So what else is there? I bought a .38 revolver, a while ago, just to experience one of
those peculiarly American pastimes, gun ownership (hard in New York State,
here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, you just go to the store and get yours,
ammo at Wal-mart,
over the counter, or mail
order, 24 hours a day). I had never fired a handgun before (here
I am at my friend Bud's farm, demolishing a white plastic bucket), and after
pulling the trigger for the first time I very rapidly developed a deep respect
for the power of these things - .38 is not something I would refer to as
a "small" caliber, although, I recently added a .357 Magnum, and that has even more punch...
In short, as American a life as this European will develop. I have no
idea what my next stop will be, but surprise is always around the corner,
both professionally and privately, I will try and keep y'all posted, on
these webpages....
Other exciting things do
happen, my friends Pietsje and Martin relocated to Redmond, WA., recently,
I am pleased to have been able to help them and their little ones
(here they are, "fresh" off the KLM plane that spent ten hours
bringing them to their new home country - brand new Americans?) find a spot
in the US where Martin can continue to develop his not inconsiderable talents
designing medical equipment. They've landed in a pleasant spot in beautiful
Washington State, and I will continue to encourage Pietsje to pick her journalism
studies back up - it's rough, relo, with kids, building an infrastructure
in what seems like the moon, when you've lived your life in cozy small Holland,
my home country too... Crack on, guys...
Career news - on Wednesday, September 29, Bell Atlantic filed for long distance relief, for me capping sixteen months of hard work creating and building the IS environment for our long distance effort. I am looking for the next hill to climb....
The full text of the press release, excerpted below, is at our Corporate news site:
http://www.ba.com/nr/1999/Sep/19990929001.html
The filing follows a two and one-half year, comprehensive effort to open Bell Atlantic's local network to competitors and meet the long distance entry requirements of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. If the application is approved, Bell Atlantic will become the first Regional Bell Operating Company to offer long distance inside its own service area, providing one stop shopping for domestic and international telecommunications services to all of its customers in the state.
"We've met the requirements of the Telecommunications Act. We have earned the opportunity to add long distance to our suite of services, and our customers demand nothing less," said Ivan Seidenberg, Bell Atlantic chairman and chief executive.
The filing
provides extensive detail on the steps Bell Atlantic has taken to meet a
14-point competitive checklist specified in the act. This checklist contains
the criteria regional Bell companies must honor to open their local networks
to competitors. Fulfilling this checklist is a prerequisite for a Bell company
to receive federal permission to offer long-distance service within its
local service area.
Internet shopping for a secondary
camera I needed for a photoshoot, I came across Nikon's Pronea-S. I had never contemplated using an
APS format camera, relegating this to the realm of amateur
photography (I spent ten years of my busy life as a photojournalist), until
I found the Pronea. I have used professional Nikon cameras and lenses from
the day I began photograpy-for-hire, and was therefore pleasantly surprised
when I found out that the Pronea-S is an SLR with all of the electronic goodies
other high end Nikons have, and takes Nikkor-AF lenses (I already own a
bunch of those for my other Nikon). So I'll begin testing this tiny little
contraption, and you'll see the results on these pages in due course. Check
it out, and there are some good prices out on the 'Net, too - this particular outfit beat everybody else by $10, and
got it to me UPS in two days. Here, by the way, is a link to a photographer in Malaysia who
has built a photography site that contains a wonderfully complete Nikon
history and more background and technical information than the factory has
at its own site. Stuff of legend.... By the way, if you're a beginning photographer,
and you want to be able to later trade up into the professional world, you
could start out with the Pronea-S, buy some Nikkor-AF lenses for it, then
add professional bodies as you can afford. Saves you from doing what I had
to do, way back when - borrow tons of money to buy a couple of F-series bodies, and lenses. Kodak has a high-end negative scanner specifically for APS for very
little money, or, if you're daring, a reconditioned version of that scanner,
even cheaper. After all, with Seattle Photoworks available, from where you can send
both electronic and printed picture to your loved ones, why would you want
to buy and pay for prints? All you really need is scans, for your website,
right? Apart from the $70 you shell out for a domain (and even that isn't
necessary, check out Freeservers), websites are free, these days, and so
is Netscape, which has a Composer module that'll help you
learn HTML,
as well (No, I don't do MicroCrap Exploder, Bill Gates' minions put too much stuff
in Explorer, Frontpage and NT Server that isn't compatible with anybody
else's browsers. I like my visitors with WebTV and older AOL browsers, not
to mention some of the other niche products out there, to be able to comfortably
enjoy my site, instead of getting error messages or crashing because the
server side has code that only Explorer understands. Even if the Federal
Government hadn't sued you, Bill, shame on you. We're supposed to build
an environment that is easy to use and fun for the consumer, honestly, Bill,
when did you stop believing in sharing?).
