filed under: business, motorcycle, truist.com

Posted 43 days ago

Well, truist.com still looks like it’s just parked. But www.truist.com has something more interesting :) I wonder if they realize that they forgot about the non-www version?

So, I was right, and they were quick – they announced the new company (and the website) on Monday. Here’s a brief article about it, also. It’s strange to see the word “truist” used in a corporate setting, and have it mean something different than “me”. Huh.

In other news, though, I plan to buy a (used) Kawasaki KLR650 as soon as I can find one for sale nearby :)

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filed under: business, links, rainskit.com, truist.com

Posted 51 days ago

As of this afternoon, truist.com is no longer mine. I had it for 8 years, 4 months, and I find that I’m very sad to see it go :-(

But as Drew says: “think of the motorcycles” – and that is helping :)

So now that the sale is actually done, here’s the story:

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filed under: business, dogs, family, kristina, life, travel

Posted 125 days ago

Four weeks ago, life was pretty simple: I was comfortable (but not really happy) in my job, we had a nice apartment, our expenses were low, we had a fairly stable plan for the future, and I was planning on buying a motorcycle. Now, though, everything is different: today was my last day at NetJets, we just bought a car, we’re looking for a new place to live, the future is very uncertain, and it’s not clear if I’ll be getting a motorcycle.

And yet, still, I think today is better than four weeks ago. Crazy, huh?

The story goes something like this: Five weeks ago (to the day), I finally realized (after much prodding from my wife) what I wanted my next career move to be. I wanted to be a Product Manager for a software company, much like I was back before I left Noteworthy Medical Systems, four years ago. I realized how important it is for me to have my hands on real problems that I get to solve myself, and how important it is for me to be on the front lines rather than in an IT department (“in the business, not serving the business”). Nothing against NetJets – they have a truly amazing IT department! – but having tasted life in a software company, I wanted to get back to that. The problem was (five weeks ago) that it’s extremely difficult to get a job as a product manager in a software company, especially in Ohio, so I essentially put that plan on hold for “someday”.

So then four weeks ago (to the day), an old friend/coworker from Noteworthy called me up and basically said “we need you to come back and be a product manager – are you interested?”. Huh, funny how these things happen. I told her I was maybe interested, and spent the next week talking to her, going to Cleveland for interviews, and trying to figure out what had changed since I left. After about a week of this, I was convinced that Noteworthy was in good shape, and that this was a legitimate opportunity, and that I’d really love going back into the product manager job.

So it was easy for me to say yes to the offer – except that Noteworthy is in Cleveland, and we live in Columbus, and Kristina is very happy as a student at OSU. So I was going to have to travel to Cleveland for this job, leaving her in Columbus, and we both know that we don’t do well with full-time travel. So I managed to work out a deal with Noteworthy to travel half-time, working from home the other half, and after much discussion we decided that we could handle that, and I said yes to the offer.

That was two weeks ago (to the day).

So I put in my notice, and we started making plans for how to make this all work. First, obviously, we needed a second car. We’ve never had a second car – our lifestyle just never demanded it, and a car is a huge expense. The question was, which car?

Well, that gets to the next decision, which was to get a dog. As part of agreeing to the travel, Kristina and I made an agreement with each other that we’d get a dog for her, to help keep her company while I’m gone. Well… she wants a big dog. And I think that it’s always better to have two dogs, because they keep each other happy and healthy. And we happen to know of a breeder who has Great Pyrenees puppies for sale, and that happens to be the particular breed of very large dog that we had our eye on… so the plan is to get two huge puppies. Oh, the changes…

So back to the car. Between the two new dogs, and the fact that Kristina is a horticulture student who regularly carries plant stuff around, we decided that we needed a car with lots of space and that’s easy to clean. Minivans were right out, jeeps weren’t big enough, and SUVs are generally a waste of money, so that left the Honda Element – a perfect car for this situation, and one that we really liked. But then that got tough – we were trying to keep the cost low (so we needed a used car), but we like having convenience features (power mirrors) and a nice stereo, and we both like driving stick-shift cars, and we didn’t want one with a ton of miles on it. It is possible to get an Element that meets all these criteria, but we couldn’t find one in Columbus. So we went to Pittsburgh (Monday night) to buy one that we found there, and so far we love it. It took a lot of work to finally settle on that car, and to get the financing sorted out (without having a used car dealer screw us), and get a price negotiated, but it was worth it.

