The Holiday’s

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For Thanksgiving I went out to my sisters for a few days. I ended up taking off Wednesday and Friday. I headed out Wednesday morning with my parents. We got to spend most of the day hanging out and my mom helped a little with getting the cooking finished. Thanksgiving day was relatively low key. It was only about 8 adults and my niece and nephew. Dinner took longer than anticipated to be ready to eat but when it was it was good! Desert was even better. The homemade brownies were really good. Zach seemed to love them, but anything with chocolate and sugar impresses him.

2008 Thanksgiving - 20

The funniest point of the day was when Zachary said he was thankful for Dinosaurs. Morgan was more practical and was thankful for food and oxygen. How a 5 1/2 year old can know to be thankful for oxygen I will never know!

It looks like I was able to avoid getting a cold from everyone. I was happy about that! I got a ride back to Manhattan Thursday night from Michael’s dad. We got a little lost but thankfully there was no traffic.

Short Week

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Today I worked from home. That is part of my typical routine I have gotten into over the past 6 weeks. Tomorrow I am off to the office for about 6 hours of back to back meetings. That is the downside. The upside is that I have the rest of the week off. Even though my company gives me a half day (1pm we can go home!) on Friday, I decided that I wanted the full day off to make it a nice long weekend. I am going to my sisters Wednesday morning and wont come home until Friday morning. Then I get a normal weekend to hang out. Hopefully I don’t get the cold that has been going around that I have been semi avoiding for the past week.

Today was relatively uneventful at work. Lots of planning meetings, and following up from a release we had over the weekend. Nothing I can discuss here. I was battling a Migraine most of the day. The Aleve didn’t work, so I ended up having to take something stronger towards the end of the day. I was trying to avoid it but if I didn’t I would ruin the entire evening.

After work I ran out to the grocery store and grabbed a fresh filet for dinner. The new “fancy” grocery store virtually across the street from my house is spoiling me. I check out what I want for food and then get it fresh and cook it up. It beats thinking ahead several days and buy from Fresh Direct. I still use Fresh Direct and love it but the fresh stuff is too difficult to predict when I will eat it. I would rather go to the store right before I want something vs buying it and hope I will be in the mood for it. The filet was really good, and the peacan bars I got for desert will hopefully be really good when I eat one later.

So, Who Am I?

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I have hinted at this for ages, but I never publicized who I am on this site. Well, way back when I started writing this blog it was trivial to figure out who I was. Then there was a period of time where I went out of my way to mask who I was. In recent history I haven’t come out and said my name or where I work, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure it out. To me, because of an scare at work a few years ago right around the time I read about people being fired for blogging I have been very shy about saying my name on this site. It is probably an over reaction especially now since I put anything detailed I write about work on a private site. I have still been a bit gun shy. Gus, pointed out to me that hiding who I am might actually be a bad thing. He might be right. More and more people look to someone’s online presence when looking up someone. I have heard of people getting job offers or not from their writings online. So why shouldn’t I say who I am? I have seen my postings commented or quoted in an online magazine here or there, or vmware blog once or twice.

So hi, my name is Scott Weinstein. I live and work in NYC. Please don’t confuse me with the 36 other Scott Weinstein’s in the US according to a census website I found a few months ago.

Now the disclaimer, the postings on this site are my own and do not represent the views of my employer. That is verbatim from my current companies policy regarding personal blogs. It goes without saying but I will follow their rules and say it anyway. My views are just that, mine. I haven’t stated who I was until now specifically because I was concerned about employers not approving. Now that I work for a company that has clear guidelines, and are open to personal blogs as long as these guidelines are followed I wont do anything to violate those policies. The topic of blogging isn’t so new anymore that I need to be so paranoid.

In the end, no one really cares about this topic but me. As I always have said I write this for me, so talking out loud about this is good (for me).

James Bond

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Tonight I saw the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace last night with Danny. It had some good action sequences but otherwise was simply an OK movie. It didn’t suck, but it wasn’t so memorable. Casino Royale was a much better movie in my opinion. After the movie Danny and I hit the Heartland Brewery for dinner. I only had one drink because I think I am fighting a cold. Otherwise a relatively uneventful day.

A Release in Progress

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I am eagerly waiting for one of the guys on my team to finish a software release on one of the applications my team supports. They have been working on it almost all day. I don’t have anything really to do with the release again until tomorrow morning but I know I won’t sleep right until I hear that everything went OK. I am hoping I get that nice all OK email in the next 90 minutes! Fingers crossed.

iPhone 2.2

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I upgraded today to the iPhone latest version of the iPhone software, 2.2. On the off chance that the problem I had last week with my iphone not syncing with my computer was related to the phone and not the computer I am updating the software right away. So far I don’t see any major features stand out. I am happier that my Apple TV has a new OS version on it so I can control the volume of the Apple TV using my remote software on the iPhone! Now that is functional!

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Busy Thursday

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My new job (well not so new since it has been almost 3 months) is unlike any I have had before. Previous jobs I have worked with people in remote offices, but at my current job virtually everyone including my entire team is remote. That means most of my day is taken up by phone calls, emails, and lots and lots of conference calls. Since most of the job is communicating with others elsewhere I am able to work pretty much anywhere. My boss has been very flexible and I have been working from home a few days a week. I go into my main office once or twice a week and one of our other offices in Manhattan a day a week or so. It is weird working from home so much. In many ways I like it allot, and in other ways I don’t like it. I do miss the socialization that is work in an office. Of course since the main office I goto doesn’t house my team I don’t even really have that when I go in. When I go to the other office in Manhattan I am around allot of people I work with, but who are in other groups I interact with. That makes the days I am there great for face to face meetings.

One day a week all the local members of my team get together in one office to meet. Since I started that has been my office in NYC since the office most of the remainder of the local team (NY & NJ) are in is being renovated so space is limited. On that day there is almost no time free from meetings. If it isn’t regular scheduled meetings it is an entire team meeting, or one on one meetings with each person on the team. The other day in the office usually isn’t as packed with meetings but this week it was. This week, that day happened to be today. Thankfully tomorrow is almost free of meetings so I can try to get administrative work done. Of course we have a big project release tomorrow so who knows what I might need to be involved with that if stuff breaks!

For a point of information, if you read this you might think I am complaining about the hectic schedule. That is far from reality. I actually live off the fast pace (to a point), and would be bored out of my mind if it wasn’t so busy with stuff to do. Honestly some of these conference calls are kind of boring, but most of them are interesting, and you have to stay on your toes or you miss lots of stuff. Here is to tomorrow and hopefully some decent time to finish paperwork!