Category: Blog Posts About Me

You may have noticed a decrease in the amount of blog posts recently and in a large part it is because I’ve been planning a wedding!  A few months ago I asked Christina to marry me.  I told her she’d never know when it was coming, and I think I shocked her good when it finally came. We were at her parents house, and it is a very long story, but I eventually found the right time to propose.  We’re getting married in late October of this year so wish us lot of luck.  Cathy Breslow took these wonderful pictures a few weeks ago at a park.  I’ve known Christina for a little over two and a half years now.  Over that time we’ve become the best of friends and completely inseparable.  We both share a similar past and through those experiences we now share a common future with a fantastic outlook, one to last a lifetime.  Tyler and I are so fortunate to have found her and as you can see in the pictures we adore her and promise to always love her.

Did you know I used to be crazy about baseball, and even more crazy about baseball card collecting?  When I was about 10 or 11 I used to sort baseball cards for a guy who owned a baseball card shop in town.  He evidently liked me and took me under his wing to teach me the business with his son (the one putting me in a headlock at a baseball card convention).

To this day, I have lots and lots of cards I don’t plan to ever sell, they will probably get passed on to my son or sons some day.  I could sell them for a few grand, but the memories and hard work as a kid can’t ever be bought, so I plan on holding on to them.   Oh, and if you look at the bottom left-hand corner of the picture, you’ll see a Jose Canseco framed poster.  At the conference, Jose and his brother Ossie Canseco did a signing session, so I got their autograph and the poster hung in my room as a kid and my man cave until recently.  It is one of my few prized possessions I’ll again never sell and isn’t probably worth much, but the memories are priceless.  When other kids were out enjoying their summers, I was working in a baseball card shop in the back or sorting them from home.  I absolutely loved it…

I changed the header images on the site a few weeks ago which included a more professional picture of me.  I wanted to give you some background on it.  At work I was talking to Brian about a new project which we thought may require employee avatars.  I showed him my avatar on LinkedIn and Twitter and he said something like “yeah you like that picture, you’ve had that for a long time now” so I said OK well then let’s change it and gave him my camera phone.  I was actually joking around when taking the pictures but they turned out half decent (to my surprise) so I decided to use them.  The photo below was my Jerry McGuire pose.  I was probably saying something like “show me the money” or something absurd but he said my hand was covering my face so it didn’t work very well.  All work and no play makes Jeremy a dull boy.  So next time someone says you need a change, try something different and have some fun.  It also helps if you are a camera ham.  So there is the story behind the new picture in case you were (yeah I know you probably weren’t) wondering.

Christina and I finished the 2010 SF Nike Woman’s Half Marathon with an overall time of 3:31:24 which is 28 minutes faster than last year.  If you look at the pace and the rank it isn’t stellar but I wouldn’t exactly call myself an athlete either.  I woke up at 4am to get over to Christina’s so it was a very early start to our day.  Got some coffee and cash and we made it to the race just in time for it to start.  We started in the orange group this year even though we had yellow wrist bands which means we run 14 minute miles (the slowest class).  The nice thing about doing that is you are with faster people at the start.  I got a little agitated because clearly the people who thought they were fast weren’t and were walking way too much to be in the orange class.  Regardless it was another fun year and we saw lots of people we knew from work.

The first half of the race we had perfect weather and the second half it started raining which was fine until the race ended and we had to stop moving.  The bus line was about a mile long which meant we waited in the cold rain and wind for about an hour wearing shorts and a soaked sweatshirt so I was chilled to the bone and shivering despite my best attempts to think about lying in the sun on a white sand beach.  Went and picked up a pizza after the race and watched a nice movie with hot chocolate to finish off the day.  My muscles are actually doing pretty good this year but my knees are what hurt the most.  Go team Safeway!

Have you ever had one of those days where things just weren’t working for you?  For some reason, today is that day for me, and I’m typing this to you from DFW Airport.  My morning started trying to find a Starbucks via Hertz’s Neverlost system, but every time I tried to go to a Starbucks (there were several within miles), it would say “you have arrived” and there wasn’t a Starbucks I could see anywhere in sight.

After 15 minutes driving around for coffee I said, “this is ridiculous” and decided to head to the airport which was about 25 miles away.  By the time I hit Highway 121 traffic was crawling at 8am and long story short, by the time I got to the rental car agency I knew I wasn’t going to make it but for some reason I kept rushing.  I got on the rental car shuttle and about halfway to the airport realized I still had my sunglasses on and had left my eyeglasses in the rental car.  Fantastic, OK, so I can’t find coffee, I”m missing my flight, and I left my eyeglasses behind.  “This is the start of a fantastic day” I said.

I got to the airport and sure enough, I was too late to check in, so I’m on stand-by for a flight at noon today.  Evidently, that flight is completely booked, so we’ll see if I even get on that (my luggage will).  I went back toward the car rental shuttle area to go back to the rental car center to see if I could recover my eyeglasses.  The funny thing was I kept seeing everyone from the conference at the check in and even on the shuttle ride back.  I finally made it back to the rental car center and was directed to a million different locations before I was finally told to go “knock on the second door on the left”.  Evidently, that second door was where the lost and found was.  After knocking, a lady answered the door and I explained I had left my glasses, so she got on her walkie-talkie to locate the car.  Of course the person replied with “I have no car with that” meaning they couldn’t locate a car with that license plate number.

The nice lady then left the office and walked with me downstairs until we located the car in a stall.  Wouldn’t you know it, the glasses were nowhere in sight?  She got back on her walkie-talkie, and it was confirmed that nobody has turned anything in.  Regardless, we went back upstairs to check the office at the return area and in office #1 nothing.  Upon going into office #2 she did a brief look around and was about to say “nope nothing here either” before I snuck my head in and saw my glass case sitting on the counter.  I have never been so happy to see my glasses, I thought I’d be wearing sunglasses all day until I could get to an optometrist tomorrow.  I thanked the lady profusely and returned to the airport.

I’ve never missed a flight before, so this is a new experience, a new adventure.  Wish me luck…long story short and lesson learned is to not rush and if you have to rush, keep asking yourself “am I missing anything”?

** Update – Didn’t get on the first flight via stand-by, so I am now confirmed on a flight getting in @ 6:50pm.

We went to the Blackhawk Automotive Museum today and I really enjoyed it.  My favorite had to be the white Porshe owned by Dr. Porsche followed by the Road Runner.

It is Christina’s birthday today so we took her to breakfast and then she took us to the Blackhawk Plaza which is quite the ritzy shopping area.

Christina and I went to San Francisco this afternoon to visit the Aquarium at Pier 39. We then went to Ghirardelli for some ice cream.  As you can see, the weather was a beautiful 75 degrees, which was awesome!

Some images from last week visiting Cisco.