After Work

Wakeboarding

Love It!  Ok, I kind of suck at actually doing it but I can not think of a better way to spend the day with the family.  Were on the lake together, often all day long.  We get a chance to really know the kids and the friends they bring.

Family

I am a very lucky guy!  Nineteen years ago I married by best friend and we have been great together ever since.  We have been blessed with three fantastic kids.  They are all very different and we are very proud of each one.

Warrior Dash

This 5KM obstacle coarse complete with mud pits, jumping through fire and scaling walls happens every year across North America. When I reluctantly agreed to do this the first time I was terrified until race day came.  Then I had a blast.  I ran hard and got dirty and it was great fun.  The second time I ran it my oldest daughter joined me and that was the ultimate in a great day!

Cottage

Probably my favorite place in the world is just outside of Huntsville, Ontario.  We are completely spoiled as we have the two cottages to choose from.  My Mother and my in-laws both have cottages about 20 minutes from each other. One on Lake of Bays, the other on Pennisula Lake.  Each summer we head up for a week, or two if we are lucky.  This is where my kids have learned to swim, water ski, wake board and a whole range of great outdoor and family activities with their brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Postal Scales

My Father was a stamp collector for as long as I can remember.  When he moved to Atlanta many years ago he also started collecting antique postal scales.  When he passed away last year he had amassed over 700 scales!  As a result my brother and I have become scale collectors as well.  As we arrange and present our collections we are learning more and more and have quickly become quite interested, even to the point of joining the International Society of Antique Scale Collectors.

Lynda.com

I stumbled across Lynda.com as a result of a free trial that came with some Adobe software.  I quickly fell in love with this site.  I have learned so many new skills here.  I taught myself to code in php, html, and css, at least enough to understand it and really appreciate what it takes to write good code.  I learned about photography and photo editing with programs like Photoshop and Lightroom.  Now, whenever I am looking to figure out how to do something, I head to Lynda.com and see if there is a course.  For instance, I built this website using WordPress after learning how on Lynda.

Big Data

This is one area that really intrigues me, particularly after building Partfiniti and creating billions of part  numbers.  It became very clear to me that  big data is the future of computing.  With the “Internet of Everything” and the tremendous amount of digital images and social content that big data will be the answer.  I plan to do more reading on this and on the future trend in storage, especially solid state.

NOVA Labs

Nova Labs is one organization I really wish I had more time for.  I have always been interested in how things work and how to make things.  Nova Labs is a maker community in northern Virginia and they are doing remarkable things.  There is a tremendous amount of smart people all working together to share what they know.  It is a very generous and vibrant community.

Through my participation in Nova Labs, I have learned to solder, program an Arduino, and I am anxious to build a 3D printer some day.

Reading/Listening to Books

I love to read both fiction and non-fiction, anything that makes you think.  Here is a list of some of my favorite books.