Yeah! It’s my Birthday!

Well not until the end of the month, but it’s still my birthday month and that means one (er… two) things:

• I’ll be another year older…   and…
• Summer is almost over

But August is one of the longest months of the year and has quite a number of day-light hours. For me, that means I can get up as early as 4:00 am on a weekday, drive down to the beach, fish, walk or run, watch the sunrise, and still be back in plenty of time to start work a 9:00!

But learning new skills or improving on old ones (like cutting wood in the 80’s) takes some time and I found my workload increasing during the transition from hardware/software development to security consulting. The biggest difference between the two is flexibility. With consulting you are more dependent on other people and as a co-worker said, “it’s like herding cats”. At times I find myself floating in the wind – at the whim of other forces respectfully known as clients. Previously when I was working on software and hardware, the deadlines are always there, but you can work at it any time of day… as most of my cliental are in Japan and Korea.

But I love to keep busy and I love challenges.

So this month was just as exciting as any other one. I spent a few days in Dallas for PCI DSS work. Nor for those reading this, be forewarned, a late flight into Dallas followed by taking the train into town around midnight is not a smart move! I was the only one on the train that had luggage during the 45-60 minute (midnight) ride. Anyone can easily hop on and off. And that includes the local undesirables that were eyeing me and my luggage. Of course I tried to look as local as possible hoping to just blend in. When the train made it to my stop, I was glad that I knew exactly where to go and had no trouble at all – after all I made it seem that I’ve done this a 100 times before. Next time I’ll take a Lyft or Uber!

Some other things that happened this month were…

• Choosing my champagne for the 2018-2019 new year and finding a GREAT deals on eggs!

• Getting in tune with what’s important in life.

• The OC Fair Fun Run where Ayano and I do our traditional run.
  Well. not so much as a serious run as it actually involves winning a few stuffed animals and jamming with the minions.

• A ‘tarring’ festival outside our kitchen window.
  Yup, you read correctly – every couple if years the Yorba Linda workers get together to tar our roads and make everything like like brand new. That’s one good thing about living in a great city that’s on the ball 🙂

• We also had a solar eclipse.
  Nothing too spectacular as we are pretty south and only saw about 50% coverage. But I’m thinking I’ll definitely be around for a 100% coverage going through Montreal in a few years.

 

Towards the end of the month we celebrated my birthday with some friends eating Korean BBQ, singing Karaoke, and going bowling. My wife also took me to the dessert for a little R&R and then to an amazing local Sushi restaurant (Yaji) only 15 minutes from our house. Mmmm – almost like being in Japan.

Well – Happy Birthday Blaine.
Another amazing year in my journey through life!