Tackle the governor?
Yes, but you have to put him all the way down. I’m not promoting you just for attempting it.
We were in Louisville, KY at the ribbon cutting for our newest call center. My role this week was deliciously superfluous. All I needed to do was stay out of the way, and not break anything.
The day belonged to the VIPs. From my company we had an Executive Vice President, a couple regular VP’s, the Call Center Manager, and of course, Melissa, our company president. From the local area we had Representative Ron Crimm, the state representative for Kentucky District 33.
(Photo Credit: Kentucky Legislature)
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer
(Photo credit: wfpl.org)
And of course, Governor Steve Beshear.
(Photo Credit: Kentucky Governor’s Office)
A visit from the governor is not nearly as intrusive as the president, of course, but there’s still a lot of prep. The state highway patrol is tasked with keeping the governor safe. And they take their jobs very seriously.
We set up our large breakroom as the ribbon cutting area. There was a nice backdrop with the company name on it. A podium with the state seal was delivered from the governors office. Then, the TV cameras started showing up. There were eight of them. They completely blocked the view of everyone sitting at the tables enjoying delicious steak, pork and salmon.
The governor was the last to arrive. A couple of black SUVs pulled up and he came in all smiles and shaking hands. He’s being term-limited out of office, so he was not even in campaign mode.
No. I didn’t tackle him. I didn’t even meet him. I hung in the back of the room and let the VIPs give their speeches. I did have a interesting chat with Representative Crimm. He was slightly hard of hearing, so I’m sure those around us also got to hear about my 13 kids and living in Utah, and the blue scarves we were giving out not only matched University of Kentucky colors, but my alma mater, BYU. We exchanged cards.
My lovely wife, later received a very nice letter from Mr Crimm. It was an unexpected pleasure.
My point in going to Louisville that week was that while it’s important to travel to get the work done, sometimes it’s also important to just be there. Somehow the presence of people from the project team makes the event feel more real.
As an IT guy, don’t skip the ribbon cuttings. They are the payoff for your hard work. . .and the food isn’t bad either.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I sat down at my desk and could immediately smell it. Sour milk. Just a hint. I knew without looking where it was coming from.
I took a deep breath and opened the mini-fridge under my desk. The plastic half gallon was bloated to the point of exploding. Very carefully I put the jug into a plastic grocery bag and tied the top. Then, just to be sure, I bagged it again and gently placed it in my office garbage.
So, what happened? Travel happened. I was back from a week in Kentucky, or it might have been Virginia, the trips have started to blur together. But, even with being gone a week, the milk shouldn’t have gone bad that fast.
But, things happen with you are out of the office. And something happened.
Lately I’ve been out of my office more than in. It got me thinking about the tasks that are critical to do when you are in the office.
Presence
First, there is no substitute for being seen. I’ve always tried to be a manager that focused on results, not on metrics. I tend to believe that if you can get the job done, I don’t care how or when you do it. But, not everyone is like me. And sometimes I’m not even like me.
Many times I have a question, a very specific question and there’s a single person who has the answer. If that person is not at their desk I have to decide, “Is my question important enough to put in email?” Often it’s not. That employee, or coworker just lost an opportunity to build credibility.
My company uses Microsoft Lync for instant messaging. And of course, we all have cell phones, but if you think about your interactions with coworkers, much of the commonality you share is built from the non-work topics you discuss.
Who are you rooting for in the big game?
Did you see the Game of Thrones finale?
How’d your son’s baseball game go?
These are not questions you are going to put into email. When you gone, you lose them. If, like me, you travel a lot, when you are in the office, seek for these opportunities to be “present.”
Accomplish Tasks
Another advantage of being in the office, is that you often have immediate access to critical coworkers. Admit it, we’ve all dodged an email, or let a call go to voicemail. It adds hours and days to the amount of time it takes to accomplish tasks. If I need something immediately, I will walk down the hall, or down the stairs to the engineering team. It’s really hard to ignore someone when they sit on your desk with an “I can wait here all day” look on their face.
