He used to be my boss. Then, he left the company to go take over the family business. Later I left and bounced between a couple of jobs before landing at my current one. He’s one of those Facebook friends that you have because they were once important. It’s not that you don’t like them anymore. You just have less in common. He posted on Facebook recently,
As many of you know, the last few years have been kind of hard on us. We’re going to be making a fresh start in a move to Cheyenne. Thanks for your kind words and acts of kindness.
Knowing he’d left to take over his family business, I felt bad for him. I didn’t know the story, but I really didn’t need to. It made me think, though. He mentioned that he’s selling his house in Salt Lake City. He’d lived just a few miles from me. I probably drove within a mile or two of his house a couple times per week. I’d never seen him since he walked out the door on his last day at our common company.
And now, he’s moving 1000 miles away and I might actually be more involved in his life. I have friends online that I’ve never met. One friend recently lost his wife to a long battle with cancer. I hurt for my friend. She had been a wonderul woman and they ran a community theater in Chicago together. We’ve never met. Not in person anyway.
When Jesus told the crowd to “love your neighbor,” a lawyer asked, “Who is my neighbor?”
Many people don’t know the people who live on their street, or the people who live in their building. I’m lucky. I live in fairly stable neighborhood. Many of the families have been here for years. We’re the newest and we’ve been here for four years. I know all the people on my street. We know that the retired couple at the top of the cul-de-sac need help shoveling their sloped driveway. The single mom across the street lost her aging father last year. I recently replaced the brakes on her van. The next-door neighbors host a 4th of July breakfast for the street. The large family across the other street have helped us with everything from car repairs to Christmas lights. The entire neighborhood watches out for each other.
But, I know that I’m not normal in that respect. In many parts of the United States, people don’t get outside and talk to their neighbors. Often we are closer to the people we interact with online than the people we are physically close to.
Sixteen years ago, we inaugurated a president who upon taking office, stopped all electronic communication. He dropped off of email entirely. Eight years ago when we inaugurated a new president, the big IT discussion was whether or not the president could keep his Blackberry phone. The president wanted it because it would keep him better connected online. The IT staff were worried about the possibility it might get hacked. Last week we inaugurated a new president who not only is obviously keeping his eletronic device, but intends to stay active in social media.
Part of the progression is better security. We know better how to protected a phone than we did 8 years ago. But, I think it also indicates how the internat is drawing us closer together. The White House just announced they are discontinuing their phone lines to handle citizen comments and complaints. Instead they are directory people to their online presence.
The internet and Facebook seem to be reversing the tendency of people to withdraw from each other. Sure, it’s not the same, and in some cases, not as good as actually walking across the street to meet your neighbors. But, sometimes all you need to do to connect with your neighbor is get them to move away to someplace like Cheyenne.
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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Eighteen inches. The forecast had been for anywhere from a trace to a few inches. Even the forecasters admitted that they blew it. I was camping up American Fork Canyon in Utah this weekend. We brought the scouts up for something called the Klondike Derby.
The Klondike is a scouting competition. The boys in each troop compete against the other troops in lashings, and fire building, 1st Aid and map reading, 12 events in all. Oh and in between events, they pull a dog sled. Did I mention that they do all of it in the snow? Snow is an important part of Klondike Derby. A few years ago, the Utah drought meant we had to hold the January derby on dirt, pulling wagons. That was not the case this year.
We were camping at a private campground. Mutual Dell is probably about 80 acres of trails, parking lots, pavilions and camp sites. There were about 25 troops and a couple hundred boys. When we signed up we got to pick the spot we wanted to camp. We picked the Whitlock Pavilion, mostly because it was right next to the parking lot. Little did we know how important that choice would be.
We arrived to a base of about 24″ of snow. The leaders and the boys decided to push tables out of the way and pitch their tents on the concrete floor of the pavilion. I’ve slept on concrete. I opted for pitching my tent slightly outside of the pavilion on the snow. A friend and I stomped down a 7’x7′ base for my tent and I tried to keep snow from blowing into my tent as I set up my gear.
Snow in Utah is different from snow in other parts of the country. We have dry snow. I know that sounds crazy. Snow is water, right? It’s just frozen. But, in Utah, our humidity is so low that the snow acts more like dust than snow. And that dust gets everywhere.
