I have one job at my job. Well, okay, maybe I have a lot of responsibilities at my job. But, I have one metric that I’m responsible for. It’s called System Up Time (SUT.) SUT is pretty easy to calculate. We figure out how many hours our reps are on the phone in a month. Then, we figure out how many hours we weren’t able to take calls.
Sometimes an outage is the fault of my client. After all, they own large portions of the infrastructure. They own the tools. They own the customer validation process. There are lots of moving parts on their side. If we have an outage and it’s their fault, my team keeps track of our lost time, but I don’t have to account for it in my reports.
But, we also occasionally have outages that are our fault. We have local computers. We have things like power, internet connections, our own tools. When an outage is my fault, I have to keep track of every hour, actually tracked by minutes. At the end of the month I have to make an accounting. If we have too many lost minutes, we end up paying a penalty.
Let me talk about scale for just a minute. We have call centers all across the country. A call center can have between 250 up to 700 agents. If I have a service interruption at a large center and it last even 1 minute, that one minutes times seven hundred people. Seven hundred minutes is about 12 hours of down time. The math gets a little more complex. For example, we typically don’t have all 700 on the phones at the same time. And it’s rare that an outage interrupts 100% of our agents’ ability to do their jobs.
But, our outages are also typically not just one minute long. Outages, are 5 minutes or less on the low end, and multiple hours on the high end. And those minutes add up. If you had a company with several thousand agents they might have ten million minutes per month. If we take that earlier 1 minute outage for 700 agents. That puts us into the 99.99% available. That’s a pretty good number. But, suppose my outage was 10 minutes long instead? Well, now you’re at 99.93%.
Suppose you’re out for an hour? 99.58%. The time adds up very quickly.
I have a tiered penalty structure. If I keep the outages about 99.97% I don’t have to pay a penalty. Get lower than that and I’m pay 0.3% up through 6% for terrible availability numbers.
It can be a little brutal, but it’s a good structure. I have a finacial incentive to keep my systems up and running at peak efficiency. I have redundant systems backing up my redundant systems. I have primary and secondary datacentes that each include primary and secondary routers hooked up to primary and secondary circuits. I got to help design my system and it’s very robust.
But, stuff happens. Most months I have a perfect track record. Granted, I have maintenance windows that I can use if I need to gracefully take the system down to replace componants. But, even then, there are times I lose production hours.
The challenge, is that while I’m responsible for the penalty, I don’t often have control over the teams and even the componants that my client uses. I won the problem of lost agents hours, but I don’t often own the solution.
During an outage is the wrong time for me to try to fix this issue. I spend much of my time building relationships with the other departments. I manage one of many clients that my company has as customers. I share resources with the other clients. Time spent visiting with other departments might seem like goofing off, but when something goes wrong and minutes count, it’s great to be able to reach out and get the guys who can actually provide the solution to my problems.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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They said it couldn’t be done. Well, they hinted at it anyway. Like the speed of light, some viewed it not as an attainable goal that you could break through, but instead like a wall that those experiencing Zeno’s paradox could get impossibly close to, but never actually touch.
The day he did it, was not a great day for it. The cross winds were 15 MPH. It was not a day that anyone would pick for an historic event. May 6, 1954. The site was Iffley Road track in Oxford. The man who was about to make history was an amature. A part-time runner and a fulltime medical student. Roger Bannister was about to make history.
In less than 4 minutes he did something that no one in recorded history had ever done. He round around a 440 yard track 4 times. A distance of 1760 yards. A mile.
He achieved it by the slimmest of margins: 3:59.4
Interestingly, once he proved it could be done, his record would be broken a scant 46 days later. No one remembers who the second man to run a sub-four minute mile was. Roger Bannister was the first.
He went on to become a neurologist. Later in life he said that he counted his contributions to science as his greatest achievement. And no doubt many in his field could tell you what contributions he made. But, despite his modesty, the world will remember him for a feat of athletic prowess.
