arei.net
It Pays to Fly The Coop

I was redoing my resume for my job today (I’m required to keep it current) and I got to doing some interesting calculations…  If I had stayed at the job I held 10 years ago, I would be make less than half of what I make now.  On average my salary has grown 13.1% per year. Of course, in order to achieve this I have had to change companies pretty frequently.  And through the last 10 years I’ve worked for 9 different companies, but really in only 5 different jobs.  (See, some of the 9 companies got both by others, and then there was transitions from one contractor to another, but doing the same job, etc etc.)  And let me qualify it all by saying that jobs in the software industry are amazingly easy to find for me.

Yet, I still have to marvel at 13.1% growth.  That’s not too shabby at all.  And the next time my boss hands me the silly little 3% raise, I get to scoff at them.

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The Lists The Thing…

Ya, making a list was totally the right move to counter my pre vacation stress. Now I know exactly what needs to get done and when I need to get it done. Plus I was able to knock off a bunch of items, so things are getting done and my stress is evaporating.

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Vacation Looms

Soon Jennifer and I are off on our vacation, a cruise to some of the Caribbean’s finest spots.  We’re both really excited about the trip, but I’m starting to feel a bit of a looming deadline approaching.  It’s like I have to get everything done: at work, to pack, to clean, to take care of the beast that we call cats.  It all needs to get done before we leave and I feel a bit overwhelmed.  My goal tonight is to sit down and take some time to sort out what exactly needs to get done and what doesn’t.  Perhaps I feel less stressed about things then.

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Site Version 3.1

You’ll notice that an all new version of the site is up and running.  This is version 3.1 of the site and long overdue to be installed and put into production.

The old site was, well, getting old.  The big problem was that all of the blogging stuff was custom code and very limited.  So as any rewrite I wanted to take out that code and use a commercial blog system.  I also wanted to clean up the directory structure, redo some of the css and put up the new logo art I did a few months ago.

So, the new site is now up running the WordPress software. It took some massaging to get it just the way I wanted, but after a few hours I eventually got it setup to something usable.

More changes to the site are coming, but the basic core is there.  I intend to add links to cross post article urls to other sites like digg and delicious and the like.  Plus there’s a fair amount of content from the old site that needs to get linked in.  And a few other flourishes.  Finally, I will be taking the livejournal site down and redirecting it here so therre’s only one blug to manage.

So, here it is, up and running.  Thoughts and comments welcome.

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Avenue Q

For Christmas Jennifer got me tickets to go see Avenue Q at the Warner Theatre in DC.  We went yesterday and rolled a little Valentine’s Day celebration in there as well.  It was a wonderful show and I am completely enamored of it now.  However, there’s this odd choice that the viewer of such a show must make and it’s kind of breaks the expectant theatre model… the question is, do I watch the puppet or the puppeteer.  I tried to watch mostly the puppets, but at times I also noticed I was watching the puppeteer as well.  It got kind of confusing.  And it’s not helped by sometime some puppeteers are doing lines for puppets they aren’t controlling.  Very odd when I actually think about it.

Ultimately, as I said, I loved the show and it was a great christmas present and valentine’s day outing.

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Resume

You can check out my resume online in one of three delightful formats:

  • For those of you who want to see the resume the way it was meant to be viewed, there is a version in adobe acrobate .pdf format.

Enjoy.

(Last Updated Sep. 2009)

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