Ξ August 27th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
This weekend Rosie and I attended a Chinese Wedding in Manhattan. The recption was held on 39th Street between Park Avenue and Maddison Avenue. We had a really good time. Most of the girls from Rosie’s Dragon Boat team were there, so lots of shots and dancing ensued. One thing I’ve noticed during my travels is that Irish people and Chinese people drink differently. The Irish generally order beer or mixed drinks when at a bar, the Chinese on the other hand tend to order shots of whiskey. Well .. you can imagine where all this went. Needless to say, against better judgement, Rosie and I decided to stay out after the wedding and went bar hopping in Floral Park, with my good friend Jimmy. In case you don’t know, Floral Park is a beautiful little town in Nassau County. It has a great night life, lots of bars and restraunts on the main street, but the rest of the town is a sleepy village. I digress. To make a long story short, Rosie and I crawled in at the wee hours of the morning.
On Sunday afternoon when we work up, we shot out to see our friends Ann and Joe, and attended a showing of Bye Bye Birdie. After the show we enjoyed a bit of Chinese Food (quite different then what was served at the wedding) and headed home.
Anyway, that was about the extent of my weekend. Thanks for reading, I’ll post again in a few days.
Best Regards
Biff
Ξ August 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
Rosie and I went to a Murder Mystery Dinner with Lynn and Larry last week. It was good for a bunch of laughs. I’d say the Killing Kompany put on a good show.
Rosie went upstate to her dads house for a few days with her sisters, so it’s been kind of quiet at home. In some respects it gives me a chance to catch up on a bunch of paperwork and coding though. Greenstar Systems generates more paperwork then you would think. liability insurance, workers compensation, unemployment unsurance, taxes (state/federal/city), social security, etc. I got ADP to do my payroll which has made some of that much easier, but it’s not like getting a paycheck and just popping it into my account .. I get a paycheck, put it into the GreenStar Systems account, wait for it to clear .. then transfer it to my GreenStar Payroll account .. then call ADP .. who then takes the money, puts some into my retirement account .. pays all the taxes and finally sends me a check to my personal account. It’s kind of a round about way to get paid, but once the system is up and running, it runs smoothly. I mention this stuff because it never ceases to amaze me the amount of paperwork starting a business generates. I’ve been blogging about them because I don’t think most people realize just how many hoops you have to jump though. I’m glad I did it, but I seriously had no idea what I was getting myself into when I first started.
If you check out my del.icio.us links on the right side of the screen, you may notice some new music links. Both of them have really good electronic mixes. Check them out. DJ Steveboy lets you download them from his website, so they are really good to work out to.
Ξ August 18th, 2007 | → 3 Comments | ∇ Blog |
If you’re not into the geek stuff .. skip this post
[ok .. it’s just us geeks now]
I was trolling around the Verizon store in the mall two days ago waiting for Rosie to finish shopping at some other store. She doesn’t normally leave me alone to long in any kind of store where there are electronics or gadgets as she calls them, but recently she must have been distracted by a big sale or something. That was her first mistake .. thinking that she was going to save money while I was left alone near a radio shack or a verizon wireless store. Crazyness. In 15 minutes on my own last week I picked up a tom tom GPS device, and an MP3 player at Radio Shack. It was an expensive 15 minutes, but at least I won’t get lost anymore.
Anywho, on to the Broadband part of this post. EVERYONE who knows me KNOWS I love my Verizon Broadband Card. I can get internet access ANYWHERE. I typically use it at work during the day to get to my personal email or to send files to friends. You can’t do that kind of thing on a bank network, so I just bring my own connection with me. I generally leave a cheap laptop at work, and just travel back and forth with my PCMCIA sized broadband card. Anyway, I discovered (while at the Verizon Wireless store) that they have a new model of broadband cards out that actually DOUBLE the speed of my internet connection. Naturally I had to get one. It’s a tax write off for my business I tell myself (I swear, i can justify anything). I’m getting between 700 kbps to 1.4 mbps on my broadband access card. It’s the Verizon USB720. Basically it’s a USB card. It works on any computer and takes just a few minutes to set up. I typically use it with a Dlink DIR-450 Router. Basically, i plug my trusty old modem into the router, and i can have multiple computers on my wireless network at once. I tend to use this for doing software demo’s at a client location, or hanging out at mud coffee shop in Mineola.
So .. I’m basically posting this because I get lots of questions about my wireless broadband card. Here’s the FAQ
1) how much does the service cost? … about $60 a month
2) how much was the wireless broadband card ? … about the price of a cell phone. Click here for the link
3) do you get a lot of dropped calls? …. no, I generally have no problems connecting to the network, and I don’t normally have to reconnect. I do tend to compute mostly from either my office or a coffee shop though. The few times I’ve ridden the bus and used my laptop, I didn’t encounter any dropped called either.
4) are there any additional charges? … not that I can think of
5) how does it compare to your cable modem? …. I get about 9.7 mbps at home on my cable modem compared to about 1.2 mbps on my verizon wirreless connection. On the other hand, for email, surfing the web, watching youtube videos, connecting to other servers for work, etc . I don’t notice a difference. Where the difference is noticable is when I download a ton of music, audio books or movies. These are typically large downloads and take more time on my wireless connection then on my cable modem.
6) how are connections outside of NYC? ….. I’ve had no problems connecting on Long Island, Va, Washington DC, San Diego, Pa, Syracuse, or anyplace else that I’ve been in the continential USA. I could not connect however in Tenerife Spain with it.
