Pete was the step father of a good friend of mine, but I was very close to the family as a whole. I was included like I was a member of the family, and I considered them as part of my family. Pete was really a great guy, he was kind, and was a lot of fun to be around.

This situation is a bit worse because I have never had anyone really close to me pass away. I had a few family members pass away years ago, but we were not close. Pete and I were much closer and I wasn’t able to visit him while he was in the hospital, which makes it even worse.

Here is my report

Best Occupational Category
You’re an ORGANIZER

Keywords
Self-Control, Practical, Self-Contained, Orderly, Systematic, Precise, and Accurate
These conservative appearing, plotting-types enjoy organizing, data systems, accounting, detail, and accuracy. They often enjoy mathematics and data management activities such as accounting and investment management. Persistence and patience allows them to do detailed paperwork, operate office machines, write business reports, and make charts and graphs.

ORGANIZER CAREERS
Suggested careers are Administrator, Secretary, Printer, Paralegal, Building Inspector, Bank Cashier, Private Secretary, Statistician, Operations Manager, Financial Analyst, Bookkeeper, Medical Records Technician, Developer of Business or Computer Systems, Clerical Worker, Proofreader, Accountant, Administrative Assistant, Banker, Certified Public Accountant, Credit Manager, Store Salesperson, Actuary, Dental Assistant, Business Education Teacher, Food Service Manager, IRS Agent, Budget Analyst, and Underwriter.

ORGANIZER WORKPLACES
Your very careful, conscientious, conservative nature gives others the confidence to trust you with handling money and material possessions. Structured organizations that have well-ordered chains of command work best for you.
Suggested Organizer workplaces are large corporations, business offices, financial lending institutions, banks, insurance companies, accounting firms, and quality control and inspection departments.

2nd Best Occupational Category
You’re a RESEARCHER

Keywords:
Independent, Self-Motivated, Reserved, Introspective, Analytical, and Curious
These investigative types gather information, analyze and interpret data, and inquire to uncover new facts. They have a strong scientific orientation, enjoy academic or research environments and prefer self-reliant jobs. Dislikes are group projects, selling, and repetitive activities.

Section I: You and Your Team
This personality overview section highlights your natural workplace talents—the tasks you pursue with passion. You’ll learn how your natural strengths complement those of your coworkers and how, joining forces, you can resolve on-the-job dilemmas.

Section II: Your Key To Success
Here you discover your capacity for dispelling disruption and maximizing profitability. Use this proven, beyond-self-perception advice to create a more positive career path free of detours.

Section III: Managing Strengths and Weaknesses
Your evaluation’s highest and lowest scores result in this section’s recommendations for staying on-track in your career and reversing wrong turns. In focusing on your talents and missteps, you’ll re-stoke your energy and enthusiasm for managing costly mistakes.

Section IV: Leadership Power Moves
This final section identifies your “street sense,” those power moves that turn obstacles into insignificant details. Here suggestions based on your color-ranked evaluations will guide you towards making the most of an interview or harnessing your fast-paced workday.

I may be going to Sydney, Australia and Aukland, New Zealand in February or early March. I have a 10yr high school reunion in May in Vermont. I have to go to Atlanta sometime this year to get my molar implants put in.

In October I will be flying to Virginia to pick up my mom and take her to Paris, something she has wanted to do her entire life, but has not been able to. Now that she is in a very forgetful state I want to try to get her there before it gets worse.

I am going to try to visit London, and Switzerland sometime this year too, but who knows when I will be able to fit those in with everything going on.

I had two separate posts with resolutions last year, one for January 1, and another for my birthday, since that really is a new year. I am going to roll over my old ones because I had no time in 2009.

• Sell/trash old stuff that I don’t use anymore
• Spend more time blogging (project52)
• Take better care of my health
• Improve Django and Python skills
• Work on a startup
• Create an Android application
• Eliminate all debt
• Start dating again
• Create a solution log
• Move up in Google

I felt like getting a Slurpee so I headed out around 2pm and noticed that one of the homeless guys around here was in the park so while I was at 7-11 I picked up a hotdog and a bottle of water. On my way home I stopped at the park and brought it to him, as I was leaving, and he was thanking me I turned around and gave him $7 I had in my pocket. He was very happy to be getting both food and some money. I think that was the happiest I have seen anyone in a very long time. He said, “this is HUGE, how did you know I was in need?”, and I explained that I had been in a similar situation years ago and knew what it was like.

