So, I’ve been in my new role for a little over a week now, and I can say, in all honesty, that I’m glad I made the move. I definitely feel as though I can learn a lot from this company and my peers, but also, it’s so great to have a change of scenery. Boston’s great and all, but.. I’ve been meaning to get out of that place for a few years now.. Ever since I graduted college, for the most part, I’ve been thinking about going “elsewhere.” I never really knew where elsewhere was.. but I’m glad that I finally found out that Elsewhere = Hoboken, NJ.. Who knew?!

Back to the job thing, though. It’s amazing that in about 3 days I was able to jump right in and start working with the sales reps and scheduling ads, debugging issues, and pick up as if I’d been here all along. Granted, I’ve made a few snafus since I’ve started.. The “I wouldn’t have put it that way to so-and-so.. they’re try and run with it.. you’re better off just keeping it simple” — ehh.. no big deal.

But, it truly is surprisng how un-intimidated I am.. usually it takes 2-3 weeks to get up to speed — I definitely feel as though I’m nearly there, in this short time. I mean, I’ve already learned that it’s standard to leave at 5:00pm.. So, with that.. I’m out.

Please Note:
With a little help of the speedy Apple Customer Support, the Bonnaroo Photos should be posted this weekend.. So please stay tuned!

Some of you out there have asked me why my updates about Swedish Girl have disappeared.  Even Swedish Girl has asked me this.  For those of you afraid to ask  - no, she hasn’t gotten sick of me yet.  We are still, happily, a couple.  Perhaps, subconsciously, my moratorium was a way to try to coax a guest post out of Swedish Girl herself so she could give y’all a status check.  Our respective lawyers are still working on this.   I think my team of representatives is making progress.

There is a blogworthy development or two in the works that involve Swedish Girl and Cool Jesus.  I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but mostly I don’t want to mention anything in case I chicken out.  Hopefully, within the next month, I’ll have an interesting post for you…if I live through it, that is.   Sorry to leave you all in suspense. 

I never would have thought that this blog could lend my personal life a hand, but one of my posts did just that.  My question about when does dating turn into going out and coupledom precipitated an in-car conversation with Swedish Girl.  Where I happen to be a major talker, she is more of a trust & actions girl.  Still, things were discussed and feelings were confessed and if it ended up with us being as close to official as we could be without signing a contract. 

I remember June of 2001 when Captain Lars was still a Bostonian and had just met Miss A.  He emailed me about how great she was and how he was really falling for her (interestingly enough, I very much remembered her from living in our dorm 6 years earlier; she remains the only person to ever compare me to Jeremy Sisto, which will forever be 77 times better than Josh Groban comparisons).  I was immensely happy for the new couple and I remember using a Beach Boys song title as the subject line for my return email.  It was "Summer Means New Love."  Now it’s four years later and that summery instrumental is running through my head.  Makes you think…

I know I live in Massachusetts, arguably the home of the worst drivers this side of…anywhere, but am I asking too much for a little hand?  I’m not foolish enough to ask for courtesy on the road.  That would be nice, but I know better.  I’m not even asking for drivers to use their blinkers.  Again, just because I do (most of the time) doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to do so.  I know everyone else is way too busy for that – busy talking on their cell phones, busy presetting Mike FM into their radios, and busy flipping me off.  All I ask is a little hand.

If I let you merge ahead of me into dense traffic, acknowledge my good deed with a thankful wave of your hand.  If you and I are driving toward each other, but I pull to the side to allow you to pass me because there isn’t enough room for both of us to fit, give me some hand.  If you pass me in a late model Jeep Cherokee, return my lonely salute with a fist pump of your own.  Okay, I made that last one up.  It seems that only Larry David (he of the Toyota Prius) and bus drivers (both school and commercial) acknowledge each other simply for driving the same vehicle. 

