My youngest son turns 15 years old tomorrow.  I’ve been reflecting on the past.  15 years ago I was a bit scared.  I had 2 kids that were 4 and 2 years old.  I had a decent job that I enjoyed and my wife worked at the same company.  I knew my wife would not go back to work after Ben was born.  How would we make it on one salary?  My prayers were intense and answered.  I prayed that I could make a living to support this large family.  I had no idea it would be Lotus Software.  I applied for a job developing Oracle forms.  We were a big Oracle shop and our manufacturing applications ran on Oracle.  I came in second place for that job.  At the time, I was working with FoxPro and MS Access supporting a busy sales organization.  Part of the Sales group started a large Sales Automation project and Lotus Notes was a component of that project.  I was on the outside looking in but I wanted in.  Lotus Notes, from what I could gather, looked like a platform I could be successful and the project was highly visible.  I’d earned some respect in the company and I asked on of the IT managers for an opportunity with Lotus Notes.  The corporate IT group wanted to replace some mainframe apps with a new Intranet.  The IT manager thought I’d be a perfect fit.  I got the Lotus Notes job and a year 2000 remediation project.  They sent me to 3 training classes, hired a consultant with experience and gave me a good project right away.  The project had to run in Notes client and browser and it was an HR job posting application.  Great learning experience.  It wasn’t long before I was helping some junior developers on a Help Desk application.  I was off and running…and it only got better.

What Lotus Notes did for me and how it changed my life:

• For 15 years, I’ve supported my family on one salary.  I’m very proud of that accomplishment and Lotus Notes did it for me.
• I wanted to be into “something” that I could become an expert in.  I wanted to be needed and appreciated.  I wanted to be able to make a difference.  Lotus Notes gave me that satisfaction every day and I’ve loved every minute of it.
• I wanted to learn and travel.  I wanted to attend conferences like Lotusphere and The View.  In 1999, I was getting calls from headhunters regularly with my 1 1/2 years experience in Lotus Notes.   With some reluctance to be on my own, I took one of those opportunities.  To my surprise, my new company sent me to Lotusphere 1999.  It was my first time to a conference, Florida and Disney World.  I was blown away in all areas!  I’ve been fortunate to attend 7 Lotusphere’s, one DevCon in San Francisco and one View conference.
• When the economy got tough over the years, I prayed I could stay employed at a good salary so I wouldn’t have to move my family.  It appears that prayer will be answered as my last kid will be graduating in 2 years.

There more to add but I must go to work.

A huge THANK YOU to the developers of Lotus Notes.  To the people who gave their knowledge in Notes.net.  To my first instructor in my first classes who gave me encouragement.  To the bloggers and speakers at Lotusphere.  I’m forever grateful and I love this software and community.  I’ll have to save more praise for a later post.

The weather was amazing this weekend.  I got a few chores done, walked/played with dogs, read and made chicken, ribs and bread. Had a couple beers too….ahhh.

It’s been a while and I finally had a chance to fire up the earth oven today.  I grabbed one of my favorite bread books from library called “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” I’ve made this before and it’s great.  What’s great about it is the technique.  There is no kneading required.  I’ve done bread the hard way and this way is WAY better.  And the bread is good.   The idea is in the correct proportion of water and flour and you need to let it sit in fridge for at least 5 hours.  I made my batch Saturday morning, covered it and used all of it today.  The batch produces 4 nice grinder size French bread.  You add some water to pan or in my case, on the fire brick.  This gives you the crunchy crust.  YUM…Just add olive oil.

I enjoy my earth oven even though I have to be careful.  I do still get some small dirt falling if I’m not careful.  No dirt on bread at least.  I love getting the fire and oven cooking nice and hot.  It smells good after the coals are red hot and you pull the fire.  Some day, would love to have a brick oven and avoid the dirt.   Makes for an enjoyable and relaxing day.

C’mon!!!  You all know how to lose weight.  I believe it was Howard Stern who said it something like this, “Shut your trap”.   The formula is easy to memorize but difficult in practice.

You have to burn more calories than you shove down your pie hole.

From that understanding, it’s strategies to make this happen.