Now, it’s important to be courteous, of course, and don’t “shoulder tap” because you are too lazy to follow process. But, if you’ve had a helpdesk ticket stuck in someone’s queue for a week, showing up in person often gets your request added attention. And if you are talking to engineers or programmers, bringing food helps.
Status Updates
Another advantage to physically being in the room is it’s easier to give status updates, especially if they are negative. I recently found myself waiting at the baggage carousal next to our Chief Technology Officer.
Dale, I’m Rodney Bliss.
Rodney, good to meet you in person. You coming back from Richmond?
Yeah, the launch this week. The WORM device install didn’t go the way we hoped.
Why didn’t you have a redundant device when you launched?
That was not a comfortable question. It was a really important question because it highlighted a business decision I’d made, a calculated risk that didn’t pay off. However, I also had his undivided attention. I was able in about 90 seconds to explain why we’d failed and the logic that went into it. And it was so much better than an email. He asked follow up questions and I answered them.
I once had an employee who really screwed up an assignment right before going away for two weeks of training. When he got back, I pulled him aside,
You knew we were struggling to fix the problem you caused. Why didn’t you call, or email or something?
I was afraid of losing my job.
Well, hiding isn’t going to help.
Traveling can be a boost to your career, but rememeber if you travel a lot, you need to maximize your time in the office, and that doesn’t just mean get a handle on your email.
And my issue with the sour milk? While I was gone the cleaning crew unplugged my refrigerator.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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The wind howled over the fallow fields of the Palouse country of eastern Washington. Sleet turned the dead grass on the cemetery hillside into ice. The six of us, my two brothers and my cousins stepped gingerly between the headstones. Our slick dress shoes little better than skis. The burden we carried wasn’t heavy. She had never been a big woman.
We safely navigated to the graveside and placed the casket next to the freshly dug hole. Our suit jackets offered scant protection against the biting wind. A quick prayer and it was done. We hurried back to the relative warmth of the cars.
Goodbye?
How important are goodbyes? Not just when someone dies, but even leaving for brief interruptions?
The woman in the casket was my grandmother, Granny we called her. She was joining my grandfather, “Papa” on a lonely hillside in the tiny town of Tekoa, WA.
It’s been 20 years, but I remember the details clearly. My younger brother and I sang “Amazing Grace” at her funeral service. We had planned to sing “In The Garden” until my mother informed us my grandmother hated that song and insisted it not be sung at her service.
My older brother conducted the service. The cousins agreed that our side of the family was more religious, so a Mormon conducted a service in a Congregational church for a woman who hadn’t embraced any particular religion until just before her death.
It was the first time I’d seen some of my cousins in 15 years. The hotel in Spokane had a piano bar. We all went down and sang out of tune ballads until two in the morning. And some of them I haven’t seen since. We gathered to say goodbye.
Was it important?
My grandfather had passed several years earlier. I was close to Papa. When I was sixteen I spent the summer in that same tiny farming community with my grandfather working on a friend’s farm. It was a magical time for a young man.
When I was twenty one I was attending BYU and I called my mother one day to say hi.
How ya doing, Mom?
I’m better. I was a mess for the first several months after my dad died, but the last few months have been better.
. . .
Rodney? Are you there?
My grandfather died?
You didn’t know? Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh, no.
What?
If you don’t know it means your brother doesn’t know either. Would call him and let him know?
I’ve always regretted not getting to say goodbye. I’ve been to his graveside, of course. But, I missed the opportunity to gather and reminisce with my aunts and uncles. There was no all night sing along with cousins sharing our grief and memories. I missed being there to hug my mother and my grandmother as they dealt with his passing.
My uncle tells me that men in our family die young. He’s the age my grandfather was when an aneurism claimed him peacefully in his sleep. My uncle just had open heart surgery for the second time. We all get old.
This week I’ve been in Richmond, VA. Our client flew in from San Antonio for the launch of a new line of business. As we said goodbye yesterday, it was important to identify the next time we’d see each other.
