Road Trip

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I am back from my most recent roadtrip. I loaded up the Tesla and started letting the hands-off Full Self Drive (FSD) supervised take me to points North. First stopping in a campground in Tennesee and up to Pittsburgh for the CIDM Convex Conference (which was the best conference in years). There was a celebration of the 20 years of DITA XML. I was an earlier adopter. My presentation went well and I semi-stealth launched wisdomino. I demo'd some extra cool software we developed and will be selling in weeks to come. It's truely game changing. Of course, there will be much more than that to come. After that it was on to Franklin, PA. to meet with some colleagues in the mining division and onto the farm stopping in Olean NY for the night. I am pretty sure it was the first time I had driven across the entire Allegany National Forest. I ended up driving through the very dark forest expanse during a night time thunderstorm. Although I normally trust the Tesla FSD on the Interstat...
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Kelley Blue Book - Used Car Bluebook Values and New Car Pricing

There is a pickup truck being auctioned off by the town of Berkshire. I like these sealed bid things. You can actually get a decent deal through these sometimes. I am going to ask my friend Jeff if he is interested. I think he is looking for a new truck.

We had an organizational restructure announced yesterday at work. It certainly appears that this will not open any doors for me personally or my career. I look at my career in a two-fold light; those items in my control (personal development and investments of time) and those items that are not in my control. The items I consider out of my control are fixed attitudes and values of senior management, history and what I call "winds aloft".

I was looking through my bookshelves of manuals the other night looking for the one a guy in Oregon wants to buy. While searching I ran into a manual that had "send off comments" in it from a place I resigned from a few years back. There was a theme in the comments that indicated that I was liked and respected. I felt good when I read them.

Although I was not denied a promotion or anything that grave I am often amazed at who gets promoted. Reverse engineering the decision tree really gets ugly.

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