I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about this, but something very few people know about me is that back in 2005/2006 ago I lived out of my car for 3 months. The initial reaction from most is that it would be a horrible experience, and while parts of it were upsetting and difficult lessons were learned and I now know more about myself than ever. I was sleeping in a 95 3 Series BMW, which might sound nice, but it really isn’t, it is very uncomfortable, and you can’t sell it because you need transportation, and in this case a place to sleep. Access to a shower was limited, but I had a friend who was very kind to me and let me come over to her parents place. The difficulty with limited shower access is you have to be super careful about what you do so you don’t *need* a shower before you can have access to one. I ate Sabritones, a lime puffed wheat snack, when I didn’t have much money (they were $0.99 a bag and filling). The sad thing about that situation is I had a very very close friend who could have helped, and he did not. He was not obligated in anyway, it was my problem, but as close as we were and having a 3000 sqft house, he should have. Eventually his brother moved out and when he got his own house he let me stay there for 3 months or so, which saved my life, and I will be forever grateful to him for it.

So the situation is different, but I can relate, I know how hard it can be sometimes to keep it together. I know that giving him that small amount of money and lunch made a big difference for him, and he is enjoying it. With the upcoming load of stuff I will be bringing to CA, I am pretty sure there are things in there that I can give to him to use, but I wish I could do more for him today. He was a very nice man, and I feel bad for him because with apartment costs as high as they are getting back on his feet will be hard. I know that if I had not had family to go back to, I would have been in serious trouble.

Now that I have revealed more than I think I ever planned to on my blog, I will close with Merry Christmas, and have a Happy New Year!

So since this is MY new year, here are my resolutions:

1. Lose weight
2. Take better care of my health
3. Start dating again
4. Transfer departments at work to the department I would like to stay for the rest of my career
5. Spend more time blogging
6. Write an article or two for an online site, like I used to for Linux.com

Up to this point I haven’t made any progress on 3, 5 and 6, but I have started riding a bike again, while I don’t always eat healthy I have been making sure I have healthy food every day, and I have somewhat transferred to another role in the company.

At the beginning of October I moved to Mountain View, CA from Atlanta, GA to temporarily switch roles in the company. I may end up remaining in this position or changing, but I will be here until at least the end of March 2010. Because I am close to work I bought a Gary Fisher Cobia to ride to and from work, and will eventually bring my road bike out from Atlanta. Considering it has been about 12 years since I rode a bike over a few miles, I am fairly happy with the rides I have been doing. I rode 10 miles on the 18th, 15 miles on the 24th, 9 miles on the 25th, and 10.5 on the 27th. The ride on the 27th was to and from work, and I happened to get sick from riding in cold weather, but if I can do it sick I know I can do it any day.

Some of you know that my mother suffered from brain cancer, and after getting back into riding and gaining some interest in the things Lance Armstrong has done I have developed and annoyance with myself for not being involved in his Livestrong organization sooner. In the coming months I am going to start being involved in the organization and try to get other coworkers involved as well.

One thing people have said about me is that they can give me a goal and I will reach it, this has always been a work related comment, but I feel that while I do fail at some goals, they may not be total failures but may get put on the back burner until a point in my life where it makes more sense. One thing I would like to do, which I would place more under the dream category, is the Ironman triathlon. I say dream category because it is an intense race, and I don’t know that I can/will put in the time anytime soon to do it. I hope to eventually do something similar that is a real challenge. To give you an idea of another item in the dream category I have Everest at the top of that, but considering I get winded doing a lot of things I have a ways to go to do either of those. Not to mention Everest is very expensive. Thinking about how I must appear to my more recent friends I can see these two things as somewhat shocking, most people know I am ambitious, it isn’t something I hide, but a lot of people don’t know the more physical things I used to do in my life so I appear much more sedentary than these goals would imply.

Anyway I am a little sick right now so I am finishing this up and going to bed after I take some meds.

So as another year starts I feel some things need to change. I need to get out more often, and start to take better care of myself. With my mouth finally starting to hurt less I am taking fewer pain killers and can hopefully start taking my cholesterol meds again. I’m sure they don’t conflict, but I didn’t want to take any chances and forgot to ask the doctors.

My career is in my opinion starting to take shape and taking the shape I would like. While I have had to put a lot of effort into it, and worked a lot of hours, I feel the effort was worth it. I do feel that I may regret some of it later as I didn’t really enjoy life and instead pushed for the career. That may have been the wrong approach, but I have seen a lot of people spend their entire life working towards a career or their piece of the pie and I think that getting that out of the way early leaves you more available for the other stuff later in life. The people in my life who know what I have had to do, mainly friends from work, understand just how difficult it was because they have intimate knowledge of what we do and what challenges exist. Maybe one day I will be important enough that writing a book about my life will make sense, after all a book is a life goal of mine.

So since this is MY new year, here are my resolutions:

1. Lose weight
2. Take better care of my health
3. Start dating again
4. Transfer departments at work to the department I would like to stay for the rest of my career
5. Spend more time blogging
6. Write an article or two for an online site, like I used to for Linux.com

We’ll see how it goes, I don’t know that I do such a good job completing my goals that I write down.

