The ubiquity of information

It's Saturday afternoon. Jessica and I are in a motel room in New Jersey, getting ready for the wedding we have to attend in a few hours. I'm flipping channels on the TV. I come across a program focused on animal life in Death Valley. It catches our interest, and we see the tail end of a segment which is obviously about some kind of road race that is run there, which sounded pretty awful.

I pulled out my Blackberry, which I had brought to be able to retrieve maps online on the go. I did a quick search on the terms "death valley ultramarathon" and within seconds I was reading the wikipedia article on the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race where runners have to face a 13,000 feet elevation gain (running from below sea level to near the summit of Mt. Whitney). I had a great chuckle when they said that nobody had died on the race "yet."

Putting the Internet into our hands at every moment isn't just about being able to buy movie tickets or get directions to the closest pizza joint, no matter what the marketing suits tell you. Sometimes it's just about being able to satisfy your curiosity the moment it arises.

Don't get me wrong. I did use the Blackberry for more traditional things as well. We needed to find a specific clothing store on the way down to NJ, and we found one at a mall right by the highway we were traveling. And I even earned some points among the extended family by not just finding the closest Denny's for them, but giving them directions as well. And while I didn't need the Internet to tell me how crazy it would be at Denny's as part of a party of 11 with 3 children under 5, I could have blogged about it while it was happening, had I thought of it :).

Stop wondering and start doing

Another "day in the life" of a man who regularly realizes he's smarter than he realizes if he just did the things he always talks about doing.

Yesterday, I had a bit of a headache towards the end of the day. My muscles were still sore from my last run and my weekend of playing with my nephews (playing catch and baseball with a couple pre-teens takes more out of you than you'd think). I went to bed a bit early, thinking, "I probably won't run tomorrow, my body might need the rest."

This morning, I felt fine. Not sore, not overly tired, etc. But I immediately started over-analyzing. Maybe I need to rest, maybe my body needs an extra day to recuperate, maybe I should wake up a bit more and make sure I'm not sore.

No, dumbass, you should just get your running clothes on and get on the treadmill (yes, it's beautiful out there, I'm holding off on running outside until I complete this training program).

I finally did the run, and it was one of the best runs I've had in a few weeks.

Stop thinking about it, and just keep doing it. Don't be so afraid of failing that you don't try, because trying and failing is a better end than not trying at all, and more often than not you won't fail anyway.

How many times do I have to re-learn this lesson (in matters small and large)?

(Fifteen pounds down ... four runs left in my training program ... so far, so good.)

Spring hits Podunk

One week ago, it was gloom and doom. This weekend, the weather was amazing.

Saturday, we set up our hammock in the back yard, and spent about an hour just laying in the sun. Stress falls away pretty quick in that environment -- and in the peace and quiet of the warm spring breeze I once again had a bit of a "reset button" moment. I need these, periodically, to remind myself what I work for. My own yard, on a quiet street, surrounded by trees -- this is why I endure all the stress I face at work.

The whole area is more alive right now -- you can see the early beginnings of buds on trees, things are sprouting in gardens, the spring birds are back, and people are out and about. The parking area near the pond was completely full this weekend, and the entire surface of the pond was dotted with boats.

And, of course, the bugs are starting to come back. We saw several hornets buzzing about the house. Some things never change.

Positive Thinking

On my commute home yesterday, I drove past the pond and saw two large blue herons flying over it. They were the first ones I've seen this year, and seeing them always brings a smile to my face. Spring is coming. The birds know it, but maybe someone should tell the skies.

This morning I went and killed that run that killed me Wednesday. It was still hard, but I ran it a little slower and was able to pound it out. Mission accomplished, though I'm still nervous about the rest of my runs being this difficult. Jess is enjoying the fact that she's having an easier time of running than I am, so I guess there's some benefit to my struggle.

I'm going to head over to PR Running on Monday and get my shoe choice double checked. I'm also going to incorporate increased stretching into my routine. I read some great advice -- do stretches on your off days to make sure you give them the attention they deserve. A full set of stretches can run you 20 minutes, and I know I don't have the patience to do that before/after a run. I'm lucky if I spend 2 minutes stretching. But if it's my off day, I can stretch in place of a run and still get some benefit.

