May 21, 2006
I Lost my Wedding Ring
I lost my wedding ring at the Rest Stop on the South side of the French River on highway 69. I went back there today to try to find it, but I could not. If anyone finds it, please let me know. Thanks.
Posted by mishkin at 11:59 PM
October 22, 2005
We are Selling Our Home
Melanie and I have decided that we would like to sell our home. We have lived there for only one year, and it has been wonderful, but our personal circumstances make it a poor choice for us right now. We are probably going to buy something much smaller once we have sold it. The house is very close to a new mega-mall being built as well as right next to Hwy 404, yet it is still secluded and quiet. It has beautiful interiors and landscaping, lots of space indoors and out, and is just generally a really wonderful home. Please take a look at the web site Melanie has set up for selling it.
Posted by mishkin at 01:29 AM
October 11, 2005
Huge Things in My Life
Melanie and I have been going through a massive examination of our life triggered by the discovery that our debt load is higher than we expected. We are discovering many important things which, while I would love to get into details about, I just can't in a public forum. Suffice it to say that the work of going through this is hard but incredibly valuable and, God willing, Melanie and I will be much better husband and wife after it all.
Posted by mishkin at 11:55 PM
August 27, 2005
New Car, and a Road Trip
Yesterday I picked up my new car. It's a 2005 Mazda 6 GS with the "Sport" package. So it has a fairly nice stereo, and its a 5-speed standard. I love driving standard. I've played around with it a little, and it can go 50km in fifth gear at 1250 rpm and it still has enough juice to go up minor hills. I can also go from stopped in second gear. Overall, I think that I'll be able to get really good gas mileage out of it by driving in higher gears.
One thing I'm a little irritated about: it's non-trivial to put in an alternative stereo system due to the front panel style. I really wish sales people would bother to tell people about this sort of thing when I made it perfectly clear that I was interested in upgrading the stereo system. As well, the instruction manual is incredibly poor. It says nothing about how to use the "SAT" button to get satelite radio working. GRR.
We're going to be leaving for Virginia tomorrow morning. The family is coming along with me as well as Shabnam Tashakor a good friend of ours who is going to observe me at work. She's studying adult education and is interested in the type of things I'm doing as an agile coach. I'm hoping that she will be able to apprentice to me and start to deliver courses. We'll see.
Posted by mishkin at 05:38 PM
July 22, 2005
Christian and I
This past week, my long time buddy Christian Gruber joined me as an agile coach at Capital One with CC Pace. He's staying with me in my apartment in Glen Allen, VA. We're hoping to move into a two bedroom in a month or two. We're going to have lots of fun!
Posted by mishkin at 07:02 PM
July 12, 2005
Quick Journal Entry
This past weekend, we had an excellent second devotional gathering at our home. Justice did really well riding his bike but he still has problems with starting and stopping. I started reading "The Artist's Way". Melanie went to hear Mr. Javahari from the UHJ talk in Toronto and was inspired in many great ways. One insight is that we are going to ask/consult with the NSA about our situation, another is that she is going to focus her homeschooling efforts on Baha'i cirriculum. Melanie visited Jeanne and her neighborhood today and had a great time. Melanie also has made some updates to her website: http://www.berteig.org/melanie.
Posted by mishkin at 12:08 AM
May 27, 2005
Losing Weight
I have decided on a goal for losing weight. By the end of June, I want to be under 200lbs. Right now, I am somewhere between 215 and 220. In order to do this, I will make sure to get regular exercise every day. I am going to focus on push-ups and sit-ups and 20 minutes of running on a treadmill or biking. Additionally, I will continue with my Gym membership and training at Gold's in Richmond. Finally, I will switch over to a diet of lunch and dinner veggie subs at Subway. I will weigh myself every day (don't have a scale today) and put the weight up on my blog. On average, I will need to lose about 1 pound every 2.5 days. The first 10 pounds should be easy... after that, we'll see.
I also have a long-term goal: to get down to 180lbs. This will be difficult, but I want to fit into size 34 pants, I want to be able to run 10km without trouble, and basically, I want to look way better than I do right now. If I can get to 180, I will basically feel like I am back to the weight of my youth (even though I was actually about 165 through most of university). Wish me luck!!!
