Currently Browsing: Personal
Mar 25, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 23 comments
Making some wine this weekend, and printed on the side of the high-capacity 8 gallon bucket I’m using as a fermenter is this:
I just can’t believe how insane we are as a society that we allow people to store dangerous buckets like this in their homes. Especially in homes that have children. Where is the common sense? Who is thinking of the children? I can’t understand these selfish wine drinkers who think their need for a cheap buzz outweighs the safety of our children.
UPDATE: Someone on Twitter ponders why I need such a high-capacity bucket. Isn’t 3 gallons enough? Again, where’s the common sense!
Join the Conversation (23 comments)
Mar 12, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 2 comments
Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ll catch up later.
UPDATE: Back from the dentist. The good news is that the cause of the problem was a filling that was too close to the nerve. That’s the reason I always had a lot of temperature sensitivity with that tooth. Dentist said it was just a matter of time before the nerve got irritated enough to become inflamed irreversibly. It’s good to know it wasn’t my fault, for not catching something sooner. That also explains the sudden onset, and rapid progression of pain. So I have a medicated filling, pain meds, and an antibiotic to deal with an infection that was getting started. That should get me through until I go for the scheduled root canal.
Normally I dread the novocaine needle, but this time I welcomed it, because I knew it would mean sweet, sweet relief. We’ll see how things go when it’s completely worn off, but being just about completely worn off, I already feel better. I want to thank Dr. James Beam, who’s prescription was the only way I made it through the weekend.
Join the Conversation (2 comments)
Mar 10, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 24 comments
Finding it difficult the past few days to concentrate on the blog. Several years ago I had a molar filled that was borderline root canal territory. It’s never been quite right since, with both pressure and cold sensitivity. I’ve always meant to get it taken care of, but I generally am the type of person that will avoid dentists if I can. About a week ago I get some pain in that tooth that wouldn’t go away. Now it’s more than a couple of ibuprofen can handle.
Some whiskey and a few ibuprofen get me to sleep, and while I’m sleeping I don’t seem to have much pain, but it’s off and on during the day, and when it’s on, it’s on. I’ve had bad cavities before that needed root canal, but this has been worse. I’m not getting any facial swelling so far, which is making me wonder if I cracked the tooth. Whatever it is, I’m getting to the dentist as soon as I can. I was hoping to hold off until the insurance kicked in, but I need relief now. Hopefully it’s not so bad, and a temporary medicated filling will fix me up until a root canal can be scheduled (with insurance). I’m not to keen on the idea of paying a molar root canal 100% out of pocket.
I’m getting way more experience with dental pain relief than I ever wanted. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I got Tylenol with hyrdocodone, which I didn’t find to be that much more effective than ibuprofen. I’ve generally found ibuprofen the best solution for dental pain. If you want to talk combination therapy that works well, but that your doctor will never recommend to you, ibuprofen and a three or so shots of whiskey is highly effective. Just make sure it’s ibuprofen and not Tylenol, which does bad things to your liver in combination with alcohol. This is very good at easing the pain, and anything you do feel through the buzz you don’t really care so much about :)
Join the Conversation (24 comments)
Mar 1, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 3 comments
My apologizes for the light posting today, when there’s a good bit going on. My grill arrived this afternoon, and begged to be put together. I ordered it Tuesday, and it arrived today. Amazon Prime is awesome. Sadly the weather today was kind of lousy, so tonight wasn’t the night for the inaugural cookout, and I had planned to make a big pot of chili that will be lunch for the next several days. I decided on the Weber Spirit E320, which isn’t often sold in stores. I love my Smokey Mountain, so I decided when our last 150 dollar Lowes special rusted out, I’d go for something of higher quality. It was a snap to put together, and feels like a much more solid grill. I think Weber makes good stuff.
But either way, putting together the grill has to either cut into blog time or work time, and work pays a lot better by the hour. Plus, I’m trying to move my monstrosity to the mansion (my other office, that’s not my home office) tomorrow, and have to do a few things with the old job tomorrow that somewhat relate to the new job (don’t ask how). I’m running a small HA cluster in my loft right now, which is getting warm. I’m afraid of my electric bill if I don’t make the move soon, like tomorrow.
