While the new year is certainly off to a big bang, the holidays did provide some time to rest, reflect and recharge. I started this blog back in March 2009 with absolutely no idea where it would end up in the long run. So far so good – lots of traffic and very positive feedback to date suggests there is something of interest to others here. As you can see, I want this blog to reflect me as a real person talking to you as a real person…while giving you the opportunity to add your thoughts into the mix as well. Pushback is very welcome (encouraged, actually) and I’d like to note that I have moderated/censored/deleted absolutely no comments beyond the inevitable pure spam.
A related concern I had on day one was around the potential loss of privacy. Let me thank you for making that a complete non-issue. I have gotten to know quite a number of you reasonably well through post-stimulated email exchanges, which has been really great. Upon reflection, I am now comfortable opening up a bit further…
First, some obligatory contact details
- This blog’s About page, written way back in March 2009
- My Linked-In profile (shoot me an invite if you know me)
- My Twitter feed (newish as of Feb 2010)
- My Flickr photo feed (also newish as of Feb 2010)
As for the latter two items, my social web experiment continues to expand. I am hoping to “tweet pictures” from around the world as I travel (and as soon as I can get my iPhone to stop dropping GPS co-ords upon upload) among other interesting things. Question: Is all this of any value? Answer: Absolutely – by going out on a limb I have met a lot of folks I otherwise wouldn’t have, and have had some great educational conversations to boot.
This post isn’t meant to be about work. So let me just say I enjoy my job as a key member of a small team that makes a huge difference, and leave it at that.
I enjoy traveling and meeting diverse customers a lot…except for the time away from family and the stress of managing my bursting inbox.
I grew up in Seattle Washington, went to school in Pullman Washington and have worked in Rochester Minnesota, Boca Raton Florida, Austin Texas (twice), Redmond Washington and Cambridge UK. My wife says I have itchy feet! BTW, the picture at the top is a bit dated (which I prefer; you may have gotten a more personal Christmas email with a newer picture) but the kids and wife are still great.
I am currently running roughly 25 miles per week, have been on a (very successful but gentle) diet for 6 months, and intend to rid myself of a few more bad habits during 2010. I read everything I can get my hands on except user manuals – a typical week includes a huge amount of articles from web sources (e.g. EE Times, The Register, Microprocessor Report, NY Times, CNN, some blogs, some RSS feeds etc), the Financial Times, the Economist, a (nearly always non-fiction) book or two, and the Cambridge newspaper.
My wife says I love my gadgets – there are way too many to list, but they do include an Atom netbook. I like photography, but am comparably terrible at HDR relative to a gentleman in Austin (amazing!).
The family and I love to travel together on holiday; so far we have been to Paris, Venice, Athens, all over the UK (!!!), Istanbul, Budapest, and Brussels. We are looking forward to Dublin and Jerusalem 1H 2010.
Random ice-breaking factoids: Slightly INTJ, married 18 years, coffee-aholic, a sometimes windsurfer, *had* a BMW, shaper, think in broad brush strokes and then fill in detail, too nice of a guy, an obsessive planner and scheduler, can’t sit still, million+ miles in the air, amateur student of psychology, always up to new things (iPhone developer at the moment), massive amount of small-change foreign currency mixed together in my backpack, ready to roll-up my sleeves and jump in…
…other than that, I am pretty boring!
