditions in Asia (and Europe, actually) that set the stage for Japan's expansion in Asia prior to World War 2.
I also enjoy the outdoors, tend to like the mountains and forest more than the beach. I also enjoy good food, good wine, h-o-t springs, and the desert night. Oh, and I like girls ... a lot.
I am very open-minded but not so open that my brain falls . I am very tolerant of other points of view and lifestyle choices and do not demand that others make the same choices I do. Just because someone makes a different choice doesn't mean I experience that as invalidating in any way of my choices. I also don't try to "convert" people to my point of view nor alienate people who do not share it. Oh and I do not talk about other people's business or to speak for them so I am not a particularly good source of gossip or a consumer of it.
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The Plague
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Posted:Dec 12, 2020 12:40 pm
Last Updated:Apr 18, 2024 6:26 am 1367 Views
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Well, paraphrase Churchill, we are not at the end of this or even the beginning of the end but with the approval of vaccines, we are at the end of the beginning. It will probably not be until the middle of January that we begin see any impact of the vaccinations but looks promising that life will begin slowly start return normal as we go through spring and into early summer.
The sheltering in place has been difficult for a pretty social person. No more "blues nights" at the local places, everyone hunkered down inside, my scared to death they will kill me accidentally if they were to infect me unknowingly.
The plan now is to get a vaccination at the earliest possible opportunity. I have some work travel to do to Europe and Australia that has been delayed for a year but most of all what I am looking forward to is just getting back to normal and not being afraid to sit with folks and have a chat over a glass of good wine or a meal.
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January 2020
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Posted:Jan 24, 2020 10:41 am
Last Updated:Apr 18, 2024 6:26 am 2098 Views
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I titled this with the date because I don't post here much. One of the things I am open is a partner, both foreign and domestic. the winter time I like go warmer places, maybe Arizona (I like the Scottsdale area) especially during baseball spring training. I like San Diego, too. Hawaii would work too. For foreign I generally go for work and will go Iceland this spring and probably Amsterdam in the summer or fall. In the summer time for domestic , I'm pretty much open anywhere.
There aren't a lot of people near on this site, least are still active. There do appear be a lot of abandoned accounts people haven't logged into for a very long time but if someone is interested and they are within a couple of hours of flying time, I can visit and we can see if something might work.
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I'll be in Amsterdam next week
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Posted:Jul 12, 2019 3:08 pm
Last Updated:Apr 18, 2024 6:26 am 2647 Views
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Leaving on Thursday. If anyone is in the neighborhood, give a shout. working during the but available evenings on Mon, Tue, Wed.
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I hate bureaucracy
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Posted:Jul 12, 2019 10:28 am
Last Updated:Jul 12, 2019 10:28 am 2641 Views
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I don't do dogma well and I especially don't like places where the attitude seems to be that the employees are there to serve the bureaucracy where the bureaucracy should be there to support the employees. So this one place has a travel expense reporting system straight of the Flintstones era. I have spent almost a week trying to get a travel expense report reconciled. Charge a meal in a hotel on the corporate card? The "wizard" automatically categorizes it as a hotel room expense and if you attempt to make it a meal expense, it disallows the reimbursement.
My past employers used Concur or Expensify or something similar where I took a picture of a receipt with my phone, said what it was for, and hit "" and that was it. But no, not with this outfit.
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Boy is off to France
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Posted:Jul 7, 2019 11:08 pm
Last Updated:Dec 9, 2020 9:22 am 2738 Views
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I dropped the boy off at the airport today. He's spending a few weeks of his summer between high school and college doing some vagabonding in Europe. He speaks French (pretty well) and his best friend is French and will also be there for his summer vacation. He's travelling with another friend of his and they'll be going to Spain and Netherlands before my ventures out on his own for 9 days to Monaco and Italy before coming home. When I was his age, I was living in Germany. He went to France last year with his friend's family. His friend's dad works for a French company that has offices here in San Jose and they go back in the summer. They have been coaching my on his French and people compliment him on his pronunciation. Last year he lost his glasses in the English Channel, this year he brought extra contact lenses.
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