Join the Conversation (3 comments)
Feb 9, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 45 comments
Tam highlights a post from someone who visited Europe, tried to rent a car, only to be told they didn’t have any “American transmissions.” It’s hard to find anyone born after 1980 that knows how to drive a manual. Kids these days. I suppose I don’t mind if they don’t know how to drive cars with manual gearboxes, as long as they stay the hell off my lawn.
I learned to drive on an old 1982 Datsun 720 pickup truck, because that’s what my dad drove. When I was rear ended in an accident right outside my high school, he replaced that car with a 1990 Nissan Sentra two door. It was literally four wheels and a steering wheel. I didn’t even have a tape deck. Both were manuals. I have actually never owned a car with an automatic transmission. I had to learn to drive these because that’s what my dad bought. Dad took the train to work, and didn’t have a need for a fancy car. That worked for me because I generally had use of it during the day. I don’t know at what point parents stopped teaching their kids to drive manuals, but it had to have been around 1980 or so.
If you want to be truly horrified at kids today, apparently one problem the auto industry is having is millennials just aren’t learning to drive. Now, if we had flying cars, I could accept this. We’d all be lamenting these damned kids, with their flying cars, zooming over the house all hours of the night. I could live with that. But no, they just aren’t interested. I couldn’t wait to get my license, so I could go places without having to beg mom, and more importantly, without having mom tagging along wherever I went. Cars represent independence from your parents, even if you’re driving around mom and dad’s old beater. It was this way for generations of Americans, except this one, apparently. Maybe this is the consequence of helicopter parenting.
UPDATE: I should note, just in case dad is reading, I smashed up the 1990 Sentra too. Not my fault. Hit and run driver on the onramp to the Schuylkill Expressway from 30th street in Philly. Car was un-drivable. I got the plates from the car that ran, and we had a cop we know run it… they were stolen tags. The risks of driving in Philly. But my dad would have been sure to remind me of this fact if I didn’t bring it up.
Join the Conversation (45 comments)
Jan 9, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in 2nd Amendment, Personal | 4 comments
I am just plum out of energy from the weekend. This was one of those events, much like NRA Annual Meeting, where you’d rather stay up and talk to people than go to bed. An early start to the events meant only a few hours of sleep a night. I had to start a new work engagement today, so that added up to not much energy for posting, despite having a lot to say. Let me relay some further impressions.
I hadn’t seen Clayton Cramer in person since Heller. To say he’s a font of knowledge about American History is a serious understatement. The depth of research he’s done on behalf of the issue is remarkable, and he can recall obscure facts on command at a detail rarely achieved.
The other fun fact from the weekend is that Professor Nick Johnson, who is co-author on the new Second Amendment law textbook–the first of its kind–along with Professors Michael O’Shea, Dave Kopel, and George Moscary, is a member of the local shooting club I am an officer for, and lives relatively close to me in Bucks County. Apparently he’s had Professor Moscary as a guest at the club, who commented to me how nice the facilities are.
It’s a small world, folks. My club has its roots in the working class neighborhoods of Levittown, and yet you never know when you might find yourself shooting next to a distinguished professor of law. I’ll be speaking more about Professor Johnson’s law review article later, which attacks some common misconceptions about the civil rights movement’s view of non-violence, which is a challenge to the now prevailing view. It’s really quite fascinating.
Join the Conversation (4 comments)
Jan 6, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 7 comments
Just got back from what I think was a very successful interview for the dream job. Now headed down to DC for the weekend to spend some time among friends. We’ll see how well I can blog on the road with the iPad.
Join the Conversation (7 comments)
Jan 5, 2012
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 21 comments
Many of you know that I took a new job about a month ago, after a few months of unemployment after my previous company shut down. Today, I went in, handed in my resignation, and walked out. I feel an awful burden lifted from my shoulders. When I got the offer, I wavered a bit on whether to accept it. The company did not come off well to me in the interviews, and the job was a step down from my previous position. But I ultimately decided to accept, thinking that any job is better than unemployment. I’ve spent the past month regretting that decision. The job turned out to be worse than I had feared. There was very little about the company that functioned, and many people put in long and difficult hours to make up for a complete lack of planning, poor product and project management, and having insufficient resources to accomplish goals. It’s one thing to work hard because sometimes it’s just necessary to make a deadline. It’s quite another to work hard because you don’t have a better strategy.
