| 1998: | 7/13 | 8/14 | 8/31 | 10/1 | 11/21 | 12/14 |
| 1999: | 4/1 | 6/22 | 7/16 | |||
| 2000: | 1/16 | 6/6 | 8/14 | |||
| 2001: | 1/29 | 8/21 | 12/16 | |||
| 2002-6: | 18Aug02 | 14Apr03 | 13Oct04 | 02Oct06 | Timestamp |
I'm winding down a year of fun and feverish travel, where I've visited many friends and family in fifteen cities around the US and New Zealand [Hi, Mudds!]. For those to whom I've explained "dot-to-dot", I recently connected Memphis, the last longstanding mid-continent challenge. Oops, writing the accompanying dot-to-dot page made me think of another mid-continent dot--oh well.
Work is getting more exciting, as I just got a long wished-for promotion; I'm still figuring out how to describe the role, which is a good indicator that I've got a ways to grow into it! My business card says Program Manager, and I'm doing liaison work between our engineering department and our Internet product management. I'm learning a great deal from my current manager, the head of Internet Connectivity Services. Friends will be amazed that I've moved my Unix workstation off my desk in favor of a windows box with a large screen. My how times change! I still use the Unix box for some tasks; there are things that MH and emacs can do that Eudora and Word cannot. Like a Luddite, I'm creating this web page by typing HTML in emacs text-mode. My car, in contrast, has an automatic transmission, though that is providing woe through its second transplant operation in the fortnight.
I survived the GMAT. The score was much better than just good enough, yet not quite what I had hoped. The last practice test score was too high to beat or even match. I hate thinking of myself as mediocre, and I have to keep reminding myself I'm not competing to get into Harvard and Stanford anymore. I kept thinking during the test, "I'm so sick of these test questions." Surprisingly, the essays that had me so worried seemed to come out fine; on one I wrote about the separation of worklife from personal life, arguing that we are evolving toward a more integrated blend. The SAT stuff just went on forever. I was highly irritated at the College Board non-disclosure agreement exercise. I had to hand-write my agreement not to disclose test questions, which made me so mad I want to violate it immediately. The heavy-handedness is not appropriate behavior for a monopoly organization, and I even more emphatically support Nader's fair testing efforts now. Colleagues will also not be surprised that I found the test room to be too brightly lit for the computer screens.
Why take the GMAT? The plan is to matriculate business school this year. For this purpose, I've been winding down outside activities, ending a couple of board positions. I'll continue on the condo board, though I don't know if I'll continue as chair.
Meanwhile, computers are taking over my life. I flew out twice to San Jose to get my mother onto the net with a hand-me-down computer from my brother Evan. Evan's new machine came up fine once he exchanged it for a significant upgrade after we discovered his hard disk wouldn't reliably boot. I had to buy another copy of win95 to get working network code onto Mom's machine. In trying to use that new disk to fix the network code on my home desktop machine, I ended up with an unbootably corrupted win95. No big deal with my new win95 cdrom and boot floppy, right? Hah! After a tech showed me how to format a new master boot record, I can now get the machine to boot whatever I put on the C: drive. Unfortunately, I haven't yet (nor have my tech friends) been able to get working drivers installed for my Sound Blaster proprietary cdrom drive, so I can load from the win95 cdrom. I write this now from my old win3.1 laptop, which I've been hoping to upgrade once the desktop machine is fully functional. I've been struggling for years to get it to do networking right, replacing much hardware in the process. Yes, I should just go out and buy a new machine; no, the budget says save the money for tuition instead. I wish Janet Reno would get serious about Microsoft and go after them for racketeering, rather than this irrelevant browser war; I shouldn't have to pay twice for the same operating system to get working code.
My school application has been sent, so I'm onto the next project. I just bought a new Win98 $400 computer from Micro Center. It's amazing what a $400 computer will do these days; I believe this one will get me through grad school, along with the $250 17" monitor and the $300 HP Officejet. I'm so impressed, I'm going in on buying one for Mom. I guess I'll need to do an installation visit for Rosh Hashanah, free Northwest seats permitting. Anyone got a place for me to stay for a couple of nights in the bay area? Mom's full up.
