Yesterday was a good day

Yesterday, we started out that we were going to take advantage of a groupon offer to tour the American Victory ship museum (a WWII ship anchored near Downtown Tampa).  We didn't know that Traffic from SR 60 would be as bad as it was.  We ended up saying enough of this, instead we went to the outlet mall at Ellenton.  Before that though, we had lunch at IKEA Tampa.  We split an order of swedish meatballs.  We didn't even eat the whole order of swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries jelly.  It was good.  This morning, we finished moving the garage stuff around, and painting an epoxy coat on our floor.  The silver gray color of the epoxy floor looks good.  We just got the one step epoxy from Home Depot.  The Home Depot paint sales lady told us that the paint should be drivable on in about 5 days, walkable in 3.  I guess it's been about 8 and a half days since the car part of the garage had a car on top of it.  I guess the heat from the tires is usually what causes issues.  I hope the epoxy floors hold up.

Yesterday, we also drove to Sarasota, and saw the kissing sailor statue back near Marina Jack's.    It had been removed because it was struck by a motorist.  We saw some pelicans and other birds in trees near Mote Marine laboratory.   We also stopped near Longboat Key, and walked to the beach, where there were several birds at the shore line, feeding.  It was cool.  I enjoyed that part of the early evening.  I really like observing nature, and birds in particular.

http://martysalo.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/my-world-is-small/

I consider my world to be relatively small.  Due to limited reflexes, processing, or whatever other factors, I choose not to drive, because an accident put things into perspective, and the costs of insurance would likely be too high.  I can adjust to living in a small world, but it is nice that I have a wife who can drive, and take me places.  

Yesterday, we went to Wright's Gourmet Sandwiches, and the Monte Cristo sandwich that I got there was quite large, I had a quarter of the sandwich, and put the other 3/4s of the sandwich away.   I put them in little tubbies, and surprisingly, they fit kind of well.  This morning, I fixed a second quarter of the sandwich.  I guess it has Turkey and Ham, Cheese and pickles, along with mustard and whatever else they use as condiments.  

We have found a very nice place for cakes in Tampa.  Sweet Tweets Cakery at North Dale Mabry has some cupcakes that are really nice.  www.sweettweetscakery.com is the website, and the cupcakes are better, in my opinion than Gigi's Cupcakes.  Gigi's has good cupcakes, but I think the amount of frosting is a bit over the top.  There are a couple of Gigi's cupcakes around in town, so they may be a franchise.  www.gigiscupcakesusa.com is the website.

I live close to work, so I usually walk home from work.  My wife usually drops me off in the morning.  I work at a hospital.  I think it would be really cool if they'd do more to embrace the technology, and have a blog about construction and future plans for the facility.  But maybe that's just me.  I think that people are much more excited to continue working toward something if there is a reasonable expectation that things will get better, or improve, or be different.  The communication from leadership down to lower levels seems to not be very robust.  It is probably more of a job for the public affairs department than for me in IT.  I see the possibilities, and I think it would be so cool.  Photos do a better job of conveying progress.  It would be cool to have some sort of photo-documentary of the progress of changes.

I suppose that I've spoken with several of the members of the leadership team at the hospital about my idea, but as of yet, the idea hasn't taken off.  I was excited to see that the VA facility in Palo Alto had some pictures of construction activities over there.  The facebook page of Palo Alto's is a bit more impressive.  Maybe it's just a factor of where they are.  One would almost expect that they'd be closer to the center of what's happening, being that they are where they are.

I am happy to be doing IT support.  I recognize that there are many worse places that I could be--many worse jobs that I could be stuck doing.

We had a good time at Orlando/Downtown Disney on Saturday

We had a good time at Orlando/Downtown Disney on Saturday. They are in the process of building two parking garages where some surface lots were. Presumably, this will add significant numbers of parking spaces to the Downtown Disney area. I'm not sure what the time table for getting those parking lots constructed is.
Splitsville, a big bowling alley, dining establishment looks like a pretty cool addition to Downtown Disney. We didn't eat there, yet, but that's okay. We've eaten enough, and we're trying to still eat less, and lose weight. I recently got a new scale. This one uses a 9 volt battery, the previous scale was using a lithium battery I guess. I'll see how it performs over a longer period.
We took the bus from one end of Downtown Disney to Old Key West, a part of the Disney Vacation Club, as near as I can figure out. From OKW, we took the water taxi back to Downtown Disney, and it was pretty cool. I liked riding the boat launch back. Pictures from the water are pretty neat.
One of the areas where I think much could be done to improve communication about what is going on at work is to introduce a blog about mostly the new construction. I work at a hospital, and there have been a number of construction projects which have been going on. I think having a blog for helping to communicate changes would be a very good thing. Many people probably wouldn't be too interested about it, but I think that if pictures of new entrance ways, and stuff were included, it could be highly beneficial.
I was encouraged that another VA facility (Palo Alto) had some pictures recently of some of the construction projects, and they shared some of those on the facebook site of that facility. I met with the hospital Director recently, and shared with her, my idea for improving communication about changes at the facility, and I was impressed that she at least got some of the ideas about a two way communication stream generally with blogs. Who knows if much will happen with my idea for improving communication at the hospital, or my idea of highlighting some of the successes we've had with helping to improve the lives of veterans. I'm sure that more could be done.

I had a nice Google Plus hangout with a kind lady from some part of England

I had a nice Google Plus Hangout with a kind lady from England who is a carer for a stroke survivor, and the fact that she reached out to say hello was very nice in my opinion. I like the fact that the computer technology enables communication much easier. I'd like to see more being done with computer mediated communications technologies at work, with the patients, but I realize that I am just a piece of the machine.
I like what the VA at Palo Alto has done with listing construction activities on the public facing website.
http://www.paloalto.va.gov/construction_paloalto.asp it looks like a pretty impressive list of construction projects going on. I guess the public affairs part is doing a pretty good job with things over there. I'd think that more could be done, indeed, being right near facebook, Apple, Google, whatever else in the Silicon Valley entails, it's sort of expected I guess. I like the freedom from discrimination that the computer mediated communications tends to afford me. I'm reasonably sure that there are probably some others who might experience a similar level of joy. Communicating via Google Plus Hangout kind of reintroduces many of the factors of slow speech which might add to possible discrimination, but whatever.
I guess I can continue to try to win friends and influence others through interaction.

Snowden gets some freedom to move around Moscow.

I guess Edward Snowden got some freedom to move around Moscow, possibly Russia. I suppose that he'll discover how the Russians deal with dissent. Maybe he could have discovered it if he paid attention to the Pussy Riot, blasphemy case. Rage against the machine indeed.
Maybe he will keep his nose clean, and he won't be messed with by the Russian spies and counter-intelligence fellows. Somehow, I tend to think that Wikileaks will be less effective in trying to protect him. Maybe he has gained an appreciation of the system he now finds himself in. Right now, the temperatures might be okay, but I'd suspect that before too long, it'll get very cold. Maybe the language will come easy for him. Maybe he will be able to go on to Venezuela.

When the power goes out

When the power goes out, life quiets down. Fortunately, the power doesn't go out too frequently around here, but still, when it does, TV stops, and most cooking stops. When power is not quickly restorable, then it starts to get uncomfortably warm here in Tampa, FL. Usually, though, the power gets restored before too long. An exception was when larger areas were down simultaneously with 3 tropical systems passing through Florida and just a lot of damage.