Guess who just got a new Cadillac? That’s right, me! Ok it’s not new, but it’s new to me. I traded my motorcycle for it. Or as my wife puts it, I traded my Mojo for it.

Saturday we got to meet one of our favorite wine makers, Tobin (Toby) James. He was in town doing tastings at several Whole Foods stores. It was really great to finally meet him. He is a cool, down to earth guy. We chatted for a good 20 minutes. I think we convinced him to do a tasting at our favorite hang out, Cave Creek Wines next time he’s in town.
A little background: Last year we visited the Tobin James winery in Paso Robles California following the recommendation of some friends. We loved it. We joined the club, the James Gang. It is the only club we are a member of. This year we went to their summer BBQ event, which just rocked. We are waiting for our biannual shipment of wine from them now. We should have it any day now and we can’t wait!

I don’t like horizontal surfaces.
We feel the need to put “things” on them.
Then they look cluttered.
They are difficult to dust with so many “things” on them.

We went to Vegas last week for Wine Week at Smith & Wollensky’s. We also went in March so I won’t bore you with details but we had a great time. It’s always fun to just hang out with friends and enjoy good wine.

We didn’t do too much gambling. We went to our favorite sports bar at Harrahs and played video poker for a while. We figure if we are losing less than we would have spent on the drinks (which are free while you play) then we are ahead. I lost almost $20 and Jessica made $15. She doubled what she started with. She actually did much better than that but she continued to play for a bit while losing. So including tip we had spent $8.75 and between the two of us we had 4 beers and a glass of scotch. Not too bad.

After the sports bar we went to the outdoor bar/club at Harrahs. It was packed. While I was at the bar buying drinks a cute redhead bought me a shot. Yep, I’ve still got it.

It’s been so long since I’ve posted it seem a little overwhelming to try to catch up. So instead I will list some of the highlights from the last couple of months in chronological order. Here goes…

Cancun Vacation: We went to Cancun again. Had a blast. Already booked for next year. If I can find an appropriate picture I’ll post it later.

Iaido (Japanese Swordsmanship): We had our yearly testing. We had three Senseis visit from Japan for a week of intensive training and testing. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun. It was fun drinking with them after class too. Oh yeah, I passed my test.

My birthday: I’m another year older, though I feel like I’m ten years older. My Iaido test was on my birthday though so the celebration had to wait a few weeks. That was a good time. Everyone enjoyed themselves. We set up a projector out back and watched “A Tale of Zatoichi” while we relaxed in the pool.

Italian Cars and Wine: We made our yearly pilgrimage to California for the Concorso Italiano show followed by a weekend in Paso Robles. We love the wine in Paso Robles. We usually go to a different region every year but we liked Paso so much last year we went back. Plus, one of our favorite wineries, Tobin James, had a full moon shin dig while we were there so we had to go.

My brothers wedding: My brother just got married. We flew back to New Hampshire/Massachusetts for it. The wedding was very nice and it was great seeing family I haven’t seen in a long time, such as my cousins Joe and Isaac.

Seeing Old Friends: I haven’t seen my old High School buddy Adam in probably 15 years. While we were in NH we met up with him and spent a couple of hours catching up. It was great to see him. Hopefully it won’t be another 15 years before we meet again.

I think that about covers everything. I’ll try not to slack off so much in the future.

First off, I apologize for not keeping this more up to date. A lot has happened since I last posted an update. I really should be posting something about my vacation in Mexico or my new rank in Iaido, but something else is bugging me.
There is no application for tasks in the Apple iPhone!!! WTF are they thinking? You can sync calendars and contacts with Microsoft Outlook but not notes or tasks. Apparently nobody needs those anyway? Sure there are 3rd party apps for tasks but they don’t sync with anything. I recently switched to Microsoft Outlook because it synced well with my Blackberry. Now I have this iPhone and I can’t sync tasks to anything. Obviously that really bothers me. Am I the only one that actually uses a to-do list? Google doesn’t have one either but I hear they are working on it.
This was almost enough to keep me from getting an iPhone. That and you can’t copy text, another WTF? But I figured I’d either find one in the app store or I could make my own. But it still bugs me that they don’t have it.
End rant.

Last week Jessica went out for a girls night out. So myself and the other husbands went out for sushi. It seems every time I have it I like it more than the last. Too bad it costs so much, I could have it every day.

I recently read a book that I just have to spread the word about. It’s called The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferris. Sounds cheesy huh? Conjures up images of 6 minute ab infomercials? Well, ignore the marketing hype, it’s a great book. Originally I was very hesitant. I thought this Timothy Ferris guy sounded like a pompous ass and the whole book would just irritate me. But if I could get one nugget of good information out of it, it would be worth it. Initially I reserved the downloadable audio book at the library. After a long wait it was finally ready. I went to get it but after a bit of confusion on what to do and what software I needed etc., it suddenly disappeared from my hold list. Son of a …. I was going to reserve it again but there were 9 other people in line ahead of me. So I shopped around to see where I could get it for next to nothing. The best price was at Amazon, $11.97 with free shipping if my order was over $25. So I tried to think of stuff we needed to make up the difference but couldn’t think of anything right away. Like I said, I thought I might hate it and didn’t want to spend a penny more than I needed to. So the next day I think of something we needed anyway and placed my order. A couple of weeks later I had two copies of the book. That’s right, two! I accidentally ordered two!!! In trying to spend as little as possible, I spent twice what I had to. After reading it I didn’t care though. I figured I’d lend the extra copy to friends. The first person that borrowed it liked it and bought it from me.

Anyway, that was all a really long and roundabout way of saying it’s a good book and I recommend you read it.

I am really trying to be a more positive person and avoid negativity, but I just have to rant about work for a moment. There is a point to it though.

I’m very frustrated with my job. It’s hard to describe what I do but much of what I do (and enjoy doing) is implementing processes that save time, increase productivity and eliminate the possibility of human error as much as possible. So I often find myself coming up with ways to save myself time. What might take someone else 8 hours to do I might do in 2. What frustrates me is instead of being rewarded for saving time, I now have to find something else to do for the other 6 hours or I don’t get to pay my bills. That seems backwards to me. If I come up with a way to save 6 hours I will share it with others so they can save time as well. But I have no incentive to. If I save time I have to look forward to more work. I feel I should be compensated on results, not time spent. Otherwise, somebody slow gets paid more than me for the same job.

Also, the company I work for is obsessed with metrics. They spend a great deal of time coming up with ways to collect data so they can pay people to analyze it. We are developing a new tool to track time, productivity, work flow etc. We have already spent tens of thousands of dollars on meetings to discuss it. Finally it is being developed. Several times I have pointed out that they are spending $100 to save $1. They don’t seem to care. The way it works is we spend all this time developing the tool, then pay the worker for the extra time it takes to enter it and then pay a manager to stare at the data for hours to look for problems. In the end they research the problem and find that there was a valid reason for it.

The point of all this is I just found out about a book coming out in two days called “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It”. It’s all about Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. I’m not sure how it relates to the metrics obsession, but I really wanted to bitch about it. Anyway, this ROWE concept seems perfect for me. I’m pre-ordering the book today. I’m not sure my metrics obsessed bosses would go for it, but maybe it’s time to move on to something else anyway.