PeteLumbis(dot)org - Blog

I went for a huge bike ride today, probably the biggest one I’ve been on since I lived in North Carolina, if not before that. I decided to head up to Williamsburg to have breakfast. First I did not realize that Williamsburg apparently the brunch capital of the universe. Almost every place I looked at had huge waits for one person. I ended up finding a place with no wait, but I had to eat outside (it was kind of cold and windy) and the service was terrible. Kind of disappointing.

After breakfast I rolled over the Williamsburg Bridge, which is fucking humongous. I will say that the ride is smoother than either the Brooklyn Bridge (wooden planks like a boardwalk) or the Manhattan Bridge (sidewalk cracks that feel like pot holes when you roll over them). Anyway, my first idea was to ride up to 110th Street and cut over the north side of Central Park and ride down Broadway. After I got to around 80th Street, I decided to try and make it to the north edge of Manhattan and ride down all of Broadway.
I took 1st Ave up to 125th Street where I hit the FDR. No longer able to go north, I cut over to Madison Ave up to 138th Street. At this point I was basically tired of zig-zagging around Manhattan to get to the northwest side. Also the cold and wind was getting a little much. I cut over to Broadway and proceeded to bomb down Manhattan. Mostly a calm (for Manhattan) ride. Times Square and Columbus Circle were both fucking crazy, of course, but I’m alive.

I got off of Broadway at Times Square and didn’t realize it until I was in the West Village. A slight correction, back on track for a few more blocks before trucking over the Manhattan Bridge and back home.

After that I ate enough Chinese food for two, then rolled back to Manhattan (on the train, as I’m beat) to go see Wild Child at the Film Forum with Karen.
Karen and a few friends went for a beer at a nearby bar where we chatted and saw David Schwimmer.

Anyhow, it’s late, I’m totally exhausted.

There was an article in the CSM that I think hit on exactly how I feel about this election. It’s not that the world will end if McCain wins, it’s the bigger picture, the larger scheme of things. The continuing devistation to my belief in American politics.

I’ve learned that this election is about the heart of America. It’s about the young people who are losing hope and the old people who have been forgotten. It’s about those who have worked all their lives and never fully realized the promise of America, but see that promise for their grandchildren in Barack Obama. The poor see a chance, when they often have few. I saw hope in the eyes and faces in those doorways.

The article is pretty short, but a great read. check it

Tuesday night is the election. I’ve supported Barack Obama more than once on this forum and it’s pretty obvious if you’ve ever talked to me for more than five minutes where my politics lie. But anyhow, what I wanted to do here was give my predictions for Tuesday. I should preface these two maps with a few things. First, I don’t believe in “jinxing” it. At this point luck isn’t going to do anything. Second, both of these maps show Obama winning the election but this is not to say I feel comfortable. To be honest I’ve been very anxious for the last few days thinking about Obama losing. I really am not okay with that idea. It serious scares me. I don’t think that McCain is going to start a nuclear war or anything but it’s just depressing to watch the positive and good things about America slowly be chipped away. McCain will just continue chipping away at those liberties just as Bush has done. In the end, even if McCain wins America will make it through and be okay; I have faith that the country is resilient, it’s more about how much time will it take to fix all of the damage. Anyway, on to the predictions:
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This weekend I exercised my right to free speech through my Greenbacks.

First inspired (and reminded) by a post by my dear friend Thomas made the case for his donation to the Obama Campaign. This reminded me that I also needed to donate. Although I don’t have 100 bones to spare I did kick up a nice 20-spot to the good man on the Democratic ticket. I was going go give shortly before the FISA vote a few months back but Obama’s vote for it closed my wallet. Let’s consider this the reward for Biden’s debate performance.

Second I became an official member of the New York Chapter of the ACLU. This is my little protest against the NYPD. I really can’t express how little faith I have for an organization that prides itself on suspecting the citizens it is sworn to protect and working tirelessly at stripping their civil liberties. The NYCLU has been one of the leaders in standing up to the NYPD and bringing legal action against their questionable tactics. Hopefully my meager donation goes to help their good cause.

• I was in Boston last weekend for the wedding of an acquaintance. It was a good time even if the wedding was on a Sunday.
• Being back in Boston was great. I really missed the familiarity and how not overwhelming the place was. A large part of my heart is still in that city.
• I saw lots of old friends and it really boosted my spirits.
• I got absurdly sick this week. I tried to leave work early on Friday only to end up putting in a full day. I did spend all of Saturday sleeping though.
• Friday evening there was a fair amount of work being done one of the networks I’m basically in charge of and things went wrong. This lead to a phone call at 2:30 in the morning for me to try and fix things and get back on track. I got things humming along again and got back to bed around 3:00am. I miss being a co-op
• I went rock climbing today at an indoor gym with my coworker Christy and her boyfriend. It was a lot of fun but humbling to realize how little upper body strength I have. I also bled from my fingers, it was gross.
  
• Beck is in town this weekend and I go to Seattle next week. The pace of life continues to be exactly the same as it was when I got here four months ago.

I’ve started uploading more photos. I put up the handful of photos I took on my trip to Iowa as well as some of the pictures that have been taken since I moved to New York. I still have a TON of pictures to go through and upload, but we are making progress. See them all at my flickr page.

**Update**! I have now uploaded all my pictures including two trips to Coney Island, the International Yo Yo Open, my trip out to Jamaica Queens, and my trip to Montauk yesterday.

I don’t know if I’ve stated it here before, but I’m happy this year because I get to be a single issue voter*. For the first time in my life I can decide to support or not support a candidate based on one small issue that effects me. This year that issue is the internet. Since my career depends on people using the internet and for politicians understanding it for their policies I can vote against McCain since he doesn’t really know how to use “the Googles”. But recently the candidates took place in a (paper) science debate. I loved this gem.

John McCain:

I am the former chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Committee plays a major role in the development of technology policy, specifically any legislation affecting communications services, the Internet, cable television and other technologies. Under my guiding hand, Congress developed a wireless spectrum policy that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology that enables Americans to surf the web while sitting at a coffee shop, airport lounge, or public park.

Now this sounds legit. Let’s throw him a parade for his hard work and innovation! But wait, there’s more…

With the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Senate passed the first major revision to telecommunications law in 62 years which provided the foundation for much of the cell phone and Internet regulation over the next decade. The bill passed 81-18 and was signed into law by President Clinton. McCain voted against the act.

That’s right, the thing that McCain helped invent, he actually voted against.

At this point if you believe anything McCain says I have some ocean front property to sell you in Arizona.

*Disclamer: I’m not a single issue voter. I am voting against McCain for a very large list of reasons.
source.

I’m in Austin now. It’s been a busy week, but I’m having a good time. More on that later. For now I have the rest of my pictures from my Bulgaria trip up! And only 4 months later! Check it:

• Day 8
• Day 9
• Day 10

In case you missed anything you can find them all at my flickr site.

• I found out today that I’m being flown to Austin, Texas with three other coworkers for training all next week. I leave Monday morning and come back Friday evening. The interesting thing is that I resisted a little because of my project but my boss’s boss (that’d be the CEO) insisted I go. So Texas here I come.
• Next week will be totally crazy as I get back from Austin at around 5:00pm and then all day Saturday and Sunday I have to work to do the last phase of my project. However after that FREEDOM!
• I am going to Boston for the first time on the 26th through the 29. As an interesting side note when I was living in North Carolina that was my first weekend back to Boston was this same one. Although I won’t be able to wish Tom a happy birthday this time when I return I am going with Alex to watch the first of my friends get hitched. I’m officially entering that stage in my life and I’m not 100% sure I’m okay with it.
• I’ve also decided to take a vacation. Work is getting a little much and I diserve a little break. I’m going to fly out to Seattle (maybe Portland, still up in the air) on October 17-20. I’ve had a Jet Blue flight burning a hole in my pocket for a year and this will be a good chance to use it. I’m just going to show up, drink coffee, wander around for a few days and head home. The city solitude will be refreshing. So will seeing trees
• Yesterday I went to the West Indian American Day Parade not too far from me here in Brooklyn. I met up with Karen and a few of her friends and scoped out the madness. I’ve never seen a celebration/parade/whatever like that at all. Definitely something worth checking out at least once. We then spent the rest of the afternoon on the stoop of Karen’s friends in Crown Heights drinking some beers and enjoying the company. It was a great way to spend Labor Day.
• Saturday my good friend Liz and I started a long term project to visit the last stop on every subway line (inspiration). We headed way out to Jamaica, Queens to the 179th St stop on the F-Line. It was an interesting little area. You didn’t really feel like you were in New York. Liz has some pictures. Mine should be some time around May Day.
• After our Jamaica adventure Liz and I headed to Jackson Heights, Queens for some of the best Indian (well, Bangladesh) food. The neighborhood was this interesting mix of Islam and Indian. A really interesting place to walk around.
• After food we decided to walk to Astoria to meet up with Erin and her roommate Adam and go to their nearby Beer Garden. It was a nice walk even if I got us a little lost. We all met up and went to the beer garden and met up with Alex’s friend Ali who recently moved from Boston. It was a swell evening.

