Personal

I have been in a cold medicine induced haze all day today. Kai, Danny, & Jayson were having lots of fun regarding my state of awareness. It is kind of weird when you don’t really feel your feet. I knew I was in for a day when I couldn’t read the screen of my PDA on the train. I wanted to leave early but I ended up staying a few minutes late. Time just flies by.

I am going to try and get to bed early. I hope that happens.

I feel like I am getting sick. I am on cold meds. The drinking last night probably wasn’t one of my brightest ideas. I also went to the office today to help out with some stuff. I am back now and I am really tired. The non-drowsy cold stuff I am on right now sure makes me tired.

I did my tax’s Saturday. I was torn between buying the Turbotax software, using Turbotax online or H&R Block Online. I ended up trying an online tax prep (not telling you what one, tax’s are a personal and private thing:). Man was it easy. I have to say if you have a relatively simple to moderately complicated return I would suggest this. I am not an accountant. I hate math. My accountant even told me for simple stuff to use software. He of course is a friend of the family trying to save me money, and it worked. I did the return early and now I hope to get a nice return early. Nightmare is over, for another year!

Friday Jayson and I had to leave work early to goto a wake.  A friend of ours mom died.  It was very sudden and very sad.  It was scary how similar a situation it was with my Uncle Berny.  We ran home to get our respective suits for the service.  I was thankful that I had just bought a brand new suit and gotten it just a week ago.

After showering and shaving I put on the suit.  I was kind of surprised at how it fit.  When I tried it on in the store after the alterations it was tight but it fit.  When I put this on the paints would barely stay on my waist.  What the hell happened I thought for about a half a second.  The dumb-ass’ at the store gave me my Dad’s suit.  We went together, bought the same style suit and have the same last names.  They gave me his.  At that point I needed to wear something for this thing, so I put the paints on and cinched the paints as tight as I could with my belt.  The paints were fine except they were a bit longer than they should have been.  I spent most of the evening pulling them up when I walked so I wouldn’t mess up the bottoms.  The jacket fit, but was a bit longer than it normally should have been.  It was really funny.

I ended up calling my mom on the subway and asked her to have my dad try on the suit that he had.  REALLY LONG conversation later it was confirmed that a switch had been made.  Thankfully I was able to get throughout the night with the EXTRA large suit.

As my sister put it, the craziest thing about this situation wasn’t that I had the wrong suit, but that I could put my dad’s suit on and actually wear it at all.  Now I love my dad, but he has gotten to have a huge belly.  The last time I think he exercised without being forced to (he did have physical therapy a few years ago) was the 60’s.

The service was really sad.  I hate those things.  not because of reasons you would think.  I didn’t go out of obligation like I do with tons of family functions.  I went to let a friend know she wasn’t alone.  And she wasn’t.  A ton of us showed up.  But what I can’t stand is not knowing what to say.  There is nothing you can say that will make any difference.  it is just awkward.  You just have to sit there knowing there is nothing you can do to help.

I am a little depressed after checking out the Baby Name Wizard. No I am not having a kid, but this was too cool to not check out. It maps out the popularity of the most common names in the US for the past 100 years or so.

I was depressed to see that the name Scott peaked in the 60’s with a rank of 15th most popular boy name. In the 70’s it was ranked 17th. That was when my parents jumped on the band wagon and named me. After that the name started a major decline. Ranked #39 in the 80’s, 75th in the 90’s, and 208th last year. Come on people, it is a good name. Use it! Why does everyone need to go for those (as my brother in law calls them) shee shee fru fru names people use now a days?

Scott, from Old English. Meaning wanderer or from Scotland. There are other good meanings for the name that I couldn’t find in the 3 minutes I tried to do research for this entry. It is a good name, trust me.

On a positive note, I know of one new possible Scott out there. Don’t change your mind Sean!!!

Rant about nothing important is now over. Resume normal schedule!

I deal with disaster scenarios all the time.  I am paid to look at a system we have and figure out where it could fail.  then come up with a way to minimize that risk, either by a fully automated redundant system or some other backup plan.

So saying I was surprised when I read that the MTA had to turn off an entire train line and it won’t be back for nine months would be an understatement.  How can a major municipal corporate not have redundant systems for minor components like switch controls?  If you have a system that is worth billions of dollars, and millions of people use each day it sort of should be a given that you have backups for critical systems.  I guess the MTA can say oops.  This article explains what happened, or that the NYPD isn’t really sure yet.  They are still investigating.

Thankfully I am no affected by this issue, but because of what I do it got me to stop and think "redundancy, we really do need that"!  I am now not sure if big companies or small ones get the whole redundancy thing right?

One funny thing I noticed when I was out in the snow Saturday. The 4 & 5 trains were running local in manhattan. that meant the express track was not in use. They do construction on the weekends. This weekend during the snow storm they parked trains on the express track at every station that I stopped at. It looked like they were trying to keep trains out of the snow when they were not in use. I have seen them park a train or two before but there were allot Saturday. It is sort of comforting that the MTA is thinking a bit about things like this. Trains underground out of snow causes less problems! Now all they have to do is not raise the fares

Another interesting note is that Jay read that the city was taking anyone with a social security card and a drivers license and letting them work with or on snow plows for like $9 an hour. I guess they were really short handed.

I love the snow. I love watching it come down from the comfort of my warm apartment. I love standing on the street and watch fresh snow fall. I am no longer a big fan of playing in the snow, but I used to be. Snow is one of those things that looks cool, and doesn’t come along so much to become a bore!

Saturday when it was snowing I decided to go out for a while. If it was poring raining on a weekend I would probably stay in, but snow is a different story.

First of all I decided to go out for two reasons. I forgot something at work on Friday, and I really wanted/needed it this weekend. That is what I get for bringing in my own gear to the office. Second I needed something at Best Buy. At first I thought I was crazy for wanting to go out. Then I realized that I lived in a city with one of the largest underground transit systems in the world. And the train I needed is about 1 block from my house. So basically I had to walk a block, and then a few blocks once I got to my station by work. That was it. Best Buy is one store down from the train station. I thought piece of cake. Guess what, it was. I even spent some extra time out in the snow because it was so nice. Cold, yes but nice.

One misconception I need to discount in this entry. My mom has said repeatedly that Doc Martin’s are not good snow shoes. if it snows out they won’t be good. Well mom I used my Doc’s Saturday in the snow with no problem. Of course after 3-5 inches of snow I probably would have needed snow boots, but I wasn’t planning on going out after that much snow.

My cousin just IM’d me. She of course did play in the snow. The joy’s of being 9.