Tom Parette

Finished Product

Tom — Tue, 28 May 2013 20:27:16 +0000

Completed view of house

The house is complete. It took us almost 15 months to build and although there are some small things left such as landscaping, etc. we moved in on 3/16. It is nice to see all the hard work pay off.

Isolation in a Services Oriented World

Tom — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 03:21:48 +0000

For years there has been a push to move banks to provide a single layer of business services to support all delivery channels. There are many benefits to this approach such as business consistency, ease of support, the ability to perform a business process/events across channels by starting in one channel and finishing in another. The classic example is a mortgage application which begins on-line and is finished in the branch. It is important to keep in mind that this recommendation is based on a single logical set of services and the physical implementation should use an approach to provide physical separation in order to ensure that the solution provides the highest level of availability. Having a single common physical services tier may provide support simplicity but in the event that tier becomes unavailable (and it will) then ALL delivery channels being served by that tier become unavailable. There are other reasons for physical isolation. Frequently the business interaction will differ across delivery channels. While interaction across a mobile device will have a short session time, a call center session could be much more long running. Physical isolation allows the ability to tune each supporting tier to optimize the channel it serves. As with any design, understanding all single points of failure, even clustered solutions must be well understood and mitigated to prevent outages that should be preventable.

House Construction Update

Tom — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:21:06 +0000

We are in the home stretch of building the new house. This has been a huge project and will end up taking a full year to complete. Being the general contractor for your own construction project is rewarding and the money you save is very significant. We are also doing several of the major tasks. Wiring a 5500 sq ft house was a huge undertaking but like many of the other tasks, doing it ourselves was the only way to get it wired just as I wanted. Soon I will begin on the interior trim as Lynne is just ahead of me painting. This is truly the only way to get exactly what you want and your perspective once you live in the house is very different compared to just purchasing.

I would not ever consider building or buying a house any other way.

Swimming across the Chesapeake Bay

Tom — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 01:39:49 +0000

Chesapeake Bay "Swim Course"

It has been a few weeks since the Chesapeake Bay Swim and wanted to reflect on the 4.4 mile swim event.

First I was very impressed by the quality of the race in terms of the race support. It was very well organized and well run before during and after the event. There was a significant number of kayaks and other craft on the course for people that may have trouble during the race. The race itself actually went as I expected. Granted, 4.4 miles is a long way to swim but the conditions made it not a difficult event to finish. I never did see the boats to get drinks, etc. at mile 2 and mile 3 but I likely would not have stopped anyway. I did end up with a very sore left shoulder and a bit of wetsuit rash but felt just fine after the race and drove from Baltimore back to Charlotte right after the completion. I can foresee doing other long distance swim events in the future including this event again. There is also some great venues to participate in long distance open water swims.

http://www.worldstop100openwaterswims.com/

Training for long distance swim event

Tom — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:07:41 +0000

I have not posted for a while and wanted to share some thoughts around training for a different event this year.

I was able to get in the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim http://bayswim.com/ for 2012. It is a 4.4 mile swim across the bay taking place on 6/10/12. The longest swim I have done to this point is 2.4 miles in the Ironman races I have competed in. From a training standpoint, I am obviously working on much longer swims but also focusing on long runs as the endurance aspect of this race will come in to play. I am looking at 2:15 - 2:30 to finish this depending on conditions. I am viewing this much like a marathon from a training perspective working on base miles/yards first then doing speedwork as training progresses. Like a marathon, nutrition and hydration will be a consideration for this race but obviously will be different on if/how the problem will be addressed.

Overall I am looking forward to trying something different this year. Part of this is recognition that after 27 marathons I may not be able to continue long distance running forever and this is an option to compete in challenging events and visit some wonderful venues. Below is a link to what is considered the top 100 open water swims in the world. The bay swim is #95 on this list.

http://www.worldstop100openwaterswims.com/

Airventure Oshkosh

Tom — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:31:31 +0000

This past July I made my third trip to EAA Airventure in Oshkosh Wisconsin. It has been described in many ways, “The Worlds Greatest Aviation Celebration”, “Disneyworld for airplane junkies”, etc. It is THE aviation event for North America and for a week period is the busiest airspace in the world with 10k - 15k people flying their airplanes to the event and 500k visitors over the one week period. Although it started as an event for homebuilders, everyone in the business is there. This year Boeing flew in their new 787 for the first public showing in North America, my last trip there in 2009 Airbus had the A380 there for the week. Every warbird you would want to see will be there and daily airshows. If you are in to aviation it is a must see event. Below are some pictures from the 2011 event including a USAF F16 that landed long.

Space Shuttle Program

Tom — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:38:53 +0000

We have been fortunate to have seen two space shuttle launches. The first was in August 1984 for the maiden launch of Discovery. The most recent was 2/24/2011 for the final launch of Discovery. It is sad to see this program wind down and we as a nation no longer having ambitious goals to explore and develop breakthrough technology to move forward. Below is a photo taken from the Titusville bridge on 2/24 with a Canon SX30IS using the 35X zoom.

Shuttle Discovery Launch 2/24/2011

Ironman Louisville Final Thoughts

Tom — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 02:03:55 +0000

It has been several weeks since I finished my 6th Ironman race in Louisville on 8/28/10. My final thoughts on the race are posted below:

http://www.tomparette.com/?page_id=237

IPad post

Tom — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 01:59:20 +0000

First post from the iPad using the soft keyboard. Seems to be a good option for brief posts but would not want to type a novel with it

Brighton UK Visit

Tom — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:43:52 +0000

While in London on business I did a side trip south to the coast to the resort town of Brighton. It was a neat town and in some ways a typical beach town with various shopping etc. but the most unusual thing was the beach was covered with gigantic stones. Not small stones like Nice France but golfball size and bigger in most cases. I took the picture below to give some scale to the size of the stones with a typical .5L water bottle. As usual transportation in Europe was very easy with the train ride from London to Brighton being about 1 hour with frequent routes and always on time.