In the modern world of collaborative research and “team” contributions and pair-programming, it’s rare to find an individual feat of distinction. Bill Gates is most associated with Microsoft, but he was more brilliant at assembling a great team around him that he was as a coder. Steve Jobs tasked his Mac computer team to make it “insanely great.” Jobs provided the brilliant marketing.
In business, we are all interconnected. We each have a part to play. We rely on our team and they rely on us. Successes should be shared. As should failures. We should recognize extraordinary individual contributions, but also acknowledge that loose cannons sink projects.
And we are stronger together than we can be separate. And yet, we still can stop at times to recognize the individual who does the impossible.
On March 3, 2018, Sir Roger Bannister passed away at the age of 88. I just wanted to take a moment and recognize one of the most extraordinary men of the 20th century.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Rodney, where were you last Tuesday?
I was working from home. Why?
No, I mean from 11:45 to 2:23.
Ah. . .I have no idea. What’s this about?
Well, I noticed that your Skype status was showing you as AWAY. I have a screenshot if you don’t believe me.
I thought it was a joke. The look on my manager’s face said he definitely was not joking. I wasn’t sure how to respond. It wasn’t clear if he was accusing me of not working, or if he was just curious what I did with my time.
I never did figure out why he felt the need to track my movements that closely. But, it did give me an appreciation for the power of the Skype status. Like a lot of companies, we use Skype. And since our teams are spread out across the United States, Skype is often the best way to contact people for an informal question or status update.
Skype does a pretty good job of figuring out what status it should show. The options are
- Available
- In a meeting
- Conference Call
- Presenting
- Busy
- Do Not Disturb
- Be Right Back
- Off Work
- Away
- Offline
Some of the status like Available, In a meeting, Away and Offline are set automatically. When I’ve joined in an online meeting, Skype let’s people know. If I’m away from my desk for more tahn 15 minutes, Skype sets my status to Away.
But, other status are set by me. Busy, Do Not Disturb and Be Right Back are options I can set myself. And they make pretty clear sense. But, I can actually force any Skype status, including Appear Away.
Why would I want to Appear Away? I mean, my manager once called me out for that very thing. I work with a lot of engineers. The engineers don’t typically like to talk to people. They like to focus on systems and networks. They will often set their status to Appear Away to keep the number of interruptions down.
You can still reach out to someone who’s status is set to Away. In fact, if you suspect they might be hiding, it’s not unlike the old school answering machines. you know, the ones that were in people’s house and they could hear you while you left a message.
Are you there? Pick up if you’re there. Seriously, I just have one quick question. . .Hello?
There are times where I’ll set my status to Appear Away. I often work late into the evening. I sometimes think if I were betere at my job, I wouldn’t need to work late. I will often make my status appear Away just so that I don’t have to explain to someone why I’m still working at 1:00am. After all, that’s what email time stamps are for.
Now, if you could figure out how to make your status appear Available when you are actually away, it would be a solution for my over inquisitive boss types.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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She was the only female executive at the annual planning conference. Meetings were scheduled for all day, but it was often during the side conversations over coffee and the ubiquitous danishes that the real plans were hashed out and finalized. During a break after the morning session, several vice presidents started discussion how the funding for the new operations center could be handled. She picked up a fruit plate and leaned in as one of the men started to describe his projected budget. Three hours of sitting and drinking bottled water was taking it’s toll and as a group, they headed for the restroom, conversation in full swing.
She pulled up short at the door marked MEN. She could hear the conversation continue as the door swung shut behind her retreating peers. Her own bladder was asking for her attention, but she had a decision to make. With a determined effort she pushed the door open and walked in.
If we are going to have this discussion, I think I need to be part of it.
When business gets done between formal meetings, you need to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to be part of them. In fact, it’s essential that you do. Whether it’s going for drinks after work, or playing on the community basketball team, or even having an informal meeting while headed to the restroom.
High speed internet has finally made possible the promise of a remote workforce. My home office setup includes a docking station for my laptop, dual monitors, my office phone that uses VoIP to seamlessly route my calls to either home or work. Using a virtual private network (VPN) connection, I can be fully logged into my work network. I have everything at home that I have at work. Everything except coworkers.
