Random and occasional thoughts on

I think my post over on my photography blog says it the best way I know how.

I have been doing a lot of management with my family phone plan lately and just wanted to share some of the things I have learned to save some money on your bill. I also got some parts of this from a friend who had some shortcuts for these. If you have any other tips, please feel free to comment with your ideas. These are from my dealings with Verizon , but most should apply to other carriers as well. Data . Corporate vs. Personal Data plans. Both offer unlimited data, but the personal one is about $15 per month cheaper. The corporate one is needed if you need to access corporate servers (i.e. Exchange for work email sync). Personal one works fine for things like Gmail and web browsing. Data . If you choose to go with a lower level data plan (like pay-as-you-go), check online before the end of your billing cycle. If you are using enough, you can save by moving up a level before the end of the month to get the bulk discount. Drop back later if you no longer need as much data. Tex...

No, get your mind out of the gutter. Let me explain. About a month ago, I saw a message on Twitter that said " On 2nd day of my " 'running streak' ". I realized that since I had run the day before, I could match that streak. I had been struggling with running regularly and thought that I might give it a shot. According to the United States Running Streak Association, Inc , a running streak is defined as running at least one continuous mile within each calendar day under one's own body power . It says nothing about pace, so I decided to give it a try. Every runner worth their salt knows that recovery is important. Typically, recovery takes the form of days off from running which would not happen with running every day. Why would someone do this to themselves? Is it safe? I learned during my triathlon training that recovery can also happen during cross-training (biking or swimming for example) or even on easy running days. During my ramp-up for my Ir...

Any financial adviser will tell you that debt has costs. The cost of interest is the biggest and most obvious one. Technical projects have debt as well. "Quick and Dirty gets it done", "Deadline Rules" and "We'll fix that in the next release" are but three of the refrains common to almost any technical project. At times, they have their place. It would be foolish to postpone a major "go-live" to change the structure of an index and the lost revenue could collapse the viability of the program. However, too many times, "putting off til tomorrow", becomes "let the new guy/gal/team worry about it" because of staffing turnover or because the development team and the maintenance teams are in different departments. This maintenance is the technical equivalent of interest in the financial realm. This blog post is a great read and should be mandatory for all IT managers involved in development or maintenance projects. Jeff e...

One year ago today.... There is an older post, but that was just a pre-dated entry to record my Ironman Race Report. In the past year, I have ranted, raved, shared and bragged about everything from running to technology to family and friends. I have not seen millions of hits, but have seen over 2000 visits with over 3000 page views. I had some technical issues getting the statistics working which means that there were many other visits in the 2 months before I got all the bugs worked out and tracking reliably in early July. This many visits produces some interesting statistics. Well, interesting to me anyway: visits came from over 30 different countries visits came from 50 different states in the US. (Iowa & North Dakota missing) top 27 states have 10 or more visits only 5 states had a single visit I have been neglecting this blog a bit for several reasons. I will tell you what they are and let you decide if I need either a kick in the pants or a pat on the back. One reason ...

Can you guess what it is? Did a little birdie tell you yet? I'm not telling.... 2 days to go.... Any guesses? If so, leave a comment or shout it out on Twitter ...