My Monday is going to be very busy, for a day off. Dentist appointment, running shoe shopping, grocery shopping with my mother, and possibly lunch with Jess. The Marathon could well be over by the time I get home and pop on the TV to see how it's going.

A many-stepped journey

I know I'd be a happier person if I took my own advice more often. For example: don't sweat the small stuff.

Today I had a particularly stressful phone conversation with my manager, for reasons I won't go into here (nothing bad, just the usual). I immediately went down to the treadmill for my Week 6 Day 3 run of my C25K plan. Things went okay until about 15 minutes into the running portion. With ten minutes remaining, I wasn't sure I had it in me to finish.

Five minutes went by, and what had started as a slight nagging in my legs had turned into a burning pain in each calf. I was counting the seconds, and had 300 to go. I tried to push it out but after another 30 seconds I realized how stupid I was being. Pain like that, that gets worse as you continue the exercise, is usually not something you want. I dropped back to walk pace immediately, walked for 5 minutes, and then stretched for a few minutes.

The pain is gone, but it's still tight. And I'm pissed that I couldn't complete my workout. But this is just one step on a long journey -- one training run that didn't complete as expected is hardly reason to get upset.

But such is the paranoia of the man who isn't fully confident he can do what he's attempting (even though he's done it before). Every tiny setback is examined from all possible angles.

Dave, don't sweat the small stuff. You still got a great workout in.

The question: was it just random chance? Unstretched legs? New running shoes? Too fast?

What do I change next time?


My plan: stick with the new shoes, drop my pace a bit, and try again in a couple days. If the pain returns, go to the running store on Monday and see if there's a different shoe I should be using.

Easter Birth Control

So yesterday we hosted the family Easter dinner, a surprisingly non-religious affair given how religious most of the attendees (but not the hosts) were. In any case, after an easter egg hunt, an easter basket hiding game, a huge meal, and several hours of 3 sugar-crazed kids, my house looked like some kind of tornado went through it.

I walked into the kitchen and jokingly said, "What happened to my house?"
My sister-in-law replied, "Birth control showed up."

In unrelated news, I got some new running shoes yesterday which I am looking forward to trying out. I've been running in 2 to 3 year-old shoes with a lot of rough miles on them. These are fresh and new, and I got a great deal on them online.

Two digit losses

No, I'm not talking about investments or work revenues. I'm talking about my recent fitness initiative!

As of this morning, I'm down ten pounds from when I made the decision that it was time to start this up again. I've completed five weeks of my running program, I'm down ten pounds, and I can feel the difference in my clothes.

A good start!

On pushing your limits

I don't talk about work much in this blog, for a few reasons. The biggest is the most obvious: I don't want this showing up on some corporate legal radar. The last thing I need is the guys in suits actually thinking I'm a liability (or more of a liability than they know I am!).

So. I'm finally taking one of the classes that lots of managers here take -- it tries to cram in all aspects of being a manager into 3 days. Leadership, business acumen, personal growth, all of it. And the pre-requisite (not required, but strongly recommended) is a "skills assessment."

The assessment takes the form of a 5-hour simulation of being a manager. You sit at your desk and handle email, calendar, and telephone. You have dissatisfied employees, demands from peer managers, all kinds of problems. It seems that the goal is to put you under enough simulated pressure to expose your weak areas, so you know what to focus on.

This does not sound, in the least bit, fun.

And yet my manager sings its praises, nearly constantly. He says the simulation was more important for his development than the follow-up course.

This is coming up in a couple weeks. I'm fairly nervous about it, for a lot of reasons. But it boils down to, "what if they tell me I suck at this?".

What's odd is that I would have no such fears about a technical challenge of this nature. If I took a 5-hour assessment of my technical skills and learned that I am good at half of it and suck at the other, I'd be glad to know that, so I could start working on the other half. But that's because I've known I'm good at the technical side of things, for a long time. Maybe if such a test had been handed out in my freshman year of college I would be just as nervous. Or maybe it's because management is made up of "soft" skills, and I have it in my head that if I'm bad at them, there's no improving it.

It doesn't make much sense, but there it is.