My brothers are both in the early (limbo) stages of moving, causing all sorts of interesting upheaval in the family. I wish them luck finding suitable places to land. When my friends pray to Gladys for parking spaces, that's not just for cars. People give the shchinah some rather funny names, right Harry?
I've been admitted to grad school, completing the summer's major project of getting in. Many thanks to those who advised me and to those who wrote letters for me. I am looking forward to finally officially being taught how to use MS Office and how to read my condo financial statements. (and how to make sense of the business world...) Need I learn to play golf?
My friends Kevin and Karla and I once again demonstrated our tradition of setting up multi-couple blind dates when the three of us happen to be simultaneously single. Each of us arranged a date for one another. This past Saturday, the six of us had a well-received dinner together at Casablanca and began to get to know each other. The entourage went on to see a set at O'Brien's, where a band containing a couple of Kevin and Karla's friends were playing; the performance was fine, but the amplification was just excessive--they sounded bad, and the loudness scared off half our crew. I don't know if any of the couples will go further, but I was delighted with each of the participants and their contribution to the conversation. I'd even be happy to further get to know my date if he's interested. Ted?
Sunday, I had the pleasure of attending the birthday party of Matt Hayes, who turned twenty-nine again. He seems in reasonable danger of doing so many more times, even if a Star Trek film fest isn't my idea of a great party concept. Mother Judy's cake was wonderful, of course, even if she was dyslexic on the candle placement. Matt may sometimes seem like a crotchety old man, but Ninety-two indeed!
After a ten year and five country search through music shops from New Zealand to Germany, I was finally able to purchase a CD copy of Eberhard Weber's early album Yellow Fields, through Amazon.com. It arrived this weekend. This is the last album I had realistically expected to replicate on CD, although the "Montreaux Summit" compilation of the mid-1970s would be nice too. I'm also looking for a copy of the out-of-print Kent Nagano recording of Stravinsky's "A Soldier's Tale", with Vanessa Redgrave and Sting. One down, two to go.
Mom's $400 computer didn't work as well as mine, so she's exchanging it. A two-hour long-distance call ended up with me declaring the modem no good. And to think I was trying to pre-empt such calls by replacing the previous computer... Dare I let my dad get one of these too?
I'm almost done migrating from my old laptop onto my $400 computer. Office 97 is working, as is Eudora (moved my email), Netscape Communicator (and IE and an eval copy of Opera--not ready for prime time) and GNU Emacs (with GNUS). The installation of Office 97 went smoothly once I remembered to disable Norton Anti-Virus, which correctly identifies all Microsoft software as a virus. I have one slot of my (two slot) PCMCIA drive working, so I can back up my flash memory from my HP200LX and so I can use my PCMCIA SCSI interface to my 1G JAZ drive (thank you David), which is how I moved data from my laptop. The big unsolved problem is the upgrade path from DOS Managing Your Money, which is no longer a supported retail product; my electronic bill payments with Checkfree are dependent on MYM, and it will be a large project to start over with different software. I tried to get MYM to work with a DOS boot, but couldn't get it to control the modem, which is essential to the Checkfree setup. Ideas?
The High Holidays are over, I'm back from California, and school starts Saturday.
My plans to attend Folsom Street Fair on Saturday were rearranged, since it turned out the fair was really on Sunday. Thanks to Harry, Northwest Airlines and my boss, for making the schedule adjustments possible. To my delight, I got to see friends David and Fester, Aaron and Steve, and Hans. I also took in the latest exhibit of photographs by the Thought Criminal, Mark Chester. This was followed by a nice dinner at Absinthe with Harry and Michael (congratulations on surviving ten years together!), Evan and his date du jour, and Evan's charming roommate Nick, who was very kind to me in spite of not feeling well.
Now back East, I attended Yom Kippur services at Betenu, where I chanted from Leviticus during the afternoon service. Some dear friends managed to truly surprize me with a surprize birthday party; who would expect a birthday party during Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur? It was an interesting talmudic dilemma. Needless to say, I erred in the fun direction of not embarassing my now more calendar-attuned friends with having to call the invitees to cancel. Happy New Year!
