People seem to complain that I don't post enough.  That happens.  What those people don't know is that I do post to Twitter a lot.  So I've added a sidebar item that shows my last five tweets.

For those who don't know Twitter is a "micro-blogging" site, where people post updates in 140-character chunks.  Wikipedia can tell you the rest.

Part of being in the new company involves signing up for insurance, retirement plans, etc...  Up until now, everything has worked pretty seamlessly.  Seamless, until I logged into my company's retirement plan website.  Symantec uses Schwab to manage the 401k's, and I thought that since it's a pretty big company that uses cool, rotoscoped commercials, it should have a decent website.  I was wrong.

First, when I log in, I'm presented a menu-like page with links to other functions and information pages.  If I click on half of them, I'm logged out of my account.  Cookies be darned, I have to log in again to go back.

Second, when something changes, they send me an email to let me know that it has been changed.  That's a nice thought, but there are huge flaws with the execution.  I will detail them here.

In order to know what changed, I have to open an attached HTML document, enter my username and password, and then they'll tell me.  Let me restate, I have to enter personal information into an attached document.  This is a huge issue because it just reeks of a phishing scam.  I'm sure that the emails I've received are legitimate, but that's not the point.  The point is that in this age of the internet, emails are guilty until proven innocent.  Any email asking for personal information, especially those with attachments, are not to be trusted.

Oh, here's another kicker.  These are the "system requirements" for opening their attached HTML doc:

• An Intel Pentium or equivalent machine
• Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT or Windows 2000 or Windows XP
• An e-mail client software that accepts attachments
• An e-mail address that accepts attachments
• A Netscape 4.06 (or higher) or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 (or higher) browser

What is this, 1997?

Anyway.  I emailed them about how their emails are actually conditioning people to fall prey to phishers.  They responded, assuring me in a long paragraph that the data is sent in an highly encrypted manner.  While that's nice, it doesn't address my real concern.  They're still asking me to enter my username and password in an email attachment.  I responded, saying in brief: My issue is not "is my information safe travelling over the internet?", it's "where is my information being sent and can I really be sure that it's being sent to your servers?".

So far, no response.

Boo, Schwab.  Boo for training your customers to trust emails completely with their sensitive information.

Betsy and I went out on a little date last Friday.  We don't usually go out much, but we want to do that more.  First we went to Altered Esthetics, an art gallery in Minneapolis that was opening a video game themed show.  I've seen video game art before (search "8 bit art" on Google and you'll see some good examples), but the stuff we saw there was not quite what we expected.  Rather than art inspired by video games, it was more about painting images from the video games.  A lot of the art seemed pretty amateur, almost like high school art.

After that, we went to a restaurant in Robbinsdale called "Thistles" (not worth linking).  From the outside it looks like a fancy place and it sounded good.  When we got in, though... Oh man.  First off, the atmosphere was too bright to be romantic, but too dark to be a family restaurant.  The walls were blue, which is an unappetizing color.  The service was slow, even with four people working the front and only half the tables full.  The water was luke warm.  The bread was simply sliced bread, sliced within reach of the bathroom doors.  Who we assumed was the owner stopped by our table, said hello and then asked if we had reservations, remember, the restaurant was only half full.  When we said no, he just walked away.  The menu was small, I'm guessing to give the image that they do a few meals, but they do them well.  Unfortunately, they failed that, too.  Betsy's chicken lacked sauce.  Even basics like olive oil and salt would have helped.  My walleye was over fried.

And to top it off, I shut the door on Betsy's hand before we left!

It really was the date of "close... but not quite".  We can only go up from here!

As some of you know, I have decided to leave Calabrio and move on to the next job in my career.  Starting next month, I will be an employee of Symantec in Roseville, MN.  I am very excited about this move and I'm sure it'll be a great thing for my career.  I have truly enjoyed my time at Calabrio and will be sad to leave such a great company.  I'll miss the people, the environment, and even the product.  This was not an easy decision, but I am confident that it is the right one.

Wish me luck!

Hey friends and family.  I know it's been a while, but I definitely have something that is worth blogging about.  Last Saturday, I purchased my first motorcycle!  It's a 1993 Kawasaki Ninja 250 with a little age and more than a few cosemetic blemishes, but a heart of gold...  well, aluminum.  Here's a picture:

I've been watching Wine Library TV as one of my regular podcasts.  If you like wine and want passionate, straight talk about wine, it's the best out there.  Anyway, I was reminded recently about Jesus' miracle of turning water to wine (Read it here).  This was during a wedding feast, and in that day, the best wine was served first, followed by the poor stuff when everyone has had a couple of glasses.  I'm guessing that if they put half the energy and money into their wedding celebrations, this first wine was probably pretty good stuff*.

So, the feast runs out of wine, and Jesus' mom asks him to do something.  He performs a miracle when he tells the servants to draw water, and it becomes wine.  That wine is given to the master of the feast (the feastmaster?), who probably knows what a good wine tastes like.  He remarks how good it is, better than the best stuff they had for the beginning of the feast (which was the best stuff they brought).

I thought this was interesting because not only did Jesus perform a miracle to make wine, but he made the best wine they had that night.  He didn't just do a super-natural booze run when the party ran out.  This was the work of a connoisseur picking just the right vintage and varietal for the occasion.  It makes me curious about what it might have been like.  Was this the world's only 101 point wine?

Something to think about.

-Pete

* Actually, I think I heard that their celebrations would put ours to shame, but I can't back that up.

About a few weeks ago, Betsy and I found our green thumbs.  Turns out they were hidden under the overgrown evergreen shrubbery and landscaping rock.  When it got warm here (remember that day?), we started working on our front yard's gardens.  My mom came over and helped us plan, which was great.  She and Betsy were hard at work with planting cool and interesting plants in the gardens we're calling "The Eye", "The Box", and "The Strip".  Very creative, I know.

So, step one before continuing on the next gardens was removing the shrubs.  We've done that to ten by now, and we got pretty good at it by the time we did the last one.  The next task will be removing landscaping rocks.  Backbreaking work that really has no real time-saving solutions to it*.

I'll post some before and after pictures soon.

* You can rent a Rock Vac for the low, low price of $150/day.  Too much for me.