Friday night I went to sleep in a three-man tent. None of my sons came with me on this campout and none of the leaders were interested in sharing a tent pitched in the snow instead of under the cover of the pavilion. Saturday morning, I woke up to a one man tent. The snow overnight had compressed the walls and roof of my tent down to a space just slightly larger than my sleeping bag.
I cannot remember when I have had a more enjoyable night’s sleep on a campout. The base of snow made for a soft bed. Not that I was sleeping directly on the snow. I had a ground sheet, then the tent floor, then my 4″ sleeping pad, and around my 0 degree sleeping bag, I had wrapped another flannel lined sleeping bag. Plus, I had a stocking cap, wool socks with hand-warmers in the them, a warming back taped to the back of my Under Armor long sleeve shirt and warming packs in both pockets of my flannel pajamas. I was toasty warm and absolutely comfortable.
As the other leaders got up Saturday morning, they confirmed one more of my reasons for choosing to sleep out in the snow instead of under cover. The pavilion had a high curved ceiling; probably 20′ high at the peak and a gentle parabolic curve down to about 8′ high at the edges. Under that dome were 8 boys from our troop and 5 or 6 boys down at the end, from another troop. Tent walls are designed for privacy, not sound proofing. The boys talked and laughed far into the night. The sound echoing off the smooth ceiling and being reflected back to bounce off the concrete floor.
Do you know what does block sound well? Insulation made of millions of tiny snowflakes. Throughout the night, the falling snow damped most sounds. As the snow built up on the walls of the tent, it blocked even more of the sounds. The only sound I heard during the night was the snow sliding off the top of my tent to the sides.
Digging out from my tent in the morning involved snow up to my knees. I broke trail to the pavilion and drug my tent over to roll it up on the clear floor. We definitely enjoyed having a clear set of tables to fix our breakfast on. The pavilion was a brilliant location.
One additional benefit to our spot, we realized later in the morning. One troop packed up their gear and headed for home before the competition started even started. Their problem? Their boys all put their boots outside their tent Friday night. They weren’t under a pavilion. They not only had to dig out their tents, they had to dig out their boots as well.
Gotta pick your spots.
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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Detective Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”
Something remarkable happened today. Something we would call unprecedented, if it hadn’t happened dozens of times before. This morning, there was a man who literally had the power of life and death. At his command, he could launch armies, the likes of which the world has never seen. He had the power to overrule the law, absolving people of any and all crimes. He literally had the power to order the deaths of individual American citizens. He also controlled the most powerful nation on earth. Billions hung on his every word. His every whim was taken care of by a host of attendants.
This afternoon, that man has none of that power. He cannot command even a single soldier. His words no longer cause nations to tremble. He no longer has a driver, or any government supplied servants, except men to guard him.
If this were Iraq or Libya, we’d say that the leader had been deposed.
Instead, this is America, where without so much as a harsh word, the most powerful person in the world peacefully handed over all that power to a man with whom he disagreed. He empowered a man that many (including the outgoing leader) thought unfit, even dangerous, to hold those reins of power.
The American president weilds power unlike anything the world has ever seen. And yet, every 4 or 8 years, even when the campaign for president has been strained, the actual transfer happens smoothly and peacefully. Given the history of the world, it is truly a remarkable or “curious” incident.
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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Anything I don’t understand must be easy.
– Pointy Haired Boss
I have been accused of running my teams using this advice. Generally, with a smile and a wink. But, many of us, I would venture that all of us, suffer from this same philosophy.
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
– Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
We understand space is big. We maybe don’t understand that bit about the chemist. What do you need from the chemist and what’s a chemist anyway? But, space? Yeah, we’ve got that down.
Sure, Star Wars and Star Trek are science fiction. (Galaxy Quest, on the other hand, “It’s all true. I knew it!”) And, even though we know that spaceships canotn “warp” or use “hyperspace” to jump around the galaxy, we’ve got a pretty good grasp of the concepts of space.
Or do we?
Look at the following quiz on a few space topics (answers at the bottom of the post.)
How far above the earth is the International Space Station?
