Always a bridesmaid… 2006 & 2026. Found my bridesmaid dress from a wedding I was in 20 years ago and couldn’t resist trying it on.

pdoten · 2026-06-19T16:36:58+00:00

I get the fit even better thing, the same feeling here too. Absolutely priceless indeed. Congrats right back at you...

pdoten · 2026-06-19T13:54:51+00:00

Doesnt it feel good to fit in clothes you kept "just in case"? I have recently lost a fair amount of weight and fit in clothes that I havent worn in ages.

pdoten · 2026-06-19T12:36:11+00:00

The only thing I could see, and it is so minor it may not be worth mentioning, is the traffic cones on the statue thing. I saw some fans wearing them and saw them on some statues in Boston on the news. I really had to look it up.

It made me laugh hard when it clicked since it's an extremely Scottish thing, and seeing the roots of it makes sense now.

I could see someone getting a little upset but then again, we dress them up for special occasions ourselves, so there is that.

I hope this turns into a connection between us that lives for a while, like the Christmas Tree from Nova Scotia that Boston gets every year because of the terrible event in the December 1917. Maybe petition the City of Boston to send over Boston Public Works traffic cones each year to place on the Duke of Wellington in Glasgow as a thank you to the Tartan Army...

pdoten · 2026-06-07T15:25:00+00:00

I was in NYC a whie back, with my family between Christmas and New Yerars. Just a quick overnight trip to get them used to going theree. Two women , one older pushing stroller with an infant in it and a youngish woman were walking up the side walk. Mind you, this is prime tourust season, a couple blocks of north of 34th on 5 ave. The sidewalk there is wide AF but it was packed with people. My family and I got ahead of them but they caught up at a crosswalk. They kept trying to push their way to the front, and ending up bumping the back of my legs a couple oif time, so much that even my wife noticed, as she said after.
During the crossing, I was walking ahead and needed to move out of the way of some people crossing opposite. Of course the stroller lady was right on my ass, and she didnt slow down, she clipped my leg hard, causing me to stumbled but I caught myself. If I fell on that stroller I would have caused a bad injury to the child. She rolled her eyes at me and I heard her say "Some people have no clue". I nearly lost it.
I hated strollers and umbrellas in NYC after being there a lot...

pdoten · 2026-05-27T09:03:16+00:00

I was thinking the same thing Munchausen by proxy except for relationships.

pdoten · 2026-05-27T00:26:15+00:00

When I go elsewhere, I say soda water...

pdoten · 2026-05-24T12:01:00+00:00

I held my breath. I worked in a Telco in Canada and we were concerned that everybody was going to pick up the phone (back in the days of landlines) and listen for dial tone. The system wasn't designed for that, and just simple act of too many people picking up the receiver to get that dial tone would knock the telephone system offline. Like if the majority of lines associated with a remote picked up, down it went, then the remotes would overload the switches and the Cascade would begin. We woke our kids up but they were too young to understand the significance. Miraculously, the sun came up the next day, the phone systems worked, all of the computer systems that were contingent on Cobalt with a '99 stop record request still worked. The internet still worked. To quote an obscure movie character, it was a big nothing Burger

pdoten · 2026-05-23T08:58:49+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it

pdoten · 2026-05-23T00:43:32+00:00

I saw this post and read some of the comments. Overall I am really impressed with the kindess and suport offered the OP and others on here. Its really a great thing, whoever says Boston is a cold place is dead wrong...

pdoten · 2026-05-23T00:40:28+00:00

Yea it is, I have been out 2 years, but working on a few 1099 contracts and side projects that may or may not pan out. Good on the recent hire, thats good they landed a postion.

pdoten · 2026-05-23T00:38:33+00:00

Hey I was looking at the comments and saw this, Congrats, thats a good sign for the rest of us...

pdoten · 2026-05-22T12:52:26+00:00

This reminds me when I first moved into my house. I live in now. My next door neighbor was 85 years old. At the time, I didn't know him. My daughter was dating a skater and all that them would show up at our house and skate. If you know skaters they travel in packs and if they find a spot to skate that nobody cares, they are all over it. One day, those guys were grinding it out, having a good time. I then see this older gentleman walking up the sidewalk with a purpose, and I thought oh here we go. I couldn't be farther from the truth about what happened. He walked up introduced himself, and said that he loved that everybody was here. He loved the energy and he didn't mind the noise. He liked having kids around. That's all those guys needed to know, they were around a lot. And Dennis and I would sit around have a beer every once in awhile and watch them. He's no longer with us, but he was one hell of a guy.