Keys to my success:

• I joined the fitness center at work back in February.  My company offered a free 6 month membership when we moved a bunch of us from a satellite location to a brand new building.  It was actually even then not an easy decision to join.   Biggest issue was when I was going to work out.  I settled on first thing in the morning and I’ve been very consistent.  I’m really enjoying my workouts and I feel great.
• I cut down on my portions.  There’s a delay in your ability to feel full.  I try and eat slower and stop eating.   This mostly my problem at home for dinner.  That’s the meal I need to be careful with.  I’m good during the day at work.   I’m bad at home with the fridge in walking distance.
• I have a list of foods I enjoy and I want to graze on them during the day.  Eggs, Salad, tuna fish, veggies, almonds, whole oats and fruit…  I try and cut white bread.  The idea is to keep the body burning food and not get to hungry by the time I’m home for dinner.  I drink as much water during day as possible.  Makes for a lot of bathroom breaks but hey, we’re in IT and we need to refresh the brain a lot.
• My wife’s in tune to this plan.  She does most of grocery shopping and I’m begging her to keep my food items stocked.
• I have my weight and fat index goals written and I’m working with fitness staff.  You need to talk and think about this all the time.  You either have the right or wrong mental picture.  The right mental attitude will steer you towards your goal.  I check my weight every morning.  Looking forward to a contest coming up in Sept.  I want to lose 15 more lbs by end of year.

I’m so proud of making this year’s New Year’s resolution a reality.  I feel great and enjoying my success.  Many people have noticed and it feels good.

Let me know if you have any more strategies for keeping in shape!

My Senior in high school does not know what to do with the rest of her life.  Welcome to the real world.  I’m currently pondering the same question.  Material for another blog post.  My wife recently explained this to me.  I tried to have this discussion with my daughter, but she just rolled her eyes.  We had discussed just last fall that she was interested in Nursing.  I told her to reach high and think about being a Doctor.  I then just recently heard that she’s turned sour on the medicine path and she was thinking about film editing.  She had a fun and successful year in choir and theater.  She spends a lot of time on her computer.  I’ve always thought she had a bit of geek in her.  I was ready to encourage her endeavor towards film production.  But, now the word is she’s into a career in beauty.  Wife and I both want her to go to college so beauty school isn’t our idea of college.  I’ve walked in her room while she’s on the computer and I’ve seen her coding HTML.  I was blown away.  That’s geeky and I thought maybe she was on her way to an IT career.  On second thought, how many teens these days are taking computer science as a major in college.   My companies not hiring any.  All the young IT people at my company are from India.  Fact.  From people I talk with, it’s the same all over.  Yet, in a handout during a career night at the school, IT jobs are showing as a growing sector.  During vacation a couple weeks ago in Wildwood, NJ, the Sunday paper had another survey showing Networking and Systems Analysis jobs as a growing sector.  Maybe it’s the current economy, but, I don’t see this in my current world.  I see most of us fearful of job loss.

Even with all the current gloom of economic news and outsourcing of IT work, I believe I will encourage her to look at a career in IT.  She may have the gene.  My feeling is you have to strive and do something you love to get up in the morning and do.  If you concentrate, train and work at it, you’ll get there one way or the other.  My oldest son is going to be a Sophomore at MASSART in Boston.  He started as a Graphic Arts major but decided on Industrial Design.  My initial feeling about Art school was, “How do you get a job in Art”.  I’ve got a more positive attitude now.  My thought is that it may be difficult but if he’s good at it and enjoys it, he’ll make it work.  Same attitude works for all of us trying to make a living in IT.

It’s started.  I spent 1/2 of a Sunday, two evenings and a couple hours today to get my earth oven base started.  Next step is to add the sand base and the brick floor.  I love cooking outdoors.  I’ve often dreamed of having my own brick outdoor pizza/bread oven.  In an attempt to save money and do something easy, I’m going with an outdoor earth/adobe oven.  My dad says he can get me sand and clay for my adobe mixture.  Hope to ‘enlist’ some neighborhood kids to help mix my adobe with their feet in a couple weeks.  Glad I’ve got the project started so early in the Spring.  No big rush and I could be cooking outdoor bread and pizza in a couple weeks.  I’m using a borrowed book from the library. This book is a great resource and is easy to follow even for a real beginner like me.  Trying to do this project for the least amount of $$’s.  So far no cost as you can see all materials are from my yard. 

Wish me luck!

I’ve been reading a bunch of small but powerful books lately.  One that caught my eye and I was able to snag from the library was Gary Vaynerchuk’s ‘Crush It! – Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion”.  Gary is the host of a video blog called WineLibrary.tv.  If you visit his blog or read the book, you’ll find a very passionate entrepreneur.  There’s some cool things to get from the book.  Whether your ready to monetize your blog or just interested in the subject, his story is interesting and I enjoyed many of his points made in his very easy to read style.  

