Mishkin
Berteig - Just Some Random Geek.
My full name is Mishkin Ben-Garry Vyordan Berteig. I have another home page. About Me
20040228: A couple days of Ayyam-i-Ha have passed. Melanie got me a Tai-Chi practice sword, and a stand for it. I really like it! Yesterday, and a bit the day before, I had a bad headache. It felt like one of my caffeine headaches, but I can't think of anywhere I had caffeine. As a result, Thursday was a write-off for me.
Today we had to take care of some banking. So we went and met with a financial advisor at RBC and talked about RRSPs and a mortgage. We put a bunch of money into RRSPs, and it looks like we will get a mortgage for the house we are living in.
I was thinking earlier about my memories of my mom and dad together. I don't have many. One is of my dad's thirtieth birthday. Mom made a cake and I remember helping to put in the candles, then giving the cake to dad. Actually, now that I start to think about it, I remember a lot of things from when they were still together. All of the memories are from our house on Temperance Street in Saskatoon.
20040225: I've been having a good discussion on Kuro5hin about science.
Justice and Haifa are super excited about Ayyam-i-Ha - the Baha'i gift-giving season. This year, Melanie and I have really done a lot of work to make it special (especially Melanie).
20040223: Another long gap in the story. My appologies :-)
Alexei came and went. His visit was great in so many ways. The simple fact of being able to spend some time with my brother was so great. I only regret that I didn't play Quake III with him very much :-) He got his new replacement Apple PowerBook - a very nice machine. We both helped to convince our parents to also buy Apple laptops. My dad is going to get a PowerBook and my mom is going to get an iBook.
Flutterby died a couple of weeks ago. Near the end, its wings were getting very tattered. I suspect that in the wild, our beautiful butterfly would have had a much shorter life.
I am now a certified ScrumMaster. I took the course last Monday and Tuesday. Ken Schwaber, who runs the course, was a really interesting guy. The course was well presented overall, but I did feel that two days was a little short. Mind you, it was only CA$500.00. The most important things I learned were related to using Scrum in a practical sense: it's not a "silver bullet", but it does make improvements immediately to a teams work even if the only improvement is to make visible all the problems!
I've started playing WarcraftIII. It's a bit of an older game now, but I really like how it integrates a nice storyline with the actual real-time strategy component.
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., January 2004 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)