Just because we’re in our cars, doesn’t mean we’re cut off from society (although I wholeheartedly disagree with the law against driving naked; as long as you are in your car, you should be allowed to dress however you damn well please).  I look forward to opportunities when I can give my fellow man some hand.  I even make regular use of the "sorry hand" if I am driving too slow because I’m lost or if I cut you off and then had to embarrassingly sit in front of you at a red light or stop sign.  I’m thinking of starting a grass roots campaign and you can be my disciples.  Does this sound catchy – Give Some Hand to Your Fellow Man.

As part of my new job role, I’m evaluating current processes and I’ve been looking for steps/workflow graphing tools and I googled for “tool visualize people flow”. I got back some reasonable results, things like “A Prototype Notebook-Based Environment for Computational Tools,” “Graph Drawing Tools,” and “FORMAL MODELING FOR WORK SYSTEM DESIGN”.

Down the list, this one really stood out at me:

Ascension Love Spirituality – The Nature of Evil
The universal flow passes through people, empowering them as it passes. …
the only tool to which people responded well. Or, it may …

So I just *had* to click to the site. It’s all about meditation, auras, the nature of energy levels. Ha. I del.icio.us-ed it for future exploration into the Nature of Good and Evil. For now, I’m still looking for a good open source visualization tool, not the Infinite Being meditation, though maybe it would help me visualize process…

On a completely unrelated note, now that I have a home — my own place where I have groceries, all my clothes, a reasonable bed time, am actually home at night to make dinners and in the morning to make a smoothie — it has been (refreshing) making me feel like a real person again.

Last night, I met Brandon down by NYU around 8th St and Broadway to run an errand. We walked through the streets and it was nice to be together in the city. The bustle in the Village is a more eclectic, hipper crowd than say where I work in mid-town, where you see lots of suits, women in stiletto heels who could be, should be or probably are models, and some average working joes. In the Village, you’ll pass by people who look like they are going to go create something, whether it is art or anarchy or just something new and different.

Every day of my commute, I have some minor debacle. Generally, it is that I’m not quite sure where to go to get somewhere. I haven’t gone any one way enough yet or entered through quite the same entrance as before, that I’m pretty much always looking around for signs in the stations — and there’s generally a lack of adequate ones. Today, I got into Grand Central and began with looking for the damn Subway sign, instead of all the train platforms that were around me. Finally, closing in on the #7 train, I hop on and when it stops at 42nd and Bryant Park, the conductor is mumbling something about this stop, last, 42nd and Times Sq, Flushing, blah. Well, I don’t want to end up where ever the hell Flushing is, so to be safe I hop off. Walk outside, am at 42nd and 6th Ave, and I can see Times Sq and start walking toward it on 42nd. Then I think wait am I heading in the direction of 7th Ave or of 5th, since I want to be going to Port Authority at 42nd and 8th? Well, I can see Broadway up ahead, but is Broadway toward 7th? Ugh. I turn around get back to the other corner, struggle to get a bearing or see the sign way up ahead. Realize that to my right is 41st street which means the numbers are going up when means that 7th is the way I was originally walking. Fuck me. Finally, at Port Authority I buy my bus ticket, but then can’t remember which gate number is for Hoboken. And I’ve been to Port Authority a number of times and as far as I can tell there is NO way to find out which gate is what without asking someone at an Information Booth. There is a mob of gates and levels and people. I finally find out gate 204 is for the NJ #126 to Hoboken, which is in Zone 2 mind you, just in case you thought of purchasing a ticket without knowing. As memere would say, Heavens to Murgatroid! And in case you were wondering what the hell that means, I give thanks to the further wonders of google with Snagglepuss.

I am a displaced Sox Fan.  I have to admit, I’m still not comfortable uttering those words.  It defies logic.  Did I grow up in Boston?  Negative.  Did I endure 28 years (my lifespan) of agony rooting for a team that could never get the job done, no matter how close they came?  Negative.  In fact, in 1986, my 10 year-old self  was jumping up and down when the the Mets beat the Sox due in large part to Bill what’s his name. 

