I think in the 5+ years I've been running this site, I've had 1 difficult member of hundreds, which is amazing to me. Statistically, it doesn't make sense how so many people can be so kind, so easy to talk with, so pleasant, caring and what I often call "remarkably close" when I talk to others about what I do.
Obviously working on the computer all day deprives you from the typical co-worker experience that most people are privy to and it can be strange not to have that basic relationship, someone you have small talk with during the day, someone you go to lunch with or celebrate events with.
I've always been VERY open about my life with members, because I don't have anything I'm ashamed of so I'll answer anything you want to know and because I feel very comfortable sharing things with each of you. As a result, I've made hundreds of incredible friends across the globe. I share my life with incredible people from all walks of life and they share their lives with me. The whole thing just absolutely defies the most basic statistical assumptions.
Some of you I have met in person, even had to my home. Many of you I look forward to meeting in person, but all of you are always in my thoughts and my concerns as I want to do the best I can by you because I know you are not just good and deserving people, but some of the best people I've known which makes me work even harder to do the best I can by you.
In any case, know that I appreciate you. I suppose I said all of that so I can say this.
After many years of pure insanity in marriage as many of you know, and only after I decided I would spend the rest of my days as a single person with the market and the people I call friends every day over the internet as my true love, I met the most incredible person I've ever known. The lovely and very talented Andrea. Most of you know a little about Andrea, some of you know a lot about her and some of you have even been in touch with her.
Andrea is a veteran, 15 years in the Army with a few years as a medic and most of them as a Black Hawk pilot and flight lead in charge of "Air Assault" planning, which is quite detailed and intricate with only 15 seconds of slack between the actual plan and being on target , coordinating with 3 to 5 other Black Hawks, two Apache gunships and sometimes Chinooks. This basically means she planned all of the flights, coordinated all of the communications and appropriate counter measures for the areas and threats known to the area. She has been deployed in war time to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Iraq as well as the DMZ in South Korea, but you'd never know any of this about her as she's very humble. She's still a pilot today, having flown Emergency Medical/Trauma, she now flies for several news stations.
In any case, I'm very proud of her for so many reasons I wouldn't even know where to start. I'm proud to have her on my arm and in my life which is why I share things about her with you.
In any case, she knows how much I work which is typically 12 hours straight with no lunch or breaks beyond the bathroom and I often have a laptop with me even then. You may know that after more than a year of trying to get the new website up and running, sending emails back and forth from FL to NY where my web designer was, Andrea took over the mission and now has the website within days of going on line as soon as I find the time to write some script. She knows a lot of you by name and knows a lot about many of you as she knows I care about my members so it's important to her as well.
To my surprise in an effort to make my life easier, to make my time more efficient and maybe just to allow us to spend a bit more time together, she surprised me with this yesterday as I was writing the "Daily Wrap"...
I have quite a few computers running and multiple screens, but this was fantastic as it's clean, fast and over the course of a month or so, she's been asking little questions here and there as she's never owned an Apple computer before.
By the time I was done with yesterday's Daily Wrap, she had already downloaded 3 of the 4 charting programs I use. She knew that one of them only runs on Windows and had already bought both Windows as the second operating system as I use with my other macs and the VMWare Virtual machine that allows Windows to run on the Mac. She had installed all of that, my charting programs, downloaded all of the historical data and set up the "Dragon" voice to text software you see in the foreground and did all of this without interrupting me with a single question while I was working on last night's post. The Dragon software looks especially cool as my typing style is "Hunt and Peck", that's two index fingers hunting for the letter and then pecking it so it should save me hours every day.
It's obviously much more than the gift of an I-Mac, it's the thoughtfulness, all of the details that I wouldn't expect anyone to know and the reason she did all of this, to make my life easier and to make the service I provide better for all of my members so I just wanted to give her a shout out as many of you know her and know this is something she would do, although I'm grateful beyond words for so many reasons to have this incredible person in my life that I couldn't imagine if I tried to, just as I'm grateful for each of you.
Have a fantastic weekend!
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