Nathan's Occasional Blog

Now that it’s out in the open at work, I can comment that I’m leaving my current position to hop back into the consulting world.  The main driver is that I evaluated my current role and where I was headed and realized that I’m not pointing in the right direction.

Right now I’m a member of a small team for an organization the likes to outsource the tough stuff to vendors.  This is not a bad model, but it means that I’m becoming more of a project manager and “firefighter” than a technologist.  I’m not comfortable with that.

So I started looking around at what’s open and two very cool opportunities came my way.  BUT – they (and most everyone else) are looking for seasoned Cisco platform veterans and experience managing 100’s and 1000’s of servers.  We use Foundry Networks gear at my current gig, with the Cisco VoIP stuff outsourced.  Plus we’re in the 10’s of servers, with no signs that will ever really change (nor should it have to).

I finally accepted a position as an infrastructure consultant with a Northwest consulting group (will remain nameless for now) that I’m familiar with.  Familiar?  Hell, probably half the staff in the Bellevue office are folks I worked with (and more importantly enjoyed working with) in my last gig.  I’ll get a chance to not only work on internal infrastructure needs, but will be working on client hosting projects with multiple servers and multiple datacenters, etc.  This is the right direction for me career wise.

It took Alicea and I weeks – literally – to agonize over whether to make the switch or not, but we finally said yes and I notified my current boss a couple days ago.

Since then he’s been working on my job description so he can find & hire my clone.  🙂  He just passed it my way and it’s a solid 3 pages long.

Ho.  Lee.  Crap.  I can’t believe how much I do and have done in my current role, and how much experience and knowledge I really have.

Job postings intimidate me because I feel so meek compared to what they’re looking for.

I’m intimidated by my own job description.  😉

If I only had Mike’s “sticktoittiveness” with the M’s.  I gave up 2 years ago.  Alicea and I used to watch every game on TV.  Believe me, July sucked when it was M’s games vs. Tour de France.  Now?  I can’t even put on FSN during a game just to have background noise while I search for something else in the channel guide!

Anyway, you’ve got to read Mike’s chronology of this season.  I love his mood tracker. 

Ahh, the Seattle Mariners. I went into this year without a lot of hope (witness — no optimistic 2006 predictions like the crazy 2005 ones). But… this team is unlike any other I have been a fan of. They have managed to get me excited and crush me not once, or twice, but seven times. Today I gave up on them for good. Or at least, I hope so.

Source: ikeepitreal: Give it Up, Turn it Loose; Or, Why Barry Zito Can Take His Laid-Back Attitude and Surfer Style Elsewhere

“The officers had no way of knowing the suspect was deaf and mute and the suspect apparently was unable to communicate that to the officers,” one supervisor wrote in a review. “The suspect could have avoided this confrontation by remaining calm and still.”

So the police expect disabled people to start wearing shirts that say “don’t shoot – I’m deaf” or “…I’ve got a learning disability” or …. 

Way to go Seattle PD, this was obviously the fault of the individual.  Can you imagine being in a silent world, one you already have trouble coping with, waiting to go to work, and when you turn around there’s an angry woman pointing a gun at you?  Yeah he shouldn’t have run – but I can understand why he did.

At least they had the decency not to press charges. 

Source: Taser use on deaf man defended

Let me guess … now they’re going to ban shoes on airplanes?

The government’s new order that all airline passengers put their shoes through X-ray machines won’t help screeners find a liquid or gel that can be used as a bomb.

The machines are unable to detect explosives, according to a Homeland Security report on aviation screening recently obtained by The Associated Press.

Source: X-rays won’t detect liquid or gel bombs – Yahoo! News

Belkin looks to be coming out with some new surge protector designs that let you plug in big bricks and lots of other things easily.  But what’s catching my eye is the “concealed’ model that looks to have the outlets on the inside of the unit.  Very cool for those who are trying to protect youngin’s!

Link to Belkin releases Compact, Concealed, and Clamp-On Surge Protectors – Engadget

I’ll have to go get some of these for Kaitlyn.  You know, to keep her important Lego creation designs and pictures of animal crackers.  🙂

Link to Kingston launches Mini Fun flash drives – Engadget

I just came across a new interface for testing your online bandwidth that lets you store previous results … COOL!  Check out www.speedtest.net.  It’s in “beta” (aren’t we all?).  Found via CNet.

I guess Dell is tired of the bad press around all of their exploding batteries.  Good call guys, good call.  Of course, one could argue that you shouldn’t have waited for the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make you do it…

Link to Dell to recall 4.1M laptop batteries – Yahoo! News

As I mentioned last night, Windows Live Writer is a sweet little application.  There are some great screenshots of the tool in action here and here, and one feature that really caught my eye was the ability to put in categories and other details in a pane at the bottom of the page, and select categories in the upper-right portion of the window (above the sidebar).  I don’t see that, and I’m guessing that’s because I’m using Blogger.

I’ve seen a lot out there about WordPress.  I’ve tried MSN Spaces.  Then there’s Movable Type, TypePad, etc.  I’d like something flexible, free, and a package I can continue using my own domain name for.  It seems maybe I’m outgrowing Blogger?

What do you guys think?  Any recommendations?  There are a lot of great themes for WordPress so I’m leaning that direction.  Just stumbled across a comparison table of features for the major players … will have to dive in.

OH – check the comments from my post last night and you’ll see Joe Cheng replied to my post this morning.  SWEET!  Glad to be in the feedback loop Joe.  I linked to his blog and noticed he and his wife dig the Nikon DSLR cameras.  Alicea and I are thinking about getting a DSLR too.  I love the online community!  Subscribed!

Joe I’ve got another bit of feedback for you:  Why can’t I select text in the title space of the blog with my mouse?  This is in the Web Layout view.  I have to use the shift key and arrows.  Seems like a bug to me.  It works, btw, in Normal view.  I’d also like to CTRL+ENTER to post just like I can in Outlook (to send).

Brilliant post by Sean Alexander today about how FRIGGING INSANE some packaging is these days for what we buy on retail store shelves.  I can’t tell you how many sliced fingers I’ve had/seen because of stupid hard plastic packaging that is darn near impossible to open.

I was just talking about it with one of my coworkers and we both agree that when someone starts this class action suit we’re totally onboard.  Here that Kristin?  🙂

I think action #1 isn’t half bad either.  If the retailers want this packaging as a deterrent to theft then they should remove it upon lawful purchase. 

My buddy Bryce said to that, “I like having the store personnel remove the packaging for me.  Unfortunately the minimum wage slaves will have little.”

My counter is this … but if we all get their minimum wage hours chewed up removing stupid packaging, someone will take notice when the scanned items per hour plummets.  THINK BIG!

Link to Addicted to Digital Media – Packaging Hell – Time to Rise Up!