So .. now that I’ve upgraded to my faster card, if anyone wants the old card (pc5740), let me know. It’s a PCMCIA card and should work with any laptop or the DLINK DIR-450 Router. It gets between 500 and 700 kbps (which is not bad at all for most people).
Regards
Biff
Ξ August 15th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
Comments: I’ve been getting a few comments here at good ol’ BiffSocko.com .. I love to get them and it’s great to hear from people that I don’t hear from on a regular basis. Anywho, feel free to write them, I always respond back.
Projects: My first project as a Quant Software guy is starting to wrap up. It is a TON of software that does some really complex tasks. I’m actually quite proud of it. I’m learning a TON of stuff here in this group and I’m really enjoying this contract. GreenStar Systems also has a few new projects on the horizon. We’re getting more projects from our current clients and are starting to get new companies calling out of the blue. Good Times.
I’ve been able to get back to the gym a bit more regularly. I’m in a good four or five days a week now. Mostly doing cardio with a mix of weights in between. Boxing seems to be out (at least for now) since I’m working a lot of hours, but as soon as things clear up again I’d love to start right back up with it. I’m still hitting the heavy bag at my regular gym because it’s really good exercise, but I miss sparing with pro boxers. I really liked the competition.
Life otherwise has been quiet. I’m about to start planning a few getaways for Rosie and I to take. I think we both need to take a few more vacations and long weekends. I’m looking to stay in the continential US (seeing as how poorly the US Dollar is doing against eveything else recently), and I’m also looking for a few places off the beaten path where I can use my timeshare. If anything comes to mind, just leave me a comment. Thanks.
Ξ August 8th, 2007 | → 4 Comments | ∇ Blog |
My commute this morning was terrible. Living way out at the end of Queens we tend to rely on the Bus and the LIRR to get in and out of Manhattan. Since changing my job and going to midtown, I’ve started taking the express bus to work again. I had to leave a bit early this morning (7:15) because I had an early meeting. At any rate, it took THREE hours to get 3 miles from my home. I wasn’t any where NEAR getting to Manhattan. You can see the article about it here. Needless to say, I was terribly upset. By 10:45, I gave up trying to get to work and called in. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Rosie it turns out was in the traffic just ahead of me. We both got off the Bus on Queens Blvd (sometimes called “The Blvd. of Death), and went to a movie instead. We saw The Bourne Ultimatum, then took a cab home.
Ξ August 6th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
The weekends events were quite eventful. It started out with Rosie and I conspiring to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. We were supposed to meet after work and head over to the times square theaters. The problems started because I get out of work about an hour earlier then Rosie .. and there are two bars directly across the street .. and I love Long Island Iced Teas. Needless to say, we never got to see the movie. Rosie and I met a BUNCH of people in the first bar, and we then proceeded to go bar hopping till the wee hours of the morning. I have a vague recollection of entering a foosball tournament while sucking down beer pitchers of LI Iced Teas. I guess I don’t need to go into how Saturday went. We just did breakfast with my parents, and headed back into Manhattan go get my credit card from the last place we were at :). We tried to see the Harry Potter Flick, but we arrived at the theater with over an hour before the next showing, so we decided to see it another day.
On sunday (well rested and recovered), we went to the Dragon Boat Festival at Flushing Meadow Park. Rosie wasn’t competing (she’s been out this season), but we got to hang out with her team. We saw a few races, grabbed dinner at Applebee’s, and FINALLY got to see the Harry Potter Flick. Alas, chalk up another good weekend for the Murphy’s.
Thanks for reading,
Biff
Ξ August 3rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
As my first week in my new consulting gig winds down, I’ll share with you my first impressions. First, as an engineer or developer for large banks or insurance companys, the help desk is critical for you to do your job. I need admin access to this server, or I need to install this software on that server, or my PC isn’t connecting to the network, my VPN connection doesn’t work from home .. etc etc. When you deal with technical issues all the time, and you don’t have administrator access to all the systems on the network, you rely on the helpdesk for support. That being said, I’ve had a great experience with Bank of America. Morgan Stanley was really good too. The worst .. JP Morgan Chase. My first week and a half I didn’t even have a PC.
The group I’m working with is very friendly. It’s a small, close knit group of very intelligent people. Everyone does lunch together, and has been very helpful getting me up to speed. Overall I think the group is a good fit for me. The system I’m working on is a HUGE complex financial system that was written in-house. There is no documentation. *sigh*. I’m struggling to get up to speed on the system, but this seems to be the case with each consulting assignment. I struggle for three or four weeks before I master the system.
As for the location, I miss Wall Street. I’ve had to stop boxing because this midtown location just isn’t anywhere near Gleason’s gym. Very disappointing. Rosie and I have been going to LA Fitness four or five days a week instead. I still hit the heavy bag, but it’s not the same as training with the pro’s. Depending on my class and teaching schedule, I’m going to try to take a few classes a week at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Midtown Manhattan. I’m not 100% sure I’ll have the time for it, but I’ll definitely try to fit it in. Anywho, I have to get back to reviewing code.
Best Regards
Biff
Ξ August 1st, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
Welp, I started my new job and so far I love it. It’s a great group to work with. Everyone is really nice, and the work is hi-tech. What more could you ask for? My one complaint is that I miss working downtown. The Commute to work isn’t bad, I’m jumping on the express bus and walking two blocks. but midtown just doesn’t have the personality that downtown has. There’s no parks or museums or anything near my new office. Also, there are TONS more turists getting in the way. Oh well. I better get going or I’ll be late for work.