See you in Louisville on the 17th.
Actually we’ll all be in San Antonio on the 10th for the QBR.
Right. See you then.
It’s important to say goodbye the right way.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Huddled under the Persian tents we watched the rain. The cooking fires gave the desert night a sweet smokey savor.
The Arabian April night was pleasant, despite the rain. I had no idea where we were other than Arabian Peninsula, outside of Dubai. I was here in the United Arab Emirates to teach a Microsoft class. I’d arrived on a Friday March 30th. Saturday was a decompress day. My hotel suggested a desert safari.
This was one of the side benefits of business travel. This was actually a pretty packed trip. Class was Sunday through Tuesday. Wednesday, I flew from Dubai to Athens for another class Thursday through Saturday. I decided to stay in Athens an extra day and fly home on Monday.
I spent my day in Athens touring the Acropolis and the Placa open air market.
Earlier this month I was in Louisville Kentucky. Do you know what there is in Louisville for a baseball fan? The Louisville Slugger baseball museum and factory. It’s not the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NYA, but it’s on the same block for a fan. I would have never gotten to visit it if I hadn’t been in Louisville for business.
I’ve stood in an ancient Scottish cemetery with the nephew of a clan chief as the sound of bagpipes drifted over the heather. I was there thanks to my best friend, who was the nephew, and also a business trip.
The real point is that business travel is necessary and even valuable, but it can also be fun. Don’t forget to enjoy it.
Eventually the rain stopped and the skies cleared. The traditional Arabian food was delicious. And for those of us willing to sit on water soaked wool blankets we climbed on camels and took a short walk through the desert. The walk was probably less than 20 minutes, but the memories last a lifetime.
Remember to make it fun.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Ten thousand three hundred and seventeen, in three weeks.
At 550 MPH, that’s over eighteen hours in the air. And that’s how many miles in how many days I will have been traveling during the month of January. Is it worth it?
We launched two new lines of business in Richmond.
We cut the ribbon on our call center in Kentucky.
I’ll be back in the air next month traveling to San Antonio and then back to Kentucky for another line of business launch.
Why?
Well, sure it’s my job, but what benefits do you get from traveling? It’s a pain. Rs inconvenient. It’s uncomfortable.
But. . .
There are benefits. For example, on a recent trip back from Virginia as I was walking out of the economy captain, a man was walking out of the first class cabin who looked a lot like our company president. As we waited by the baggage claim I approached him,
Is your name Dell?
Yes it is.
I’m Rodney Bliss.
Oh Rodney, nice to actually meet you in person. You’re coming back from Richmond?
Yeah, from the launch this week.
I read your emails. That was a bit of a mess.
And in two minutes I was able to explain how our launch had messed up and what my team did to fix it.
It was a unique opportunity to be one on one with one of the most influential men in our company and explain a mistake. That’s an opportunity I would never have had if I didn’t travel.
Hey Rodney, do you want a beer?
No thanks, Tracy, I don’t drink.
Tracy was a senior VP. We were all in San Antonio preparing for a QBR, or Quarterly Business Review. In addition to Tracy, there were two presidents and two other VPs around the table. In addition to a Senior director and two directors. And then there was me. Our prep was half business meeting, half frat house pizza party.
I would not have been invited to this type of a meeting if we weren’t traveling.
When I took this job, my boss said the travel would be about 5%. My boss is really bad at math. But, the travel has given me the opportunity to quickly establish relationships. Not just with the senior executives, because I don’t actually interact with them much. But, I have the opportunity to work directly with a wide variety of people; call center managers, on phone agents, desktop support engineers, and clients.
Relationships that. Would take months to build otherwise can be built over a shared dinner in San Antonio, or Dallas, or Chicago, or Louisville, or Salt Lake City.
Travel as much as you can. . .it’s worth it.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Reducing stress when you travel is both a matter of what you do and what you don’t. Sometimes a simple change can save you a ton of money. Sometimes it will just save you a few minutes of discomfort.
