May 2004

You'd think someone would have come out with a web-publishing tool made for the home user -- something intuitive and easy to use. But no. This is not the case -- at least in my trial of several popular titles (all demo versions).

So at least for Web publishing, I've put my Apple iBook G4 aside and gone back to my reliable G3 running OS 8.6 -- which is ancient in cyber years, dating all the way back to 1998! It has a program called "Claris Home Page Builder" that, in my opinion, cannot be beat even today.

So to make a long story short, I am getting old.

Yes, I suppose 38 is old ... if you are 20. But I still feel 20 -- or at least 25. It's the traitorous mirror's reflection that gives me my daily reality check. I don't have many wrinkles yet -- it's the hair thing that's killing me. I'm starting to realize that men don't technically "loose" their hair -- it moves to their backs and shoulders. Yes, it is gross! I am the first to admit it, though my wife says she doesn't mind (the liar).

Ollie (one of Danny and Melanie's many animals), puts on his best James Dean for the camera. They brought Ollie and Cody along to Florida to visit Mom and Dad (they live in North Carolina).

OK, back to business.

2004 is proving to be a busy year. Since my last update, I have jumped jobs from Deloitte to Intuit. My former boss at Silicon Graphics contacted me on my first day at Deloitte as fate would have it. She told me about a great job that just opened up she thought I'd be perfect for: Managing editor of "Snap," Intuit's intranet. The job is a lot more fun. So now I'm at Intuit: please use all of their products!

My first day at Intuit was April 19. When I signed on, I told them I needed three weeks before I reported in for duty: two weeks notice for Deloitte (a great outfit, by the way) and a week in between to visit my folks, who were in Florida at their new winter pad.

Mom and Dad, you might remember, recently purchased a roomy two-bedroom trailer in a lively retirement community called Grand Island. Their place has a great view of the nearby lake (I am too lazy to look it up the name right now).

My parents plan to use it mainly for the winter, but since they just got it, decided to enjoy the month of April at their new retreat. My sister Melanie and her husband, Danny (along with two of their many dogs), decided to spend the week following Easter there -- and by coincidence, that was the week before I started at Intuit. So needless to say, I went to Florida.

Noriko couldn't get off from work on such short notice, so I was to go alone. (She's in Japan as I write this -- it's April 26 -- visiting her folks for a week). I wish Noriko could have come along, but we all had fun in spite of this -- fun in that Melanie, Danny and I all felt like children again since everyone we met was at least 70. It was a refreshing change to life in Silicon Valley, where everyone is 20- or 30-somethng (or so it seems).

It was a relaxing visit, for the most part, with the exception of a trek to the Universal Studios theme park in near-by Orlando with Danny, Melanie and cousin Theresa (who used to work there in management -- she got us free passes!).

OK, I am getting sleepy. To sum it up, we all had a great time. (Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of "The Diederich Journal!"  

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