The saga of computers continues. Just a week before my $400 computer's 90 day warranty expired, it started getting flakey at boot time. I took it back, and they offered me my money back, so I took the cash and ran. This time, I went to PCs for Everyone and had them build my new computer to my specs. It's certainly more impressive, but more importantly there's service to back it up. Of course, reinstalling everything on a new computer is just what I needed to spend time on instead of my homework! I've installed enough to be able to do my homework, handle email, and pay my bills. There's much left to do, and I've fallen rather behind on correspondence, alas.
Meanwhile, in San Jose, we have one of those hideous finger-pointing exercises in progress. When I installed Mom's most recent computer, I used Netcom's disk to install their Internet software. It had an obsolete phone number for their San Jose dial-in, so I used their Morgan Hill dial-in to download the new numbers. We switched back Netcomplete to the new San Jose number, but apparently Netcomplete didn't change the number in Windows Dial-Up Networking, so she has some nasty phone bills and Netcom denies responsibility. Meanwhile, PacBell wants payment. Arrgh! Why did we get Mom that computer?
The good news of the week is that the fundraising effort I had spearheaded at temple for our Torah Fund has finally reached its goal. We have the money we think is needed to restore our first Torah, and we can reasonably expect to complete the project in time for next High Holidays. Alas, I never got around to figuring out enough CGI to put the fundraiser barometer on the web page.
I'm in "make and mend" mode now, anticipating my quick cameo in California at Christmas and the resumption of school on the day after New Years. Current priorities: replace broken telephone (done), upgrade laptop to win98 (first attempt completed, but will make another attempt since I didn't select enough options), get some way to back up pcmcia flash card data onto my new computer (pcmcia drive does not work, which is what inspired the laptop upgrade), test ethernet between new computer and old laptop, test new CDROM writer, replace kitchen chairs, replace broken VCR, and attend social stuff. Whew! Work is rather busy too, and similarly good stuff is getting accomplished.
Aside from annoyance over the move, work is getting more interesting as my role has shifted. Instead of a focus on getting the new features out the door in the next three months, I'm now on the technology evaluation team. The horizon is twelve to twenty-four months. Time to come up to speed on the industry buzzwords of the next year...
On the personal front, I'm getting really good at helping friends and relatives choose and install their computers, rather than doing things that make me feel connected. I'm losing count how many such computers I've done recently. It's not their fault this is one of the only ways I'm prepared to express my care. I recently attempted to date two Mikes. It turned out neither one had really disentangled from the previous relationship. I've lost track of when I last had such a relationship, though in my struggle to remain out at work, I brought in an old photo of Jared, which now sits by the whiteboard. He was such a sweetheart; if only...
This past weekend, I returned from my summer vacation and began the new school term. The vacation was a 10,000 mile tour of the US, half by car, half by airline. My father accompanied me for most of the drive, which was an expedition roundtrip between Los Angeles and Chicago, visiting family and friends. Although the trip convinced us that Dad and I dislike each other's driving, on other fronts, the trip was great in spite of extreme summer weather. My write-up is rather lengthy, so I have placed it in a separate file, tour1999.html.
Thanks to an invitation from Peg, I spent Christmas weekend learning the basics of skiing up at Sunday River through their guaranteed learn-to-ski program. When I returned to Sunday River for the leadership course, I had a courtesy lesson coming to me from the guarantee, which brought me to a total of eight lessons before being grouped for the course ski lessons. I had learned quite a bit, but with only four days of skiing to absorb and integrate eight lessons, my instructor from that last lesson recommended I take some time off from lessons and just "build mileage". I liked that advice, but it was in conflict with the structure of the leadership course, so I showed up in my required ninth lesson and had a miserable time.
One of the advantages of the structure of the course's ski instruction was continuity, both in instruction and group development. I went through seven instructors in the previous eight lessons, and my head was filled with apparently conflicting advice, compounded by a new social arrangement with each class. Alas, spending more time hearing yet another instructor's spin on what I needed to learn (in conflict with advice from my skiing friends, no less), left me so angry, I was hardly learning from this new instructor, and making no friends among my classmates. Indeed my breakthrough during that lesson came when I got fed up with connecting "perfect turns" back and forth across the trail, and turned downhill and skied, letting my anger at the tedium overcome my fear of the slope's pitch.
