In 2011, I joined many others in the Movember event for the first time. This is a fund-raising effort where participants grow a mustache for the month of November and collect donations to support men’s health, specifically prostate and testicular cancers. Individuals can participate on their own or as a team, but no matter what [...]

It’s been a week since I started my new job at Oracle Corporation. I’m a remote worker which means that the first day of work wasn’t the usual event since I just went to my home office and got on a concall with my new manager. After getting connectivity and accounts set up properly, I [...]

I’m definitely the type of person that gets excited by new opportunities and always loves a new challenge. Without challenge, I get bored quickly and boredom makes me a little crazy. So, this new opportunity came along a little while ago and I thought it sounded just perfect for me. Many of you that know [...]

It seems to everyone that I travel a lot. I guess I do compared to most people, but I enjoy traveling, seeing new places, new people, and old friends about as much as I enjoy anything. It’s usually part of my job anyway. So, with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit a place I’ve never been [...]

I’m not sure why it has taken this long, but I recently started getting about one email per week that was intended for a well-named member of the UK’s Parliament: Dan Norris. After communicating with Mr. Norris’ office, I found that we both found one another via Google Alerts that we’ve apparently both set up [...]

This past weekend, I was diving again at Haigh Quarry in the 50-57 degree (F) water to complete the dives for the PADI Rescue Diver certification. The dives were great and I continue to learn a lot from some good teachers and buddies too. I completed the dives and demonstrated the skills successfully, so I’m [...]

I think I caught the scuba diving bug because after I got the initial certification, I’ve been working to figure out how I can get more certifications and more diving into my schedule! I cautiously signed up to do my PADI Advanced Open Water certification dives on October 6-7 fearing that it may be very [...]

In a departure from the usual technical grind, I spent this past weekend scuba diving in a local quarry (Haigh Quarry, to be precise) and obtained my PADI Open Water certification! It was a great weekend to be in the water (though the water was murky…about 5-10 ft vis in most places). My classmates were [...]