- 22 miles
- 220 miles
- 2,220 miles
- 22,220 miles
- 222,220 miles
- 2,222,220 miles
How far above the earth is the satellite that your satellite TV uses?
- 22 miles
- 220 miles
- 2,220 miles
- 22,220 miles
- 222,220 miles
- 2,222,220 miles
How far away is the moon from the earth?
- 22 miles
- 220 miles
- 2,220 miles
- 22,220 miles
- 222,220 miles
- 2,222,220 miles
We tend to think of space as. . .well, space. It’s big and it’s out there. Back on September 5, 1977 we launched a satelitte called Voyager. It played around in the solar system awhile and then headed for a star called AC +79 3888, which is a modest 17.6 light years away. Voyager is currently the fastest mademade object in history. It’s screaming along at 38,000 MPH. It’s also the object farthest from earth. There’s some debate over whether it’s actually left the solar system yet. It’s 11.7 billion miles from earth. (That’s 11,700,000,000 miles. That’s twice the distance from the earth to Pluto.)
Okay, so the point? Space, the bigness of space. Voyager, at that septuble-digit speed will scoot across that 17.6 light years to its next destination in just about 40 years. . .Wait, no, 40 thousand years. That’s a long time. All of recorded human history is only about 10,000 years.
Your grandkids won’t be downloading pictures from Voyager’s travel log. We literally have no idea how to get to the next solar system. Mostly because space is really, really big.
Maybe you already had a feel for space distances. We tend to think about space as a single place. We are just a little space in a great big space. What’s this have to do with business or anything?
Just that if you don’t understand space, it’s easy to say, “We should find other habitable planets and go there.” We’re making amazing progress at finding them, but the “go there”? We have no idea.
As a manager, you need to avoid doing something similar when you work with other teams. If I don’t understand the procurement process, it’s easy for me to criticize them for taking 10 days to get me a new PC when
I can go to WalMart at lunch and have it in my office this afternoon. It shouldn’t take you so long!
Also, if you are in procurement it’s easy to look at engineering and say,
Why does it take them 10 days to get us a SharePoint site? I can share out a folder on my harddrive and people can see it right away.
Procurement can explain why they take so long to get your a laptop and engineering can explain to you why it takes so long to set up secure shares. But, the less you know, the easier it is to decide, “They should do it differently.”
So, have some patience with your coworkers and other departments. And understand how other people see your department and your position.
Oh, and here are the distances:
- Space station – 220 miles
- Satellite TV in geosynchronis orbit – 22,220 miles
- The moon – 222,220 miles
The distance to the chemist? I’ll let you know when I find 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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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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There’s an old joke:
Doctor, it hurts when I do this. . .
Then don’t do that.
My neck doesn’t hurt. In fact, it doesn’t hurt a lot. It doesn’t hurt when I lay on my right shoulder. It doesn’t randomly spasm when I’m typing and send shooting pains down my upper arm and forearm. And to go along with that, my right hand isn’t numb either. No minor tingling in my fingers, or pain across the back of my hand.
Nope, my neck, shoulder, arm and hand all feel fine.
Back in 1997, Roberto Benigni made a film called “Life Is Beautiful.” It was a great movie. Even though it was filmed in Italian, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. It won for Best Actor, Best Music and of course, Best Foreign Language Film.
The tagline for the film was
An unforgettable fable that proves love, family and imagination conquer all.
It was a comedy.
It was very funny.
It was set in a concentration camp in WWII and the main character is killed. (Sorry to spoil it for you, but it’s been 20 years, you should have seen it by now.)
Benigni, who wrote, directed and starred in the film was criticized for filming a comedy that seemingly made light of the horrors of the Nazi death camps.
I think Benigni did a good thing.
I have a friend, Dave, who is a professional writer. He has been a writer almost as long as he has been my friend, and he has been my friend for nearly 30 years. In addition to New York Times bestsellers, Dave writes a blog. He gives advice to new authors. He’s been a teacher to some of the most famous authors of the past 20 years. Yesterday, Dave wrote about the need to follow your heart, if you are a writer. Yesterday, I wrote about the fact that life can be mean and nasty and will beat you to your knees if you let it.