Don’t Check Luggage
We all know that airlines are trying to get all the money they can. Who wants to pay $25 to check a bag? But the probable, is then your lugging a suitcase through the airport. What do do?
Whatever you do, don’t check your luggage. Most flights are running very near full capacity. Airlines cannot fit all those roller bags in the overhead bins. Every flight I’ve been on in the past six months has done complimentary bag check.
Save some cash and check at the gate for free.
Don’t buckle in
You’ve sat in the gate area for hours, you just want to get on the plane and sit; maybe sleep. Better yet, checking your bag got you bumped up to boarding group 2 and you get on just a little earlier. But, if you’re sitting on the aisle, don’t get too comfortable.
You are going to get up at least twice. Save yourself some aggravation. Wait to buckle in.
Don’t lean back
You’re settled in. You’ve sat through the safety lecture. You’re now in the air. Do you lean back? Three words of advice. . .DON’T DO IT! Sure, if you’re in First Class or Economy Comfort there is plenty of room. But, back in coach, there just isn’t room. You might be in front of this guy.
I know, I know. Even a few inches back makes a big difference. But, you get your comfort at some else’s discomfort. Don’t be that guy. . .or girl. . .woman. . .person.
Don’t stand up too soon
After the flight lands and the plane has taxied to,the gate, the captain turns off the fasten seatbelt sign. Now what? Go back to your book. You’ve got plenty of time. Typically if you are in the back half of the plane, you have ten to fifteen minutes at least. If you have the window seat and you stand up, you are going to be hunched over for those ten to fifteen minutes.
Enjoy your trip. Hopefully, these tips help make your plane trip a little less stressful.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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If it’s Monday I must be in a plane. It’s the story of my life. And it’s a good life. I don’t mind traveling. Over the years and hundreds of thousands of miles, I’ve come up with some travel tips that make travel a little easier. Especially if you travel a lot, these tips are designed to provide a little bit of extra comfort and convenience.
Double Everything
A successful trip starts before you ever leave home. If you are going to be traveling a lot, double everything. I don’t mean clothes. Double the stuff you take with you. This includes toiletries.
This is my travel kit. I only use it when I travel. The great thing about it, is I don’t have to worry about forgetting my razor or toothbrush or deodorant. By keeping it in a travel kit, I can throw it in a bathroom drawer until I need it and I only need to remember one going instead of a list. Just remember to restock when you get back from a trip.
I also have duplicate of chargers and USB cords. These just stay in my travel bag. I don’t have to remember to pack my cell phone charger.
TSA precheck
If you are going to travel very much at all, TSA precheck is a great investment. You go down to the airport prior to your trip, fill out some paperwork, and pay them $85. For that your life becomes one of privilege and prestige for the next five years.
You add your TSA id to your profile at the various airlines and when your boarding pass prints out it has a TSA Precheck designation.
What does your $85 get you?
– you get the short TSA Precheck security line
– you can leave your shoes on going through security
– you can leave your coat on
– leave your laptop in its bag
– leave your liquids in your bag
– go through the metal detector rather than the full body scanner
I got it last year and I haven’t taken more than 2-3 minutes to get through security in the last ten trips. That’s total time from when I first get in line until I’m headed for the gate. Even if you only travel once per year, I think it’s worth it. If you travel every week, it’s stupid to not get it. My company wouldn’t pay for it, but I didn’t even mind the money for the convenience it gives.
Keep the bottle
This
Or this?
That empty water bottle is worth a couple of bucks every time you travel. And with planes traveling at full capacity, if you’re in row 43 it’s going to be a while before the beverage cart makes it to your row.
Just remember to empty it before you get to security. Instead fill it up at one of any number of filling stations in most airports.
Layers
It’s a tough time of year to travel. It was fifty degrees when I left Utah and a blizzard which New York City’s mayor describes as “unlike anything to ever hit this city” is headed for the east coast. Knowing what clothes to wear the day you travel can be a challenge. I use a technique I learned from years of camping: layers.