In the mean time, I had a dream job fall on my lap, and I have spend the past several weeks developing it. Rather than being an environment where careers go to die, it’s an opportunity to take what I’ve been doing for the past ten years, and take it to the next level. The pay is also comparable to what I was making. I’ve also been talking to a friend who runs an IT services company that is looking to start a new division that could use my services. We had dinner last night to talk about it a bit, and I think it’s got potential. He’s aware of the dream job opportunity, and is willing to hire me on contract basis until that job offer firms up, and then continue on a part time basis if I decide to accept. If that job falls through he’s willing to hire me full-time.
So that was basically all I needed to get the hell out of that other place. I’m employed one way or another, and both are interesting positions. They say it’s easier to find a job when you have a job, but in this case I got neither offer because I was currently employed. The dream job wasn’t aware of the current job until I told them when they started to do the background check (I didn’t want them to be surprised if they found that), and it actually complicated things a bit more than if I had just been unemployed.
So I would say I learned a lesson, not to take the first job that comes along if you have a bad feeling about it, but it was one learned could only have learned in hindsight. I couldn’t have predicted I’d have two very good opportunities fall on my lap a few weeks after accepting a job. The big lesson I’ve learned in this is never to allow yourself to become unemployed if you can help it, and I could have. I knew the company was in trouble a year ago, and decided to risk riding the bomb down. I didn’t really get the job hunt started in earnest in the two months I had while I was helping wind the previous company down, because I thought there was hope of starting over again with the same idea. I took a huge gamble on the CEO’s plan in that two months, and lost the bet. That forced me to do some things I wouldn’t, under ordinary circumstances consider doing. I always figured the reason that employers were wary of the unemployed was because of the belief that if someone didn’t want them, and doesn’t want them, they must not be very good. That might be part of it, but I also think part of why the unemployed have it harder is because they aren’t thinking carefully about whether a job is really a good fit — they need a paycheck, first and foremost. That’s going to make it much more likely they aren’t staying, especially if the job is a step down for them.
Join the Conversation (21 comments)
Dec 27, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 5 comments
I have recently come into possession of some old family photos. When I say old, I mean late 19th century and 20th century old. So much time has passed, while there are names written on the back in my grandmother’s hand, I don’t know how any of these individuals are related to me. Some of them aren’t family, but are postcards that were sent to family from other family still in Germany. I am proud to introduce the only online version of this particular photograph of what I’m fairly certain is Kaiser Wilhelm II:
The back of the postcard is written in traditional German script, which I have a difficult time deciphering. You can see the date on this is 1910, before we went to war with the Kaiser, and before the Nazi’s banned Sütterlinschrift. As a result, I never learned how to read this in high school, though my German teacher could write and read it, since she was educated in pre-war Europe. If anyone can read this, I’d sure be grateful:
There are some pictures of family in here from, I think, around the turn of the century, taken in Hamburg, during a time when it was still fashionable to be photographed smoking, in front of your children.
One thing I’ve noticed is that photographers, at the time, made their prints on thick cardboard, with very detailed advertisements on the back. I’ve found this on both the photos taken in Germany, and here in Philadelphia and New York.
My favorite from the collection is this, from a business card:
Since I’m fairly certain I am not related to any polar bear trainers, I decided to look this up, and it turns out this is documented online here, and also here. So I’m guessing someone in my family must have come into contact with this advertisement or calling card, and kept it. It makes you wonder how many of these survived. Maybe I have the only copy of these particular things? The pictures of my family, for sure, but I was unable to find a duplicate of the picture I’m fairly sure is Wilhelm II using Google image search.
Join the Conversation (5 comments)
Dec 22, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Personal | 7 comments
I haven’t done much posting for a few days, I know. I have a few very important things in the works, currently. But if all this plays out, a lot of positive life changes are in the works. At least I hope. This has left very little energy for blogging, but I am sincerely hoping my energy will come back in short order if they do.
In the mean time, I’ll do what I can, and Bitter will keep filling in. Shouldn’t be too much longer. I appreciate everyone’s patience through what has certain been upheaval in my personal life since my company shut down a few months ago.
Join the Conversation (7 comments)
