Mishkin
Berteig - Just Some Random Geek.
My full name is Mishkin Ben-Garry Vyordan Berteig. I have another home page. About Me
20040131: This last month has been very busy. I started back on the Schwab project so I'm commuting to San Francisco every other week. There's one really neat thing that's happened this month:
Last fall, Justice found a caterpillar. He put it in a jar with a twig, some grass and leaves. The caterpillar soon made itself into a crysalis. We left it alone for a long time. At one point we thought about disecting it as a science project. Anyway, last Monday, Melanie noticed that there was a butterfly in the jar!!! It is a beautiful thing with mostly black wings with a little blue and orange. Eventually, Melanie decided to let it out of the jar - it's too cold to put it outside - and let it fly around in our house. We feed it slices of orange and it crawls on our fingers. We have a pet butterfly named flutterby!
I got a new laptop - a Dell Inspiron 8600. It's loaded: it has 1GB ram, a 40GB HD, a 15.4" WUXGA screen (1920x1200 pixels), a high-end ATI mobile graphics card, built in 802.11b and Bluetooth wireless, USB2.0, Firewire, a 1.7GHz Pentium M, and great battery life. I am totally happy with it.
Alexei and I ordered the Rosetta Stone Mandarin Chinese package.
20040111: I've spent the majority of the last two weeks working on business and personal taxes - UG!!! Early this week we had an ultrasound appointement. We saw a very nicely forming baby girl :-) We're pretty certain that it will be "Verity". Now we have to figure out middle names...
20040103: We had Haifa's birthday party today. Guests: Steve and Cindy with children Cailey and Rylan, Christian and Jeanne, Peter and Farzaneh with children Niki and Ashley, Bahar with her daughter Nahal, Estelle with children Declan and Ben, Kristine, Celine, Benny and Linda. It was a good party: we all went outside for a little while (it was well above freezing), we opened gifts, ate good food (hotdogs taste really good after not having them for a long time), had a great ice cream cake from Baskin Robins, destroyed Haifa's gingerbread house, and generally had a good visit. All the kids got loot bags (with Lego!), and everyone left by 9pm. The house was kept pretty clean so it only took a few minutes to clean up afterwards.
The ultrasound appointment got rescheduled to Monday...
20040102: Yesterday afternoon I felt my third child moving in Melanie. Just a few little pushes and bumps, but definitely there... it was really nice to finally have more of a connection than just a swelling belly, a doppler heartbeat, and an ultrasound scan. We've been thinking about some names: Verity and Ebony are on the list. There's more, but we haven't yet made a really big effort to find a name. We're going to another ultrasound appointment at 12:40pm at which we will hopefully find out if it's a boy or a girl. That will help a lot in figuring out names. I personally think it's a girl.
200401010004: Happy "old world order" new year! I'm at my computer working on taxes and sorting email. It actually feels really good! Here's a brief summary of December: finished working in SF, returned home, started vacation on Dec. 20th, took Ruhi book 6, Mom came to visit, Melanie took Ruhi book 1, Rob and Cal and Lisa (Cal's g-friend), and Kristine came to visit, Haifa had 3rd birthday on which she learned to write her name in caps, had an emotional Feast of Honor at which Melanie spoke at length, bought new formal living room furniture.
I am a Baha'i. The Baha'i Faith was founded by Baha'u'llah. Baha'is believe that Christ has returned, and that the world is going through a tumultuous collective adolescence in preparation for maturity: World peace is not only possible, it is inevitable.
I am a husband to Melanie Andersen, and I am a father to Justice and Haifa. I love to spend time with all of them. Haifa is learning to talk, Justice is learning to play Chess, and Melanie and I are learning about transactional analysis and heathy eating.
I am an independent consultant with over 10 years of professional object-oriented technology experience primarily in Objective-C and Java. I'm starting to do some C# and .NET work. Here is my resume.
I am a co-founder of Oomind. Oomind is a community education system. Oomind works on some community principles similar to those at work in Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and Wikipedia. Registered users can submit and rate Courselets, as well as submit, rate and answer quiz questions about Courselets. There are also facilities for instructors, recruiters and learners. Oomind is unfortunately suspended for the foreseeable future.
I also write electronic music, primarily using some freeware software called Buzz.
My favorite foods include Dim Sum at the Koi Palace, Sushi at Ino Sushi, and Persian at Yaas. Salmon is my favorite fish, and I have an unhealthy liking for Big Macs.
That logo at the top is my name "Mishkin" in very stylized Arabic calligraphy. I designed it myself.
I can be reached at mishkin@berteig.com if you feel like sending me something for some reason.
Older entries: October 2002, November 2002, December 2002, January 2003, February 2003, March 2003, April 2003, May 2003, June 2003, July 2003, August 2003, missed Sept., October 2003, November 2003, missed Dec., or Home
Top Sci-fi and Fantasy:
1. Ship of Magic (Robin Hobb)
2. Songmaster (Orson Scott Card)
3. The Real Story (Stephen R. Donaldson)
Top Software Development Books:
1. Agile Software Development (Alistair Cockburn)
2. Software Craftsmanship (Pete McBreen)
3. The Inmates are Running the Asylum (Alan Cooper)
Top Movies:
1. Run Lola Run (CA$) (with Franke Potente)
2. Strictly Ballroom (CA$) (by Baz Luhrmann)
3. Groundhog Day (CA$) (with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell)