Right off, I like his three rules:

Love your family

Work superhard

Live your passion 

I’m doing pretty good with number 1 and 2 and number 3 I’m searching.  I’ve had some passions in my life and it’s great fun to work at them and complete.   As I move on with a new chapter of my life, I’m looking for the next passion.  Blogging it would be fun and possibly profitable. 

 He talks about building your personal brand.  It’s important for anything you do nowadays especially.  Just being aware of this concept is cool.  Be yourself and be authentic and people will respond positively to you.  With all the social software out there now, it’s a fast process. 

 There’s some obvious and practical things here like platforms and content is king.  The cool concept I got out of this was how important it was to work on the community part.  He talks about how the real work is in building the community.  You might spend an hour on a blog post but you need to spend much more time on Twitter, other blogs and doing the chatter with all the folks in the community.  You have to be genuine and this is where the magic is.  Interesting, might have thought it was the other way around.  I really liked Appendix A which gives you 21 steps to build your personal brand.  It’s very informative, straight forward, summarizes the content of the book and works as a great outline of what to do.

Well, it’s a quick interesting read and I would recommend.  What are you waiting for, Crush IT!

We’ve been making budget decisions lately so this discovery made me happy.  I’ve recently been on a pizza making spree.  Maybe because it’s easy and makes me think I’m some kind of chef.  I broke out my ol’ bread making machine for the dough and it’s been fun.  It’s a cheap and fun meal for all.  I believe the crust tastes better than buying from restaurant.  Loving it!  I’d really like to build my own outside brick pizza oven, but I digress.  The first jar of yeast I bought was the 4 oz. jar in the picture.  It cost about $7.  Expensive.  I was running out so my lovely wife picked up some yeast at BJ’s Wholesale.  It’s 2 packages of 1 lb. each of the picture shown here for $4. At first, I was not sure I could use it in my bread machine.  The title of ‘Instant’ didn’t mean to me it could be used in the machine.  So what does a geek like me do in this situation, of course, I Google it.  Unfortunately, my Google pursuits left me less than fulfilled.  I threw up my hands and said, “Oh hell, I’ll just throw it in” like the other yeast.  Results were not good.  I got a end result of some kind of mush and not bread dough.  Like a good geek, if at first you don’t succeed, debug and try again.  Who’s code ever works the first time?  I read the directions again on the side of the package (didn’t understand them at first read).  Seems it’s easier than I thought.  You have to mix the yeast with the flour for 30 seconds which I timed with my iTouch.   You also need to add 2x the water of the yeast.  Not sure why an extra 4 teaspoons of water matter but whatever.  It works!!! Now it will be a long time before I go through 2 lbs of yeast at 2 teaspoons of yeast per pizza.  Nice.  Little things that bring a smile.

I’ve been trying to follow this National health care debate.  I say trying because it’s so massive in size and controversy, I’m not sure I’ve got my arms totally around it.

Couple things that concern me and some things I’d like to see.

If this were a huge computer system implementation, it seems to me that the users were not consulted during requirements and there’s not going to be any BAT testing.  This is what’s got the majority of Americans pissed about. A massive health care entitlement with a “hope” it works.   Not even a pilot program to try before we ram it in? I don’t get it.

The skyrocketing cost of health care’s direct impact to you and me is that companies look to outsource and don’t want to hire due to the costs.  I don’t see this issue being addressed.  One debate I’ve not seen enough of and would like to see more attention to would be the possibility of moving from an employer system to a personal responsibility for insurance.  You know, like every other type of insurance.  Doctors want this so they can concentrate on patients instead of insurance companies.  Companies and Gov’t could ease this move with incentives of medical savings accounts and tax incentives.  I already pay a big chuck of the premium.  If medical costs were transparent as far as premium and what doctors charge, we could use good ol’ common sense before spending our money.  Today, we don’t pay attention to cost because we have insurance and we have no idea what the medical bill is going to be.  Let’s open it up to shopping around the whole country for insurance and real competition.  That will get the insurance companies to work in competing from our business and drive costs down.  We’ll get the cost savings and the personal medical attention that’s the envy of the world.

Alas, also frustrated that Washington won’t add any common sense to this debate, just politics as usual.

