back in the RTP...

Back in RTP again. Traveling for work and staying at the Wyndham again. Flight out was a little late a little bumpy, but manageable.

The flight out had me thinking about legislating technology. For the best reasons legislation was created to make airtravel safe. The down side to this legislation is that the Air companies are slow to adopt innovations. Our planes are old and unable to take advantage of all the advances that technology has put forward into other areas of transportation. Think how far our cars have come forward in the last few decades. I'm sure the issues is more complex than I lay out but I still that the current round of American air companies have become dependent on the outlays of the government and aviation rules which have led to a decaying infrastructure that is unable to cope with rapidly changing environments and requirements. I do enjoy travel but I really want to avoid American air companies as much as possible, whenever possible, at least until I see some changes.

The lab is coming along slowly. Built the first image for VMWare. Next step is going to be deploying to ESX. I'm a step behind in Xen, need to do a little more work to get that going. Also need to upload all this stuff tomorrow so that Cathy can test it.

Started reading "A Not So Small Life" not very far with it, but it is giving me some perspective. It is pulling me in the direction of additional introspection. The question I have next is whether I want do exhibit my introspection. On the one hand I think I can benefit from the feedback of my friends and family. On the other hand, it is a fairly public website connected to google. There is a limit to how much I need to share that wide :) Is there a penalty to how much I share? Probably. There are limits to what I should say. But at the same time I think there is something worthwhile to thinking about what I can say and putting more out there.

I should disclaim up front that these are my opinions and not those of my employers. Hmm. Something to update in the template I think.

Work, Writing and other foibles.

Last few days I've noticed I've been hitting the posts rather long. I'm remembering how to write and remembering that I kinda enjoy it. I used to try and journal more, but that fell by the wayside. Too many things to work thru or think thru and time just shriveled up. Not that I have much more time now, but I will see if I can do more writing. Writing as self discovery is always a fun form of cheap therapy. It is a lot easier to know oneself on a couple of lines than sitting around pondering. Not that sitting about pondering doesn't have its place but writing it out give it a sense of grounding and permanence. Of course I'd really like to keep it from degenerating into sophmoric, whiny, emo crap. There is too much to be excited about, to be angry about, to be sad about, to be happy about, that I really shouldn't spend all my time woe-is-me-ing.

I decided yesterday to pull back a little at work. I've been a bit obsessed with work lately, between PBCs and the new project, and meeting with Execs, I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself to really cave into the work. Since our final sprint of the last iteration I've been putting in a ton of hours, with very little relief. I need to stop. Part of the key to Agile is working at a sustainable pace. As one of the managers pointed out to me, if I'm violating the principal of Agile, how can I get my team to follow along with me as well? Do as I say not as I do, doesn't fly much with adults either.

I've been trying to focus my efforts on doing things that my management and team want, which in some ways is the right thing to do, but I've been neglecting my own personal drives and goal. My career plan is a pretty vague affair. I've been looking at the band ladder and saying --yeah, I should be scaling this. I need to really think about what I want to do. I will say I do enjoy working with a team and building something bigger than what I could do on my own. Leadership is hard but still a good challenge. I still enjoy doing individual development -- MDD while currently under wraps due to time constraints, is a good bit of fun.

One of the struggles I have with work has been that I've got a good insight into what will be useful for our team and for our company -- technologies like Object Grid or PHP or Virtualization, and while I've been right, I haven't been able to show the value to my management or grow the skills enough on my own to make them worthwhile. What hit me the other day is that understanding the need and the value of these skills and growing them either personally or within the team is really what technical leadership means. I should be exploring this stuff, and even if my management doesn't care or see value, I should take it as far as I can.
I've been focused a little too much on bands and certification, and not really enough on leadership. If I want to get better at it, I need to practice it more. So while I'm not going to stop listening to the needs of my management or the teams I'm working with, I still feel I need to be responsive to both, I need to trust my instincts a little more and be able to follow thru with what I think it is important and right.

I may not have all the opportunities to deploy all of these cutting edge technologies like some of the leads in ISSW, but I can take the opportunities to play and grow in things that interest me. I can write this stuff and blog it with the best of them. Exploration is cool, but the important part is bring back what you discovered. I was challenged by my manager that no one gets paid to sit around and work with the cool toys and dreaming about what is important. I think I realized that to challenge back -- that is exactly what we're paying our leaders for --creating a vision of how we can deliver value back to our customers, and then executing on it. If I can transform a vision to a reality faster with PHP or Project Zero, then I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

For promising to shrink back from work, this has been alot of words about work :) But it has proven cathartic. I've put the career thing in perspective rather than blowing it out of proportion. I have validated and focused on what I want to be important to me, solving difficult challenges with cool technology. I want to grow and lead technical direction, rather than being a n empty consumer driven by management whimsy. I can get back to reality a bit more and work on the rest of my life. I can work to those goals that are not covered in a PBC or a IDP, but rather my own goal list. Sucker that I am, I really like the " Say" Video from John Mayer for the Movie "The Bucket List". I may get around to seeing the film, but for now the video and wikipedia spoilers were good enough. It's good to have goals 43 or otherwise. My birthday is coming up so expect to see a few more goal related posts as I ponder last year and plan the years ahead.

Long Walk today

Had a good long walk this afternoon. Walked with A and Z from the end of the Jail Trail up over the bridge and around the South Side Works. It was a nice little walk. Weather was good, and it was good to get out for a stretch after fighting with my lab all day. Strolled around Joseph Beth Booksellers and grabbed dinner to go at Qboda. The only downsides were when A was almost hit by a car while we were crossing in a crosswalk and as we were crossing the bridge to get back to the jail trail, Z was asleep until a fire truck with full lights and sirens crossed underneath us. She wasn't thrilled with the sirens as a wakeup.