Rush tickets on sale

June 27th, Mansfield MA, An Evening with Rush.

I'm not sure I'm going this tour. Should I buy tickets anyway? Not exactly cheap....

2 steps forward, 3 steps back

Sometimes you have to look backwards in order to move ahead. In 2004, my brother-in-law Steve was serving overseas in Iraq and the surrounding areas. I looked at the sacrifices he was making for what he believed in, looked at the struggles he had been through to become a Marine at the age of 30, and decided that I needed to take steps to change my own fitness level. I ate better, started exercising, and eventually started running. I dropped 40 pounds, was running up to 20 miles a week, and felt the best I ever had. In the middle of all that, I became closer to Steve than I had been since high school (while being as geographically separated as is possible, basically).

Then things changed. I hurt my foot while running a 10K race with Steve upon his return in 2005. Things got more complicated at home, and at work. I lost my drive, and eventually lost my fitness. It took a little while, but two years after that road race it's 2007, and I'm heavier and more out of shape than I was in late 2004. I just reread my blog post from that day, from the race. It's sobering to look back on what I've lost.

That's looking back.

What motivated me then isn't what is motivating me now. Now it's time to look forward. I'm not getting any younger. I am lucky to be as healthy as I am, given how poorly I've treated myself in the past. I deserve better, my wife deserves better, and I know I'm capable of better. I'm tired of knowing my potential and being so far from it.

About a month ago, I convinced myself of this, and have quietly been working on it. I've done four weeks of the same 9-week program that got me into running in the first place. I've been recording my food intake, logging my exercises, and generally ramping up towards being more responsible. And I'm finally confident enough in it to post here that it's what I'm doing. Even though nobody really reads this, there's a certain amount of commitment involved in putting it down "on paper" as it were.

The habits are getting back in place. The body remembers what it takes. The comfort of knowing I can do this (since, well, I did it before) competes in my mind with the frustration that comes with doing it all a second time (and having it be harder).

So, once again, I'll probably be posting fitness-related items in here again, as I try to keep myself honest.

Life is a journey, and sometimes you have to loop back around and cover the same ground twice. It's okay. We're not in a hurry....

I can't quit my job

So, yeah, evidently I didn't win the big lottery last night. I even bought a ticket and everything.

Stupid system.

In other news, I am a travel writer!

Oh, wait, not really. But I did contribute to wikitravel.org, which takes the wiki approach to travel guides.

So, while I didn't win enough money to quit my job and roam the world, I did spend some of my personal time making sure that my own experiences traveling help someone else pick a good restaurant next time they go to Sanibel Island. Hey, you gotta make compromises in life.

Stalking my friends from high school

So I'm poking around a music forum today, and I notice a post about a site called Metal Archives. They said, if they don't have an entry, the band is either really obscure or isn't metal.

Suuure.

So a buddy of mine in high school was in a short-lived death metal band called Exhumed. What are the odds they have an entry? Pretty good. Not only that, I get the names of a few of the other bands my old no-longer-in-touch friend has been in since then. I follow the lines all the way to his myspace page (via his current band's).

Awesome world we live in. To be fair, we did touch base about 5 years ago, so I knew he was still playing music and all that.

Speaking of myspace ... is there like some rule that all myspace pages must look like someone ate an HTML dictionary and vomited it back up in random order? Goddamn.

You have to watch the game

There are a lot of fans in New England who aren't interested in watching the game today. Indy beat the Pats twice this year, and ended our dreams of further cementing the Pats' place in history. Peyton is overexposed, and nobody wants to watch his goofy grin upon being handed the trophy. On the same lines, Chicago is a team that ran the table against the NFC this year, a feat which hasn't earned them any respect. They struggled against the likes of Arizona, and sometimes seemed to be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

So why watch this matchup?

I'll take you back to Superbowl XXXII. John Elway, who positively owned the Pats during his career, was facing Brett Favre, who had defeated the Pats the year before. Pats fans didn't want either of these guys taking the trophy. Elway was to us, what the Pats were to Manning (up until this year, grr). Favre's victory lap around the Superdome was still fresh in our minds.

