We are 32 days in Florida as of today, and so far it's been a marvelous experience. All three boys are thriving in school. I haven't seen so many A's since my mother's book club read The Scarlet Letter. * Good on you, boys! Connectivity in the home office is stable and strong, the result of a two day effort that first saw it take 45 minutes to get an answer to the simple question, "where is the cell tower closest to my house?" Fortunately, the customer service rep on the other end of the phone was

Now the story can be told..  the last couple weeks have not been pretty around here, connectivity wise.  Think of a duck..  paddling like the dickens underwater to keep things going while looking calm and serene from above. Note that if I appeared calm and serene to you, it’s only because you’ve been too far away to hear my cursing. ANYWAY..  step one was to try to get cable TV.  No cable TV within at least half a mile of the house; they’ll be happy to run

Yesterday was a big day in our household. In addition to our two resident mothers, we also commemorated our eldest son's sixteenth birthday. Earlier in the week, after a delicate negotiation, we agreed on a blended celebration dinner at the Benihana restaurant in downtown Seattle. In addition to being the most fun I've had in awhile, the occasion offered myriad object lessons on improving one's reputation, regardless of its current state. The day started with an early call for a baseball game for

Every once in awhile, you get a piece of news that sets you looking at where you are and where you've been. Today is one of those days. There will be no technical content in this post, and it might ramble some. Bear with me; it's been a contemplative night.. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-= When I was a young man growing up on New York's Long Island, I was singularly blessed. Like most singularly blessed young men, I was also singularly unaware of my divine state. The son of a university executive vice president

In the age of the blog, it may well be that republishing is the sincerest form of flattery. The same RSS technology that many of you use to read the blog through wonderful rollers like this one also can be turned to far more nefarious purposes. I'm going to rant a bit about one particular instantiation of this nefariousness. One of my favorite things about http://blogs.technet.com is that there are no advertisements on the site (other than the Microsoft branding, which it seems to me comes with the