I have the first results of what
the Nikon Pronea can do, and you can click here (176kb .jpg!) for a larger jpeg. I am impressed,
to be honest, and awaiting the results of my visit to snowy and cold Munich.
These samples were shot with the AF-Nikkor 70-210, across an average street
with Kodak 400 ASA film. Development and scan by 
.
Order the Matildas calendar! Send email
to the Australian Women's
Soccer Association demanding worldwide distribution
of this perfect Xmas gift!
Remember
this picture? I had it up on my index page, when I was still living in New York State.
It's a view from the South Street Seaport, in downtown Manhattan. Took it
off after I relocated to Northern Virginia - that was that, I thought. Well....
Having finished what I came to Arlington to do a couple of months ago, I began job negotiations with a few of other companies. I wasn't in any particular hurry, just wanted to cut the best deal for myself, and wanted to make sure that wherever I went, it would be in a senior position in a development area, preferably somewhere other than the East Coast, and I felt it was probably time to go work somewhere else, after ten years with "Bell".
So on Tuesday, December 6, around 10:30pm, I got a call from one of my former colleagues from the White Plains lab, who I was unaware had transferred to the Data Solutions Group (the same division I currently work for). He had decided I would be the right match to work for him leading an e-commerce development team, and instructed me to call someone in HR about a possible transfer, to discuss, as he put it "what kind of package we can put together for you".
To cut a long story short, my payroll transfer to New York (yep, Midtown, headquarters, the works) will be effective January 1st, 2000. I should probably slowly realize getting away from the Big Smoke isn't all that easy for me....
So off we go, find somewhere to live (nah, not in New York City, been there, done that), move my office, and start the next phase of my phone company existence.
Wish me luck. And have a happy and prosperous millenium. I'll let you know when the housewarming is. And where.
:)
I can't help it - this picture was emailed
to me a few days ago, and while I assume Microsoft owns the copyright, it's
too good not to post.
I will greatly miss Peanuts, another victim, I suppose, to the scourge of cancer. While there is no telling whether or not Charles Schulz's treatment will be successful, please (assuming you, too, are still waiting for the Great Pumpkin :) let's send him a thank you for bringing some sanity and love to our daily lives for so many years:
Mr. Charles Schulz
c/o United Media
200 Madison Ave.
4th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Also, the National Cartoon Society has created
an online
Get Well card for Mr. Shulz at http://www.reuben.org/schulz.asp.
And please do spare a thought for the nameless hordes suffering from cancer
that aren't quite as famous.. it's a hard road, whether in a mansion or
a hovel.
The Associated Press reported that a customer returning a movie to Super Video rental in suburban Albany, N.Y., was presented with a $91,250 late fee after computers showed the tape was 100 years late.
Gosh, no updates for three months? You're right, I have been extremely busy in my new job, spending much of my working week in New York City, back to hotel life, and back to working in New York. Not a bad place to be, but I don't think I would want to live there again. Pretty soon, the marriage between Bell Atlantic and GTE will be consummated, and we'll see what kind of changes that will bring. The last merger (between Bell Atlantic and my "old" company, NYNEX) brought me from White Plains, NY, to Arlington, VA, so it's anybody's guess what will happen this time, with GTE being home in Dallas, TX, and otherwise all over the map.
Anyway, that isn't the news, really, Evelyn is. Eefje, for short, is an Internet acquaintance from The
Netherlands, Amsterdam, to be precise, who stopped by for a couple of weeks'
vacation (here she is
in NYC, sampling the local security arrangements :) after she graduated,
in February. She kinda liked the place, and we took a liking to each other,
so after going home in early March, she reappeared here in Virginia on April
1st. We're still figuring out what to do with all that, jobs, living, we may end up setting
our own li'l Internet company (boy, do *I* have an investment opportunity
for you... *grin*), but for now, we're enjoying each other's company, see
where that goes.....