I seemed to be slowing down the rest of that group, while another student from a less experienced class wanted to accelerate, so Professor Rosenthal ("Doctor Bob") agreed to ski with the two of us to evaluate creating an intermediate class for us. Our lessons were based at South Ridge Base, and it was possible to ski from our hotel, the Grand Summit, over to our lessons, assuming sufficient proficiency to handle a variety of green trails. Since one of my personal goals for the week was to traverse the resort from one end to the other on skis, I jumped at this opportunity to get supervision skiing halfway across. Unfortunately, until I warm up, my skiing is pathetic. At that point, warming up took me about an hour. This compounded with icy conditions, unfamiliar trails, annoyance at having my skiing skills overestimated while being talked to like a beginner, all led to an astounding succession of falls crossing territory that was otherwise within reach of my skills. By the time we arrived (so late as to make the professor miss an appointment to ski with another group), he agreed that putting me in with a group was a disservice to both me and the group. We agreed to let me build mileage on my own, and the other student replaced me in the upper group. One of the lessons from lecture was to let go when building a group is insuperable, and this was a fine demonstration.
During my third lesson back on Christmas weekend, I lost control near the top of a straightaway on trail Sundance and careened straight down the hill toward the fence atop the bunny slope. I was too far back on the skis and eventually going too fast (instructor estimated 40MPH) to make the turns they had been training us to use to control speed, though I tried and tried. They hadn't taught us any emergency stop maneuver, Titanically claiming it unnecessary, and as the fence approached, I realized I had to figure one out fast. I ended up on my side, feet first, stopping several feet short of the fence, in what was subsequently identified for me as a hockey stop. This had two immediate and critical impacts: I absolutely lost confidence (and gained great anger) in Sunday River's "Perfect Turn" curriculum, hence the instructors, and I lost confidence in my ability to stay in control of my position on the slopes, drastically shortening my fuse to panic.
In my first self-directed skiing lesson, I gave myself several runs on the familiar trail Broadway to warm up. I then went over to Dream Maker, where I had that downhill breakthrough, and took a couple of runs expermenting with steeper pitch. I wrapped up by making a controlled descent down my then demonized Sundance, getting back on the horse, so to speak, and disarming the flashbacks of the Sundance runaway panic.
In my second lesson, after a couple of warmup runs, I traversed half the resort from South Ridge Base to White Cap Base, smoothly returning via the route Doctor Bob took us from the hotel. I then went to the top of Spruce Peak, traveling about halfway to the other end of the resort, Jordan Bowl, before turning back toward South Ridge Base (via Dream Maker) due to time constraints. I built mileage!
After three days of Spring skiing conditions, the weather turned cold. I had been doing without the longjohns, comfortably avoiding overheating in the warmer weather, and it hadn't yet gotten down to the single digit temperatures I had comfortably mastered Christmas weekend without even needing the toe warmers I had brought. In the teens, I didn't think I needed to go all out for warmth, only to discover I was wrong. As I rode the lift, my fingers started to hurt. By the time I made it down Broadway, they had gone numb, so I skied directly into Ski Patrol for advice. Meanwhile, a classmate had so serious an accident he had to be towed to Ski Patrol, and several more had less serious, but day-stopping encounters. Ski Patrol released me after my hands and toes recovered, and I zipped up for maximal protection to succeed with a few more Broadway runs, ditching my plan to make it to Jordan Bowl and back.
Our final day of skiing was scheduled to include a ski race in the morning, followed by optional free skiing in the afternoon. It had turned colder. It was so cold, participation was made optional. Several classmates bailed out. The race was set up on trail Moonstruck, one I hadn't yet tried, since that lift had been out of service all week. I decided I wanted to at least try the trail once, so I went out in full gear (including longjohns and face mask), and faced the first problem: the map didn't show any way to get to the top of our course on only green (beginner) trails. It turned out that the top twenty feet of a nearby blue trail were needed to get to the top of green trail Green Cheese, which led to the top of the green part of Moonstruck. I took a couple of spills warming up on those trails, and I skied on the other side of the trail from the race course. When I got to the bottom, I was ambivalent about trying the run again. A guy I've wanted to get to know from the class headed down to the lift, so I joined him, leading to my first timed run of the race, 58 seconds. Another guy from the class, PJ, whose ab initio to expert ski improvement was the talk of the class, headed for the lift, so I decided to take the opportunity to see him ski, which led to my second timed run through the course at 50 seconds. While I felt proud of my improvement, most of the rest of the class times were in the 40s, with a few of the best, including PJ, showing up in the 30s. I didn't find out the other times until it was too late to try again to figure out how to speed up to their league.