With this context in mind, I watched a 30-minute highlight show on this game, today, on ESPN2. And I grinned like a little kid. I relished the tension, the drama, seeing the game unfold, watching the big hits, and big drives, the determination and grit as the Broncos' ran the Packers over enough times to wear them down and win the game.

And when Elway hoisted that trophy up, I still felt that residual resentment. "Now retire, and let us start winning AFC championships." But beyond that, I looked at two legends, at or near the tops of their games. And I knew I was watching something beyond what mattered to our team. This was history, this was football.

This year, the story is no less compelling. Manning, at the top of his game, with his aw-shucks grin and a team built to propel him to the top. Chicago, with decades of historical greatness in defense, ready to take it all away and slowly grind the game away with a punishing running game. Rex Grossman, inexperienced, maligned, ready to either win it for his team or lose it with a single foolish throw.

For these men and their families, this may well be the day they most remember, for the rest of their lives.

It's the Superbowl. The final showdown you've been building towards since August. You have to watch. I mean, who knows what you might miss?

Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving

If you know me, you know I'm not exactly a hardliner when it comes to resisting the appeal of the Christmas holiday season. But one thing I will stand up for, every year, is the ability to celebrate Thanksgiving as a holiday in its own right.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was one of many holidays we didn't celebrate. My mother believed, as most in her faith do, that Thanksgiving is a corruption of an ancient pagan celebration and no good Christian should celebrate it. Not only that, Witnesses specifically avoid singling out any one day to do someting they should do every day (be thankful). Then there's the whole patriotic history, eating to excess, etc. Anyway, you'll find a good write-up on beliefnet.

Even given all of that, Thanksgiving was the one time where my whole messed up family got together. My aunts and uncles who had left the state would come back, cousins I never saw would appear at my grandparents' house, and so on. We never had a car, so visiting with certain family members was very rare. If we skipped holidays, we might never see them. So at several points in her life, my mother came to some kind of a compromise with her conscience and her family.

We attended a few Thanksgivings. It wasn't a regular thing, as my mother's strictness on certain issues varied year to year. But we went to a few. Enough for certain aspects of the holiday to imprint on me, and eough for me to feel sentimental about it in a way that I don't with other holidays.

As hosts of this year's Thanksgiving dinner, we have a chance to take the traditions I remember from my childhood and mix them with my wife's family traditions. It's a rare thing, for me. I have very little in the way of tradition when it comes to the holidays, so mostly I've just inherited hers. It's a special opportunity and I look forward to it.

So, for just a couple more days, try to ignore the Christmas music on the radio. Don't put out your lights quite yet. Take a moment to be thankful for your family, your traditions, your memories, and all that you've accomplished (through hard work or dumb luck) in the past year. And get psyched up for good comfort food -- the smell of a roasting bird, potatoes whipped so smooth they might as well be fake, hot gravy and warm pies. And get ready to remind a new generation of kids that Christmas is great, but Thanksgiving deserves a place in your heart too.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

How I Spent my Weekend

This past weekend, I participated in a traditional male bonding ritual -- I went fishing. On the ocean. In a boat. With "the guys." The guys, in this case, are from Jess's family, and people Jess's dad or brother go to church with. In other words, not people I necessarily have a lot in common with. Except, you know, total masculinity.

Now, my expectations were low to begin with. Consider the following facts:

1. I get seasick easily.
2. I am not a recreational fisherman.
3. I am not a member of their faith.

But, the trip was in honor of Jess's dad's birthday, not mine. My goal was to be there and make sure he had fun.

It started out fine, overnighting at Jess's parents. I entertained folks by basically watching wacky movies on youtube and google video, and we all drank coffee and made smalltalk. By 11 or so, we were in bed, and having trouble sleeping in the noisy bright city environment. Country living has spoiled me, I tell you. Street lights and traffic? What's this?

We were up and about by 5 AM, and on the road shortly thereafter, six guys sitting in a Ford Excursion, not very awake. My brother-in-law asks, "Hey, does this ting have a radio?" The silence is replaced by whatever the radio had been on previosly -- a Christian station. As if the music wasn't bad enough, it changed into a scriptural reading. Picture a guy just droning on, no commentary, reading aloud from the book of Isaiah. Fortunately, we were able to change it after a few painful minutes, over to a "mix" station. Bland inoffensive music, but at least it wasn't biblical.

