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meme o’ the week September 14, 2007

Posted by Phillip in : misc , add a comment

Got this one from Darrell…

1.) Go to Career Cruising
2.) login nycareers; password landmark
3.)

Take the career match maker quiz and list the top 10 response

1. Health Care Administrator
2. Politician
3. Economist
4. Judge
5. Electronics Assembler
6. Venture Capitalist
7. Marketing Specialist
8. Industrial-Organizational Psychologist
9. Management Consultant
10. Association Manager

I just don’t know what to say about that…

has it been forever yet?

Posted by Phillip in : misc , 3 comments

I think I have no sufficiently proven that I can go long periods of time without writing blog posts. One of the folks I chat with weekly asked me two months ago: “Why don’t you post to your blog anymore?” — The answer… I am just too busy.

Since my last lame post I have done the following:

* Traveled to and from Ireland (stayed in Limerick — had a blast)
* Traveled to and from Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur)
* Hit platinum status on American Airlines
* Had twins last week (oh yeah… did I mention Andrea was pregnant again? Check them out on my flickr site.

As you can see, a lot has been going on. The only reason I had time to write this is because everyone in the house is taking “quiet time”, a concept I love, and I am off work till October 1st.

If you want to see some of the pictures I took in Ireland and Asia, they are also posted to my flickr page. I just upgraded my account to an unlimited status so I don’t have to deal with those pesky upload limits…

I think I am going to start dedicating 10 - 15 minutes a day to updating my blog, we’ll see how that goes over the next week or so.

new crackberry June 6, 2007

Posted by Phillip in : misc , 1 comment so far

So I received my new blackberry yesterday. It’s an 8800. So far I am happy with it but I have yet to fire up the GPS navigation capabilities…

More on this later (if I remember).

A few updates June 4, 2007

Posted by Phillip in : misc , add a comment

I drove to San Antonio last week to visit my friends at Rackspace and as I pulled into the parking lot, the check engine light on my beloved Lincoln LS lit up. So after finishing up my business, I rolled over to the dealership to find out what the damage would be. It turns out that my warranty expired exactly 2231 miles ago, so I was going to get dinged for the whole amount ($1032.93).

So I purchased a new (to me) vehicle. This, a 2006 Aviator, is my third Lincoln to own. It’s blue, it’s a V-8 4X4, I like it.

I recently turned off the ability to add comments and tackback links without being registered in teh system. Why? I am sick of deleting comments that my spam-catcher thingy doesn’t catch. If you want to make a comment on my utterly boring blog entries, you will just have to register (sorry!).

I replaced my digital camera. That’s right, I have finally upgraded my camera from the was-the-shizzel-in-the-day 3.1 MP Hewlett-Packard camera to a nice (but inexpensive and purchased on sale) 7.2 MP Sony SCH-S650. I am not much of a shutterbug, but I do like to take photos while I am traveling and it was only out of pure happenstance that I was able to get photos of Ireland since my camera decided to poop out while I was there. Overall, I am pleased with the new camera.

The Windy City May 13, 2007

Posted by Phillip in : geek , 1 comment so far

Here I am, going again. I am sitting in the terminal at O’Hare airport in beautiful Chicago. So far I have seen 12 food stands that sell “Chicago Dogs” — one of my favorite things to eat in Chicago. I opted to eat at McDonald’s before my next flight. Why you ask? Well, I am flying with my boss and he wanted McDonald’s so I obliged.

Our next flight leaves in about 2 & 1/2 hours. We are bound for Shannon, Ireland to meet with our customers as well as some folks from Novell. I am pretty excited about this trip even though it’s only a 4 day’er. We land in Shannon at 7:45 am local time and head over to the hotel to freshen up and sync up with our local contacts for meetings. After the first day of meetings we will head over to Dublin (a 4 hour drive) for more meetings.during our remaining two days.

I doubt I’ll have time to catch any leprechauns or kiss the Blarney Stone, but I will try to take some pictures and see some sights in the evenings. I was going to take a picture of the runway at O’Hare, but I don’t think anyone cares to see that and I’m suspicious of the way the rent-a-cop is eyeing me when I take my camera out….

Are you laser-focused on being wildly successful? April 16, 2007

Posted by Phillip in : geek , 3 comments

Ok. So I’m not really going to write a motivational blog posting. My intention is to whine and complain about how much I hear these business buzzwords. They are prevalent on conference calls, in slide decks and lately even in common conversation. Why is that? I remember some years ago when “ecosystem” and “synergy” were big. Why is it that execs and management-type folks grab on to these words and throw them around like they mean something.

Is it that they actually believe that “holistic ecosystem of heuristic technology” means something to the people that are designing & deploying solutions? My guess is no. I think that it’s easier to say something when you say nothing at all. I have even caught myself doing it.. I was speaking with a friend last week and I was talking about how XYZ software would drive environmental enablement for technology ABC. I literally had to stop myself and back the truck up. Was I really saying this? What has 8 years in the IT industry done to me?

It started long before I came to work at Novell. Even while I was at Rackspace I realized it — no matter what position you are in, to some extent, you have to be a sales guy. At Rackspace, I was a Linux Engineer in IT, but when I went into meetings to convince managers and other techs that the solution I designed was the end-all-be-all, I had to sell to them. So what does it mean? Am I getting more salesie then techie? I don’t think so — I may have “extended” my vocabulary a bit, but I can still troubleshoot like mad-man and design a killer infrastructure. ;-)