Sunday, March 12, 2006

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Giant squid grabs London audience

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Giant squid grabs London audience

Trying to Master Change

I’ve never be good at change, and that’s all that I’ve been doing for the last 2 years.  
  1. Leaving my job of 20+ years and starting another one where I have more responsibility but not as much stress.

  2. Leaving a job where I had friends that I miss, though we never really did any thing together, just as work.

  3. Leaving the financial comfort of a steady paycheck, but never really having money to do the things that I wanted to do.

  4. Leaving my 30’s and entering my 40’s

  5. Leaving the area of my small world/State/County/City and moving 1500 miles from all that I knew.

  6. Leaving Clearwater, FL a gulf beach town and moving to Vernon, NJ, a mountain valley town.

  7. Leaving Vernon, NJ after 8 months and moving to Brick, NJ, a shore/bay town.

  8. Leaving my first new car that I had ever bought, totaled in a junk yard in the Baltimore area, from an accident that could have ended with me losing my wife if the car had not saved her life.

  9. Leaving my only close family, my Mom, in Florida.

  10. Leaving behind my only real lifelong friend, Eric, who was there for me no matter what!
As time is passing on, things were steadily coming under control.  Simmy and I are finally settling into our rental beach bungalow.  We are connecting to our congregation and, according to some people, be coming a vital part of it.  My job is moving along.  I have several enterprise-wide Document Management solutions now under my belt and working on several more. I have been doing IT/Sales support. I took the my company from three stand alone computers to 20 workstations, 2 image servers, and a SBS based main sever that runs SQL, Exchange, Fax, and SharePoint services.  Just getting the users to understand and use the resources on the network has been a challenge. But many are getting it now.  This company has also been supportive of training me.  I have now been certified in Digitech Systems, Legato, and soon Liberty IMS. I will also being go for my CDIA+ certificate shortly.  I also get to ever AIIM convention and Webinar Wednesday. I also attend all the major IT conventions in NYC at the Javits Central or Philadelphia convention center.  Then the latest change happened.  I can’t talk about it all just yet, but yes…  it is once again major change.  In what I hope will be a good way.  And a year from now, I could be where I want/need to be financially.  But also once again I am losing someone that I connected with in the process.  So I will see where all this leads.  

Also for the rest of it, I love this area of the world.  I have mountains just under an hour away.  I have the shore just blocks from the house and the beach just 15 minutes away.  I have seen, up close, black bears, porcupines, ground hogs (woodchucks), and deer by the herds.  I do need to take the time to go and learn about the fishing in the area, discover all the history there is to see in Philadelphia and DC.  Visit NYC for a Chinese dinner in Little China again, see a Broadway play, take a drive up the coast to Boston, New Hampshire, Vermont and into Maine’s Bar Harbor.  In other words, to take the time to see things that I have always wanted to do.  To enjoy life and make myself stop dwelling on the choices I have made and wondering if they were the right ones.  To build myself up spiritually by studying the bible more, making more time for Jehovah, helping out my congregation more.  To become a vital link. To indulge my passions for photography and do those tech projects that I am always going to get to, but never do. To share all this with my wife, through who’s eyes I see the real me.  The one who matters to me more then anything on this earth.  

I have never used this blog in this way before, but I have learned something this week.  I have been reading Wil Wheaton’s blog for what seems like years.  Back in the beginning it was because I was a Star Trek fan, but as I read him I came to realize that he was me with a different background.  I finally got around to listening to some of his podcasts.  I not only enjoyed the day in a life feeling, but also heard his voice speaking about things that have been in my head. The same day in and day out struggle to support my family.  The battle to find creativity in any thing that I do.  Trying to matter in the big scheme of things. It’s not that I am in awe of him. Rather I see him as a peer.  He speaks about things that I do not.

I’ll be doing a lot more personal entries to this blog in the next few weeks.  I’m making it one of my projects that I will stop ignoring.

That’s all for today. More tomorrow. It’s time to crash.

L8rs,

Moleman

Thursday, March 09, 2006

AOL's email tax - charities get reprieve | The Register

AOL's email tax - charities get reprieve | The Register

What's this! another downside to AOL? AOL announced it's new policy of allowing bulk mailers to spam you if they pay AOL enough. Guess that's what the 2 GB of email storage is for when you sign up for a new AOL Instant Messaging accounts is going to be used for.