But wait, there’s another consequence to getting these dogs: our current apartment doesn’t let us have pets. (And I wouldn’t put two huge dogs into our place anyway.) So we have to find a new place, preferably a house with a large fenced yard. And we need to rent it because we’ll probably move in two years when Kristina graduates. And our current rent is quite low, and we don’t pay our gas bill, so our housing expenses are about to go way up. And we’re probably not going to find something close to campus with a large fenced yard in a safe neighborhood that’s not too expensive. So that search will continue :)

And finally, all these increased expenses may mean that I can’t get a motorcycle. I have my license (took the class last fall) and a helmet (birthday present, a week ago) and a riding jacket (another birthday present), but no motorcycle. More on this as events unfold.

So, to summarize: new job, new travel lifestyle, new car, new house, new dogs, maybe no motorcycle. Oh, and Kristina’s 30th birthday is in June, so I need to plan that. So yeah, things are a little stirred up around here :) But they’re good.

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filed under: books, business, christmas, geek, links, reviews

Posted 235 days ago

From The Nerd Handbook:

For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.

I received Managing Humans as a Christmas present, and it’s a fantastic book. It lead me to (back) to Rands in Repose which is now at the top of my list of great places to spend time on the internet. Enjoy :)

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filed under: business, geek, tagging, tru_tags

Posted 776 days ago

I’m pleased to announce the public release of tru_tags v1.8, sponsored by Simon Finch, a consultant / web developer in the U.K.

This release of tru_tags contains two new features: a new type of tag cloud and the ability for article tags to render as a mini-cloud. I also massively refactored and condensed the code, making it much easier to read/understand and hopefully much easier to maintain.

The first new feature can be seen by clicking one of the links in my tag cloud (over in the sidebar). On the resulting page, you’ll see that a second cloud appears (in the sidebar) under the heading “Related Tags”. It is showing you all the tags that are related to the tag you clicked on.

I mentioned that this version was sponsored by Simon Finch, and it’s true – he paid for these specific features, because he needed them for a consulting project he was working on. That has me excited in all sorts of ways:

1. My plugin is being used in the real world (in an online store!)
2. Work that I originally did for my own benefit is now helping others
3. I’m earning income that is derived from that original work
4. I’m earning income from open-source software!

As usual, you can download this version from the announcement page and you can find out how to use it on the instructions page.

(For those of you waiting for other features, they’ll be coming soon in a v1.9. I wanted to get v1.8 out the door with just the features for Simon, so I’ve had to delay the rest of these.)

Thanks, Simon!

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filed under: agile, business, geek

Posted 857 days ago

At minimum, my career at ThoughtWorks was a full-tilt education in “how to make Agile methodologies work.” I’ve experienced the best and worst of agile processes, and I have a very strong sense of what works, what doesn’t, and what’s irrelevant.

(For you non-geeks out there, “agile” is the name for a family of processes used to develop software. If you’re curious, you should follow the link below.)

When I came to NetJets I wanted to get all that knowledge out of my head and codify it somewhere, because my head is a notoriously bad place to store details. So I set about writing up “Agile for Managers” – an introduction to the spectrum of agile methodologies, with detailed notes about every major issue I could think of. Obviously, the target audience is the manager of a software shop; someone familiar with software development realities, but not necessarily familiar with agile methodologies.

I didn’t record all the deep insights and little details that really make it work – that would be found in “Agile for Analysts” and “Agile for Project Managers” and “Agile for Developers.” Instead, this is a roadmap to the core ideas, and a memory trigger (to me) for those details.

I wrote it all down as a TiddlyWiki, with the intent that I’d give a talk about it at NetJets. I never gave that talk, but the presentation still stands on its own. I’ve published it on this site, now, and hopefully the world will find it, and find it useful.