I think we’re both right. And that’s what Benigni was saying. Of course, life in a concentration camp was hell on earth. Even with the separation of decades, we can still smell the stench of the ovens and hear the screams from the “showers.” Nothing that I have to endure can even compare. I will never really understand that horror.
But, even in the midst of tragedy, there can be rays of light. We are the ones to make our lives. And the way we do that is to choose. Life will happen regardless of our involvement. But, we have the choice to be idle spectators, being acted on by life, or taking control.
In my family we pick our relatives. That might seem strange, but a combination of circumstances have come together in a way that allows me, my kids, my parents, to decide which people we want in our lives. I have relatives who are pretty negative. I’m an adult. They are adults. Do we have to interact? I don’t have to pick them.
No. I can simply choose not to choose that person. Sometimes I want someone in my life, a wayward niece, for example, and they don’t want a relationship. In that case, I’m like the single guy in college who really, I mean really wants to have a conversation with that girl in his History 201 class. Sorry, buddy. It takes two to Tango. If my niece decides she wants to reconnect, Facebook is still there.
We each have the opportunity to select whom and what we surround ourselves with. Want to be a writer? Write. Want to be a comic? Find an open mic and get up on stage. Want to be a doctor? Go back to school.
As my friend Dave pointed out, we have it within us to do what we want. And as I pointed out, it’s not a job, or a certain amount of money that will give that fulfillment. It’s our choices and our ability to look around and find the positive.
Like my non-neck pain. A few months ago, it was terrible. I literally thought it might disable me. (When you cross over the half century mark, everything starts to look like it potentially might disable you.) But, I made some changes. I changed how I carried my computer. I adjusted how I sat. I got a new keyboard and mouse. And my pain went away.
So, when I’m looking for that positive spark. I’m looking for that “Life is Beautiful” moment, I just think, “My neck doesn’t hurt today.” That alone brings a smile to my lips.
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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It sounds like typical new-age mumbo-jumbo: “Create the life you want to live.” Typically, it’s got a picture of somone on a beach, or a boat backlit by a beautiful sunset. We look at. We sigh. And then we go back to the drudgery that is our lives and think, “If only that were me.”
The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much can you take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.
– Rocky Balboa
Life is not what you make it. Life is what you make of it. There’s a difference.
My kids love to cook. My youngest son make waffles this morning before school. He used the waffle mix, but he also knows how to read a recipe and make the batter from scratch. He knows how to make something. However, he’s more at a loss when we are out of waffle mix, and we don’t have any eggs to make the waffles from scratch. He can look at a recipe and say,
Give me the ingredients and I can make that.
He’s less good at looking at a random pile of ingredients and saying,
Here’s what I can make of that.
Life is like that. We don’t get a recipe and all of the ingredients. We get a pile of stuff and are expected to figure it out.
It’s great to love your job. But, even the most exciting job has parts that suck. And if you get paid to do something you used to do for fun, you need to find a new hobby. (Howard Needed A New Hobby.) And work is easier if you at least like your job. Personally, I enjoy my job a lot. There are parts that make me very excited. There are also parts and people that make me question my career choice.
The trick, in my opinion, is to not get your validation from your job. (Company Loyalty Only Ever Goes One Way.)
We all fantasize about what it would be like to ditch our job and our responsibilities and head to the mountains, or the beach, or Paris, or Fiji. We see those motivational posters and think, “Yeah, I should . . .” and then, we’re stuck. You should. . what? Leave your job? Remember how much work it was to get the job? And remember how important the health benefits are? And the money?
I should. . .leave my family? If that’s your thought, get to counseling.
So, what is it that the pretty picture with the sunset and the sailboat is actually doing for us? It’s showing us the sunshine and rainbows that Rocky talks about. That ain’t life. Life is what we make of it. It’s kids with a fever at 3:00am and you have an important meeting tomorrow. It’s that strange knock in your engine and payday is still two weeks away. Life is what happened while you were making other plans. (John Lennon)
The “hard” parts aren’t the hard parts. The hard is what makes it great. (Jimmy Dugan) How you choose to deal with it determines your life, your satisfaction and ultimately your happiness. Bad things happen to everyone, even that guy and girl in the pretty picture on the sailboat.
We have to first accept that life can be hard, it can be mean and nasty. So, what are you going to do about it? And when you accept that life can be unfair and unkind, you can then take ownership of how you choose to react. How much you keep moving after getting hit.