It's been a while, and I do apologize... Hope you like having the news headlines on this page.. Evelyn eventually went back to The Netherlands, to wait for her visa, and then did some things that weren't agreed to at all, so another one bites the dust. It really makes me wonder why so many people seem to be unable to negotiate, and be straight. Owell, I'll leave that to the professionals... On the work front, things are going well, the sheer size of the company just takes my breath away. Years ago, when I joined NYNEX Corp., I thought of the Northeast (Staten Island to the Canadian border) as really huge, but 10 years down the road I find myself with responsibilities in the entire U.S.A., it'll take me some time to fathom the size of that. Big? Enormous? Too big? We'll see. And with Evelyn gone, it is time to get back to socializing and doing a little more quality of life stuff (suggestions always welcome, click on my name, top of the page, to email me), besides, it is Spring, and it's time to give the garden
a good going over... Wish me luck!
Space has always been a hobby horse of mine - many years ago, I dreamed of joining the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where some of NASA's research and development is done, and even though I never made it there, I keep following our wonderful space adventures... All the more reason, then, to congratulate Dennis Tito on being a true entrepreneur, on making an extraordinary effort to make a dream come true. As a former NASA scientist, he probably had a reasonably good idea of what he was setting himself up for..
Kudos, too, to the intrepid Russians, who seem to have no problem doing the kind of stuff that America is supposed to be really good at - pushing the envelope. Has NASA's Dan Goldin forgotten to ask his shareholders what they think should have been done? Us, that is, the taxpayers that pay his wages, and that own his company? I would wager that the majority of Americans tip their hats to Mr. Tito, the man who won't take no for an answer. Mr. Goldin needs to urgently explain how he let 20 million available greenbacks slip through his fingers, and I personally feel he should show both the Russian space agency, probably not composed of idiots, they seem to be able to fly back and forth to Alpha without too much of a problem, and Mr. Tito a little bit of respect. Mr. Tito seems to have no problem working with the Russians, unlike some..
It's expecially interesting to hear all of the noise emanating from NASA, at a time when a triple redundant computer system approved for use by NASA, and installed, up there, decides to shut down.
All in all, can we have a little less noise out of the NASA corner, and could NASA please listen a little more closely to what its owners want? Because if we so much like watching TV like "Survivor", perhaps there is room for a little more of the playfulness we used to inject in our adventures. America was built by people taking risks, get with the program, Dan! And do try to be a little more elegant if you must take other people down - for which, in my opinion, you had no reason whatsoever.
Very busy, my new product, a LAN extension service, is positioned nationwide, and so I get to deal with folks as far away as Oregon and Hawaii. Quite a job, I wouldn’t mind a little less pressure, but I guess it’s a lot better than being part of the many folks that are being handed pink slips, across the industry. I don’t always know how I survive these things, but I do.. Summer here in Arlington is shaping up better than last year, we’ve already hit the 90’s, I love the heat (provided, of course, there is some A/C around... :). I enjoy hanging out in New York City, too, although I am there so much now my social life here in Arlington suffers. Owell, one can’t win ‘em all, I suppose. I finally completed my Dolby Digital satellite television installation,
I never bought the rest of the speakers you need to have true eight channel surround sound, like in the movie theatre, but I found a good deal and have finally installed the speakers downstairs, so I now have true home theatre quality TV. Quite amazing, I can’t tell you how enjoyable it is to watch movies and miniseries in your own small home cinema.
I hadn't been at Times Square for a few years, but
now that I am once again based in Manhattan, workwise, I am amazed at the
transformation - from a run down city block, it has become a showcase for
the MMC (Millenium Money Craze) - albeit that since the dotcomcollapse, there are some empty billboards, waiting for new owners, not to mention some very large ads for shows that ended months ago.. They've run out of space for billboards,
so they're up halfway on the towers surrounding the area, around the 25th
floor, I'd estimate. Any higher, they'll either need air rights, or be in
heaven...
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