In fairness, my coworkers are not all in my office building in Salt Lake City. They are scattered all across the United States and parts of Asia. Often, I don’t even know where a coworker is located. I recently discovered that one entire department that I’ve worked with for months is based in India. They simply keep “Salt Lake City” hours. We use all the modern tools of distance working: Skype for Business, text, phone, email, WebEx, GoToMeeting and Citrix logins. I can literally do anything from my home office that I can do from my work office.
So, why have a work office? Well, during the summer, it’s great to get away from my house full of kids. But, is there a place in our modern distance-working world for face time that’s not FaceTime?
Yes. Some companies, Yahoo, IBM and some others have attempted to dictate that employees work in the office every day. I think they will eventually change and allow people to work remotely. What they are trying to accomplish is the synergy that comes from “hallway” conversations. The comraderly that comes from hearing about your vacation to the lake, or the kids recital, or just the story behind the framed comic in your office.
But, the high speed network links that have freed the worker from an office, have also freed up the companies. Companies can put buildings in areas that previously were too remote, or too underpopulated. Companies are spreading out.
What’s that mean for building esprit de corps? It means that companies need to replace quantity time with quality time. Maybe your executive team only meets together in person once or twice a year. Maybe your Vice President only sees your call centers a few times per year. During those times, you should provide both formal meetings and opportunities for informal gatherings.
But, probably not in the men’s room.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I worked from home yesterday. I’m fighting a cold. (It’s not the flu! Of course it’s not. No, I didn’t get a flu shot, but this is not the flu. Not, not, NOT!!) Anyway, it takes a lot less effort to stumble downstairs to my tiny cubbyhole of an office than it does to get in my car and drive 45 minutes to work.
Most of the time no one notices if I work from home. Sure, the guy who sits in the office across the hall might notice my light is off, but even when I’m at work, he typically instant messages me. Most of the people I work with do not work in my building.
I work with people across the United States. I email, text, IM, email, and Skype pretty much all day long. At times I have to remind myself to get up and walk around. So, a few days at home are not going to be noticed.
But, there’s a couple of problems with working at home. First is that my kids get home at 2:00pm. The internet gets much slower at that point. Yes, I know it’s not the internet that is actually slowing down, I’m an IT guy, after all. And I actually have sophisticated enough routers in my house that I can prioritize my traffic over theirs. In a pinch I can simply kick them off the wifi if I decide to.
They are also noisy when they get home. Not that I’m the type that needs absolute quiet to work, but if they can come knock on my door to ask, “Can I play on the XBox now?” it’s distracting. Besides, the answer is always the same, “What would your mother say?”
The real problem with working from home, is missing out on the interaction with others in the office. My role is both isolating and extremely connected to others. I am involved in lots of different departments, operations, engineering, security, IT, and numerous others. Physically being in the office, especially if my door is open, makes it easy to hear when something important is happening. If we have an outage (one of my primary responsibilities to manage) I get people popping their head in my door, “Rodney, do we have an outage happening? Do you know how widespread it is?” Likewise, I get to hear about events happening in other departments that will overlap with my role.
Also, even in this age of telecommuting, there is something to be said for being seen. I have a good friend who was an Assistant Producer on the TV show Baywatch. While most of the other APs were at the beach watching the filming, Kevin was back in the office working on the more “mundane” portions of the job. Kevin now runs a major TV studio.
The real issue with working from home, though relates to the title of this post. Bonus points if you recognize the quote. Anyone?
It’s from they play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” by Tom Stoppard. The line is delivered in Act II by a character simply named PLAYER. He’s attempting to show the main characters how a play within a play represents their lives. He fails.
When working in an office, it’s clear when it’s time to go home. When the ending occurs. Not so much when working at home. My son just announced we are having dinner, so I guess that will have to do.
The end
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Hey, you’re a clown fish. Tell us a joke.
