Author: Daniel

Our Passover Seder 2013

I have been posting information about our Seder now for a number of years; for those interested they can look at one of the following links:

This year our focus is to look at the choice for freedom that was made in the Exodus story and to consider some of the reasons people might have to support a change to freedom or to resist it.

The Haggadah we use is called A Different Night, http://www.amazon.com/Different-Night-Family-Participation-Haggadah/dp/0966474007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363877819&sr=1-1&keywords=a+different+night+haggadah.

Below the jump I include the beginning of the instructions I wrote up to help me organize the evening as well as the quotes we will be using this year. Those who have looked at my previous entries much that is repeated and a bit that is new. The instructions explain how we approach going through the Haggadah.

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Perhaps You Cannot Go Home, But Sometimes You Get Close

Monday at 10:30 am, I found myself at Northwood High School in Silver Spring MD with Bette Brotman Dolan. I went to Northwood as did Bette.

When I was in high school, we both rooted for the Northwood Indians. In these politically more sensitive times it is the Northwood Gladiators. Evidently it is more acceptable to have a nickname honoring people who were often slaves and fought to the death, or killed wild animals, to entertain crowds, but I digress.

There is a Facebook page where former students of Northwood can check into the status of classmates and teachers, or ask questions that typically start with “You went to Northwood High School if you remember <something from the distant past>”.

Earlier this year, a teacher currently at Northwood asked if any graduates were willing to talk to a class about their current profession and to provide advice for students who will be entering the job market in the near-term future. Perhaps a dozen or so former Northwood students answered. By chance the two people who responded who had careers in technology, Bette and I, both graduated in 1966.

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Last Day of Our Spring Training Pilgrimage

Saturday, March 16th, was our last day at the Nationals Spring Training in the Viera/Melbourne area. The game was on MASN and was scheduled for 6pm so we spent a mostly leisurely time during the day. Of course, leisurely for me meant working on grading participation in my UMUC class.

We had lunch at one of the restaurants that has become a favorite of ours when we visit, Cedar’s Café, http://www.cedarscafe.com/. This is really a wonderful middle-eastern restaurant. We have met the family who owns it and does much of the cooking a number of times. They spent some time showing Ellen how they made the food which has made our visits a bit more special.

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Our Annual Nationals Spring Training Pilgrimage – Day 3

Today was an away game in Jupiter against the Cardinals. The Cardinals are one of the few other East Coast Florida teams, we have gone to a Jupiter game almost every year we have gone to Spring Training.

Jupiter is a just under a two-hour drive south of Viera. The desire of the Nationals to have some number of teams closer than two-hours away is one of the reasons they evidently are considering moving from Viera.

After participating in a few business-related conference calls in the morning, we drove to Roger Dean Stadium, home of the Cardinals. In the past we have taken the coastal road and stopped by a number of the very pretty beaches along the way, this time we just went down the relatively boring Route 95 drive.

It was interesting to see Spring Training tickets being scalped on the way into the stadium. Toward the end of the game they announced that the crowd, a bit over nine-thousand was the second largest crowd in the history of the stadium.

However that was about it for interesting. As usual with Spring Training games, the visiting team sends few of its regulars so the only player likely to be part of a ‘normal’ Nationals starting line-up that was there was the catcher, Kurt Suzuki. Dan Haren, slated to be the fifth starter in the five-pitcher rotation pitched five innings. After he gave up four runs in the first inning, including a lead-off homerun, the game was basically over. The Nationals lost 5-1.

Having said that, a day in the sun watching a baseball game (this time while wearing sunscreen), is not such a bad way to spend a day in March.

In the evening, we had dinner at the Bacco Wine Cafe, http://www.baccowinecafe.com/, a family run Italian Restaurant. For those of you who are in the Viera/Melbourne area I highly recommend going there. The staff, many of whom are family members, are attentive; the food really excellent; and those who were at the dinner who were wine knowledgeable (I am not) tell me the wine was really excellent.