Before I give you the link, a warning: TiddlyWikis have issues with Internet Explorer, and with Greasemonkey. If you’re using either, please switch to Firefox and/or turn Greasemonkey off. (If you must use Internet Explorer, go ahead – it will probably work.)

With that, here it is: Agile for Managers. I hope you enjoy it – I put a lot of work into it.

If you have questions or issues or comments, please post them as comments in this article.

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filed under: business, reviews

Posted 864 days ago

I recently realized that I never made a link from this blog to my rant about airlines.

I came to this realization when I actually had a fantastic experience with American Airlines. They’ve reaffirmed their place in my head as “least crappy airline” and maybe even moved up to something like “good” – a first for any airline.

The condensed version of the story: I needed tickets on a specific set of flights (that my wife was already booked on) which were sold out online. I called American directly and got a very nice woman who sat on the phone with me for 20 minutes or so, working through all the possible options with me. In the end, she came up with an option that got me onto the flights I needed, at a lower price than regular retail, and in exit row seats (both of us!) for 3 of the 4 legs. Amazing.

I haven’t had that kind of customer service, on the phone with a big company, ever. Thanks, American.

P.S. – yes, this means I’m going to Hawaii for Holly’s wedding.

Update – they screwed it up

A few weeks later I was at aa.com to check into another flight, and I discovered that my flight was cancelled. Apparently they didn’t finalize the reservation, and it eventually cancelled itself. I called them, seething mad, and they told me that the return legs were full and that my choices were to return one day later at a cost of $250 or two days later for no additional charge. They refused to actually fix it, or give us a discount, or waive the $250.

We took the “two days later” option. Funny thing is, the hotel for those two extra nights is going to cost us about $250.

The only upside to it is that we’re now in the exit row for all four legs.

Net result: ignore all the nice things I said above, please. All airlines are crap.

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filed under: business, life

Posted 887 days ago

About six weeks ago my brain caused my body to write down a list of roughly-categorized questions, all vaguely related to “optimizing my ability to make things happen.” I’ve been sitting on those questions since then, trying to figure out where they came from and what they’re for. I’ve puzzled over it multiple times and not gotten any clue at all.

It’s fairly obvious to me that they all have a theme. They’re all questions about issues that I focus on all the time, and they are all a part of what makes me good at what I do. I just don’t know why I wrote them down.

So I’ve decided to post them here and see if any of you, my dear readers, have any ideas about them. Maybe this is the seed for some grand idea that will change the world someday, and I’ll later come back to here and realize that this was the beginning of it. Or maybe this is just what it seems: a list of questions that will help you focus on the right issues, so you can make things happen.

Here they are:

• audience: who needs this information, and what for? what are their key issues? who else will eventually use this information?
• effort: is it worth putting this much effort in, at this point?
• perception: how will the audience perceive this? what will they think? how will it affect their attitude? what questions will they probably ask?
• purpose: what is it that I’m trying to accomplish? does what I’m writing accomplish that?
• core issues: who feels the pain / wants this done / cares about this? are they the ones driving the solution / issue / work? are they getting what they want? is the work that I’m doing going to help resolve the core issues?
• image: does my audience trust me? how do I get them to trust me more? will this help our trust? do they think they can rely on me? do they think I have their best interests in mind? am I doing work that doesn’t have any value except to my image?
• understanding: how well do I understand my customer? do I know what is relevant, and what is irrelevant, to the decision/direction/solution I am trying to make?
• value: what do I bring to the table – why am I needed? does my audience understand that value? am I maximizing that value? am I letting others give their value? am I doing work that doesn’t support me adding that value?
• listening: does my customer feel like he has been heard? have I made sure to give them time to explain their needs/issues/wants?
• focus: does what I’m writing solve the core problems? does it also try to solve other problems? is there content that doesn’t lead to solving any particular problem?
• knowledge: do I know what I don’t know? have I asked for help / more information whenever I needed it? do I have enough information to solve my problem? have I identified which information I need, and which information I don’t need?

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