I’ve been writing this blog for over 5 years. The exact date it started is not completely clear. But, in the past 250+ weeks, I’ve penned over 1300 blog entries. Some have been very successful, garnering thousands of views. Others, have been seen by just a handful of people. The longest are well over 1000 words. The shortest are simply a picture, typically in memory of a tragic event. But, regardless, every week, five times per week, I’ve been posting something up here for y’all.
I’ve been asked on occasion, “How do you think of ideas?”
It’s both a valid question and a completely nonsensical one.
When I started I worried a lot about what I was going to write the next day. I had long lists of potential topics and stories. I worried about running out of ideas. I’ve learned that running out of ideas is as silly as saying I ran out of words. Ideas are everywhere. It’s like breathing. You don’t have to remember to breathe. Finding ideas is the same way.
Of course, not every idea is a great one. Last week I chose to write about a Black Lives Matter meeting that I attended. I actually had two thoughts in mind that day. I thought, I could write about BLM or I could write about my oldest son’s recent Eagle Scout court of honor. I love my son. He asked me to be involved in his court of honor. It was a really tough choice.
Obviously, I went with the BLM topic. It seems to have struck a chord. It’s been shared dozens of times and generated more comments than most of my posts do. I’ll probably write about the Eagle court of honor at some point.
My point is just that ideas are everywhere. At the same time, coming up with an idea worthy of 500-800 words everyday sometimes feels like being told “Dance, monkey. Dance!” Performing on queue.
I’ve spent a lot of time around comedians. Some of them professional, some amateur. The biggest difference between the comic that consistently gets paid to be funny and the guy who cracked everyone up at the party last Saturday night, is that the professional can turn it on and off. It’s one thing to make a group of strangers laugh when you are in the groove and feeling funny. It’s another to perform on command. Being able to put aside the bills and the sick kid and the fact that your just aren’t feeling it today, and entertain a crowd.
So, yes, writing everyday means that I write when I’m feeling sick. I write when I’m feeling tired. I write when I struggle to put two words together. There’s a saying among those who pursue the passion of putting words on paper: “Writers write.” It’s literally (and literaturelly) all we do. And like anything, the more you do it, the better you get.
If you’ve ever wondered how people come up with a new topic everyday, it takes practice. And sometimes, when you stuggle for a topic, you write about writing.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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If they tell you to ‘write your own check,’ write a big check
My son-in-law works for a company that has unlimited vacation and sick time. Studies have found that rather than make people more likely to take time off, people tend to take less time for fear they will be judged poorly for taking time away.
It’s just one of many policies in business that can tend to have the opposite of it’s intended results. When I worked for Microsoft, we had an allocated number of vacation days. However, Microsoft in the early 2000’s was a very busy place. People tended to work and do little else. To correct the problem, management instituded a rule. Supervisors would be evaluated on how many days their employees took off. In other words, if your employees didn’t take enough vacation time, it came out of your bonus. We all got much better at taking time off.
It’s review time at my job. Actually, review time is anytime during the year. Your review date is the same as your hire date. Well, almost. In fact, I’m late on my review. I was hired in mid-March. But, a couple years ago, I got a raise and a slightly different job title and it all happened at the beginning of February.
I have two bosses. This is the first year in this new arrangement. I “solid line” to a Senior VP in the IT department and I “dotted line” to a VP in customer service. The Customer Service VP is my day-to-day boss. But, the two of them together are going to write the review. Well, they are just as soon as I get it written. I’ve been asked to write my own review and then submit it to management and let them edit it or add additional comments.
It’s a good process. It lets the managers know (in case they didn’t) what the employee has been working on and what the employee thinks is important. And the employee (that’s me) gets to emphasize the thinks I think are important.
Great. I get to “write my check.” Easy, peasy, right? All I have to do is write down all the stuff that will make me look good. How tough could that be? And I can focus on the good stuff and downplay the bad stuff. Well, maybe not downplay them too much. I mean, my boss does know about any screwups this year. So, we’d better include the screwup section.
