There are myriad reasons to blog. However, the biggest reason should be because you want to. You feel there is something you need to share with others, and that the best way of doing that is via your blog. Maybe it’s a collection of recipes, maybe it’s a series of tutorials, maybe it’s mindless ramblings …
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Category:personal
on Eschewmenical
I am a contributor on Eschewmenical – the blog for Christianity.SE. My first contribution is my testimony of being saved.
fingerprints
The final stage of bureaucratic folderol to endure is Thursday when we get our fingerprints done for the USCIS check. Root for a smooth day 🙂
dossier done
Our adoption dossier is done (excluding USCIS approval)! Woot! Now to wait.
studying Matthew
For the past several months I have been meeting with 1-3 other guys at the Panera in Nicholasville to study the book of Matthew. It has been an amazing time, and I can’t overstate how much I have both learned, and grown through meeting with D, E, & P 🙂 Going methodically through the book …
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dossier
Had a great update this afternoon – one document we were convinced was wrong for our dossier has been verified to be acceptable! Woohoo.
golly, batman
My wife posted recently about the excitement of compiling our dossier. Last night we found out we are two documents (and immigration approval) away from document authentication and translation. At that point, we are going to be in the queue awaiting a referral. Woot!
2 years
Two years ago, at about 1430 EDT, I married the girl of my dreams – I love you, Christina 🙂
a new blog!
My wife and I have just started a new blog together, Growing in Faith and Family, to document the process of adoption which we have just started. We have chosen Ethiopia as our source country, and have begun the 15-20 month process (including wait time) to enlarge our family via adoption. We would be happy …
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bagel [thin] burgers
Several years ago I had the good fortune to have a burger paired with cream cheese on a rye bun. And a few years later I had a burger on a bagel. I’ve also enjoyed bagels on Arnold sandwich thins. Combining the best of both of these ideas, try bagel burgers (or on bagel thins) …
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groupon is no good!
I think I might have to boycott Groupon: a few months back they had a deal for an introductory flight, first ground school time, and pilot log book for about 50% off the normal rate from the local flight training company, NexGen Aviation. I arrive at the airport a little before 1400 for my flight …
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using social media at/for/with work
I am very curious to know how people utilize social media in relation to work: blogging tweets etc I know it’s not horribly scientific, but if you’d be willing to participate in this inquiry, please leave a comment. I’ll be putting up a more formal poll in the coming days. Thanks!
piano
After a very long time of looking, we have found a piano to add to our home – and my wife is quite excited! It’s a spinet style, which is perfect for our living room. And it helps displace the tv which all too often can become the focal point of a home, family, and …
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ground school
A few months ago one of the Groupons available in Lexington was for the first hour of flight along with an initial ground school lesson at the private pilot training company next to the airport. This Saturday from 1300-1500 I’ll be taking ground school. Woot! I’ve known a lot of pilots in my life, and …
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a new website
I’ve had a domain sitting [basically] unused for several years, but have finally found a purpose. Along the lines of freshnews, I have launched an rss aggregator/launch service at datente.com. There are several categories of feeds (imperfectly broken-up, but it’s what makes sense to me) that display in quasi random order. And on the front …
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out with the old…
…and in with the new. On the 31st of December of last year (boy that sounds weird to say “last year” and it only be 4 weeks ago), I traded-in my 2004 Ford Escape which had served me well for 4.5 years (including racking-up nearly 90k miles in the time I had it (and for …
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welcome to 2012
If the Mayans are right, in 11 months (give or take), all our debts disappear. But since they’re not (more accurately, it’s merely the next roll point on their calendar like 2000 was for us), we have a host of things to look forward to this year and beyond: a presidential election, graduations, births, new …
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host migration
As mentioned recently, I am about to be switching hosts from my current VPS provider, Tektonic. I have found a non-VPS ISP that meets the requirements I’d previously outlined, and have everything but the MySQL databases for WordPress instances sync’d to the new host. With a bit of luck, the migration will be invisible to all 4 …
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doing technical phone screens
Related to a previous post on career development, I thought it could be interesting to look at one approach to the technical screen that I have used over the past few years when interviewing candidates. for folks with no “real” experience yet, I ask them to rank themselves on a few key technologies on the …
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preliminary update on kirk’s crash
All who knew Kirk Aragon are still in shock over his sudden and tragic loss Sunday. The N&O called me this week for a brief interview, and some of what I had to say is in an article published today by Aliana Ramos, along with the following preliminary information about the crash: The private-plane crash …
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kirk aragon – lost 25 september 2011
Kirk Aragon was a former direct coworker, and long-time colleague of mine. Kirk died Sunday doing what he loved to do. I first met Kirk a few days after starting Opsware in January of 2007. He was one of the “named resources” for dealing with our biggest customer, EDS. Kirk’s professionalism, friendliness, and over-powering happiness that …
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effective error messages
I had a recent conversation with an old classmate, and he stated that using asserts when programming Java is useless because an exception can generate more useful information. Exceptions are only “more useful” if you are a developer or perhaps supporting an application. When a bug report or support case needs to be created, supplying the “raw” …
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changing hosts
After several years of being hosted at tektonic, it has come time to move hosts. My current web server is running 32-bit CentOS 4.9. Eek! That is old. Since upgrading to a new release of CentOS is now becoming more urgent, and upgrading is really reinstalling a new OS, I’ve started to look at new hosts. …
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technical career development
Career development. Career path. Development opportunities. Taking your career to the next level. Terms and phrases we all hear and pretty much pass over in our day-to-day lives. Right up until we want to move to a new/better job or performance reviews roll around. But what do they mean, and how can you advance your …
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the ticket smash, raw metrics, and communication – how to have a successful support organization
When I worked at Opsware, and for a while after HP bought us, we used to try to have once- or twice-a-week meetings for each support group wherein we would bring our most difficult cases (with the difficulty being determined by the case owner), and have an opportunity for everyone on the team to ask questions, …
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