I know, I know, boo me.  Call it childhood ignorance.

It’s a hard stance to justify.  My family is all New York.  And I mean a Brooklyn-Coney Island-Simon & Garfunkel kind of New York.  It’s in my blood.  Somewhere.  Don’t get me wrong, I am NJ suburbs born and raised.  But like they say, you can take the Parents out of the City, but you can’t take the City out of the Parents.  And where the Parents roam, the children are sure to follow.  The older I get, and the more time I spend in Manhattan, the more I realize what the fuss is all about.  But for me, it’s not the trendy bars or the fancy hotels.  It’s not the neon of Times Square or the hipness of The Village.  It’s not The Triangle Below Canal Street or the neighborhood South of Houston.  No, it’s heritage, plain and simple.  It’s the colloquialisms, accents, and the feeling of belonging because it’s familiar.  Because it’s family.  It’s a part of how I was raised.  

And yet it’s not the Mets and it’s not the Yankees.  Hence, the great dilemma.

I can’t explain my infatuation with the Boston Red Sox.  All I know is that it came at a time when I was not interested in athletics on any level.  Basketball, the penultimate sport that held my last bit of attention faded away to self-consuming nothingness.  I abhorred professional sports.  Even after moving to a new city I lost all interst in the professional sports industry.  But on Sunday afternoons at 238 S. Huntington Ave, a tradition began to form.  It was nothing to write home to mom about, just Cool Jesus kicking back and watching the game.  But the roommate took notice, and more importantly, the roommate took interest.  And there, really, it began.  Something familiar.  Something regular.  Something true.  Something that I could identify with.  It wasn’t my parents’ team or the Big City to which I strived to belong.  No.  The Red Sox were an entity, a Common Ground, a way to reach out to Cool Jesus and later others, including LTJ.  The Sox became an example of life, pitiful and brilliant.  They too became a part of my blood.  In sports, longevity doesn’t matter:  Passion and perseverance prevail.  But, if even that fails, entertainment always follows:

Just this last week the Rem-Dawg said, (in his best Ed Sullivan impersonation), "Stay tuned, we have a really big shoe ahead of us, a really big shoe". 

How true.   

I’m too tired to post — practically too tired to move. This week has been crazy. My brain is a gooie mush. I’m not used to getting up so early and being so perky in the morning. Generally the wheels start cranking in high gear after 2 p.m., so getting up at ~7 a.m. has been hampering my late night prowess.

The first half week on the job has been amazing. Everything is fresh and new. I think I have used the word refreshing in conversations with people at the company at least 100 times. It’s so refreshing that there is a process here. It is so refreshing to see documentation. It is so refreshing that people are so happy for me to be here. It is so refreshing to have an orientation schedule that is jam packed with real training sessions. It is so refreshing… refreshing. refreshing. refreshing.

The bottom line is this is everything that my last job was not. I absolutely adore my boss. He knows his shit, is cool, personable, laid back… just an awesome guy. The company has process, project management procedures, *real* software development lifecycle with true requirements, design and analysis, documentation, a management team that leaves the implementation details up to the people they’ve hired to be experts in implementing those things… basically, everything that I disliked about my last company and wished they did (or didn’t do) my new company does (or doesn’t do). I’m sure they’ll be new issues, but at least I am leaving all that other baggage behind! Hallelujah! And lastly, my opinion counts. They listen to it. They care to hear my input. They like me. They want me there and they respect me. Wowee. Who woulda thunk it?

I instant messaged LTJ today and told him that I think we’ll end up having more friends in NYC than we did in Boston. This seems like a paradox, but everyone here is so friendly and nice, especially at our jobs. It is amazing, but I think people are actually colder in Boston than NY… That’s just my experience so far.

LTJ and I are really happy, loving our apartment and jobs. I think this is the best decision we could have made for us, for our careers, for our lives and happiness. Everything just feels right, like this is where we should be at this time in our lives.

And then they lived happily ever after…