But, the rest of it, is wide open and up to me. All I have to do is highlight my outstanding contributions this year. That should be easy. But, it’s really been a team effort. My boss has been in almost every meeting that I’ve been in this year. I can’t get too crazy on the praise thing.
But, going too lowkey can be an equal problem. If I paint myself as a shrinking violet, who really didn’t do much, not only will my boss know I’m lying, and not be impressed, anyone who doesn’t know I’m lying will wonder what they pay me for?
Writing your own review is a skill. It’s one that despite my extensive writing background, I still struggle with. How to strike the balance between modesty and braggadocio? Fortunately, I’ve saved my weekly reports for the year. I will review them. I’ve also done several big projects. Those will go in there. I’ve worked successfully with teams across my compnay and across the client’s company.
Reveiw time is my least favorite time of year. And the fact that it comes during tax season just makes it all the worse.
Well, I’m off to write my check. Hopefully there’s enough in the bank to cover it.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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You know the saying, “these are my people”? Well, these were not my people. Last night I attended a Black Lives Matter meeting in Ogden, UT. I don’t know what I expected. Whatever it was, the meeting failed to meet any of my expectations.
Let me explain how I ended up there in the basement of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ogden. My daughter recently moved to Ogden. She doesn’t know anyone. She’s getting out of a bad relationship and Ogden is the place that has the services she needs right now. She’s also black. I live in Pleasant Grove, UT. It’s about 70 miles South of Ogden, on the other side of Salt Lake City.
Through a friend, I noticed that the BLM chapter in Ogden was meeting in the Unitarian Church just three blocks from where my daughter is staying. I told her she should attend. She can meet people. She can volunteer. She can start to network.
She’s very shy. And she is very uncertain of herself right now.
I decided that I should go. I’m not shy. I’m not uncertain of myself and I’m not too bad at networking. The meeting started at 6:00. . .on a workday. The commute to get there took me through the heart of Salt Lake City rush hour. Oh, and we were in the middle of snowstorm. I left my house at 5:00. I eventually got to Ogden at 7:00.
What comes to mind when you hear Black Lives Matter? No doubt you have some ideas. So did I. But, I was here to support my daughter and help her meet people in her new city. I decided I could check my own feelings at the door. “I’m here to listen and learn,” is a phrase I practiced on my way there. I needn’t have bothered. No one cared.
The group was nothing like what I expected. I expected politics. There was none. I expected firey speeches. The meeting was about as agitated as a sunday school lesson.
The Ogden chapter of BLM was there for three purposes. First, they were planning the coming year’s events. They split up into committees: An events committee, an education committee, an LGBTQ outreach committee. Each committee worked on a plan and then presented it to the group.
They were also there to talk about protests. Okay, here we go. Here’s the militant side coming out. I steeled myself to be tolerant. I needn’t have. This week there was a case at a local high school where a black student was spit on, called a racial slur and attacked. He defended himself. The school interviewed the white kid he’d had the altercation with. The school then informed the black kid that he was suspended, couldn’t attend prom and might have charges brought against him.
The BLM and its sister group the United Front initiated a calling campaign to the high school. “Be polite. Don’t curse. Don’t threaten.” The school is refusing to reconsider the punishment, but is doing an internal investigation. BLM has decided they are going to hold a protest.
For how many of you will this be your first protest?
I, along with a dozen other people raised our hands.
Can someone please pass out the protest rules to the new folks?
Ever wondered what the rules of engagement are for a BLM protest? They are pretty simple:
Do not respond to racial taunts
Do not step on school property
Do not curse
Do not touch another person or any sign or flag they may be carrying
Record everything
It was about as mild as you could get.
The third activity for the evening was building comfort kits for the homeless. The attendees had brought gallon ziploc bags and snacks, toiletries, hand warmers and supplies for the homeless. The 30 people in attendance made nearly 100 comfort bags. The remaining supplies were then donated to the food pantry at the church. Included in every bag was a “Know Your Rights” card, explaining what to do if stopped by the police.