Posted by mishkin at 03:35 PM
May 18, 2005
Article about the Newsweek Quran Story
Quran more than a book for Muslims
The article points out that in the West we don't have anything that is comparable to desecrating the Quran. I beg to differ... what exactly was 9/11? Just in case: that's a rhetorical question - destroying life, liberty and property are comparable to desecrating the Quran. The amount of outrage Americans felt at the destruction of the World Trade Center and the lives of the people in it, is exactly comparable to the amount of outrage that is felt about the desecration of the Quran.
Posted by mishkin at 02:49 PM
May 17, 2005
Nice visit
This evening had a nice visit with some of my Baha'i friends in Richmond. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and then came back to my apartment so I could share my music with them. We had a great time as usual.
Posted by mishkin at 10:50 PM
May 09, 2005
Fun Problem
Jesse called me this evening to try out a problem with me. The basic idea: given a function which provides an evenly distributed random number between 0 and 4 inclusive, create a mapping function which will take the output of the first function and convert it to an evenly distributed random number between 0 and 7 inclusive.
Turns out this is a pretty hard problem. He and I wrote up some simulation software in Java to try out some theories. We didn't come up with a perfect solution, but I (re-)learned something about Binomial distributions in the process. Fun stuff :-)
Posted by mishkin at 10:56 PM
May 01, 2005
My Dog
Back when I was a young kid, maybe 9 years old, my mom bought me and my brother a dog. We named it Phoebe (FEE-bee). When she brought it home, we were living on 10th Street in Saskatoon. The very first day we had her, she was so tiny and cute. I snuggled her in my lap for a long time while she slept. I only let her go when she finally peed on my lap!
Posted by mishkin at 09:40 AM
April 26, 2005
Scrum Master Practicing
I've just been listed on the Control Chaos web site as a Scrum Master Practicing. My agile resume has been updated.
Posted by mishkin at 12:16 AM
April 20, 2005
My Garden
I've been thinking about the landscaping and gardening I am going to do at our new house. I've built a preliminary model of my garden in PovRay and rendered it to get a sense of how it will look. Here it is:
Posted by mishkin at 12:32 AM
April 13, 2005
Minor update to my resume
People probably don't care, but I've made a minor update to my "agile resume" on my web site.
Posted by mishkin at 08:11 AM
April 12, 2005
I took the Nerd Test
Posted by mishkin at 11:02 PM
April 11, 2005
Canadian Association of Physicists Contest 1989
Just found this: http://www.cap.ca/edu/HSPrize/1989HSResults.html which reminds me that I came in 2nd in Saskatchewan in the contest and won $250.00. Physics, my lost career :-)
Posted by mishkin at 12:08 AM
March 31, 2005
Berteig Consulting Inc. Weblog launch
I've just set up and launched the weblog for Berteig Consulting Inc., my Agile Coaching and Consulting company. Not much there yet, but I will regularly be posting articles about agile concepts, agile software development, agile work in general, agile theory, and examples of agile work.
Posted by mishkin at 06:37 PM
March 30, 2005
An old friend
I just was doing an ego search on Google and found that an old friend of mine from university has linked to my home page. Vin Diakuw and his wife Chantal were among a fairly large group of people I spent a lot of time with. The last time I saw them was back in 1997 when I was in Saskatoon with Melanie on our "honeymoon" (it wasn't really a vacation-style honeymoon so much as a visit-friends-and-family-who-couldn't-make-it-to-the-wedding-style honeymoon). It is very very cool to see photos of him and his family.
Posted by mishkin at 04:30 PM
March 24, 2005
Working out
This evening I had a workout at the gym with my personal trainer. I'm going to Gold's Gym in Richmond. My trainer is Herb. I really like his style - a little bit sarcastic, but in a really friendly way. This evening, I over-worked myself a bit. I've been feeling a little bit sick since near the end of my workout. I suspect that I'll feel real tired tomorrow. One cool thing: for the second time, I did 200 crunches... and that was after a number of sets of stomach muscle work earlier. Yesterday I got new shoes. My old shoes were hurting my feet quite badly. I went to the New Balance store in Richmond. The guy there spent a lot of time with me figuring out the issues with my feet: bowed legs and slightly fallen arches. He also pointed out that my old shoes were too small on me by quite a bit. Anyway, I have to try my new shoes out on the treadmill this weekend at home. I hope they help out.