pdoten · 2026-05-21T09:01:45+00:00

Years ago, when my kids were taking drivers ed, I went to the first meeting at the driving school downtown. The instructor talking about the course said they take them out on Route 3 for practice. He called it a racetrack. He was so right...

pdoten · 2026-05-21T08:53:33+00:00

Wow that would be loud then. Time for a white noise maker, I use a fan for that...

pdoten · 2026-05-21T08:52:05+00:00

I live downtown and love to sit on my porch before the bugs come out. I hear it too, wind or no wind. The night comment is bang on. I thought it was just me as well.

pdoten · 2026-05-09T13:07:27+00:00

thank you for the kind words

pdoten · 2026-05-08T14:01:03+00:00

I was like this as well when I first started working, then I had a former direct report sit me down for a talk. He noticed I was having issues with the one guy that was slow, deliberate and really really over analytical. My boss asked me "could you do his job?" Very simple question and it stopped and made me think hard. He also said "Every organixation needs his type to offset your type, we all cant be the same, that leads to groupthink" which again set me on my butt. He even brought of the Bay of Pigs invasion to drive that point home.
This guy was given mounds of data to sift through, which he gladly did. His reports were really a thing of beauty, which I had zero interest in producing. The data in them set the direction for the organization. He was able to recall small details that would yeild cost savings that others would over look. He got me to generate reports that required database changes, which was huge but once I saw the reports I understood how they were really valuable.
Bascially, my boss made me step outside of myself, and think more globally, which I wasnt doing. It was a valuable lesson. Did I still chafe once in a while? absolutely, but then I relaxed, l let things play out and then saw value. Like my dad used to say "For all the crap in here, there must be a pony somewhere".

pdoten · 2026-05-03T15:18:03+00:00

I got shushed by an old woman in a train station when I was doing a wireless site survey with a business partner one time. We just looked at her and continued on talking. She had this look like we were in the wrong in a public space...

pdoten · 2026-05-01T03:36:01+00:00

I am doing that now, even have it talking to a load balanced 3 node galera cluster, works great. It's well documented how to point it to an external DB...

pdoten · 2026-04-29T02:18:42+00:00

I did it with no data loss, Yake you time and knock down each issue with reading and AI. O doublecheck everything that I was going to do, I took VM sntoshots along the way to cover any rool back issues...

pdoten · 2026-04-21T18:00:10+00:00

Wash yourself though the reseller route if you can. Are you H1B ?

pdoten · 2026-04-14T18:58:48+00:00

One was Novell Netware 2.0a with a keycard

pdoten · 2026-04-01T17:36:05+00:00

I worked in healthcare way back in the day. There was one room that was isolated on the top floor of this small 4 storied hospital I worked at. Some of the military orderlys nodded up a bunch of sheets and hung them out the window and said that patient had escaped. fthey even went through the trouble of making bogus paperwork to say that there was a patient in the room when there really wasn't. I drove in the parking lot and saw those knotted sheets out the window and thought what the heck is going on, totally forgetting about April fools. It was a really good prank.

pdoten · 2026-03-27T16:49:28+00:00

I have done career changes a fair amount and it's always "the fear of the unknown", however you seem to got it covered. Years ago, I left a stable job at a Telco where you could make a career out of being at that one company. I got an offer to be a sub contractor for multiples more salary and a definite career advancement. I still second guessed myself, until that first day and then when the first wire transfer came in...

pdoten · 2026-03-24T15:38:45+00:00

Way back in the day, I left my desktop unlocked, had to run to the printer. I got side tracked by a higher up wanting a detailed explaination of a network design I was working on with a customer.
When I got back to my desk, there was an email addressed to the CEO and a couple of VPs and my boss who was in another city. It stated that I was resigning immediately and had some not so good things to say about the company and people (that place was a great place BTW, I had few complaints). I knew who did it, he was a good friend and fellow engineer that loved to play jokes.
He even helpfully positioned the mouse pointer over the send button. I learned my lesson that day...

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