Christmas Party with Friends

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Joel

We celebrated / conducted / attended our annual Christmas party with friends. It’s usually a potluck dinner around a particular theme, and there’s been this whole color theme going on also these past few years. This year’s themes? Turkish / Mediterranean cuisine, and hot pink / grey attire. Hey, don’t ask me. I just try to show up looking good. The other highlight is the Secret Santa gift exchange, organized by someone designated as “Christmas Pappa.” This year, my wife was “Christmas Mama.” Here are some choice pictures of your favorite Ipes from the party:

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Joel

Last December, the entire Ipe family went with great expectations to see The Hobbit. While the kids liked it well enough, my wife and I were decidedly underwhelmed with the bloated plot, long run time, and the overabundance of CGI chase scenes. Not happy for sure, but disappointed would also be an apt way to describe my feelings about the film. I didn’t mind seeing the film broken out into two or three films, but the story is so bloated that it goes on forever. I’m certain that financial considerations by the studio prompted this decision.

With less enthusiasm, I took the kids tonight to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in this children’s book-turned-into-a-trilogy-that-is-now-a-foreboding-and-ominus-prequel-for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. Yes, I said less enthusiasm. The reviews via word of mouth were better, so I attended with more hope. In addition, our friend Vijay met us at the Menlo Park mall and went to the AMC Dine-In
Fork & Screen theater. If I’m going to sit through another 2 hour film, I’m gonna do it as comfortably and hydrated as possible. In case you were wondering, we saw the film in standard 48fps, no 3D.

The film begins with a flashback one year earlier, which I remember was described in one of the LoTR appendices about the 3rd Age, of the initial meeting between Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield in Bree. It’s fine, and then fast-forwards to the dwarven party (plus one hobbit) attempting to escape orc hunting parties. They meet Beorn, travel through Mirkwood Forest, meet the woodland elves ruled by King Thranduill, and so on. They eventually make their way to Erebor (“The Lonely Mountain”) to confront the dragon Smaug.

Let’s get this out of the way first – purists may be pained to know that Team Jackson / Walsh / Boyens continues to embellish the original story with material from the appendices. Not a crime from my perspective, but there is a lot of embellishment and rewriting of the tale. It’s nice to see a female character, so I’m okay with it.

I still feel that the film drags on for much too long. There is still way too much “Run for your lives!” Also, I’m sad to say, while Smaug looks good and sounds good, the scenes between him, Bilbo, and the dwarves drag on for quite a while. Smaug has this long soliloquy with Bilbo, and then there is this long game of cat and mouse (dragon and dwarf?) as Smaug attempts to kill them. After a long time, I had flashbacks of Money Python and the Holy Grail.

“Get on with it!”

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

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My last day at Prudential

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Joel

Today was my last day at Prudential. I was here for two years, two months. Certainly the shortest tenure at any organization in my career so far. I said all I need to say publicly in an earlier post, so I won’t talk about it again. My last few days were a rush to wrap up documentation of testing that I had left to do, documenting other side project work I had led the work on this past year so it wouldn’t be lost. I wrapped up everything around 1:30pm, then worked completed my “Exit Checklist”, said goodbye to my colleagues, then rushed to catch my train. I picked up the kids early, and took them to a Hobbit-themed party at our library. For dinner, we decided to all go out for dinner at our local favorite diner.

I’m sad to leave Prudential. It’s a great organization overall, and I’ll certainly miss the colleagues that I have worked with these past two years. This year, unfortunately, didn’t feel right, and it was time for a change. Looking forward to my upcoming time off, and starting anew next month. In the meantime, I have two weeks to catch up with 1) rest and relaxation, 2) old friends, and 3) odd tasks around the house.

Walking away after two years
Caught my train, and relieved to have some time off
Celebratory dinner with the wife
…. and the kids.
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NJ TRANSIT bus crashes into Newark building

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Joel

A little bit of excitement here in Newark this morning a few blocks from my office. Around 1am, an NJ Transit bus and a taxi cab collided in the intersection fairly close to one of the parking garages owned by my company. The intersection is pretty busy, so Newark PD closed down the intersection down for hours. As of this morning, the intersection was closed, so it caused a lot of problems for folks trying to park in the morning. As I heard, engineers were concerned that removing the vehicles might destabilize the building. What a mess.

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Trying out the software licensing subscription model with Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Joel

Last month, I upgraded our home PC with an internal SSD drive as the primary drive for my OS and apps. I wouldn’t say it is noticeably faster, but the jury is still out as I continue to evaluate overall performance. After upgrading, I had to decide which key software to install and what to leave off. Nothing better than a clean slate, you know? I also decided to upgrade some of the old software.

