Rob Pickering

As most people who know me and lots of my readers know, my son has Down syndrome.  Down syndrome "also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is typically associated with physical growth delays, mild to moderate intellectual disability, and characteristic facial features" (wikipedia).  So, in essence, he has three 21st chromosomes in all of his cells, hence the selection of 3/21 as a day to drive awareness across the world.Today my family celebrated by all of us wearing "silly socks".  This came about as an initiative as part of the ''Lots of Socks'' campaign begun by an organisation called Down...

Recently I was invited to participate in the World of WarCraft, Battle for Azeroth Alpha Test. I know you're thrilled (I was too!). However, in order to install the game, it required 40GB of free Hard Disk space. I only had about 30GB free, so there was no way to install it. I have a 1,000 GB hard disk, but 200GB are partitioned for other operating systems, I have over 300GB of Music, and then all my other files take up quite a bit of space. However, I've been running low on space for a while, so I decided to see if I could fix the problem, install the game, and learn something about the Mac along the way....

Today is a special day in the lives of my family. It's also a special day for millions of people across the world. March 21st is celebrated as World Down Syndrome Day. Why March 21st? Because March 21st is also written as 3/21. The most common form of Down syndrome is Trisomy 21, which is a third copy of the 21st chromosome (where there is normally only a matched pair). Tri (3) somey 21 or 3/21 or March 21st! If you'd like to learn more about Down syndrome (like why the 's' in syndrome isn't capitalized), there is a great FAQ found at https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/about-down-syndrome/facts-about-down-syndrome/#freq. Down syndrome Why is World Down Syndrome Day...

2017 found my family and I finally settled, if a bit temporarily, in our new home in Cupertino, CA. We're renting and that will be the next major milestone we cross (buying a home). My son started First Grade, my wife continued her position at Cisco, and I'm still enjoying my position at ServiceNow (though I started a new role in 2018). In reviewing the books I read this year (22 titles), they were broken down in the following broad genres: Entertainment - 41% (down from 55%) Non-fiction - 27% (up from 15%) Computing - 5% (down from 15%) Biographies - 18% (up from 7.5%) Self-improvement - 9% (up from 7.5%) In my last What I've Read post,...

I've now reached a milestone in my life that everyone dreads, that age when your friends start to pass. I didn't think it would happen this soon. I'm beyond saddened that my first friend to pass from this world into the next was Chris Utley. I was a very young 25 years of age when I met Chris (I'm now 47), so he and I knew each other for 22 years. I had just been recruited from a job at Miami University to run the Internet Operations team at Cincinnati Bell Telephone as they became an Internet Service Provider with a service offering called "Fuse Internet Access". I was told I needed to have a "Webmaster"...