So this weekend I went to a wedding for a good friend at work. His name is Frank Thompson. It turns out that he is the uncle of an old friend of mine.

I grew up in Rutgers Village, a small neighborhood in New Brunswick, N.J. right where U.S. 1 and Route 18 meet. The neighborhood is on the border of East Brunswick and New Brunswick, and has always been in an appealing spot. It has an East Brunswick location, with New Brunswick taxes. There is a water pumping station, a stream, a fire house, and a small elementary school all right in the neighborhood. The Fire Chief, much of the police force and fire men, and the part-time mayor all live in this small neighborhood. Crime has been fairly low, and the neighborhood is kept fairly well.

I moved to the neighborhood when I was 7 years old. I used to walk to Woodrow Wilson Elementary School, right in the neighborhood. I played in the three-team baseball league. I was in the neighborhood cub scout troop. I used to ride my bike all weekend long. We used to walk under the U.S. 1 overpass to the Route 1 Flea Market. Ah… the good old days.

So back to the wedding this weekend. It turns out that Frank is the uncle of Ben Thompson… I didn’t make the connection until he introduced himself. Then I remembered. Benji. Benji Thompson. We all used to play baseball together, ride bikes together, go to scouts together. His mother was my scout leader. It was great to see her again. We talked about old neighborhood friends – Kenny Puritz, Mike Blue, Jason Kormondy, David Cleary, Steven Eckert. The rest of the evening, I thought about all of my other friends – Nikki Francisco, Gary Chiang, Steve Aamland.

Strange thing, time. As time moves along, you remember less and less the bad things, and more and more the good things. I know I did not get along with a lot of the kids in the neighborhood. I was a nerd, and easy to pick on. But now that time has worn away the rough edges of those memories, I wonder how all of my old friends are doing. I hope that they stumble across this old blog post, and give me a call. I would love to talk to them again.

• I was born in New Jersey, but moved to Detroit, Michigan when I was one year old.
• I lived in Detroit until I turned 7. This was enough time to become a Tigers, Lions, Red Wings and Pistons fan.
• Then I moved back to New Brunswick, New Jersey.
• I went to New Brunswick public schools up to high school. Then I went to Rutgers Preparatory School from 1989 through 1991.
• In 1996 I got my bachelors of art with majors in Art and Art History from Rutgers College. It took me five years, but then again I paid for it.
• My first job out of college was with a small company in Edison called Nationwide Computers & Electronics. I worked on their full page newspaper advertisements selling computers, appliances, etc. By the end of the year I was there, I was a Quark Xpress and Illustrator expert.
• Things got a bit rough there, and I ended up working for a subsidiary of theirs called NWCD – New World Computers Direct. There I developed their direct mail catalog, and started working on their web site. By the time I left there in 1998 I had developed a full online catalog built in PERL that connected to the Bank of Michigan to take online credit card orders.
• I left NWCD and took a consultant job at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Hopewell. I worked there developing Lotus Notes applications for the Worldwide Medicines department. We used Notes 4.5, Photoshop, and JavaScript. I worked there until I left in 1999 to go to Bellcore.
• I worked at Bellcore in the Marketing department responsible for their external web site. I was in that department through the name change, and helped drive the new design through the rebranding of the company. After that, I took a job with their Notes development group. I was team lead there through early 2000. Thats when I applied for another job at BMS.
• I took a new consultant spot in the Client Services group of IMSS back in BMS Hopewell. I was converted to an employee on June 27, 2001. I have been bounced around from group to group, and site to site. Now I am a manager in the Application Services department. I first worked on internal applications across most of the divisions within the company. My current assignment is to manage the Internet Marketing applications. These are the direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical brand web sites.

My hobbies include:

• Digital Photography, Scuba Diving, Golf, Billiards, Coin Collecting, World of Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40,000

I think that’s enough for me tonight.