I decided to take a leap with moving on up from my old version of Microsoft Office to their new Office suite. Microsoft’s full Office 2013 suite is pretty expensive once if you need more than the basic core applications. We primarily use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. One option available was to purchase the full Office Home and Student 2013 package (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote) for $139, but it doesn’t include Outlook. Argh. The Office Professional 2013 includes the four apps we need, plus Access and a bunch of other apps we have limited need for, such as Publisher, etc. Sound better, but that will set you back $399. Pretty steep.

I decided instead to try out a trial month of their new Office 365 Premium product. It’s basically Office Premium 2013 for either $9.99/month or $99.99 annually. You automatically get the updates to future versions of the software, and a slew of other benefits that I’m not likely to use, such as the ability to install temp versions to use on any other PC. However, what peaked my interest was the fact that you get five licenses for installation. Now I could use this on a future PC for the kids to do their homework, my parents’ home PC. I’m currently using one of my additional Norton 360 licenses on my parents’ PC, no issues.

$100 for a year of Office wasn’t a big hurdle, so I purchased and installed. The interface is certainly more minimalist and flatter, in line with what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8. So far, it’s okay, not wowed, but it works well enough and it’s fast.

Back a few years ago, I used to do lot of photo and image editing with an older version of Adobe Photoshop, especially when I needed custom graphics when i had free time to design and maintain websites for church, the NY IIA’s chapter website, and also the original version of joelipe.com (before migrating to WordPress.) It also came in handy when I needed to fix up an awesome family photo that had some weird or unfortunate aspect. I’ve done some cool airbrushing in my day.

Adobe’s software has notoriously been expensive, and that’s why I’ve used an old version for almost a decade. To purchase a new version was financially prohibitive — I’m talking $600 for a single license. I’ve used lots of free and shareware image editing software in the past, but, in my opinion, nothing beats Photoshop in terms of tools available and what it can do. But $600?

Adobe recently also began offering subscription pricing for their large portfolio of software under the Creative Cloud umbrella. While I would to have Acrobat, Dreamweaver, and a host of their other software available to me, I can’t afford the $49.99/month subscription fee. My side shenanigans don’t pay enough to cover that. The good news is they’re currently running a promotion offering Photoshop CC and the latest version of Light room (v5.3) for only $9.99/month for the next 12 months. It bumps up to maybe $19.99/month for me in 2015, so I will have to evaluate in a year’s time. For now, I think it’s a good deal, so I bit the bullet. If you’re also interested, this special promotion runs out on Dec 31st.

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Stopping to smell the winter roses

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Joel

We had our second winter storm this weekend. I know The Weather Channel is naming this storm ‘Electra’ as part of their marketing and awareness campaigns, but I’ll just refer to it as the latest storm, we would be ready. Eventually.

Last night, we drove out to a nearby farm selling Christmas trees. This is our third ‘real’ tree. It’s not bad compared to an artificial version, but my goodness, pine needles everywhere. We picked up the tree, picked up our Christmas holiday cards for labelling and mailing, ran a work-related errand for my wife, dinner at Panera Bread, then some grocery shopping for cookie baking supplies, as well as other necessary staples. Yes, once again supermarket shopping on a Friday night. Living the dream!

Here’s the problem. When we set up the tree stand, I discovered that one of the square nuts was missing, which would prevent us from properly securing our tree from falling over. As the cats were already excited about having an indoor tree to climb and eat, we didn’t care to find it toppled over in the morning. We locked them up in the basement with food, water, and litter overnight. In the morning, I would go to Home Depot to find a replacement nut.

Saturday morning, I went to Home Depot to get the square nut, have my workout at the gym, and pick up / drop off clothes to the cleaners. Armed only with a sample square nut, I tried desperately to find a replacement, but i couldn’t find it. It was basically a 3/8″ square nut with a course thread. First thing I learned was that you can either have a course (thick threading) or fine (thin threading) for a nut and bolt combination. Who knew?

Anyway, I couldn’t get the sample square nut to thread easily on the sample bolts on display. I took my best guess and went home took to find out it wasn’t a match. Fed up, I did what I should have done originally and went back with both the bolt and nut. Finally found a 3/8″ hex nut with a course thread, and that eventually worked. Eureka!

The rest of the day was spent quietly in peace indoors at the Ipe House. My wife Namita and kids baked cookies, and I cleaned up and watched old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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I gave my two weeks notice

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Joel

I gave my two weeks notice. It’s official. I ‘m moving on. 