The extreme temperatures and winds led to the closure of the upper elevation lifts, blocking my intended cross-the-resort adventure, so instead I returned the rented skis and went for a scenic drive across northern New Hampshire to Vermont. Near Gorham, my car indicated an outside air temperature of -4F. Although Mount Washington was obscured by clouds, the rest of the scenery was beautiful. I finally glimpsed my friend Kevin's New Hampshire hometown of Lancaster, though I let the temperature get the better of me when it came to stopping for maple syrup in St. Johnsbury. Sorry, Peg.
Yesterday it was back to school, where the Marketing professor mercifully cancelled class because he couldn't get back into the country in time. There was enough to do preparing for Portfolio Management to take up the morning time. Now I'll catch up on a few emails, and try to dive into the final Leadership paper, though I'm eager to jump into the Portfolio homework, and I probably need to get going on the Marketing assignments. Thus, I'll be pretty scarce for the next few weeks. I also have a friend of a friend as a houseguest for several weeks; it's interesting after so many years without a roommate to be dealing with all that again, though Jim's a great guy. Things have gotten cold, outside and inside, so I broke out the electric heater for the first time. (Thanks Maryana!) Now I'm fighting a slight cold, while Jim tries to shake his. Meanwhile, work goes on. We're in the midst of a departmental reorg, and undoubtedly stuff happened while I was away. But that's what keeps things interesting, right?
The Buenos Aires Seminar was a pleasant and interesting break at the sleepless end of a stressful term. My missed airplane connection in New York gave me a much needed day of rest and relaxation while the rest of my exhausted class toured a steel mill on the Rio del Plata. I put my photos from the trip into a Powerpoint slideshow, downloadable on the web from http://pobox.com/~dhirsch/eze. In that class project, I ended up recommending to Oracle that they use or build a data center in Buenos Aires. At some point, Genuity (the new name for GTE Internetworking) should do the same.
The final class in the MBA program was Strategic Management. Without a second course, this term was still a significant effort, with an ambitious workload from the one class. We each wrote journals tying the concepts of the week to a particular organization. As the professor suggested, I chose my life and career as the organization for that assignment. My team presented the case on the Japanese Facsimile Industry in 1990, and I gave a the technical background for the presentation. In teams, we competed in a computerized business simulator, where that portion of our grades was tied to continued improvements in our stock price. My team suffered some comical data entry errors, in addition to some unfortunate business strategy choices, putting us into seventh place out of eight teams in the end. We did manage to have fun with this anyway, and I got to make the final presentation for our team, outlining lessons learned. Evan visited that class on my last day of school.
The mugging, final school event where we get awarded our class mugs, was attended by Evan and my old friends Peg and Kevin. Evan and I went from there to a celebration put on by classmate Regina, and then we went on to Provincetown to enjoy the remainder of Memorial Day Weekend. On Tuesday, I flew with Evan back to San Francisco, on my way to a pleasantly timed business trip in Palo Alto the week prior to my California and Arizona vacation/victory tour, from which I write.
I'm now juggling relaxation, visitation, and contemplation about what's next on many levels. Got ideas for me? It's a great time to pass them on!
It's been almost six months. The Black Mountain project worked, and the followup paperwork is almost done. I bought a digital camera (Canon S-100), the results of which can be seen in my latest California photos. I haven't seen suitable weather for new Black Mountain photos yet, alas. Meanwhile, the company stock (GENU), which seemed a bargain at under 7 is now hovering around 4, and my group within the company is disbanding. So what do I do when my job seems shakey? Buy a new Mercedes. I figure I'll be well into my next job by the time the car arrives in early May. How's that for swagger?
I've already gotten my first skiing in for the year, having accompanied Peg to Ragged Mountain in New Hampshire. After a week, I've almost recovered, which is good, since the next Sunday River trip is coming up. Hopefully this time I'll get to ski all the way to Jordan Bowl and back.
