We did some long overdue second bedroom cleaning out today (thanks Sweetie!). Made me realize that I’ve lived in this place for six and a half years and despite my efforts crap has accumulated. I found a plastic bad in the closet that had business cards and scratch notes gathered as much as 15 years ago. An assortment of out of service cell phones. A reminder that we ought to put the old scanner and printer on eBay (unless someone wants to give us, say, $60 for the pair).
Clipper Club of New Jersey, now there was a good group of people and an amazing return on my time investment. I found a bunch of business cards from that group. My entire adult career was basically driven to success off of that and especially one man. David Chazin was always willing to answer my newbie questions, then getting me hired into his group at a consulting firm where he was exactly the mentor I needed. This also reminded me of his sad loss when his wife Ruth Lapin perished on 9/11. I have a couple of old business cards, maybe one of them will still work; I doubt a CompuServe email address will.
Also found some more guitar stuff to send to my nephews, a nice guitar strap, an effects box and a few music books and a half dozen very young kids books that can go in the package for the nephew-to-be. Computer stuff for the Big Guy. An old photo of me getting an award while working at the since-deceased Home Insurance, the printout of my final submitted draft for Life With Unix.
There was a slip with Brian Marasca’s phone number. Brian was someone I worked and palled around with back in the Clipper days. He wrote one of the more excellent third party libraries, ObjectDB, which was the subject of my second article for Software Development and climaxed with the phrase “Buy it, love it, live it.” This went over well with Brian so when we ended up working a block apart in Manhattan (and later together), I got to enjoy his very fertile mind.
Finally got out of the house and over to Vitamin Shoppe where we found some good specials on Atkins bars and muffin mix, getting for about $60 an overstuffed basket that retails for more than twice that. Finally used up a ‘gift’ card at Sears–never shop there if you can avoid it–by picking up a totally cute pair of tops for the aforementioned nephew to be. And treated Sweetie to a caramel latte.
BillSaysThis 