Posted by mishkin at 11:34 PM
March 16, 2005
Been fighting sickness
This past week has been rough. Moderate illness has plagued me. Also, even though its great, the closing of the sale of our house in Elmvale has been incredibly stressful. That's done now, and thank goodness! No more paying mortgage payments on a place we aren't living in! Mind you, it is kind of sad too since it was Melanie and my first home we owned.
In other news, Verity has been standing on her own with increasing frequency, I'm still enjoying my work, I've been going to a gym regularly (even though my personal trainer has missed a few appointments) and I've discovered the cool networking service: www.linkedin.com.
Posted by mishkin at 08:49 PM
February 17, 2005
Self Awareness
I had a gread dinner with Michael Hamman this evening. During it we talked about many things having to do with personal development. I realized afterwards that there have been two very important instances when I consciously changed myself. The first, between grades ten and eleven I decided I needed to be more outgoing and to meet people... and proceded to do that. The second, in my early twenties, I realized thanks to the quote truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues, that I was a habitual liar and that I had better stop... and so I did. Both transformations were difficult and exhilirating.
Posted by mishkin at 11:56 PM
February 07, 2005
Little bit of this and that
The big news: Verity stood on her own for the first time last night at our local Feast. She was holding onto my legs, let go, and stood for about 5 seconds, then plopped down on her bum. She did it a few more times during the night.
My friend Derek has published his first web site. For a first try, I'd say it's pretty amazing. Find out more about joyoushomes.com web site.
Melanie and I leased four paintings from my dad and he gave us a third. One of them is an amazingly large beautiful painting that is going to go in our "prayer room" (normally called a living room).
I've started working again in Richmond Virgina. I'm working with a guy named Michael Hamman - he's a really amazing guy and I think I'll learn a lot working with him.
Posted by mishkin at 08:02 PM
January 04, 2005
Heart Health
Today I went for a heart stress test and to get hooked up for a 24 hour heart monitor. This comes out of some minor chest pain I had back in May or June or thereabouts. My doctor had me do some bloodwork and an ECG. The results were healthy. However, he also said that I could optionally have these two further tests if I wanted...
Then in the early fall, Melanie and I tried to get life insurance. After many weeks, the insurance company came back and said that I was rejected... although the agent said that I could do these further tests which had shown up on my health report from my doctor to the insurance company. So... in order to get the insurance, I need to do these tests. Irritating, but oh well.
Posted by mishkin at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)
December 31, 2004
Updated Agile Resume
Not that anyone is really interested, but I've updated my resume. It can be found in multiple formats from the front page of my static home site www.berteig.org/mishkin. You can also click on this link to my resume of agile stuff. I've had my resume on-line for about six years and it has been critical to me finding several jobs/projects.
Posted by mishkin at 02:26 AM
December 23, 2004
Ug. Sick.
Not much to say really: sore throat and a little achy. What can you do?
Melanie is getting a cell phone. I'm getting mine replaced because it totally sucks (its an Audiovox) - I can never hear it ring or feel it vibrate, the keypad is too small and sometimes the keys don't register if I'm dialling quickly, the menu structure is painful to use, and reception isn't very good. Try Nokia - they have good phones.
Posted by mishkin at 09:01 AM | Comments (1)
December 20, 2004
Lost My Passport
On Friday the 10th I lost my passport in the cab I took from the airport to my home.
I've been trying to find my passport. It has my work visas as well as some sentimental value. The problem is that the cab that I took didn't give me any contact information: no business card, no name on the VISA sales slip, etc. I so called my credit card company - they don't have the merchant's name either. I seem to be stuck. So, today I'm cancelling my passport and applying for a new one. Ick.
It's actually kinda funny too, because I'm working for a credit card company and I know for a fact that the information that I'm looking for is in their systems. But I also know that it may be operationally very very difficult to retrieving due to policies, system boundaries, etc. Blah.