And once you decide to take ownership of how you react to life, you also get to take ownership of the happiness in your life. Happiness is not something that happens to us, it’s something we create. It’s the result of what we make of life.
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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President Barack Obama and former President George W Bush are 11th cousins. Mr Obama is 8th cousins with former Vice President Dick Cheney. The president is also related to Texas senator Ted Cruz. They are 14th cousins. . .once removed.
A friend of mine recently announced she was leaving Facebook. Some drama had developed and she felt the best way to end it was to step away from social media. I was disappointed because she’s a relative and before Facebook, I didn’t even know she existed. Now it’s how we keep in touch. She’s my 2nd cousin, once removed.
Everyone has cousins if you go back far enough. But, that whole 1st, 2nd, 3rd deal can be confusing. And if you kick them out of your house, are they now once removed? (No, but we’ll get to that.)
I grew up with my cousins. We had birthday parties together, saw each other at Christmas, and of course we resigned to the “kids table” together at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I figured out the people I’d been referring to as cousins were actually my 2nd cousins. It’s actually pretty simple.
We all know what a 1st cousin is. Your aunts’ and uncles’ kids. You share the same grandparents with your first cousins. If you share a greatgrandparent with someone, you are second cousins. So, if your grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, we are second cousins. Here’s a picture of me and my cousins.
The man in the chair is my great-grandfather, Tandy Blair. I’m the little kid on the floor between his feet. The girl second from the right with the blond hair is my “cousin” Kris. Actually, she’s my 2nd cousin. Her grandmother and my grandmother were sisters. Tandy was their father.
If you share the same great-grandfather, you are 2nd cousins. If you share the same great-great-grandfather, you are 3rd cousins. At this point it’s easier to switch our perspective. If Kris and I are 2nd cousins, then our kids are 3rd cousins. My friend who is leaving facebook is Kris’s daughter, Nicole. Nicole is 3rd cousin to my kids. Since Kris and I are 2nd cousins, and Nicole is one generation removed from Kris, Nicole and I are 2nd cousins, once removed.
If you have the same. . .you are . . .
parents. . . siblings
grandparents. . .1st cousins
great-grandparents . . .2nd cousins
great-great-grandarents. . .3rd cousins
great-great-great-grandparents. . .4th cousins
Nicole recently had a baby. Kris’s grandchild is two generations removed from Kris. Through the magic that is Facebook, I got to meet my 2nd cousin twice removed. If Nicole is 3rd cousin to my kids, then, Nicole’s child is 4th cousin to my grandkids. In other words, they share the same great-great-great-grandfather, Tandy Blair.
Family is important to me, and extended family is important, but I was struck, again by how much closer social media has pulled us. We look at a story saying Presidents Obama and Bush are 8th cousins and it seems like a long ways apart. And yet, I realized, I actually know people (granted, they are little people at less than 3 years old) who are 4th cousins. Suddenly the world doesn’t seem quite so large.
Note: I’ve simplified the relationship tree slightly. Technically you share the same great-grandparents as your siblings, of course. To determine your “cousin-ness” find the first common progenitor and count down from there.
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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We sat there. . .waiting. And if you were late, woe is you. We were never late.
The smells from the homecooked meal wafted up from the steaming dishes tempting our resolve.
But, we waited: my mother, my brothers, my sister and me. . .waiting.
My dad was always the last to arrive. Once he arrived, we could eat.
I’ve been in meetings that remind me of my early dinner memories. You don’t start before the boss shows up and he’s going to make an entrance. I’ve never understood the desire to attempt to exert influence by making people wait. I understand that people do it, but I’ve never understood why. Maybe they don’t realize what they are doing. It’s hard to imagine, but a healthy ego and a lack of social awareness could lead you to being oblivious that you’re wasting people’s time.
I went to a convention one time with my friend Tim. Tim was celiac. He couldn’t eat gluten, found in most flour. So, when it was time to eat, he had a special meal ordered. We were eating in the convention hall and it was a pseudo-catered event. The meals, excepting those for people like my friend, were all the same, but waiters brought them to our table and served us.
