Arthur C. Clarke died at the age of 90 today. I always knew that it would happen, he has been an old man for quite a while. But it makes me very sad. His books introduced me to science fiction when I was kid and I have enjoyed reading them ever since. I have at least 25 of his books on my shelves and have probably read countless more. He was an amazingly prolific writer who never gave up on the quality of his work.

The literary and scientific world has lost a great mind today.

It has been over a month since I last wrote, I apologize dear readers. Really, things have been busy. It is now Sunday evening and I am resting for a little bit and was thinking about everything that is going on. I am not going to go through a whole long spiel here, but I thought I could at least offer a list of things that occupy my time lately

• Work. The new job goes well. While strictly only 8-5, it is thoroughly exhausting. I have traveled twice in the last 4 weeks, both times for only a day and a half each. The skills I have had to learn have been good ones, but seem to require a part of my brain that was not used as much before.
• School. This is my last semester and due to my dropping a class last semester, I am taking a class alongside my Master’s project. My project is due in under 3 weeks now (2 weekends more to finish it up) so that is coming down on crunch time.
• Bowling. Every Tuesday. I even bought shoes, they should be here tomorrow. No more oddly disinfectant smelling house shoes.
• Volleyball. Sunday and Monday. Practice on Sunday and games on Monday. This is just starting up this week. We practiced for what felt like several hours earlier today. Great fun, but man will I be sore in the morning.
• House stuff. The plaid wallpaper is gone. Finally. I am in the midst of repainting now. Priming is underway and test colors got bought today and put up on the walls to be evaluated.
• Friends and more. Great events with great friends, whether it be the above mentioned bowling and volleyball or weekend wine trips, dinners and talk, local chili cookoff, walks in the evenings, or just being together. I couldn’t ask for better people in my life right now.

While busy, life is very good right now. I hope it is good for you too.

There is a challenge when looks for new employment that is subtle but insidious. I received 4 formal offers of employment over the last 5 months as I looked for a new opportunity. In a perfect world, I would have been to look at all the offers and compare them and pick the one that looked the best for me. But that is not what happens. Like a more stressful version of Deal or No Deal, you get each offer by itself and you have to weigh the quality of it against the possibility you might get something better later. Thankfully for me, I am glad I passed on the first 3.

I have accepted an offer from Swisslog to eventually be the Director of Software Implementation for the North American division of their Warehouse and Distribution Solutions division. As this is a bit to bite off and chew immediately, I am starting by managing the technical aspects of their largest project. I will be using this project to learn the business, software, and process in more depth than would be possible if I tried to run the whole group right away. After a few months I will then expand my role over the whole operation. I am very excited. Having a company that is truly interested and willing to create an environment where one is set up to succeed is a rare find.

I’ve got a week or so before I start so I am going to be enjoying the last bit of work-free time by trying to get ahead with my school and house projects. More updates when I start.

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I can’t believe I just put a flash player on my blog, but whatever, just watch the damn trailer.

As many of you know, I have been working free-lance since I left GuardianEdge as I take my time trying to find that perfect (or as close to perfect) new job opportunity. This has obviously meant that I have spent considerably more time at home without the regular daily schedules that come from being employed at a 9-5 job. Especially over the last few weeks I have started to notice that my sense of time and the passage of time has become, shall we say, less than good. It is as if time has become drawn out and events that feel like they took place several months ago in fact only took place weeks ago. I find myself having to pull up my calendar to recalibrate my sense of when events actually took place.

This is a very odd experience to undergo. On the bright side, subjectively I am not getting old as fast as I was before.

This morning in looking over the various blogs I read, I came across this challenge. Take

• The first entry on Wikipedia’s random page.
• The end of the last entry on this random quote page.
• And, the fourth image from Flickr’s Creative Commons Attribution License random image page.

Now use those three items as a band name, album title, and cover image for a CD cover.

I got quite lucky; I came away with my band as Daredevil, a quote from Robert Heinlein: “A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.” and this image.

I was amused. Now it is your turn!

I suspect this link will excite some of my readers more than others. You know who you are.

Who Needs Friends…when you have pens.

Ruins of the old Williamsburg Hospital

Just a quick hello between Christmas and New Years. I hope everyone had a great Christmas, I know I did. While my family history has often been rocky, it is amazing and humbling the kindness I have been shown by so many families throughout my life. This year was no exception.

A few photos were taken. They can be found through the picture linked above.

Black and white photography is something new to me. Those with more official training in photography usually start shooting only black and white and I think that I see why. It is the same as working with a prime lens in that it removes a variable from the equation of taking a good shot. Rather than having a multitude of variables, I am forced down to just focus, aperture and exposure. That leaves more of the brain able to concentrate on framing the shot.

I don’t think I will start shooting exclusively black and white to practice, but as we exit fall and enter winter, there are not very many colors to speak of and I think it will allow me to explore other aspects of my picture taking.

A few more pictures from the same set are on my flickr page. I didn’t make a set, so it is probably easiest to click on the one above and just go backwards and forwards.