Posted by mishkin at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2004
Back to Richmond
I'm going back down to Richmond for a couple of days. The work I've been doing recently has been incredibly interesting: process/methodology consulting. I was able to work for a few days with Mary Poppendieck of "Lean Software Development" fame. I learned a lot about metrics for software projects as well as queuing theory.
Posted by mishkin at 10:59 PM
December 13, 2004
Too Much To Tell
Moved, started a new contract, life is good. More details to come soon :-)
Posted by mishkin at 05:40 AM
November 08, 2004
First day of snow, but a good day
There's a nice amount of snow falling, but none on the ground yet (it's all melting). I suspect that even if some accumulates today, it will be gone very soon. Yesterday during the day it was warm enough to wear a t-shirt.
Today is my first Monday at home in seven weeks! It feels very very nice. I'm still crazy busy, but at least now I can take some time to do some things that I really need to do: banking, system administration, web development etc. I'm planning on putting up a professional blog on my Berteig Consulting Inc. web site about various agile and lean things that I learn in my consulting engagements.
Posted by mishkin at 09:47 AM | Comments (171)
November 02, 2004
Selling the Elmvale House
So it looks like we're finally making a deal to sell the Elmvale house. It's not in writing yet, but the buyer has verbally confirmed that the deal is good. I'll post details once it's all finalized. The Elmvale house has lots of memories: Haifa was born there, Melanie and I went on our (first?) pilgrimage from there, Alexei filmed "The Perfect Divorce" there, Oomind was attempted there, and Troba tested us there.
Posted by mishkin at 12:43 PM
October 18, 2004
Job Craziness
Nice big contract fell through. Ug. Scramble scramble scramble. Well, the people I'm working for right now are being very nice and keeping me on for an extra week. Melanie has been amazing, and truth be told, I haven't been at all worried about it.
Posted by mishkin at 05:27 PM
October 15, 2004
Wow I'm crazy and so are the drivers around here!
So I couldn't sleep. I was "up" until about 2:30am packing, taking care of little things, working, etc. (and I watched "The Life of Brian"). I got into bed... and tossed and turned. I said some prayers. I played freecell on my pilot. I thought about work. And around 4:10am, I decided that an hour and twenty minutes of sleep wasn't worth it, so I got out of bed. And at 4:30am I got in my car and drove from Richmond to DC. The drive was actually very interesting: the first half (distance-wise) was basically free of traffic. But when I got to Fredricksburg at about 5:20, suddenly there were lots of cars on the road. Ten minutes later is was actually heavy traffic with slowdowns. And ten minutes after that, we started getting some stops in the traffic. Even with the heavy traffic, I got from the hotel to the office in pretty much exactly two hours including parking and going to the bathroom (which I had to do very very badly by the end of my drive). Oh - I also had my first cup of coffee in probably six months. I'll have to remember to take substantial pain killers starting this evening in order to avoid the headache. Fun. Maybe I'll get to go home really early and have a nap on the plane and then at home.
Posted by mishkin at 06:37 AM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2004
Ug.
I've been sick for the last few days. I'm in Richmond, VA so it sucks to be sick more than usual. Yesterday I wasn't able to work (and my boss thankfully suggested that I stay in my hotel to sleep and relax). I feel somewhat better today, but I still have a pretty bad cough. Being sick while travelling is quite lonely.
Posted by mishkin at 06:46 AM
September 28, 2004
New Work
I'm in Richmond Virginia working on a new project. I am contracting with a small consulting company called CCPace. They have a client (who must remain nameless for now) for whom I am performing a "Lean Analysis" of their existing software development processes. I've met lots of really intelligent people.
David-John visited this weekend. Unfortunately I was so busy with stuff, that we barely got to visit. One highlight of the visit was that we went to eat dinner at The Sultan's Tent on Front Street in Toronto. Justice loved the belly dancer. The food was of course excellent as well.
Alexei was visiting for much of September. It was really great to see him. He has created a logo for my business, Berteig Consulting Inc. and is now starting work on a new web site for me.
We finished planting all our stuff in the new place.
Posted by mishkin at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)