I met several people. I made sure my shy daughter made some contacts both with the church and local BLM leaders. Most importantly, I changed my perspective. I came prepared to set aside my differences. What I didn’t expect was that we would unite behind common causes.
The Unitarian Universalist Church is not only non-denominational, it’s non-dogmatic. They welcome Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddists, Pagans and Atheists. A granola bar doesn’t have a religious affiliation. A packet with a toothbrush, razor and feminine pads, doesn’t come with a tie to a religion. Unless, it’s the universal religion that says we should take care of each other.
Last night I met a lot of people who were living that sermon. They didn’t change my political beliefs, but they didn’t try. It’s not at all what I expected.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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(This post was original published 2/22/2017. I’ve updated it very slightly)
If you live in the United States, you know that Monday February 19th was Presidents Day. (There’s actually debate over whether the apostrophe should be included: President’s, Presidents’ or Presidents. This post isn’t about that controversy.) We celebrate Presidents Day to remember Presidents Washington and Lincoln. There’s no question that Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809. He would have turned 208 last Monday. It’s probably a good thing they did that statue of him in Washington based on when he was younger.
It’s less clear when George Washington’s birthday was. If you look at your calendar, it will clearly tell you that he was born on February 22, 1732. So, feel free to have a party today celebrating George’s 286 birthday. Just don’t expect George to show up for it. And not just because he’s been dead for 218 years.
See, George already celebrated the big 286 back on February 11. In fact, throughout his life George Washington consistently celebrated his birthday on February 11. . .even after the government switched it to February 22.
When Washington was born, the American colonies, as part of the British empire followed the Julian calendar. It was called Julian because it was conceived by Julius Ceasar. The process of days and months were put together by the famous general. He named a summer month after himself: July. August was named after another Roman emperor, Augustus Ceaser. October was named for Octavious. If you look at the calendar, you will notice that those three months, all named after famous Roman leaders, all have 31 days. It’s not a coincidence that they made sure that their month had at least as many days as anyone else’s. Alas, poor February took the brunt of abuse. (Probably because there was no Emperor February to protect it. February is based on the latin word februare which means “to purify.”)
But what does Julius Ceasar’s calendar devised in 45 BC have to do with George Washington? Very, very little, it turns out. But, very, very little is not nothing. See, Ceasar (actually his calendar guy) figured out that we needed a leap year. He switched the calendar from a lunar cycle to a cycle based on the sun. And he understood that the earth rotation around the sun wasn’t exactly 365 days. So, every four years we got a leap year. And that’s how it continued. . .for a long time. . .like really long. . .hundreds of years. But, we don’t just add an extra day every four years. Because even with the leap year we still are just slightly off of matching the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun. To compensate, we actually add “leap centuries.”
About 1500 years after Ceasar fixed the calendar, it was broken again.
Every year that is exactly divisible by four is a leap year, except for years that are exactly divisible by 100, but these centurial years are leap years if they are exactly divisible by 400. For example, the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 were.
– Wikipedia
In 1582, Pope Gregory fixed the calendar. The world hadn’t been counting those leap centuries and the days were off by about 10. When the rest of Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar, the British stayed on the Julian calendar. Why didn’t they get on board with the latest technology? Henry VIII. The guy who had all those wives. He wanted to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon after she failed to produce a male heir. But, being Catholic, you had to get the Pope’s permission to get your marriage annulled. (And the fact that they had a daughter makes the whole question of annulment an interesting one anyway.) Catherine was the sister of the King of Spain, at the time that Henry was trying to get his annullment, the Pope was a prisoner of Catherine’s nephew Emperor Charles V.
Catherine didn’t want a divorce, and made sure her nephew understood her wishes. He in turn let his prisoner, the Holy See, know that it would be a very bad idea to annoy his aunt. Pope Clement VII was clearly not a stupid man and refused to grant the annullment. Not getting the result he wanted from the Catholic church, Henry decided he’d form his own Church. Which he did in 1530 and promptly granted himself an annulment.
