Hello and welcome! If you are retired and are even minimally technically inclined or would like to be, enjoy using a computer, and find yourself using a number of services such as Google docs, RSS readers, photo editors and organizers and so on, may I suggest that you explore self-hosting or homelabbing as a great retirement hobby. Today I want to introduce you to the two hobbies, how they are different and how they are related.

Returning to Basics The title of this blog is iamcuri.us. That title was chosen to reflect the many and sundry interests that I have and the drive I have to explore new ideas and to learn new things. While I think some of my posts here have reflected that, others seems to skew in specific directions that seem to narrow the focus on the blog. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the posts that outline my tinkering in websites and self-hosting do reflect my questioning and exploring and learning.

The Evolution of an Academic Had someone told me on the day of my high school graduation in 1977 that I would one day be an academic, in possession of a doctoral degree and teaching at the university level, I’d have warned them that whatever they were smoking was muddling their brain. Yet, here I am, forty years later, in possession of not one, but two master’s degrees, and a doctorate, teaching at a university.

The ONE THING I love to read and love to learn, so it is no suprise that one of my favorite pastimes is to wander through bookstores. I love perusing the titles, skimming a few pages of those that interest me and maybe marking a few to add to my reading list. It’s a habit I developed probably thirty years ago. One of the subject areas I generally skim is the business management section.

What’s Wrong with Asking for a “Highly Satisified” Rating? Virtually all businesses today are concerned about how the public perceives them. They recognize – and rightfully so, in my opinion – that customers who have a positive experience, who receive great service, or receive quality, tasty foods are more likely to be repeat customers. They also know that customers who have a poor experience are just as unlikely to return. Thus, measuring the customer experience by asking the customer to complete a survey of their experience is an important means for getting information on how well the company is doing in meeting the customers’ needs and expectations.

Science Fiction and the Polymath Throughout my junior high years I was a huge science fiction fan. One of my favorite authors of the time was Isaac Asimov. I was quite surprised to learn that Asimov not only wrote science fiction but had also penned books, short stories, and essays that ranged from religion (Guide to the Bible), chemistry (he was educated as a biochemist), engineering, and the list goes on.

Me? A Manager? Not so Much For the past year or so my manager has been after me to move into a management role. I managed to avoid doing so until fairly recently, using my work on my doctorate as an excuse for not really having the time to take on all the work of learning the role, learning the courses I would manage and so forth. Recently, however, I was approached again and, having all-but completed my degree, really didn’t have a good reason for

The Power of Curiosity I have always been a curious person. I’m the kid that took toys apart to see how they worked (and was sometimes able to put them back together again, too!) I was the kid that enjoyed reading the WorldBook Encyclopedia because, well, just because. Learning about different stuff fascinated me. Even as a very small child I was curious. My mother used to tell the story of the time when I was maybe 3 or 4 years old and came in crying because my eyes were filled with sand.