Once again my Ducati dropped dead while out driving around. I was on my way to Max’s house to store it while I move. In the 139 tunnel that leads from downtown Jersey City to the Pulaski Skyway my bike stalled and refused to start. I was nearly hit by several cars until a large truck stopped and blocked traffic for me. I pushed the bike to the traffic circle at Tonnele Ave. Then Progressive couldn’t find a town truck for me. After several hours I am back home, alive, with a slightly scratched bike.

Education:

• Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biological Sciences, Ph.D. program. Left after completion of 5 terms.
• B.S. with High Honors and Highest Distinction from University of Maine in Zoology

Highlights of Recent Experience:

• Publisher – Sr. Manager of Development in Technology
  • Built from specification a brand new site in the portfolio of sites
  • Composite of technologies to create a Web 2.0 style social networking site
  • UI in JSP with JSON, DWR, and Custom AJAX interactions with a bulk of the user interaction in
    in Flex 2.0
  • Back end technology in primarily Spring and Hibernate with Oracle database
  • Media processing in PERL handing off to a JMS & Java based workflow engine that used various SOA techniques to convert video, audio and images to site standards
  • Built out several key clusters for the media processing subsystem in Solaris, Linux & Windows OSes
• Private Bank – Vice President – Enterprise Architect
  • Architected and implemented a redesign of the asset management account opening process –
    the first in 20 years. Highlights included: first portal type system, first IMS updated
    from J2EE, and first project to use RUP.
  • Received 2 (personal and team) Excellence in Service awards for my work with account
    opening.
• Airline B2B – Team Lead Portal & Web Development
  • Migrated and implemented existing website into a content management system based upon ColdFusion, and JSP’s and EJB’s in WebLogic
  • Developed application architecture to facilitate rapid implementation of business processes and
    for integration with airline’s and supplier’s existing systems using
    • Web services – XML, WSDL, Axis, ColdFusion MX, WebLogic
    • EJB’s – entity beans (CMP and BMP) data model, session beans with business logic on WebLogic and JBoss
    • ColdFusion MX and Struts based MVC system for page flow and front end rendering
• Online Retailer – Senior Application Developer
  • Programmed in-memory structure for product information, which is very fast and efficient, added
    in appropriate caching algorithms. System handles tens of thousands of products and over 400
    servers
    • Hierarchical catalogue item retrieval – no acceptable point of failure
    • Preload of high demand items into cache on server startup
    • Meet the demands of 10’s of thousands of transactions a minute
  • Continually tested and reviewed new code as well as existing code to create the robustness and
    scalability requires to handle over 60,000 orders and multi-million product information requests
    daily

I never talk about work, notice that there is not a single post on here about my job. It isn’t because I hate my job. In fact I love it! I have read far too many stories about people who vent about a boss, mine is pretty good, nothing to vent, or accidentally give away a trade secret, or you name it. I plan on that never happening to me! So here goes my first blog post about work.

I suffered through 2 days of the worst training in my 34 years of education. The purpose was to be enlightened by a search engine expert.

I learned 4 things:

1. why my dad cannot find anything useful in Google
2. why I have to go to page 2 to find what I want in Google
3. why the 3rd page is always in Japanese
4. all web sites should look like Edmunds.com

Beyond the sexists and culturally irrelevant stories about cars and hairspray, we listened to a total of about 2 hours of ranting against WikiPedia’s ranking in the top 5 of almost every search. It was obvious this man has a white whale and his name is Wiki.

My take on this: he hates it because he cant game it and he cant game it because it is actually useful information on a topic.

This will ALWAYS be one of the fundamental pricipals of subject expert directories versus automated link collectors: humans are better information aggregators, synthesizers and judges of the final product. Sorry Google, I love you. But I know where to look when I want information versus when I want to buy a desktop fan.

Oh yeah and when branding yourself, there is a point of obvious, then annoying, then tacky, and somewhere you end up at classless.

HAHAHAHA - Do a little dance, we were right:

After offering a bleak assessment of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said today that he was urging lawmakers and President Bush to change course quickly to protect a further erosion of America’s standing in the world.

It was only a matter of time before the cripple wounded made this just like Viet Nam. Thank you modern medicine, because of you Americas mistakes are even more numerous and walking into our grocery stores, churches, and right in the faces of the people who supported this boondoggle.

Now if we can only feel the backlash in middle America. If only. Who dares to call themselves a neo-con now? Creative destruction anyone? What a freakin’ mess.

All done on Jesus’ watch too. Thank you religious zealots in Alabama. Thank you for this chance to once again prove intellegence and education will win out over you backwards ways. What was that about “them uppity northerns bettah stop comings downs here ands treatins us like some kind of anthramapology experiment?” What way my reply? “Stop acting like protohumans and there will be nothing to study!”

I guess that “I’d rather have a beer with Bush” sentiment now includes a beer with Bush and an artificial leg and PTSD.

And before you think I am not sympathetic to people who are hurt in war, this is not personal, this is politics. I feel really badly for these people, they were consumed by a machine that doesn’t give a fuck about them and to make it more onerous (entailing obligations that exceed advantages) the machine duped them into thinking this was their patriotic duty.

Matteo, my Ducati 749 Dark, and I were were out for a spin today. The gym, then the bookstore, and wrapping it up with a long way home ride along the waterfront.

Earlier in the day I saw a while Lamborghini cruising on 6th Ave. What a wonderful and unique car. I don’t know the exact model.

You might be wondering how these two things are related! Well…

Owning a Ducati is as close as I will ever come to owning an exotic Italian sports car. I think it is ok to say that most people view Ducatis in that light as well. I simply cannot drive the things anywhere without people asking me about it. I wonder if the Lamborghini guy has that problem. I bet not, because people are scared of a person who has 200k to drop on a car.

