Free books

I did some cleaning over the weekend. Does anybody want any of these books?



Unrelated: the hurricane is coming. Everybody be safe!

End of an era

So to make room for the baby, I've finally decided to part with my PacMan machine. If anybody in the NYC area has any interest, I'll happily give you a discount.

Here's the Craigslist posting, which my spouse was kind enough of to add some humour to:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/vgm/3352745759.html

Maui Babymoon

Victoria and I returned today from our "babymoon" in Maui. For those of you perhaps not familiar, this is essentially the last vacation we get to spend alone before we spend the next eighteen years on "family vacations". :-)

She's at 20 weeks now, so just crossed the "halfway point" for the pregnancy. That's late enough to call it a babymoon, but early enough that she's still able to do stuff like snorkel and take hikes around the island without being miserable.

I had never been to Maui before, and it is quite beautiful. It's amazing how peaceful and quiet the island is. We did see quite a bit though. Here are the highlights:

• Toured around Lahaina
• Saw the Iao Needle
• Drove about 1/3 of the Road to Hana (saw the Twin Falls)
• Took a submarine tour of a local reef
• Snorkeling around Black Rock (we stayed at the Sheraton where Black Rock was located, so it was easy to just wake up and drag the snorkeling gear that we own down to the beach)
• Attended a luau
• Went to the top of the Haleakalā Volcano
• Lots of relaxation

There was even a hammock on the lawn right outside our room, so it was very easy to lounge about and read, etc.

The photos can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4092626392883.2152216.1199470342&type=1&l=feb6107e1d

In short, a great vacation. We got a free room upgrade, so we had a full view of the ocean.

As is the case whenever I travel, I'm all jet-lagged, which is why I'm writing this at 2:30am instead of sleeping soundly.

Getting organized and nostalgia

In preparation for the baby, I've been working on going through and cleaning out lots of stuff. It's amazing how stuff accumulates to fill the space you live in. When I moved into the apartment, it was sparse to the point that it felt like a museum. Now the closets are overflowing and I've got a large stack of rubbermaid containers in the bedroom.

Anyway, here's a bunch of random stuff I ran across as a result of going through boxes, etc.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3923057873776.2148523.1199470342&type=1&l=c19bbec561

Next up, the Pac Man machine is going to be sold to make some more room. If anybody is interested in buying it, let me know. Otherwise I'll be listing it on Craigslist soon enough...

Some small things...

So the secret's been out for a while among various circles, but Victoria and I are having a baby.



Yes, the many years of sitting in front of a CRT and/or years of laptop use did not impair my ability to procreate.

Yay!

Despite having been in the workforce for a number of years, being married, owning an apartment, I guess for the first time I'm starting to feel like a grown-up. Real responsibility. It's hard not to reflect on the fact that my father was 28 when I was born, and I'm 35 - and hence I should in theory have my shit more "together".

I went to DefCon in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago with Dan Christiansen, and it's hard not to notice that I spent much more time soliciting advice on fatherhood than we did talking about technology. I was 24 the first year I went to DefCon, and I'm still trying to decide whether it's the conference that has changed or whether it's me. Probably a bit of both.

More later...

Another Year Older... 34th Year Edition!

So I was going to write a blog post called "Another Year Older" describing the state of affairs, then realized that I've gotten to the point where I blog so infrequently that last year's post with the same name actually fit on the blog homepage.

Been a crazy week. I've been to New Jersey twice in the last week (we drove out for Victoria's PsyD graduation and our wedding anniversary over the weekend, and then I flew back for funeral services for my grandmother late this week). To make things more fun, we have a wedding next weekend meaning I will have traveled from Detroit to New Jersey three times in two weeks.

Went to Windsor yesterday to celebrate my birthday. Had never been to Canada before (despite a failed attempt around 1999 with my cousin and brother). Much like the United States, except all the signs are in both English and French, and there were windmills *everywhere*. Funny how here in the States the energy debate is over coal versus nuclear, while in Windsor it's whether or not to augment the existing windmills by placing them in Lake Huron.

Also, my wife made some kickass red velvet cupcakes.

34 feels old.

Need to spend time today getting caught up on work. They've been very supportive of my situation, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm falling behind on crap and need to get things in order. There was only so much I could do via the corporate email built into my phone.

Will have to get some photos posted from recent activities.

Fun with Taxes!

After spending most of Sunday, as well as working late last night, I finally completed my taxes. Whew!

I've discovered it's bad to do all of the following in a single tax year:

• Get married
• Relocate to a different state (including tax-deductible moving expenses)
• Operate two different home offices
• Sublet an apartment in a Cooperative
• Have tuition expenses
• Change jobs (but not at the same time as relocating)
• Have enough 1099 income to be deemed "self-employed"
• Have not-reimbursed business expenses, including travel and asset depreciating equipment
• Be enrolled in a managed fund with a high volume of stock transactions
• Compensation via a not-tax-exempt federal grant

In the end, my return was something like 92 pages, which feels a bit longer than previous years... Repeat after me: "Audit risk."