Personal

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Christmas Cactus, part two

I mentioned before that I was pleased with my Christmas Cactus. I even showed a couple pictures of it with little buds. I am even more pleased with it now. The blooms remind me of dragons. I have a few pics, but they are kinda blurry.

This is one of the better ones.

Notice how the bloom folds back and looks like wings?

Here’s another shot.

As you can see, there are multiple blooms from this shot. We are having 3-4 bloom at any given time. We have had 6-8 full blooms so far, and another 15-20 on the way. Based on how these are lasting, I suspect we will have buds through the end of January; perhaps longer.

This last picture should give you an idea of how many buds we have.

Basically, every cactus growth has a bud at the end of it.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Dick Clark, you have had a good run, but…

Dick Clark, you have had a good run, but please get off my TV.  You are embarrassing yourself by over extending yourself on TV.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Proud of my brother John

Today I got the official word from my big bro…

“three book hard cover deal”

Yes, my brother’s first published novel, and they liked it so much they have signed him to a three book deal!!!

I’ll have links “soon” to where YOU can buy a copy of his book.  I know I will figure out how to get copies of them all.

Very proud I am.  He has worked SO HARD on this.

I’ll share more information as I get it.

FOLLOW-UP:

Publishers Marketplace 12/18/2008

FICTION: SCI-FI/FANTASY
John Pitts’s BLACK BLADE BLUES, featuring a female blacksmith who
unintentionally reforges a magical sword, and must use it to slay a modern
day dragon, to Claire Eddy at Tor, in a three-book deal, by Cameron McClure
at the Donald Maass Literary Agency (World English).

Friday, December 12, 2008

thingamajob needs to hire me, they obviously have no clue about how to do their job

I was looking at a set of jobs and filled out some applications.  It is OBVIOUS that thingamajob.com needs to hire me.  Here is a sample of the e-mail their computers sent me in response to a position.  How sad!!  You know, it is NOT THAT HARD to have variables actually display the contents of the memory location instead of the name of the variable.  It is also NOT THAT HARD to actually TEST your systems.

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Welcome David,
You just took a big step toward finding a fantastic job by applying to the below position through one of our partners, !@WSVENDORNAME@!. This message is to confirm that your resume has been sent to !@COMPANYNAME1@!, Inc. via Thingamajob, the free online job search tool for the Allegis Group Family of Companies.
Title:UNIX/SAN Architect
Company:!@COMPANYNAME1@!
Skills Needed:UNIX, SAN, BILINGUAL SPANISH
Location:Miami, Florida
Category:Information Technology
Rate:!@RATE@!
Job Type:!@JOBTYPE@!
Posting ID:1835002

To receive emails from us more effectively, please add us to your “Contacts” (i.e. Address Book, Buddy List, etc.)
In order to process your online job application, we had to create an account for you in !@COMPANYNAME2@!, Inc.’s online job search tool - Thingamajob.com
Thingamajob is owned by Allegis Group, parent company to some of the world’s largest staffing companies including Aerotek, TEKsystems,and Stephen James. These staffing companies work with the hiring managers who have the jobs you want. When you put your resume online or apply to a job posting on Thingamajob, a recruiter matches your experience with one of our many opportunities. If your experience meets the job’s objectives, a recruiter will contact you to prepare you for the interview and get you in the employment seat.
To log into Thingamajob to track your application, or update your resume, please use the following login information
Username: !@USERNAME@!
Password: !@PASSWORD@!
If your experience meets the qualifications of the position, a recruiter will be in touch with you shortly to further discuss your professional background.
To log in, go to Account Login http://www.thingamajob.com/My-Thingamajob.aspx
Thank you for using Thingamajob.com… Remember We’re Hiring!

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Commercialization of Athletics

I found the article from USA Today about commercialization of college athletics (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2008-12-10-corporate-college_N.htm) interesting.  Having spent the past 5.5 years working with the company that does this commercialization that was discussed in the article.  Face it, the colleges and universities have already drank the kool-aid; they are just waiting for the alumni to mentally grow accustomed to the idea and for the NCAA to not throw too big a hissy.

It seems like a win-win all the way around to me.