torand.org

Just the other day, I heard the following story: A young guy is having his taxes prepared. While the tax professional was preparing his taxes and going through the forms, he notices a 1099INT from a bank. When he gets ready to report the interest, the gentlemen said that he needed to talk to the [...]

While waiting at school for my daughter, I started talking with a parent. She was telling me that her daughter wanted to go to this cheerleading competition this weekend. I told her that my daughter wanted to go also. She asked me how old my daughter was and I told her. She was totally amazed [...]

I was on a conference call recently working through some of the problems in launching a new web product. We have been working on this project for some time. Prior to this call we had received the traffic estimates which we thought were extremely low. We got an email the morning of the call, going [...]

As you know, tax time is here and I’m back to preparing taxes. It’s funny in a way how ignorant we can be. I wanted to share this story because it makes me wonder what we are teaching in school or better yet, what we are NOT teaching. A young girl (20 years old) wanted [...]

It is a rainy cold day here in Dale City. Nothing better than siting here watch Iowa play football. Not much going on, there is nothing better that just being lazy around the house. It is interesting to see the attitudes of people about my employer, AOL. Most only focus on the shrinking subscriber base, [...]

Today we went to Dulles Airport for the 13th Annual Plane Pull. The Plane pull was a fundraiser for the Virginia Special Olympics. There was two groups (AOL Dulles and AOL Reston) of 20 men/women from AOL competing, along with other major companies. The Reston Team had beaten the Dulles Team and was ranking 3rd [...]

It is the first day of school for me–Orientation Day. I met all the staff and teachers for this upcoming school year. I wasn’t sure exactly where I would be placed. I just made myself available to wherever the Lord leads. Today, I found out that I’ll be working with Kindergarten in the morning and [...]

I got up early this morning to do a carrier deployment. Setup my machine… logged into the admin machines… made the edits… read the deploy notes… called into the bridge number…. no answer…. reread the deploy notes… the install is for tomorrow morning…. uugh…

I have been at AOL for about 7 weeks now. I have yet to get any real work, unless you call working on excel charts for someone else, work… It is, well, different here. I am getting the feeling that you are suppose to just know their proprietary code and infrastructure. Since what I do [...]

Well I changed jobs, and am now working at AOL. I just finished my first full week. Nothing like reading mind numbing documentation, in a room that is overly hot. I have four, yes 4, other roommates in my office. It is extremely warm in the office, it isn’t the 10 moniters or the 10 [...]