We had a farewell lunch for two ARC employees who were around when we were just humble VAutomation. Bill was VAuto's fifth employee. Brian came shortly before the ARC acquisition. Brian used the following Teddy Roosevelt quote in his fairwell:
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.I was reading this article over at CERC about Teddy's family life and came across this great quote as well:
There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad. man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions.Our home computer really got messed up this weekend. I'm not sure if it was the machine or me, but either way, I got to do a clean install. Formatting, installing from CDs, software updates, the whole shebang.But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.
We did have fun at Hampshire Hills yesterday. The girls were counting down the hours until the event. We spent a lot of time at the pools. I even tried my hand at their wall climbing facility. It closed with a nice barbeque dinner. Unfortunately the turnout was poor this year. The last time we had a company outing at Hampshire Hills, some said that it should be on the weekend so that working spouses could attend. So this time it was on the weekend, and several folks said that they already had plans for the weekend. As my old business partner Gene used to say:“no good deed goes unpunished...”.
They gave away two eBookmans (eBookmen?)at the outing. That project was something I worked on for quite some time. It was extremely difficult to graft our USB core onto the Franklin proprietary processor. So ironically I won one of the eBookmans.
Saturday we went to Cambridge Soundworks and ordered a Samsung DVD-VHS combo unit. Now we can catch up to the 90's. (grin) With a DVD player, I can now investigate signing up for Netflix since it can be difficult bringing the kids into a video store. We also went to investigate some vinyl fencing and a decent wood swingset for the yard. Having a large yard has its pros and cons. After dragging the kids all over town shopping we treated them to some ice cream at the Amherst Ice Cream House.