A polo shirt, a hooded sweatshirt, a scarf and a leather jacket. The scarf might be superfluous, but the rest of it allows me to add or remove layers as
needed. Airplanes are strange environments. Sitting on the Tarmac in Salt Lake City in fifty degree weather, I was opening up the air vent to keep from getting too hot. At 33,000 feet the outside temperature is about thirty degrees below zero. At that altitude, you absolutely rely on the heaters to keep you from becoming a flying popsicle.
But there is just one problem with my layering strategy. It’s near,y impossible to take off your coat packed into the middle seat. Here’s what I’ve found works for me. Pull your coat up over your head. Continue until your entire coat is bunched up in front of you. At this point, it looks like you have your coat on upside down and backwards. But, it’s also simple to pull your arms out and you’ve successfully removed your coat.
The same strategy works when you are driving, but I couldn’t recommend that in good conscience.
Neck Pillows
These are the strangest inventions in travel. They look like something you would put on a life sized version of My Little Pony. But, if you are going to spend hours cramped into a 17″ wide seat, they are literally the opposite of a pain in the neck.
Hopefully these tips help make your next trip a little easier. Do you have a travel tip? Leave it in the comments.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Today marks a turning point for this blog. As longtime readers know, I don’t often talk specifically about blogging.
Going forward I have some exciting things planned. At least they are exciting to me. And I appreciate all of you lending me a few minutes of your day each Monday through Friday to attempt to entertain you. Hopefully, we’ll share a writer/reader relationship for a long time.
Okay, what’s new?
First, I’m moving to a themed layout. Not the actual layout of the blog, I don’t plan on updating that for at least another year. Instead, I’m planning to pick a topic or theme each week to write about. One week might be devoted to business travel, another one might be devoted to coaching employees. Still another might be focused on interviewing.
I attempted this a couple of times with pretty good success in the past.
Up until now, I’ve kind of written whatever took my fancy that day. I have a list of topics I draw on if I have a total brain cramp. But, most times I pick something that has happened the previous day that I can blend together with an IT topic into a single post.
This format has worked pretty well. Starting next week I’m going to put a little more structure around the process. I’m hoping this will make reading this blog less of a kinetic experience, where today you read about running a rafting company in Wisconsin and tomorrow I delve into the intricacies of the ten data areas of the Professional Project Management process.
My goal is to create a more cohesive narrative. One that is more entertaining for you and easier to repurpose into a longer form. That’s scared writer-speak for “I want to start collecting these scratchings into books.”
Don’t worry, I still intend that each day’s entry will be completely self contained. You don’t have to worry about needing to “catch up” if you miss Monday and Tuesday’s post.
Why?
You might wonder why I’m doing this and why now?
First, I’m following the Howard Tayler career path. Howard is my friend who writes the award winning Schlock Mercenary web comic. I admire Howard for his success in transitioning a hobby of drawing comics while working full time for a computer company, into a full time cartooning career.
When Howard started out, he by his own admission “didn’t draw well.” Later, he self deprecatingly described his skill as “less bad.” The fact is that he is very, very good at both drawing and storytelling. However, when he started out he simply drew what he found funny. The story moved forward, but in a somewhat random manner. After a couple of years, he started to organize his stories into “books.” Each story had a beginning, a middle and an definite ending that stretched over several months.
It was only after he started writing more complete stories that he turned his comics into books. Howard has released 11 books so far. He envisions as many as 18 in this current series. At that point he will end the story of Schlock Mercenary.
What does that have to do with me? After all I’m not a cartoonist.
It occurred to me that the first two years of this blog are a lot like some of Howard’s early work; consistent, hopefully well written, but lacking in direction. I realized that I can make the experience better for you the reader by applying some thought, structure and planning.
Do I expect to someday quit my day job and write full-time?
Ask me when I’ve been doing it for a few years.
Finally, why now.
