Thanksgiving in Eaton New York

27 gallons of gas, 800 miles, many gas station bathrooms, indian casino's, wonderful food and drink, and some good and bad weather.

 

overall a success.

 

hope you all had a good holiday.

 

 

Grandfather David Muir Tholl

reposting this after finding this on Highbeam. He was a great grand-dad. Built me the best train set when I was 8. Rest in Peace.
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David M. Tholl, the retired president of the now-defunct American Tool & Machine Co. of Hyde Park who later became a cattle rancher, died of cancer last Thursday in his home in South Portland, Maine. He was 74.

Mr. Tholl was born in Detroit and educated in schools in Troy, Mich., and in Needham.

He worked for American Tool & Machine for 40 years, the last 10 as president, and retired in 1972.

In 1972 he moved to West Virginia to organize a cattle ranch and operated it for 19 years. He settled in South Portland in 1991.

He was a member of the Norfolk lodge of Masons in Needham, and had been a scoutmaster.

Mr. Tholl leaves his wife, Eleanor (Harrison); a son, John David Tholl, of Wellesley; six grandchildren and a great-grandson.

The funeral was private. Burial was in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Portland.

Boston Level Completed! Next Level: New York CIty

Heather has taken a job at Hoffman LaRoche in Nutley New Jersey and we are starting to shift gears into transition mode. I informed my employer a few weeks ago of the possibility I may be moving to New York if Heather decides to take the job at "Roche". As this will require me to find a new job as well this has me jumping back into the word processor to modify my resume and start sending out coverletters and resumes to prospective employers posting jobs at newyork.craigslist.org/tch I'm really hoping to hear from people in my extended network living in the NYC area to give me some good ideas on good/interesting tech jobs in the midtown area. SO I'm putting this out there to the world so it knows exactly what I want...
My current job at Mikrodots is an informal small business environment where I spend about 60% of the time in the depot fixing systems, entering support tickets and scheduling future service and 40% in the field at client sites doing server checkups, wiring, software/hardware/network support.

There is no dress code to speak of, no HR dept, limited oversight, and only 3 full time staff! It is a very efficient operation in regard to our company overhead and how many systems we are actually supporting with such a skeleton crew of staff. Mike has created a great model for the small business managed service company, it's just a shame that it hasn't grown faster and added some more strategic partners and business. My only coworker aside from the owner Mike Doherty is Andy Giles. Andy is a talented young tech (only 23!) proprietor of the tech blog: www.techsack.com. Andy is my manager and the go to guy for the tougher problems relating to server side issues and networking. He will have a bright future in the tech sector and I will be interested to see where it takes him in the near future.
Mike Doherty (owner of Mikrodots) typically working in the back of the depot (in our spacious new Woburn office) testing out potential candidates for new ERP software, open source web appliances, corporate wifi security, and always generally looking for better more efficient ways to serve our customers. He tried his best to ensure information flow between employees and documentation of case/client information. He also kept up with testing out new sources for monitoring and virtualization technologies. Completely different management style than I've ever worked with but definitely was great about never micro managing his talent... if anything he probably erred on not being as involved or engaged with developing the sales organization earlier on in my time there but now he seems to be on the right path trying to brand the business better and get a sales department moving.
Overall it was a great experience and brought my level of server side knowledge up a great deal. In my next support position I'm looking to keep pushing forward in my knowledge of networking, monitoring, and enterprise level tools and software. Working with netsuite ERP was also a added bonus of the job and something that I would consider using someday as a small business owner. It's integration of accounting and ticket management is really useful for the 5-10 employee managed service company. It was a bit pricey for a small company but its functionality and easy of use made it worth it in the end.
In my next job I'm hoping to have more responsibility and a more engaging atmosphere with more collaboration for project based work and chances to hone my skills in network monitoring, and implementation. My ideal company would be a renewable energy company like Beacon Power, or perhaps Arcadia Wind Power based in NYC.

Mint.com to the rescue

Just when I was attempting to use yahoo pipes to amalgamate all of my banking websites, mint.com has come and done all the dirty work for me, and from the first look has done a fantastic job. Thanks to Rob Reed and Heather for finding this super helpful tool. Logging into 3 credit card websites and 4 separate checking sites was getting tedious. After my initial giddy-ness at the concept, paranoia started setting in. Now I can have all of my accounts hacked at once. The devil's favorite darling is convenience.

How long this service will stay free now that inuit owns it is anyones guess. Don't screw this up Intuit!