I consider myself very fortunate that I have the spare cash to own such a fine machine.

Those of you who have been subjected to my ramblings for a while will recall that I was obsessed with the legitimacy of statehood.

As if by magic, I came across an entry on slashdot about Pirate Bay moving to Sealand - an abandoned UK fort turned principality. It seems the debate over whether or not Sealand is really an independent state still rages. Those who oppose point out:

• Has space or territory which has internationally recognized boundaries (boundary disputes are OK).
• Has people who live there on an ongoing basis.
• Has economic activity and an organized economy. A country regulates foreign and domestic trade and issues money.
• Has the power of social engineering, such as education.
• Has a transportation system for moving goods and people.
• Has a government which provides public services and police power.
• Has sovereignty. No other State should have power over the country’s territory.
• Has external recognition. A country has been “voted into the club” by other countries.

And a quick check of Wikipedia reveals even more on the subject:

In international law, the two most common schools of thought for the creation of statehood are the constitutive and declarative theories. The constitutive theory was the standard 19th-century model of statehood, and the declaratory theory was developed in the 20th century to address shortcomings of the constitutive theory. In the constitutive theory, a state exists exclusively via recognition by other states. The theory splits on whether this recognition requires “diplomatic recognition” or merely “recognition of existence”.

A raging question which was on the whiteboard in my head now has an answer.

Last night in the pouring rain Anthony and I came upon my 749 Dark knocked over. It was so horrifying to see. I would prefer to see most anything on a Sunday night before seeing the unnatural site of a motorcycle on its side.

We picked it up to find that both front and rear left turn signals were broken, serious body scrapes, a couple bent parts but that was about it. It ran fine and the ride home in the rain was only made a bit worse by the lack of a left hand signal. One idiot talking on the phone in hi Hoboken Honda (that is what we call 3 series BMW’s in Hoboken, because they are so common, like Hondas everywhere else) hit my left ark as I extended it to signal.

The funny thing is that I am not mad, it gives me a little project, but I am more kind of sad. I feel like a bad parent because I let somsone beat my Matteo up.

I hope the person who knocked it over is having terrible dreams where Ducatis are attacking his children all night long.

Ellie My Siberian Husky

The name of this blog comes directly from my attempts at learning Hebrew. Nearly the first thing I learned to say was “The dog jumps.” It became a running joke amongst friends. But as you can see, I have a dog, who can jump, so it is kind of even sorta more funny…ANYWAY…here are some facts about me:

• Grew up in Maine
• Moved to NYC to go to Columbia Grad School - which I hated - you can read about what the lab does.
• Left school and started working for internet companies - some small startups, Toys R Us.com before they sold out to Amazon.com, then for the airlines, Chuck Schwab, and now I work for a big publisher in “The City”.
• I have a lot of experience with computers, but please do not ask me to help you with Windows because my answer will be “Buy a Mac.”
• Into my saltwater tank, riding my Ducati, playing with Ellie & Blue (my sister’s smelly black lab)
• Enjoy traveling
• I have lots of random thoughts, like people should walk on their own side of the side walk, current fashion trends are abysmal, Louis Vuitton used to be classy now it is trashy, people who stand on the bus should be let off first because they have been standing the whole time, revolving doors are irritating, RFID is not the end of the all security forever, credit card companies are seriously predatory and the government should do something about it, Bush is an idiot, Gore has emerged as an elder statesman, marriage is a sham to allow women to take everything from men, post-feminism may just have it right, being Jewish is a wonder not a chore, and so many many many more.
• Family: Pretty much, Adam and my Father, Kent along with my Aunt’s and their families. I have a few other relatives that I am not in touch with, mostly due to internecine battles on both sides. Who knows why my Mother’s brother and sister have not been heard from in 25 years? It all gets so boring after a while.

Yes! Please do. Why? Because only if we let them make this country the worst place to live in the world will their corrupt idiotic ideology be exposed for what it truly is.

• It simple isn’t enough that people are doubting the war. Why should they? Is isn’t like we were lied to.
• It isn’t enough the poster boy for rah-rah America was killed by his own butt-buddies marines.
• People are up in arms about a sniper video on CNN, well, war sucks, and it sucks to have your Wal*Mart trip interrupted by war. Oh wait, we are at war, did you forget?
• You get what you asked for. You want a nation full of hate? You voted away your jobs? You voted for war? Good, thank you, now cry at your sons’ graves and vote again. Vote! Vote! Until all your kids are dead.
• Even your own people are wondering: “Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them.” Hmm. It goes on and on.
• Listen to Lou Dobbs, he makes some good points.

I don’t need to go much more into this. It is real. And I love it! I love saying “I told you so!” Please, please, please keep the status quo, because it will be cool to see just how bad this can get. I want every one of you to have low paying jobs, no healthcare, dead children, mountains of debt, no education, and then maybe only then, will you realize you sold your soul, you sold your country to warmongers who helped bring Asian sweatshop living standards to the heartland.

I thought it would be amusing to enter a contest that Ducati.com was running on their site. The basic idea was to send in a picture of yourself with your Ducati and one with out. I submitted the photos to the site and thought that it was the end of the deal. Imagine my surprise when I received an email telling me that I had won the contest and was traveling to Italy in 2 weeks along with 25 other winners.The contest, to recap, was to travel to Italy and tour Ducati Mechanica after being photographed for the 2002 Ducati People advertising campaign.As the days ticked by I grew increasingly nervous, and didn’t tell anyone but my family members up until the week before. I thought it was a hoax. Then one Friday afternoon I received the airline tickets via DHL. It was indeed official; I was flying out Tuesday night via Alitalia to Bologna!

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