The second amusement of the trip was in how badly we got lost. The blind were leading the blind in the front seat. I had made the mistake of getting two sets of directions -- one (very detailed) from Google Maps, and one (short and sweet) from the Marina's website.

Unable to reconcile differences between the two directions, our front seat tandem drove us all over Connecticut. Miraculously, we had left early enough to overcome this obstacle, and arrived only a few minutes late after stopping for directions at two different gas stations.

What we saw first was one of the cooler things I was to see that day -- the boat warehouse (picture is not mine, comes from the Marina's site).

Imagine a giant parking garage for boats, where each boat fits into a cubbyhole and is retrieved from it by a huge forklift/crane thingy. Easily a hundred boats in this building. Very nifty.

This led to a surprise, however -- how small the boat was. I mean, it wasn't tiny, but it was smaller than I expected. Given my sensitivity to motion sickness (fascinating, by the way, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness claims this is an evolved response to hallucinations caused by toxin ingestion), this was notgood news. I downed a couple of Dramamine and helped load things up.



The trip started out wonderfully. The weather was perfect and the seas calm. We left the shoreline and found an area where some birds were congregating, and tried our luck with some light tackle. This is "normal" fishing, basically. Rod, reel, lure, cast and reel in. Nothing fancy, very relaxing. But we caught zero fish and decided to move on.

Here's where my experience totally shifted from my expectations. I pictured us on a boat, with lots of water on all sides. This is true ... but what I hadn't planned for in my mental image was the number of other boats sharing the same spot. This wasn't a matter of "look way over there, someone else is fishing," it's more, "Well, there are 25 boats within sight, obviously this is a good place to fish."

The next type of fishing we did was much less fun, for me. The rods were replaced with much heavier ones, and each of us put a heavy weight at the end of our lines. You then stop the boat and set it adrift, and then hang your line off the edge of the boat. Release the line, wait for the weight to hit the bottom, and then reel it in a foot or two. Then, periodically bounce your rod up and down so the weight hovers above the ground. The result is that your lure is a couple feet off the ground, trailing behind your weight. What sucks about this?

• The rod is heavy and tiring on the arm
• The heavy weight dulls your ability to sense anything
• As the ocean changes in depth, your weight will snag on the floor and fool you into thinking you've caught the world's largest fish

The fascinating thing about that last bit is that it reveals just how quickly your boat is drifting relative to the ocean floor. You go from leisurely holding your rod to feeling like a submarine has
snagged your line and is making for Mother Russia.

Anyway. This method of fishing (jigging) bored me to tears, and did very little to address my growing seasickness. I took more Dramamine, which made me more tired and less eager to fish. But I did my best.

After a while, we moved on to Round Three. Here, we trolled. You take two big rods, put them in holders at the back of the boat, and tow a couple hundred feet of line behind you with big lures at the end. When you land something, you strap yourself in and reel in the fish.

I must say, this was pretty cool.

You take turns letting the line out and catching whatever you hook. We caught enough fish doing this that everyone had a chance, or several chances really. My chance came fairly early on, and I dragged in the biggest catch of the day, a 36" Striped Bass (Striper). This fish was a good 6
inches longer than anything anybody else caught, and it went a long way towards keeping me credible even as I spent more and more time sitting on a cooler and wishing my seasickness would go away.

Reeling in the fish was more fun than you'd think. It's a continuous strain on your muscles, six guys are cheering you on, and it's hard. At the end, you pull your fish aboard, and everyone oohs and aahs over what you've done. And then they measure it and keep it if it's legal, and you're back at square one.

As a plus, the boat is moving the whole time, which really helps with my motion sickness. But eventually the seas got too rough and we went back to Jigging. I didn't even bother to fish this time, instead quietly cheering on everyone else who was reeling them in. After six hours at sea, we headed back in, exhausted, dirty, but satisfied. To be honest, I was ready to quit after 3 hours, but hey, we got our money's worth.

In the end, my brother-in-law caught the most fish (8) and I caught the biggest. Not bad. Our captain came ashore with us and fileted the fish in front of us so we could split up the meat easily. As someone who doesn't really enjoy eating fish, I donated my monster filets to Jess's dad and brother. I hope they enjoy them. Here's our cooler at the end (mine is the one on top).