On Monday, I informed my manager that I would be moving to a new opportunity after two years at Prudential in the Internal AUdit Department. We had a good long heart to heart conversation, which only yet again confirmed that she was a great manager to work for. My last day is Friday December 20th. I’ll be spending the next two weeks wrapping up audit work, and helping out where I can on minor housecleaning tasks. I’ve already performed what records management tasks I needed to perform a month ago, and my office workspace is fairly cleaned out. 

So why am I going, and where am I going? Earlier this year, I began considering my long-term career plans, and this included whether I wanted to continue here in an internal audit function. I started in external audit in 1999 straight out of school, followed by a year and some change doing security implementation work. I moved into internal audit for the next 11 years, which was fine for a time. But now I feel different. I wanted to do something else both different and challenging.

A few months ago, a former Citi colleague of mine contacted me, and informed me that he was moving into a new role within Risk Management at his firm, and they were looking to expand the group. Would I be interested? It doesn’t hurt to have a conversation. I went in for a few meetings with various individuals there, and it seemed like a good fit and an exciting new role. Final pre-clearance checks were completed by Monday morning, so I drafted up my resignation letter. 

I will be taking the last two weeks of December off to vegetate, recharge, to see friends I haven’t seen in a long while, and to do fixing up of the house. I start my new Risk Management role on January 6th. 

My first non-audit role in over a decade. Color me excited and optimistic.

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Went to Manhattan to see friends and the tree in Rockefeller Center

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Joel

On Saturday, we drove into Manhattan to visit our friends Kanishk and Sofi and their new son Lucas. They live down in Alphabet City but luckily found street parking after much circling. We hung out there for a while, then took the subway up to midtown. In hindsight, I should have taken photos while we were there, but I guess I wasn’t thinking.

We walked around Rockefeller Center to see the tree, see the lights…… and it was a magical 7 minutes.  Then the kids got tired, cold, and hungry. We walked around some more and decided to grab dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill on West 5 1st St. If we didn’t want to wait, we had to grab one of those high tables near the bar, but hey whatever. We ordered drinks (including hot chocolate for the kids), and entrees. Long wait for dinner to show up, but glad when it did.

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Before we could go home, Josh desperately wanted to see the Nintendo Store (they have stores?) so we hung out there until closing. The subway ride back down to 14th St was uneventful, found the car in one piece, but getting home was long and painful. There was a large backup at the Lincoln Tunnel to get through, and we waited 30 minutes to get through. The NJ Turnpike was fairly clear until south of exit 9, then we sat in another hour of traffic due to construction and lane closures. By the time we got home after 1:30am, everyone else was sleeping, and I was tired of being behind the wheel.

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Pack 53 December Feast

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Joel

Our cub scout pack celebrated the end of the year with their traditional pack feast. All the dens bring in various dishes to share potluck-style. At the feast, it’s a short meeting, but there are also activities/entertainment. Some of the pack leaders stuff marshmallows in the mouths and try to say “Fluffy Bunny.” They announced which dens earned pizza parties.  Actually, this year, I made the announcement, as “Popcorn Colonel.” I also distributed prizes for those who earned them from popcorn sales. Now my popcorn responsibilities are over for another year. The top 11 popcorn sellers also got to throw pies in the faces of particular Pack leaders. Josh, as the #2 seller at just over $1,000, chose to throw a pie in my face. We’ve got some photos and video to post of this travesty against my face.

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Commuting from Princeton Junction

Posted on December 2, 2013 by Joel

I may have forgotten to mention this, but starting today, I’m now commuting from a new train station. No, not a *new* train station. The Princeton Junction train station that is only 15 mins from our house, but there was a 5-8 year waiting list to get a parking spot. In 2005, I considered getting on the list, and my wife thought it would be a good idea to get on the 5-year waiting list at that time after we moved into our neighborhood. I stupidly said, “Nah! Who knows where I’ll be working in 5-8 years.” Lo and behold, I end up working in Newark and taking the train in 2011. I spend the next two years driving every day to the Hamilton Train Station (40 mins in traffic each way) but there is plentiful parking available there.

However, the good news is that, again at the behest of my wife, I finally signed up for the waiting list at Princeton Junction. And in November 2013, while perusing my Junk Mail for no particular reason, I find an email from the West Windsor Parking Authority stating that I was eligible to get a spot in their newly expanded Vaughn Lot. Luckily, I still had two days left before the window of opportunity closed, and I was able to submit the paperwork and payment.

So here I am, Monday December 2nd 2013, and I’m finally parking and commuting from Princeton Junction. It saved me 20 mins off my commute in the morning, and the train ride in is only 36 mins on the Express. And the parking is $60 cheaper a month. It’s a win-win. It’s also been a long time coming.1385987958296

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