At our table, the waiters brought everyone a plate except for Tim. We understood that his, being a special order, would take longer. So, we waited, because that’s what you do. Tim was telling a funny anecdote. And we waited. The punchline was pithy and dry in a Scottish sense of humor way. And we waited.
Finally, Tim clued in to the fact that no one at the table was eating.
Why is no one eating?
We were waiting for your food to arrive before we start.
Oh, please! Eat! Don’t wait on me.
And we ate.
Maybe the chronically late managers are like my friend Tim on that one occasion. Maybe they don’t see it.
Maybe.
When I ran meetings, I typically had an agenda and the meeting couldn’t start before I arrived. At one point I was managing both a team of email engineers and a team of Microsoft SharePoint engineers. I had to figure out how to avoid wasting their time. The SharePoint guys didn’t really care about the email issues. The email guys didn’t care about SharePoint. I cared about both. The solution was to hold a 90 minute meeting. The first 30 minutes was devoted to email issues. The middle thirty was combined issues. The last 30 was dedicated to SharePoint. The email guys stayed for the first 60 minutes, the SharePoint guys for the last 60.
What it really meant was that I, as the leader ended up in 90 minutes of meetings. And that’s the point, the leader should be inconvenienced for the team, not the other way around.
Now that I’m the dad, we’ve adopted a different family tradition. My grandmother, my father’s mom, used to “wait” in her own special way.
We will wait for you. . .like one pig waits for another.
I’m not sure how grandma would run a meeting, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t make everyone wait until she arrived.
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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The picture was nearly indescribable, even for a writer. From a hilltop in the Scottish highlands looking down a long narrow valley. The heather was just starting to bloom. The sky, so often gray and rainy in April, was an incredible shade of azure blue. Big puffy white clouds hung like cotton balls illustrating some children’s book. The hilltop was occupied by monuments to the dead and departed. Rock cairns 12 feet high. Grave markers, the names and dates chiseled in granite, had been worn down over time to the point that they were indecipherable.
It was the perfect picture of Scotland. At least to an American. It was what the TV and movies tell us Scotland should look like. And then somewhere down in the valley, out of site came the haunting strains of someone on the pipes.
I’ve travelled a fair amount internationally. When I was working for Microsoft, I often made trips to do training around the world. As any business traveller can tell you, it’s not all that exciting. You see the airport. Then you see the inside of a taxi which takes you to a hotel that looks like any of a hundred other hotels you’ve been to. In the morning, you get into another taxi and go to a training room, or a convention center designed more for function than asthetics. You deliver your speech, or your lesson to a group of people. You go out to eat, typically your one and only interaction with the local scenary. Then it’s back to the hotel. And another taxi ride and airport visit in the morning.
Typically business travel doesn’t let you see much of the city, let alone the country you are visiting.
Several years ago, I was asked to speak at a conference at The Hague, in the Netherlands. My friend Tim was also one of the speakers. I live in Utah, a long way from the Netherlands. Tim lives in Scotland, a short flight to The Hague.
Rodney, why don’t you come a few days early and stay with my family in Edinburgh?
Are you sure?
Absolutely. We’d love to have you and I can show you a bit of the countryside.
Tim is descended from a very proud Scottish family, or clan. His uncle is the clan chief. (Yes, in the 20th Century, clans and chieftains were still a thing in Scotland.) His family isn’t from Edinburgh, though. His family lived in the Highlands. Northern Scotland is unique. It’s much different than Southern Scotland, and certainly different than England.
Hey, Tim, do you know what the difference between England and America is?
You know I’m Scottish, not English, right?
Yeah. The difference is that in America we think a hundred years is a long time and in England you. . .they. . think a hundred miles is a long way.
(I would not recommend anyone confuse a Scotsman with being English. Just a warning.)
Our trip through the highlands encompassed about 200 miles. The roads were in good condition, but narrow two lane affairs that wended their way around great sweeping curves and down into hidden valleys. The hardest part was that they drove on the wrong side; a scary endeavor when the driver is pushing Autobahn speeds.
Rodney, we do NOT drive on the wrong side of the road.
Oh yeah? What side of the road to Americans drive on?
The right side. . .
And the opposite of right is wrong.