As you have no doubt noticed, 1530, the date of the split between the Anglican Church in England and the Catholic church, is before Gregory fixed the calendar in 1582. So, by the time the Catholic church got around to fixing the calendar by adding 10 days, England had decided it wanted nothing to do with the Church in Rome, including their new fangled calendar. So, England stuck to the Julian calendar and the rest of Europe updated their dates to reflect the new Gregorian Calendar. And that’s how it stayed for a lot more years, until 1752. It was in that year that the British Empire finally got on board with the new calendar. By now the two systems were 11 days out of sync.
To sync the calendars, it was decided that Wednesday September 2, 1752 would be followed by Thursday September 14. And that was officially the shortest two weeks in the history of the world. Now that the calendars were in sync, they still had to fix the dates. It was decided that things like birthdays would also be moved forward 11 days so that the celbrations were still happening about the same time of the year. Washington, as has been said, was born in 1731. He was obviously born before the big calendar switch. So, his birthday, like everyone elses jumped forward 11 days. They also shaved nearly a year off his age, by moving the year of his birth from 1731 to 1732. This was done by changing the start of the year (from March 25 to January 1) and pushing all dates ahead one year. It was designed to keep people’s physical age closer to their calendar age
The problem was that Washington decided he didn’t like February 22. He continued to celebrate his birthday on the same day that he had for the first twenty years of his life: February 11. (Well, the first 19 years of his life after the calendar change.)
So, as you raise a glass to Old George today, realize that he’s already had his party 11 days and a year ago.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Cliff Young was 61 years old. He was racing against younger runners. Some much younger.
The race was 544 miles long. It went from Sydney Australia to Melbourne.
The record was a little over 7 days for a runner to complete the course.
In 1983, the year Cliff ran, the second place finisher beat the previous record, finishing in 6 days, and 1 hour. When he crossed the finish line after six days, he was ten hours behind Cliff Young.
How does an aging cattle rancher win an ultra marathon against professional athletes?
He won for two reasons, he didn’t know “the right way” to run, and he refused to give up.
Yesterday I wrote about Ester Ledecka, a world class snowboarder who borrowed someone’s skis and won the gold medal in the Olympic Super G. She won by going fast and not knowing enough about the course to pick the “right” line down the hill. She picked her own and it worked. She won by 0.01 seconds.
Cliff Young is a classic “tortoise and hare” story. On the first day, he lost badly. The other runners were much faster. However, they all had set running schedules. Some were only going to run a certain number of hours. Others only a certain distance. Cliff? He didn’t seem to have a strategy. Like Forest Gump, he just kept running. He passed the other runners during the night as they slept. Once he got the lead, he didn’t give it up.
So, part of his strategy was to work harder than his competitors. You could say he wanted it more. But, he also, like Ledecka, wasn’t bound by any preconceived ideas.
Everyone was sure that Cliffy, as he became known to millions of fans during the race, would eventually wear out. He claimed to have previous run two to three days straight chasing sheep in the hills. . .wearing gumboots.
But, Cliff didn’t fade. He got slower, but he kept an amazing pace. He had a unique running style, it was called the “Young Shuffle.” It’s a style that ultra marathon runners still use today.
Cliff crossed the finish line after 5 days, 15 hours and 4 min. He’d beaten the previous record by nearly two days. And as was mentioned he beat his nearest competitor by about 10 hours.
I take a lot of inspriration from Cliff Young. And not just because I’m often the oldest member of my project teams. Cliff, ignored conventional wisdom. He was too old. He ran too slow. He was too inexperienced. And yet, Cliff believed in himself.
In my job, in your job, there are established ways of doing things. There are experts. There will be times you are told, “Oh, you can’t do it that way.” Sometimes it’s true. You cannot kayak across a mountain path. But, more often we are simply limited by the experience of others. And if you decide to go against the grain. You may find yourself, like cliff at the end of day one, far behind those doing it “the right” way. But, if you believe in yourself, and you keep going, you just might set a new world record and force everyone else to change their methods to match yours.
It worked for a 61 year old cattle rancher in Austalia.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved