LifeStyle Of The Rich And Shameless
November 4, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
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Categories: Castle, Insider, PRWeb, Puter Stuff, Squirrels, TimeWaster, Travel
Many of you have been asking what I’ve been up to since my decision to part ways with PRWeb/Vocus last August. It seems even after leaving the company some people just can’t help but to wonder what the Castle is up to. For the most part I’m just doing what I always do, only more of it.
August consisted initially of sleeping and staying up late. I decided to delve into the Apple server arena and have been teaching myself the various intricacies of Apples Xserver and XRaid. It uses open source services - Apache, MySQL, LDAP and such, which I’m experienced in installing and managing, but Apple does things in their own quirky way.
Then of course there was the celebratory night when PRWeb editor Kathy was abruptly dismissed, then skipped out on her own termination party. Verily, I wept. Seems she downplays with talk of scrabble, poor SPIE.
So enraptured in joy at the good fortune of my former co-workers and friends, I went and purchased a mountain bike and began going for a ride twice a week. I also purchased a new desk, leather office chair, multi-function printer, a terabyte external hard drive, a new PS2 and a new digital camcorder. If she gets fired again I maybe have to buy that boat I’ve been eyeballing.
September started rough, with my daughters maternal grandfather dying in a commercial fishing accident. For weeks most of my time was spent organizing and taking care of the various duties required with organizing arrangements. My youngest daughter also started 1st grade which was pretty exciting and a few school events have occurred which I’ve gone to. Getting to take my daughter to school and pick her up is also a treat for both of us.
Octobers highlight has to be buying my C230 Mercedes Benz, a sedan with the sports package and usual Benz fixens. It’s an automatic, but can switch to a six speed clutchless manual. It’s a treat to drive and I try to find excuses to go anywhere in it.
Shadowed by that, but still just as exciting I’ve upgraded my iPhone to the 8GB model which holds just enough music, movies, and podcasts to keep me happy.
November has just started, but I’ve been busy coding some ideas I have into proof of concepts. I don’t think I’ve really slept much so far this month - my brain just wants to be thinking its thoughts.
Employment - I have had many job offers both local and nationally over the months, including a few friends that want to go into a start-up together. I’ve done some contract work to help friends and clients of friends out, but nothing too exciting. Currently though I’m not looking for full-time employment, but the idea of participating in a dot com start-up sounds exhilarating. Working long hours, wearing a dozen hats, and generally playing hard is probably going to be my next gig. I need to have creative freedom and be in a small enough group that communication is not an issue. Where my skill set, which ranges across the board despite my specialty being IT can really be flexed for the good of the company.
In general most of my time has been spent goofing off, watching movies, learning new things, playing video games and stumbling more than I should. I’ve had lunch with the Penguins and Terry on several occasions. I still stay online most of the time and in touch with all my friends at PRWeb and Vocus.
The days sort of blend together and the day of the week loses meaning, but at some point I’ve managed to travel. Including to Utah, Colorado and Texas. I flew with some friends on a private jet to Colorado to go see my first major league baseball game. The first inning was pretty cool since it was all a new experience, after that it just sort of dragged and the heat was intense that day. Still I can mark that off my todo list.
The number of movies and music downloaded from iTunes has really increased and I’ve managed to get caught up on shows that I never had time for due to the long hours I used to work. So far Heroes is my favorite and I can’t wait for the next season to come out.
There’s probably more things, I’ll remember 15 minutes after posting this. So check the comments in a few days.
Comments»
A better system for external storage. http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/10/19/usb_disk_dock_l.html?p=3&cat=undefined
That’s pretty sweet. It would be even better if it had a firewire 400 or 800 connection.
[...] my way back this evening I was in a bit of a mood so I decided to take the back roads home and push the Mercedes to see how well it handled in the slush and [...]