Monday April 7, 2008 

 

Some days it feels like spring is in the air, Sunday was one of those days. I've taken to volunteering at a gym in Ballard called Stone Gardens. Volunteering is a great way to get free climb time at the gym. Unfortunately, because the gym is really far away for me, getting there regularly is difficult. I can only manage weekends and for now, weekends are good because I'm not planning any outdoor climbing. Usually the weekend is the time to get away to Smith or elsewhere. This past weekend, I put in some time at the gym and was even able to get a workout and session in on Saturday. It was good. In between my volunteer shifts, I took a stroll through the locks hoping to find some steelhead in the ladders.  Unfortunately, none were there. :(  I did get to see a boat come through on the big lock, however.

Today was my 3rd day at work and Murphy's Law was in place all day. It started with a miscommunication that occurred on Friday, which led to my being 30 minutes late to a meeting this morning. It followed with a long and drawn out day of trying to get all of my credentials sorted and software installed. Naturally, there were some snaffus, and only 1 issue that required a call in to Helpdesk. Turned out an important security patch (Security Update for Microsoft(r) Office Outlook 2007 (KB946983)) causes my Outlook to behave poorly, which was the last step in getting myself running today. After removing the update and consciously reminding myself to ignore all of the incoming update announcements telling me I haven't installed it, my Outlook works. Once that was solved, I was off to get my badge where I was dismayed to learn I had to take another photo. Having the kind of day that I did, I was not calm, relaxed and smiling so my photo looks...well....bad. Their digital images are not great, anyway, but I wish they had mirrors or something before they sat you in the chair and counted to 3. The person taking the photo takes so many photos in a day that I doubt they really look at the picture. They probably scan it for clarity and that the eyes are open because I would hope normal person would let someone get a picture like mine on their badge! It works like your license and apparently there is no take over, which is unlike the DOL.

There have been a lot of little things I wanted to post here, but having been busy and all, I'm going to bullet it, below.

David and I have worked together since about the time I moved to seattle, maybe 1996 or thereabouts. It was a time when everyone else was making money hand over fist (and boasting about all of the cool things they were doing) while I was struggling to find a way to pay off University debt and housing and fuel costs while still having money left over for me to eat. A colleague from Microsoft at the time referred me to David, who was just starting off his career and building a client base. Well, naturally, with the returns Microsoft was seeing on the market, who wouldn't want a base of clients from there?  David was very helpful with strategizing my portfolio, even making recommendations on what I should invest in for my 401k, which was managed by another company. He helped me find money to eat, but more importantly, he kept me honest with my financial strategies. I wasn't lured into the hefty spending habits of most and although over time I earned enough to buy my Audi and put a down payment on a house, I never lost faith in my or David's investment strategy...even through the bust of 2000 and the recession of today, I am confident with what I am doing. In fact, now that I have a job, I am looking forward to putting some of my hard earned $$ into some funds to take advantage of these low times. :)

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