The year-end trip: I dragged my friend Bruce for his first visit to San Francisco and a Christmas weekend ski trip with Evan to Tahoe. United lost my luggage, ruining Christmas the same way for a second time in three years. I ended up wasting an afternoon shopping for replacement clothes and another afternoon returning the excess once my bags were finally delivered. We went to Tahoe anyway and got good photos but didn't ski. A couple of others in our group got injured while skiing; the snow wasn't quite adequate. Someday I'll go back and ski Heavenly.
We stayed for several days with my friends David and danny at their place by Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park. We did spend the better part of a fun couple of days shopping at Mr S. At the end of an unexpected sidetrip to San Jose, I tried to connect with my mom for dinner to no avail. I ended up visiting step-sister Shelly, where it turned out my dad and step-mom were still visiting. It was wonderful, and with good visits to both friends and family, I feel truly torn between the coasts.
I took a quick overnight sidetrip to Southern California to visit friends Bob and Lee. Bob is joining me for an upcoming European vacation, and this was a planning session, as well as my first chance to see their new home between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. Thank goodness for low airfares on Southwest! Thank goodness also for interesting reading to distract me from all the airport delays on the trip, and for the cellphone that made the logistics easier to repair.
For New Years Eve, danny and I caught the last few hours of the DeYoung Museum, which is being torn down for replacement with a more earthquake-ready building. I had a nice steak dinner with friends Harry and Michael before we gave up on our targeted New Years Eve party for lack of parking. Bruce spent the night visiting a cousin. In the morning he joined us at H&M's for the beginning of their New Years Day party. Two hours before our flights home, Bruce decided to extend his trip another week. He had a better time once I left. I felt better once I got home with all my luggage intact, which was made possible only by an equipment delay in Washington DC.
On the temple front, I pulled together about fifty pages of affiliation application, which apparently were well received. The ratification process takes about a year, and we hope to be formally accepted in October at the Boston UAHC Convention. I also sponsored a wonderful event that was the brainchild and production of our new president Paula Silver. That was a coffeehouse, with four open mike performers and professional singer Jenny Paul. It was the best social event we've had in a long time, and hopefully the first of a series.
On the homefront, I'm trying to recruit more condo trustees. Everyone's really busy these days, and we're doing too good a job for anyone to want to bother to make time for us. Guess I'll have to do something unpopular to get people's attention. On a more local level, I'm making space for my friend Don to rent a room from me. He's in transition between settling his mother's nearby estate and a relocation plan while I'm going to struggle a while with car payments. Slowly that front room is getting cleared out in my spare time. Then again, it's competing with viewing a friend's tapes of "Queer as Folk" and mastering the 747 in my flight simulator. The latter is a beautiful laboratory for the concept of power curve: you constantly juggle scarce power between climb and acceleration, and it's surprisingly easy to lose control, even using the autopilot.
Watch this space for results of all the sweat I'm pouring into my resume, which I know is due for another major revision or two. See http://pobox.com/~if/resume.
I'm also trying to come up to speed as a member of the Community Advisory Board (CAB) for the Fenway Community Health Center Research Institute. I figure it's time for me to get involved in some community activity within Boston and with some gay connections. We're advising principal investigators for HIV prevention counseling trials and HIV vaccine trials. Issues include patient disclosure and consent ethics, participant outreach and recruitment, and coordination with other trial sites around the world. My opening theme is to make the CAB more accessible to suburbanites, which during the business day my current employer forces me to be. Early meetings in the city make it very difficult for us to participate, which I've also identified as a factor in recruiting participants in the trials we're supposed to promote.
I may get back to playing bridge soon. My cruel dad sat me down with the bridge simulator and talked through a few hands with me. When is Sheinwald going to revise "Five Weeks to Winning Bridge" to use five card majors?! I spent more time with Bridge Baron last week, and it now has a shortcut on my laptop. Is Dad a dealer or just an addict? It depends on the hand.
Convention flaws aside, I was moved by the plenary session tribute to former UAHC President Rabbi Schindler, a man whose frequent quotations in the press always made me proud to be a Reform Jew. I also enjoyed the track for increasing outreach and programming aimed at those between college and child-rearing. Singles groups may be necessary, but they are not sufficient to give adults in their twenties and thirties a sense of place in congregations. My experience of taking a leadership role in my thirties is atypical in American Jewish experience. I encouraged the younger folks in this track to join their boards and the older folks to recruit younger members to boards. I told them if they weren't seeing appropriate programming supported by their boards, they should work to take over! Two young rabbis at Boston's Temple Israel are doing exemplary work in attracting the age group to actively participate, and it has infused unprecedented energy into their congregation. I applaud them. That congregation is also enjoying the fruits of a family education program, where parents don't just drop the kids off for religious school. Kids almost invariably mirror their parents' interest in Jewish learning (or lack thereof). Giving the entire family a chance to learn together has bolstered Jewish literacy among a generation whose Jewish education was often abbreviated by the family wish for assimilation. We face a wonderful opportunity for rennaisance.