But dinner was tasty and the walk was nice. Probably something good to repeat this summer! Maybe even take the longer walk and start from home.

30 days in..

still searching for a theme. Sadly I think the actual theme is mostly around work. In truth nothing wrong with that, but I think I need to expand my topics a bit more. I still like taking about the geeky. The new PHP framework or the wierd little programming tic, but I think I've been a little too focused on those of late.

The reality of it is of course that I tend to wax and wane with all my interests. I think I follow a 3 month cycle of obsessions and then I point to one of the other ones. I tend to jump between work, financial planning, fitness and self improvement. I think my reading habit is taking a beating. Too many unfinished works. Having a hard time getting into fiction at all these days. From TV to books -- I just can't seem to dig anything. Kinda annoying. The closest I see is a few out takes from Cartoon Network. Of course I say that and then I pick up the sci-fi book club catalog and start paging thru it ;)

Enjoying the taste of chocolate after giving up candy for lent. I decided to try out Lent this year just because. Not a religious thing, but more of a personal challenge. Since I didn't grow up with it I had never heard the rules before. The whole 'you're allowed to give up your fasting on Sunday, since it represents a mini-Easter' sounded a bit like cheating to me. I thought it was made up until I read it on Wikipedia. Going in I allowed myself 1 cheat -- if it was a once in a life time event, I'd let myself indulge. The only qualifying criteria event was my nephew's birthday. An 7th birthday only comes once in his lifetime, so I figured that would qualify.

In general I'm seeing a trend towards simplification in my life. I'm not sure why at this point. It has a bit of an appeal for me. I'm not looking to become a monk or give up all my earthly possessions to walk the earth like Caine on Kung Fu or become a bum (Thank you Quintin Tarantino), but I would like to reduce. Part of it may just be a control thing, learning to make choices. Choosing what to keep and what to part with. Choosing what habits I keep and which I let go. Perhaps it will pass, and I'll go back to whatever it was I did before, but it doesn't feel like it. I'm not looking to become No Impact Man, but I want to think about the kind of impact I have. Maybe it's Z. She definitely put a new light on things. And V, I still feel his presence on my life every day. That is the nature of fatherhood I think.

In any case I still feel like I have more to do. More clean up of my actions. A good bit of cleanup on the house :) A few more books to read and ponder. I think a good part of the reason that I've slowed my reading is that I thought that I should write more notes about what I'm reading. And organizing that process has been slow in coming forward. Perhaps I should start a wiki or a blog. I should take the lazy path -- I can create another blog here to capture what I want to write.

On a tangent to that -- I should figure out how to back up my blogs! I'm sure Google is good at keeping this stuff available, but I think I'd like to have a backup.

Can't get my brain in gear. Got a spare laptop today to work on my lab this weekend. Hope to get it 2/3s wrapped by Tuesday. Flying to RTP on Monday. Not looking forward to the trip. Not that the work is hard or bad, just long and potentially useless. Made a mistake with my lab selection for this year. It is very hard to do a good job with a lab if you don't have some sort of passion for the topic. Struggling to find some passion this year. So many other ideas feel more interesting right now. I still think Virtualization is critical. It is the win. But I think the Cloud computing model provides a much better reflection of virtualization's potential. Running multiple images on one machine -- nice, saves energy and effort; Running many images on multiple pieces of hardware smoothly transitioning from failed hw -- priceless! Of course nothing comes without cost and overhead but still.

I'm falling behind on the year of IC. At the end of March now. If I can finish up my lab, I'll have a piece for Jan/Feb and a piece for April. I may count this blog as a piece for March. I have a few ideas that I want to try and publish. As either a patent or as a piece to publish. I need to write faster. Both code and the other stuff.

On the otherhand I think I need to think about work a little bit less. I focus on work and Z, but I think I should be spreading my brain to other areas. My brain needs a change. Less development and work and more variety. Been reading a few different books lately, which help. "In Defense of Food" By Michael Pollen was pretty good. At first I didn't understand the title, but Pollan points out correctly that a lot of the products that we see at the grocery store are not really food. The cult of nutritionism has convinced us that it's not the food that it is important but the component parts. While I've followed nutrient guidelines for a long time I never gave this much thought. But at the heart of this is the idea that foods are simply components that can be well understood reduced to parts rather than pieces of a complex whole that is more than the sum it's parts. A fairly good read with decent advice on eating. Eat Food, not too much, mostly plants. Simple and to the point. I'm finding different ways to simplify my life right now, and this was right up my alley.

At some point I think I need to talk this out a bit more. But not tonight.

Out and about

Went out for a walk with Z this evening. Had a great walk. We went down to the park, strolled for a bit and came back. Out for around 40 minutes. I enjoyed getting out of the house, and I think she did too. I suspect if I walk with her anywhere she wouldn't care, so long as I didn't pause during the walk.

A few of the DeveloperWorks Editors spoke at our dept meeting to talk about opportunities to write for DW. As this year is the year of IC, I definitely want to take advantage of the opportunity. Fortunately it sounds like there could be some good opportunities for me.

career plan says what?

So it is that time of the year again to start thinking about career moves. Management has started asking to make a plan for the year. What are we doing today, what do we think we can do this year, how does this year impact your career plan? Tough questions, ok maybe I supplied about half but I hate think of the future in such little chunks. So much to accomplish, so little time!

In other news reading up on Portal 6.1. The beta is running and the new docs are out for Beta 3!