Author: geoffand

  • Notes from House Hunting in San Jose Area

    This week I am in San Jose/South Bay to “preview” prior to deciding to relocate. Since I spent the first 38 years of my life here, I don’t need much pre-viewing, so we are hitting likely locations to live. So far, I have pretty much dismissed the far south bay. Morgan Hill and Gilroy, while…

  • Relocating back to Silicon Valley – The Good

    Hell has frozen over, and it looks like I am going to be relocating back to the Silicon Valley. I left there in 2003 to take a job in Tucson that I liked, and came to enjoy much of what Arizona offers. A couple times I flirted with going back, including a very tempting job…

  • Anniversary of an Ominous Day

    Four years ago today was the classic definition of a “bad day“. I had been at the gym, doing my daily workout, but felt blah and off. I couldn’t get my heart rate above 100 (registered on the elliptical trainer), and I really had to force myself to do the full hour. I was uncomfortable…

  • Travel Horror Stories

    Product management and product marketing are two fields where you can expect to travel often. Unlike sales, who usually have a territory, we cover the world and are called to travel widely. Every one of these jobs I have been in has advertised 25% of travel. And every one of them has underestimated the percentage…

  • Google Authentication Shenanigans

    Is it me, or has google been fucking with their gmail authentication today? I swear it has kicked me off my webmail 4 or 5 times today. Won’t remember which accounts are logged in. At one time it got me stuck in an authentication loop. Over and over, prompting for my password. Grrrrr. This has…

  • eBook Fun – Fixing fouled up books

    As I have mentioned many times, I have been a long time satisfied user of my reader and ebooks. Certainly better than hauling around a lot of dead trees when I travel. All good. I have been building a collection for more than 5 years now, from a variety of sources, many commercial, but also…

  • More hand suckage – Cortisone shot

    Ugh. My 6 weeks with a brace on my thumb didn’t help. I guess I am not surprised, at best it was going to help ease the bone on bone rubbing. Today, I went back to the hand specialist. He wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t improving. The degeneration of cartilage is not really reversible. Just…

  • My online history

    My blogging/online history I started blogging late, in 2009. I was stuck in a bad job, that had gotten much worse due to some serious political wrangling by the executive suite. At first I just grabbed a wordpress.com site, and made a couple of posts that were really not meant to be read by anybody.…

  • Big Changes in 2014 for Casa Gander

    In 2012, I joined a great company, a cool place to work, and a true leader in Scientific instrumentation. Not quite a dream come true but a good move, particularly at this stage of my career. Things had been going well, then the Friday before the Thanksgiving week, the bombshell fell. All manufacturing of our…

  • My history with e-Readers

    I am a gadget person. I have always loved tech, and have often been on the leading edge of trends and an early adopter. One category that I dove into head first was the e-Reader trend. I first stumbled across them in 2006, when Sony launched the PRS 500. I didn’t jumped then, but I…