Among the thousand favorite friends and colleagues laid off with me from Genuity was my dear old friend Peg. Last summer, she started her own firm, Primak Partners, to do probate accounting. Now that she has growing income from that business, she decided it was time to stop going solo, so she invited me along. I'm now studying the arcana of guardianship financial reports in Massachusetts, and, once mastering that, thinking about expanding us to an additional state. I'm already representing Peg at networking events with such success that another regular at one event asked me to be a substitute at a subsequent event. I hope to soon begin billable work, so I can get paid!
Back in February, I accepted an invitation from Homero to return his November visit and travel to Brazil. It was the conclusion of a hopelessly long-distance romance, but the possible prelude to a happy long-distance friendship. Homero teaches English and hopes to start his own school.
If these businesses plus rental income don't give me enough diversification of income to weather the economic storm, I have no clue how to better demonstrate the concept.
Having gotten close enough to financial flame-out to genuinely worry about it, I became more sensitive about the quality of my volunteer time. I was having cultural differences with the hierarchy of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, such that my liaison astutely asserted I'd never be satisfied with my volunteer experience there. Thus, just weeks before the global meeting in Washington, I was uninvited. I went for the last day anyway, just to visit with Homero, in from Brazil. But it was the beginning of the end for me with Fenway. Although the Fenway staff and CAB were graceous about the breakdown between me and HVTN, the same issues I had with HVTN arose locally. Basically I felt I was being asked to contribute a significant professional effort without any compensation, while staff was not doing what I considered to be crucial elements of their paid jobs. I withdrew to refocus on my search for pay. I face similar issues with my condo association (I just created a huge increase in condo fees), and my synagogue, where I'm in the hot-seat as senior VP, since the president recently announce her impending departure due to her husband's economic dislocation. After a year of major volunteer work, it is time for me to favor paying work.
Recently, I was diagnosed with an allergy to dust mites. In most cases, this is easy to deal with: seal up mattress and pillows, and regularly launder sheets, vaccuum and dust vigorously. However, with the overcrowding of my apartment compounding my allergy to housework, real cleaning and dusting has been impossible. Happily, the allergy medication has largely alleviated symptoms. But the whole affair has sensitized me to the limitations of my home in its current form as an overstuffed library and warehouse. Brainstorming with roommate Don (in his expertise as an architectural historian) and property manager Bill (for his familiarity with construction issues in 1901 vintage buildings) led to some startling conclusions: tear down some silly interior walls and expand the place out toward the exterior walls! Of course, it will be largely uninhabitable during the process. So, going out on a cashflow limb, I believe I'll be renting out a room from friend Shira in Nashua for the forseeable future. It's not yet a done deal, but we are both eagerly anticipating the short-term results. Having relocatable work is definitely an asset, so long as I can find adequate space someplace to work.
In this time of economic struggle, I wish everybody I know the
blessing of adequate paid work.
Much to my temporary disappointment, none of the diversified income attempts of 2002 turned into anything like a paying job, even if they were fabulous experiences. Back to the career search drawing board! In spite of its current economic decline, I've long wanted a role in aviation. Although I worked my way through primary pilot training, I don't think I want to do that for a living. I'm above the age limit to become an air traffic controller. In the current economy, it's rare to find an airline hiring raw MBAs. So I kept exploring for something I could do to get some core aviation experience. I think I've found it: dispatching. I attended the six-week dispatcher course at Sheffield School of Aeronautics and earned my FAA Aircraft Dispatcher license. It was an invigorating, intense experience and I had great classmates.