In more positive news today I was given four free tickets to tonight’s Yankees vs Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium. This is the last time these two teams will meet at Yankee Stadium before it’s torn down at the end of the season.

I won the tickets from some guy at work who gave them to me because he couldn’t go. I got four so I took Erin, Liz and Adam. It was a great game and the Sox ended up winning 11-3.

I realized today that this project is starting to become too much. I’ve realized that I’m living my life around the time lines I have for work. I have already missed on birthday, I’m set to miss a second and almost miss a third. That’s not cool. It makes me feel like a crappy friend. I’m well past the point of no return on this and it’s almost done but I’m not ready to undertake anything like this again anytime soon. It’s too much sacrifice and too little reward.

I’ve been quiet in the blogosphere as of late. Work has eliminated almost all respects of that “free time” thing I’ve heard other people talk about (usually while riding the train to or from work).
I’m in the middle of leading a major project to completely redesign a customer’s network, which includes migration plans from the existing network, overnight maintenance windows, Visio diagrams, network configurations and all kinds of other boring stuff. I can’t even begin to describe the amount of time I’ve spent in the last two weeks on conference calls.

I’ve probably averaged around 50-60 hours for each of the last two weeks. To describe the madness I’ve been dealing with, Wednesday I found myself the victim of a lovely food born illness. After calling in sick and spending most of the day dying I was still checking my email remotely when I had the energy to get out of bed. Around 3:00 I was feeling a little better, but still pretty shitty, so I logged in from home and started working. I was about an hour and a half into what I was doing when I had to run to throw up. I took care of that business and went right back to work. Later that night I was part of a simple network maintenance window that took a few hours and found me working from 10:00pm-12:30am.

Last night was a much larger maintenance. I went to work early to try and get everything taken care of and then proceeded to run around all day between meetings, interviews (conducting), working to meet my deadlines and conference calls. I left the office at around 7:00. I got home, ate dinner and headed back to the office around 9:30. I then worked from 9:30pm until we finished the cut over (after a few small bumps) at 2:30am. Everything was kosher so I was happy. Tired, but happy.

My stress level has been reduced from around an 8 (it was around an 11 before I came up with a genius network scheme that got me out of a TON of work) to maybe a 6. That is until we finish the full network migration over an entire weekend a few weeks from now.

In a much larger scheme of things this whole project is great (besides being the occasional major pain in the ass). This is really the experience I was looking to get. This is exactly what I wanted to do and I’m exploring networking technology in a way that is new and interesting. I’m really utilizing my knowledge in a brand new way, and so far, I dig it. I’m learning a lot (in both the hard and soft skills side of things) as well as just getting better at my job, which is a never ending goal. Although I’m working myself to death now, the project will be over soon enough and I can go back to breathing easy and feeling a grand sense of accomplishment.

In other work news I might be flown down to Austin for training for a new client we recently got. Wild. Nothing is official and I’m not going to hold my breath, but I still can’t grasp that. Most of the time I still feel like I’m still a co-op, but apparently I’ve officially entered the world of adulthood.

Tomorrow I’m going to go ride The Cyclone at Coney Island with a few friends. It will be a great way to relax, unwind and not be working.

I didn’t have anything to do today so I met up with Liz and we went to see the International Yo Yo Open at the South Street Seaport. After watching for a while (and taking pictures that I’ll put up sometime in the next decade) neither of us had anything on our agenda so we walked all the way back home to Park Slope. On our way we wandered around DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) had some delicious Mexican food and then kept walking. The whole thing was about six miles. My legs are a little tired from all the walking (in flip-flops none the less. It makes me think of the stories Tom told me about his buddy Mikey walking across Philly in flip-flops). I’m just about to leave again to go see I’ll Come Running as part of the rooftop films series down the street on the roof of the Old American Can Factory.