Geezer

There are 384 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 31 of 39).

Highlights of 2010: changing jobs

The year 2010 was special in one very important way: I landed my dream job. It rescued me just in time from the slowly maddening existence I had at my last job.

First off, let me say that the company I used to work at wasn’t all bad. In fact, it’s one of the top-ranked places to work in the country. There were bagels and fruit on weekday mornings and beer Friday afternoons. The benefits were good, too. All of that would’ve been great had I not been in the department I was in, where sweatshop-like schedules were the norm.
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Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy

Fifty years ago today, almost to the minute, John F. Kennedy was wrapping up his famous inaugural speech. I listened to it again today and it still inspires.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivered his only inaugural address at 12:51 (ET) Friday, January 20, 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office administered by Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Kennedy began his speech at 12:51 (ET) Friday, 20 January 1961, immediately after taking the presidential oath of office.

The address is 1364 words and took 13 minutes and 59 seconds to deliver, from the first word to the last word, not including applause at the end, making it the fourth-shortest inaugural address ever delivered. It is widely considered to be among the best presidential inauguration speeches in American history.

via Inaugural address of John F. Kennedy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Desert Storm 20 years later

USS Elliot (DD-967) in North Arabian Gulf, circa 1998


Sunday was the 20th anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm. Hard to believe it’s been that long.

When Desert Storm started, I was in the Navy and spending a week in training at NSGA Imperial Beach, which was far closer to vacation than war. My ship, the USS Elliot (DD-967), had just come out of the yards for long-needed maintenance so the ship was pierside at the time and the crew was taking advantage of the time ashore to do some training. Like a lot of Americans, my experience of the fighting came from CNN, though I had the advantage of being able to read classified intelligence reports as the war raged.
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Highlights of 2010: politics

The year 2010 was one full of more political stuff for me, and by that I mean the stuff outside of my Parks board and East CAC activities. With these two Raleigh civic activities I do my best not to lobby or persuade for one decision or another. I simply try my best to represent my “constituents.” There were a few notable legislative issues where I was an active proponent or opponent last year: all of them above the city level.

First up was a trip to Washington, DC to the Clean Energy, Jobs, and Security Forum as part of the Operation Free group of veterans who are pushing for changes in America’s energy policy. In January I flew into DC with other vets for a day of media training. I spent the following day in the Dirksen Senate building, starting off with speeches by Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Lindsay Graham, and other leading clean-energy advocates.
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Highlights of 2010: helping out the community

It was a productive year for helping out in the community.

The biggest and most rewarding thing I did as the CAC chair was help organize the first East Raleigh Community Day event along with Ronneil Robinson, Raleigh Police, Raleigh Parks, WakeMed, and others. It was so much fun seeing everyone out and having a good time. I had a silly grin on my face all day long.

Part of the Community Day celebrations included the grand opening of the Police Department Field Office in the Raleigh Boulevard Food Lion shopping center. This was the result of an initiative I took two years ago to work with the city and the property owner to get it done. Now the shopping center is thriving, new businesses moving in, and the neighborhood has a nice local place to shop.
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25 years of compact discs

Photo by Arun Kulshreshtha

This past Christmas marks the 25th anniversary since I got my first compact disc player. I don’t remember exactly what brand it was. Maybe a Teac. [Update: It was a JVC.] It was the single-disc variety and didn’t do much error-correcting, if I recall. It lasted for years, though. I remember it still spinning discs into 1995 or so.

Word when they came out was that CDs would become as affordable as albums were (~ $10) once their manufacturing reached a certain scale. Like a lot of things the music industry says, it turned out to be lies. The suits in the industry chose to maintain the high prices of CDs even as their manufacturing costs dropped through the floor.
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Capt. Honors and his videos

Capt. Owen Honors

When I first heard about the controversy over Capt. Owen Honors and the videos he made when he was Executive Officer of the carrier USS Enterprise (CVN-65), I immediately thought of the irreverent videos made by my captain and senior leaders right before our ship would pull into a foreign port. They usually had some costumes in it or a skit of some sort. Looking at the same horizon, the same haze-gray paint, or the same windowless compartments for months on end can make you crazy, so adding a little humor is a good thing. Especially if it conveys important information in a compelling way.
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Highlights of 2010: Parks board

Lions Park Playground Dedication

This year marked the start of my second term on Raleigh’s Parks, Recreation, and Greenways Advisory Board (a.k.a. PRGAB). Service on this board has led to an amazing set of friendships and a greater understanding for all our Parks department does.

It has been challenging but rewarding work. The board meets every month, and each member is also expected to serve on one or more committees. My committee of choice is to act as liason to Mordecai Historic Park, which is a mile away from our home.
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Highlights of 2010: weather wrap-up

Even though I’ve only had my weather station graphing on the Internet since December, it has actually been gathering weather data all year long. Let’s look at the highs and lows, weather-wise, for 2010.

The year 2010 was an exceptionally hot year, with more 90°F + days than any other (the official total was 91 [PDF]). The MT.Net weather station marked its hottest temperature of 106.2°F on 7 July at 1:03 PM. This roughly coincided with the driest recorded humidity of the year: an astoundingly dry 14% (at 1:15 PM that day).
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Highlights of 2010: break-in

This year brought an unwanted visitor when our home was broken into while we were away for Thanksgiving. Miraculously, we knew about it the instant it happened. It had only been hours since I completed my alarm script, which meant our alarm panel called our cellphones the second the burglar opened the window.

While we in the dark about what was really going on at home, we soon learned that the damage and impact was actually very, very minimal. We didn’t even cut our vacation short. What we did do was add a few more components to our alarm system and a few more security enhancements to our windows.

Later we even got video of the suspect leaving the scene, which was distributed to all the downtown police officers.

I look at the incident this way: the break-in was in reality a free evaluation from a seasoned security professional. A man who makes a living breaking into homes showed us just how he would approach our home. He showed us where the weak spots are. This guy gave it his best shot, and ultimately he failed. He failed!

So now that I know how a pro would approach our home, I have made our home even stronger. We’re now better off as a result.