Two weeks from today, over 100 weeks after my last ordinary day of employment as a technical MBA, I plan to start working as a junior dispatcher at a wonderfully small airline affiliated with US Airways. I'll write more about the experience and the company once I get settled in at the job. Meanwhile, it's all about relocation. How the blazes do I rapidly pack up an apartment where I've lived for eighteen years? How do I get in touch with over twenty years worth of local friends to say farewell over the space of a task-packed fortnight? It's an overwhelming and emotionally exhausting project. It's also thrilling: I'm finally moving out of my college housing, an overdue event. Well, that's the big news, and now it's back to the moving tasks at hand...
Back in Brazil, I am in awe of what Homero
and his friends have done putting together their English school. The
people involved are tremendous. The students treated me like royalty.
If any of my friends are interested in spending a week down there
helping with the school, I encourage you to discuss it with me. By
the way, as I finish writing today, emacs is magically coming back
into my fingertips. Hooray!
October 2, 2006
It's been two years since I've written here. Today is Yom Kippur, and I'm using this diary entry as a means for reflection.
First, some basic facts: Among my trips back to Boston, I kept in touch with old colleagues at BBN. One of the groups I where I worked in 1990 had been asked over the past couple of years by one of my favorite customers to provide an on-site support person. Noone currently in the department wanted to move out to Los Angeles to fill the position. I applied and they hired me. Thus, I left the airline and rejoined my old company BBN, yet relocated to California to end my 25 year exile.
After six months of searching for a California home, I am still in my temporary housing, a shared condo on the edge of Torrance with roommate Keith. My Manassas townhouse sold at a nice profit, and with good down payment and adequate income, I was not expecting trouble as a real estate buyer in what has turned into a buyer's market. I am currently working with my fifth realtor to select my fifth property to attempt to purchase. I still need to sue my way out of escrow on property number four, where the seller failed to disclose pending litigation against the property. The professionalism of multiple people involved with that transaction has been disappointing. Nonetheless, I carry on with the hope that I can soon rescue my belongings from relocation company storage, host a whole bunch of overdue visitors, lay down fresh roots in the community and resume a number of personal projects currently in limbo.
One of the joys of the new job, has been revisiting my New England roots. Shuttling back and forth for my training in Cambridge has permitted me to visit Betenu on several occasions and to reconnect with friends I hadn't been able to see in spite of free flying during my airline work.
The biggest wins of the move have been related to family in the West. I'm now within a day drive of friends and family around San Francisco and Tucson. A few weeks ago, I saw my brother's new North Beach apartment, as well as some other Bay Area friends and family. This past weekend, I visited my dad and step-mom in Tucson, with a side trip to her granddaughter's new family property outside Benson. On the way back, I had a sushi lunch with another step-neice's family in Casa Grande.
On both of these trips, my new friend Rich accompanied me. We've been spending lots of time together, and he's probably the biggest pleasant surprise of this relocation. We're both in turmoil related to household moves, while he's in the last stages of building a new house and I search madly for one I can buy. I plan to go out to dinner with him tonight to break my Yom Kippur fast.
One of the casualties of my housing limbo has been my Jewish links. Athough I've located potential congregations, I don't want to get involved until I know where I'm living. This means, aside from Betenu, I have no place to go for high holidays. My nearby cousin Marion checked with her congregation if they would honor my Betenu holiday tickets as an inter-congregation courtesy. They would not. So instead, I'm taking the day off alone, trying to figure out appropriate observance on my own. My old friend Michael used to do this routinely, never bothering with congregational observance, but it's not quite what I want from the holidays. Part of the importance for me is not only personal repentance and rededication, but communal repentance and rededication. We live in communities, as well as families and bodies. That is why I pay membership in a congregation.
Ironically, as I type this, I got a call from my friend and former Manassas roommate and colleague Tyler. He's having computer trouble. I think I wrote somewhere above of my frustration that I seem to only be able to express my love for friends and family with technical support. As he's been my only human contact yet today, I'm reminded that having friends and family to support, in whatever ways I can, is the blessing of having people in my life. So thank you Tyler, and good luck with your pesky computer woes. We both seem to be getting better at this.
Whether consciously or not, a bunch of friends have contacted me around my recent birthday. I was delighted to hear unexpectedly from Homero in Brazil, Andy and Rob in New Zealand, Matt and Judy in Boston, David in San Francisco, Mark in Wisconsin and Shawn in Morgan Hill. Bless you all for remembering me.