For a couple weeks I have had pressure on my molars, and years ago I learned that my wisdom teeth were coming in at an angle, but all the sudden the teeth were causing incredible pain. I had some vicodin left over from other prescriptions and quickly took one, but no pain killer has ever really helped with pain so I was on the verge of tears all day. I did get Lortab prior to my appointment to help with pain. It appears that it is just vicodin with tylenol, but it was prescribed that I could take two. So far that has only made me sick and very tired.

Luckily I was able to get an appointment today and I saw the doctor. Three wisdom teeth and one molar are being removed next Wednesday, the 4th wisdom tooth should slide in the place of the molar if it decides to come in, but the molar needs to come out either way. One benefit to the visit is that they had this new piece of equipment that makes it easier to detect the early signs of oral cancer. Since I used to dip I get very upset/anxious/sick about even the thought about cancer so I jumped on the chance to get checked. Everything looked fine so now when I notice a bump or something I won’t jump to conclusions that it is cancer.

In 2007 a friend and I both started moving out equipment to rack mount setups. We each had our own reasons, but the common reasons were saving space, organization, and it is kinda nice to say you have a rack in your house. When I was looking for a rack/cabinet I found someone a couple hours away that had a lightly used 45U fully enclosed cabinet for sale. The cabinet came with sides, doors, caster base, two shelves, four-fan unit for the top, and a $350 price tag. A few days after picking up the cabinet I spoke with him again and we made a deal that resulted in me having an entire car full (trunk full and front and back seats full to the ceiling) of equipment. I recreated an album containing the older pictures of the cabinet, and how things were organized, which can be viewed in the Rack Project album.

After moving to Atlanta I was able to acquire even more rack mount equipment and fill in some of the gaps I had to leave empty in the beginning. The details of what is in the cabinet can be read on my Gear page, but here is a parent list.

• Linksys WRT54G 4-Port 10/100 54mb Wireless Router
• Canon CanoScan 8400F
• brother HL Series HL-2070N Laser Printer,
• 4U, Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Desktop
• 5U, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ File Server
• 1U, Intel Pentium III, 850mhz Endian Firewall/Router
• 1U, Intel Pentium 4, 2.4ghz IBM x305 Servers (x4)
• 1U, Tripp Lite HTR07-1U UPS (x2)
• 1U, Dell PowerConnect 5012 Gigabit Switch
• 1U, Cisco Catalyst 2900 XL 24 port Switch
• 1U, CAT5e 24 port Patch Panel
• 1U, Rack Writer
• 2U, Intel Pentium 4, 2.6C Linux Desktop

I am currently not using the Cisco switch, the 2U desktop, or any of the x305 1Us on a regular basis. With the monitor and 5.1 audio connected to the same power source I am pulling 515 watts right now, which does raise the power bill, but not to an outrageous amount.

I am opening up time to start doing a little consulting so I have taken some time to organize the work space and make it a better work environment. The following pictures are of my home office that were taken on March 2nd, Home Office album is on PicasaWeb.

I haven’t tried it yet, but this recipe is probably going to give you the real Swiss fondue experience. The fondue I had in Zurich had white wine in it, which was different from other fondue I have had, but sooooo good.

1/2 lb Emnenthaler Cheese (shredded)
1/2 lb Gruyeye (shredded)
1 clove Garlic
2 cups Dry White Wine
1 tbs Lemon Juice
2 tbs Flour
3 tbs Kirsch
1/4 tsp White Pepper
Nutmeg and/or Paprika to taste

Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic clove – add clove to pot or disgard
Heat up the White Wine & Lemon Juice – should be hot but do not boil
Reduce heat to low and slowly add cheese while stirring
Slowly add remainder of ingredients while stirring
If fondue is too loose add more cheese
If fondue is too stiff add more wine

I have felt like a jerk not being able communicate with a lot of the people I have to talk to, co-workers are of course excluded from that since they all speak English. A lot of stores seem to be closed on Sunday, and they are of course different from stores in the U.S. The food is good, I have had Italian, Swiss-American, Swiss, and some German food and have enjoyed them all. The Swiss-American burger could have been better, but it was of course “American” food in another country. Food is pretty expensive. I have been paying 20-30 CHF for a meal, which is about $17-$25. Not horrible, but when that $25 is fries, a coke, and bratwurst it is a bit expensive.

I am pretty sure I am going to put in the effort to relocate to Zurich even with the downsides, I feel there is more opportunity for travel, career advancement, personal growth, and excitement here than in CA or NY and certainly more than Atlanta.

You are more than welcome to browse through all of the photos taken during the trip along with some of my favorites displayed below.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://peterjmanis.com$1 [R=301,L]

Apparently Wordpress couldn’t handle that correctly because I made a small change to my permalinks. I have since updated it to

RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ http://peterjmanis.com$1/$2$3/ [R=301,L]

Everything should now redirect properly.