Nationals Spring Training Pilgrimage – Two Days Down, Two To Go

It is always great fun coming to Nationals Spring Training. For those of you who have never done so, I would recommend it (either for the Nationals if that is your favorite baseball team, or for whichever team is).

The weather is pretty nice, especially the further north you live, the pace is informal, the fields much smaller and intimate and the opportunity to run into players either at the game or in restaurants or similar locations much higher.

We flew down Wednesday morning.  I actually had some business to transact for our first stop.

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The Magistrate

Last night, Ellen and I attended our first “live” event at a location different than the event itself. We had seen advertisements for these often at movie theatres, often for opera performances. This one, seen at the Shakespeare Theatre’s Harmon Hall came about almost by accident.

I received an email from the Shakespeare Theatre that John Lithgow was going to be performing in a play called “The Magistrate” Saturday evening, March 2. I am a big fan of John Lithgow and had never seen him live and even though I had never seen the play he was going to be in, I thought it would be fun. Ellen agreed to go and only then did I realize that the play was being performed in London while we would be in Washington DC. After checking with Ellen we decided to buy tickets and see what it was like.

When I was having lunch with a friend last week he mentioned that since the play would start at 8pm Washington time it was highly unlikely that it would be actually be ‘live’ in London. Well, duh (I realized).

Thus, when we got to the Harmon we were introduced to the concept of live and ‘nearly live’. So we thus were able to use our home theatre to watch a recording of a live play assuming our home theatre could seat a couple of thousand people.

As a side note, the acting was fine (what would you expect from a play done in London), John Lithgow was great (though I suspect his role would have been better served by someone a bit more ‘English’), but the play itself was only ordinary. It was a 19th century English farce, thus dealing with errors in social behavior; unlike let us say a French farce which typically deals with errors in sex.

Our conclusion was that we would probably try it again at some point since at a minimum it allowed us to see in sort of a theatre setting some performances we would otherwise rarely have a chance to see. On the other hand, perhaps I can talk Ellen into just going to a theatre run in London sometime.

ESEM Consulting LLC

It’s great when what you do best and enjoy most are the same thing.  In my case, helping people and organizations become the best they can be really does it.

Achieving organizational and business success gives me personal pleasure and carries through to all aspects of life.

It was with this in mind that I created ESEM Consulting. My focus is to work with small-to-medium sized IT companies who want to grow their presence in the Federal marketplace. My experience is that as companies work to expand, senior staff expertise, the organizational culture, and, the strategy for business development and capture, are not ready to propel the company forward.

Using my executive level experience both inside and outside of the Federal Government, as well as my technology, management, and capture experience in small and large companies, now is my chance to do what I enjoy and to help other companies and their leadership grow to the next level.  I’ve synthesized the key elements in a one-page description of the services ESEM Consulting is offering:

ESEM Consulting 1-Page Summary

Feel free to reach out with questions or comments and do share the information with others that might benefit from our services.

Federal News Countdown – February 1st

I was, to my continual amazement, invited back again to be on the Federal news Countdown, hosted by Francis Rose, on WFED, on the AM dial at 1500.

During the show two guests go over their top three Federal news stories of the week, starting with their third most important, then their second and finally their most important story. The other guess this time was Larry Allen, http://www.allenfederal.com/. Larry is a long-time industry expert on acquisition and a good person. Having been on this particular show a number of times, this one was particularly fun to do.

It can be heard here, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/86/3215767/Federal-News-Countdown-Mobility-Section-508-update-and-sequestration-worries.

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When Is It ‘Okay’ To Hack Into A System?

Recently there was a situation where a student at Dawson College in Montreal hacked into his school’s network and was expelled from the school.

What seemed like a pretty obvious and reasonable result turned out not to be so clear-cut.

Eric Chabrow wrote a column on this at govinfosecurity.com, The Ethics Behind Gray-Hat Hacking.

He asked me for my opinion, I provided some background on an incident that happened while I was the CIO at the US Department of Transportation which I felt provided some insight into the question at hand.

http://www.govinfosecurity.com/ethics-behind-gray-hat-hacking-a-5459