Since March 2013 I’ve updated this blog every Monday through Friday. There are some posts that appear sporadically prior to March, but starting in March it’s been regular as clockwork. Today marks the 500th blog post. It seems like a good spot to pause, take an assessment and think about what I want the blog to become.
So, thank you for your readership. I’m continually amazed and humbled that my thoughts and writings provide some measure of entertainment or usefulness to so many people I’ve never met in person.
I’m grateful you are here as we start What’s Next.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Great job on solving today’s problem, Rodney.
Yeah, Rodney you really saved us on that one.
You’d think I’d be grateful. My boss and my coworkers were telling me what a good job I did resolving a nasty technical issue. I’d just spent two days working with my engineering teams to do an emergency install of a redundant backup system that had failed when we tried to use it the day before.
But, I wasn’t feeling particularly worthy of their gratitude. I was the technical project manager. The word “technical” is right there in the job title. I had run this project. I had vouched for the validity of the technical solution. The very same technical solution that had failed to work the day before.
Every project is a series of tradeoffs. You never have all the resources and all the time and all the features you want. You have to trade off. It’s called “Risk Analysis.” And during the project we identified the risks around our backup solution. The project team considered the issues, weighed the risks and we made our choices.
And when things started to go south the day of the rollout, the risks we had evaluated as low turned into high risks. So, I was looking at the problem and recognizing the choices we could have made months earlier that would have prevented our current outage.
Was I responsible?
Partly.
There were also technical issues that had led to the outage, but I couldn’t get past the decisions we had made months earlier. The risks that we had noted and dismissed. I didn’t feel like they should be thanking me. If they had accused me I might have felt they were more justified.
I wanted to have properly prioritized the risks.
As I was leaving after a 12 hour day with the last of the technical issues finally resolved, the site manager thanked me again.
Great job today Rodney.
Thanks, Derek. But as the technical PM, I figure I’m the one who should have prevented it in the first place. Not feeling really brilliant. . .or competent.
You don’t get it, Rodney. Stuff goes wrong. It’s why we have jobs. But, look at the last two days. When stuff fell apart, you didn’t. You kept your head. You put together a contingency plan. You put in long hours and you led the engineering teams in building a solution. At the same time you managed the client and kept our management team informed. You aren’t being thanked for causing the problem. You are being thanked for the professional manner in which you resolved the problem. That’s valuable. And people noticed. Nice job.
Thanks, Derek.
I really hadn’t thought of it that way. Everyone makes mistakes. How you handle yourself when the system falls apart defines you.
You are at your best when things are at their worst.
– Starman
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Somedays it just doesn’t pay to be me.
I’m a project manager. But what happens when the project doesn’t go as planned? People react differently when things go badly. How you react to a blown project can either build credibility and lay a foundation for solving the problem, or make the problem worse.
1. Stop
First thing to do when things go bad? Stop. Don’t make a bad decision worse by rushing into a solution.
2. Evaluate your options
What choices do you have? There are always options. Doing nothing is an option. Retrying your previous solution is an option. As a project manager sometimes I get to pick the options. But, more often it’s the engineers who will tell me what my choices are.
3. Pick a solution
After evaluating your choices at some point you have to pick one and go. As a PM, I answer to my stakeholders. I will evaluate the solutions and if the decision is a big one I’ll take it to my stakeholders. They expect me to not only recommend a solution but to identify the benefits and risks of each solution. While I have my preferred solution, ultimately the stakeholders have to believe in the solution. They get to pick.
4. Execute
Finally, act on you solution. Again, as a PM I can run a project, but I need engineers to actually make it work. The hardest part of this step is to wait. It’s tempting to pester the engineers, but if you have done your research properly, the key in step 4 is to let the workers work.
It’s easy when you are in the middle of crisis to run to the first solution that presents itself. The pain in a crisis can be excruciating. All you want is for it to stop. But, if you keep your head, you can turn a crisis, if not into a win, at least into less of a loss.
And remember that as bad as your crisis was, as terrible as today may have been, the sun will come up and tomorrow is another day.
Make it a better one.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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