The ride home was long and fraught with peril. We got stuck in a 45 minute traffic jam due to what had to be a fatal accident; that car was crushed. We also had a tire spring a leak, which the manly men of course had to repair immediately (surely a good idea, but at this point I was hungry and exhausted). We got back to Springfield around 6, were back on the road home by 7, and I was showered and back in bed before 9.

Was it worth it? Definitely. Jess's dad had a great time, and I even had some fun. Would I do it again?

Nah. Not really :).

Two months?

So, obviously it's been a while since I posted. Funny that my last post was about TiVo, as it brings me back here 2 months later.

Series 3 is out, and it's not everything we wanted it to be. Don't get me wrong, the functionality I want is in there. But plenty of people are disappointed that the newer TiVo functions allowing multi-room viewing and sharing between TiVo and other devices are not available due to ongoing discussions with the cable companies.

That wouldn't stop me from buying it, except that it's 800 dollars.

TiVo is everything I want in my DVR. But I can't spend $800 to record my TV shows when my cableco DVR does an acceptable job of it. For $1600 I could ditch my 27" CRT HDTV and replace it with a 42" LCD HDTV that does 1080p. Which do you think would have a greater impact on my daily recreation?

The fact is, I'm not blowing a grand on either of these things. I have a house to pay for! Well, not just the house, but doors, carpets, floors, and chimney work. And who knows what else? At this point, a thousand dollar luxury purcase just isn't in the cards.

If it was $300 I would have argued with myself but eventually bought it. For $500 I'd be kicking myself, wishing I had it and watching for sales. At $800, I can just back away and let the early adopters enjoy their new toys. I'll check back in with TiVo sometime next year....

TiVo: No, don't cancel!

Shortly after getting HDTV and a HD DVR from my cable company, I realized my TiVo had a short life span ahead of it. Dual tuner and high definition simply are killer features. Everything else, though, the TiVo does better.
Handling a show ending while you're recording it
Handling schedule changes
Season passes are "smarter"
Suggestions
PC integration
Overall interface

In other words, it breaks my heart every time I use the HD DVR instead of my TiVo.

So, after not using the thing for 6 months (hear that? That's 75 bucks down the drain), I called to cancel. I got a very friendly enthusiastic young man who couldn't wait to help me, and made me feel even worse about canceling.

I explained why I had to do it. I talked about HDTV. I mentioned I'd be looking at them again in a few months when Series 3 came out.

And he said, well, Series 3 will be out in a couple months. What if we didn't bill you for a few months, and once it comes out, you can decide whether you want to cancel or not.

Well, fine.

I'm a sentimental sucker. I love my TiVo. Let's hope I don't forget to cancel again in 3 months (or let's hope I get a Series 3 for Christmas...).

New hobby in the making?

The area where I live now is known for being a haven for sportsmen. They are trying to attract hunters, fishermen, and just plain outdoorsy types. Boating, hiking, fishing, you name it.

Well, on the 4th I got a taste of what it has to offer for people, and I might just be hooked.

We had a medium-sized family BBQ on the 4th, and after a nice little thunderstorm blew through, all the guys in the group (myself, brother-in-law Steve, father-in-law Steve, and nephews Tommy and Joey) got into the kayaks Steve (BIL) had brought and started out from what's traditionally known as "North Pond." We paddled over to where a stream leads to the pond from another one, and headed up that way (going under the very low bridge to do so). Within mere minutes, the road was out of sight, and we were surrounded by reeds, wildlife, and quiet.

Now, I love water. It calms me, the sight of it, the sound of it, the idea of its vastness. But I am not a boat person -- I get seasick quickly. And I am not a fisherman -- haven't fished since I was a kid.

But this trip changed both those opinions of myself. The water was calm, and sitting in the boat was equally calming. And while I am not a legally licensed fisherman, I will admit to taking a couple casts and getting a feel for the rod and reel. Somehow, having something to occupy you in a simple repetitive way made the whole experience even more relaxing.

I returned home after several hours loose and relaxed, if a little sore from paddling. Sunburned, sure, but with a new experience under my belt.