Tim picked up speed on the next curve as a response. As we got closer to his family’s traditional home, we drove through small towns, each of which it seemed, had a story. Some were of betrayal and warfare.
So, when did that take place?
About 1670’s. But don’t mention it to anyone if we stop. They’re still a little sore about it.
Eventually we ended up on a green hilltop with an ancient stone shed guarding the entrance to a small, but very old cemetery. As we walked among the tombstones, Tim pointed out the markers of the past clan chiefs. We finally came to rest between two massive rock cairns. One for his grandfather, the other for an uncle. Both previous clan leaders. As the notes from the piper started I turned to my friend,
Tim, this is the epitome of an American’s traditional view of Scotland.
He simply stared out across the heather covered hills as the clouds lazily made their way across the deep blue sky.
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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We had planned to meet for dinner in the hotel restaurant. He arrived first and while he was waiting, had ordered an appetizer of chips and salsa.
Bad move.
In honor of my friend Tim, and his incredible career, I thought I’d tell a story about when we had to work together. Got to. When we got to work together. I had recently left Microsoft and was doing work as an independent consultant. Since I had worked for both WordPerfect, the original maker of Novell GroupWise email system, and Microsoft, the maker of the Exchange email system, I attempted to carve out a niche right in the middle. I sold myself as an expert on the migration between the two.
And it was true. . to a point. Truthfully, I was a smart technical guy with a long history of email administration and my friend Tim had assured me that he had access to a wonderful migration tool to take Microsoft Exchange 5.5 accounts and migrate them to GroupWise. The fact that I hadn’t actually migrated any mailboxes was a detail that turned out to not be pertinent.
Microsoft Exchange 5.5 was significant because it was the last version of Exchange that had its own directory system. That might not sound like a big deal, but back ten to fifteen years ago it was huge. It meant that you could put Exchange 5.5 on your Novell NetWare network. You didn’t need Microsoft Active Directory, or Windows NT. For companies that were trying to avoid completely embracing the Dark Side, it was an important distinction. However, Exchange 2000, the next version after 5.5, required you not only upgrade your email system, but upgrade your directory to AD as well.
Novell saw an opportunity to win back some email accounts by offering a migration path to GroupWise. That’s where I came in. Well, it’s where I wanted to come in. And that’s where Tim came in. Tim was (and is) a respected expert on all things Novell, including GroupWise. His company, NDS8, which is sadly closing its doors this week, was respected as one of the top integrators in the world. And NDS8 was Tim.
Tim let it be known that in his opinion, I was the top world expert on Exchange 5.5 –> GroupWise migrations. It was largely as a result of that recommendation that I got the gig. We were migrating 5000 users at a hospital in Fargo, ND. We were there during the summer, and it was lovely. Really, if your only impression of North Dakota in general and Fargo in particular is the movie, you have no idea. First, the movie was shot in winter. . .in Minnasota. Second, the locals hate it when you reference the movie.
The gig went really well. And the tool that Tim supplied me also worked well. I worked with a brilliant group of Novell consultants. The project started in the spring and went all the way through the summer. At one point, our lead Novell consultant had a conflict. Novell came to me and asked if I knew of anyone who could step in and do the network side of the migration?
Yes, actually, I know a guy.
Tim, as an independent contractor had no problem working in the United States, despite the fact he lives in Scotland. I was delighted that his schedule allowed him to join the project. We spent a lot of hours pouring over spreadsheets and log files.
It was one night shortly before we were ready to do the cutover that we had what should have been a typical dinner. He was already at the table and was just about to put another chip in his mouth when I walked into the restaurant.
Tim, I thought you couldn’t eat wheat.
What do you mean?
Well, that whole celiac thing. Isn’t gluten one of the things that you are supposed to avoid?
Yes, of course.
I saw realization dawn as his face fell.
These chips aren’t made of corn?
Slowly, I shook my head.
Oh boy. I may be a little late in the morning. I’m in for a bad night of it.
The next morning as he came down to breakfast, he looked like he hadn’t slept all night. Later, I found out it was because he hadn’t slept all night. Fortunately, he made a full recovery and the migration, the job that he got for me before I got it for him, went smoothly and definitely bolstered my resume.
NDS8 will be missed by all those in the Novell community.
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