Continuing with the list of things to consider and focus on in bad times.

5. Recognize Your Strengths
What are you good at and what brings joy? It’s a question I ponder often. I have a basic knowledge of my own strengths and I’m always seeking. In some down times, I like to focus on learning either technical or work on other interests. My life seems to be changing from a heavy focus on kids activities to personal interests. I’m at a point where I’m beginning to look at what I’ll want to do in the next part of my life. Hobby, Business and charity will sure be included as I don’t want to waste time every night watching tv.

6. Count Your Blessings
I recently adopted this one.  It started with the reading of “The Secret” a couple of years ago where the book talks about Gratitude.  Keeping a daily journal of what your grateful for.  I’ve seen this theme come up more frequently in other areas like at church or in my other readings.  We did this exercise during a church function where we asked an intimate group to write down everything they like about the church and then share it.  The exercise and the discussions were great and you feel your attitude improve.  It’s a great exercise to practice every day.  This week while listening to talk radio, a story was told about a seminar Zig Zigler gave and a woman stated how she, “Hated her job”.  Zig asked her to write down 20 things she liked about her job.  First to get her started he asked her if they paid her at her job and if she liked that.  A few weeks later they “ran” into each other and he asked her how she was doing at work.  She stated how amazing it was that people at work have changed for the better.  Try it.  List your blessings and think about them often.

7. Seek Advice From Your Neighbor

We have a wonderful community of Lotus professionals willing to help.  I wouldn’t have survived this career path without Notes.net and seminars I’ve attended have expanded my knowledge way beyond anything I could have done on my own.  Express yourself and people will help.

8. Get Out And Sweat

I’m glad I’ve gotten back into a workout routine.  I’ve been a very consistent Noon time walker and I love to get fresh air and clear the mind.  They just offered a free 6 month membership at work to the fitness center and I’m enjoying it.  I used to run till I developed a foot injury.  Getting back into a work out routine is so great for mental and physical health.

That’s the list.  Enjoy and Feel Good!

I enjoy reading Self Help or Inspirational books/articles.  I feel if you continue to fill your head with good stuff, the bad stuff flows out.  I started my exercise program this week and like to read on the bike.  I came across a cool article in US News & World Report from Oct 09 titled “How to Feel Good in Bad Times”.  Some of the items on the list I’ve seen before but others were kind of new.  There’s no question that your attitude is paramount to success and it’s hard to keep a good attitude in tough times.

Here’s the list:

1. Spend $20 on a Experience rather on an item

I had a hard time thinking of a gift for my wife for Christmas this year.  She wants for nothing.  I did stumble on a show coming to our area called “Rain”.  It’s a Beatles tribute band.  I’d seen them on PBS.  It was in a large theater and we don’t get out much.  Well, we went last weekend and had a great time.  We bought the cheapest seats in the balcony but it did not matter.  We had a few drinks, sang, danced and had a ball.  Forgot how fun a date with the wife is. 

2. Pursue meaningful life goals

I know how important this one is and I think about it all the time.  I know I’m the happiest when I’m pursuing something meaningful.  I love the challenge.  When I was a high school basketball player, I set goals and loved the work and the achievement.  Then, I set my sights on being the first in my family to graduate college.  When I was bored in my job out of college, I set my sights on an IT career.  What’s next?  I’m looking.

3. Be receptive to what’s happening in the moment

In this point, they talk about real difficult times and how to learn from them.   You really have to be mature in your thinking and work hard to maintain your attitude.  My most recent challenging time was this last Fall.  Not a tragic time by any stretch of the imagination but a challenge to my attitude for sure.  It was a project at work that was a tough assignment and short delivery timeframe.  I’m sure you can all relate.  (Will be feature of future blog post)  One of my main values in my life is balance.   This project challenged my balance big time because I had to code just about every waking moment in order to meet the deadline for about 7-8 weeks.  When I got home at night and wanted to fire up the laptop,  there were conflicting family obligations.  Tough for me because my family comes first and I was struggling with this balance.  I really had to work at smiling and sometimes failed.  Good experience.

4. Nurture meaningful relationships

I’m not an emotional person or very chatty.  I like my quiet time and space.  On they other hand, Love my family and relationships.  It’s what I live for but it’s funny how we sometimes get caught up in things and don’t always spend the time we need to with our family.  Need to make it a priority and cherish it.

…to be continued.