Jess was just saying that it would be nice if we had a hobby we could enjoy together. We're going to give this one a shot -- a place nearby will rent you kayaks for the day for $40, or a bit more for a two-seater. We're gonna check it out, see if it's something we both enjoy.

Who knows, maybe I'll be posting about my exploits across the streams of Worcester County before long....

Identity Theft FTL

Within the past year, I have received notification from three companies that personal identification about me may have been accidentally disclosed to unintended parties.

Wells Fargo had a server disappear in shipment, which may have had all kinds of juicy info on it including names, SSNs, and bank account information. Wells Fargo, of course, does my home mortgage.

A Medical Insurance company that I don't even do business with, but which provides services for my place of employment, recently contacted me to say a server was stolen out of a locked office at their facility, which had names and SSNs.

Finally, my newspaper informed me that they accidentally shipped a piece of paper including some billing information (we have our newspaper paid direct from our checking account, much as we do with our phone and electric bills) to their carriers.

Out of the three, only Wells Fargo offered to give us a year's free subscription to a credit monitoring service. I wasn't going to take them up on it, but after two additional breaches in the course of the following months, it's probably about time to do that.

And of course, because no tragedy in America happens without someone standing to make some cash, I recently saw a sign on an insurance company for "Identity Theft Insurance." What the hell is that? It's not like you can say, "My identity got stolen, I need a settlement to replace it."

Ah, the perils of the modern age.

What does your workspace say about you?

I've always wanted my workspace to reflect a little of who I am outside the office. This serves a lot of purposes. I get to have a little bit of my outside life around me while I work, and people who come into my workspace can see a little of the person who might not otherwise surface. It can also act as a conversation starter and a bit of a friend-finder.

The problem is that after ten years in the same company, it's stopped reflecting a little of who I am, and started reflecting a little of every little thing that has interested me in that ten years. It's less like a snapshot of my life and more like a dumping ground for it. And that's fine, in some ways. Some times it's cool to find an action figure I got when I was in my teens and remember how it ended up at work when I wanted something to decorate my cube in my first month on the job.

But overall, it's slowly been gnawing at me. I want a cleaner workspace, with less junk and more meaningful items. More things with stories attached, fewer random Burger King kids' meal toys.

And now, as a shift into a new managerial role (and office with a door) looms on the horizon, I have the perfect excuse to do something about it. What do I keep, what do I get rid of, and what do I add?

I mean, I can't even remember what prompted me to put a snowman-shaped pez dispenser on my bookshelf. I think I nabbed it from someone's cubicle after they left the company, to remind me of them ... but I can't remember who it was. There's an irony there which is not lost on me.

I have two Lord of the Rings movie posters on the wall that have been on display since well before the movies came out. When I put them up, it was a way of spreadng the news about the upcoming movies and starting conversations about them. Now people assume I'm some kind of LOTR fiend when the truth is I've seen Ocean's Eleven more times than I've seen Fellowship of the Ring (okay, maybe not, but it's close).

I've got snapshots of my nephews from before they were old enough to talk. Now they're in little league. I've got a complete LOTR chess set. Patriots players action figures for people who haven't been on the team in years. A giant R2-D2 cookie jar. The list goes on.

But I also have my collection of magnets I grabbed on my road trip, to remind me of where I've been. I've got a clay "death mask" I bought in Cancun. I've got a beautiful black and white picture of my nephews and niece taken last fall in a pile of leaves. And while you might not understand why a Diablo 2 action figure is important to me, in a weird way it's very important to me, and I don't want to let it go quite yet.

It's going to be interesting to see what I make of my new workspace, when I move into an office. How much of the old me will come along? What will my co-workers think of the change?

Right now my plan is to save one shelf in the office for "toys" and decorate the rest with more "grown up" trinkets. This will force me to pick and choose the toys which have the most meaning, and remind me of my roots, while allowing me to show more of who I am today to those who step into the office.

The real question is, what do I put on the walls? Right now I have four posters -- 1 Sandman, 1 Swingers, and 2 LOTR. I've been thinking of decorating with travel-themed posters, though ... change it up a little.

Watch here for updates :).