Category Archives: Just for FUN !!

It’s amazing what a creative artist can do with chalk and an open sidewalk. Here are more examples of amazing sidewalk art.

Jaws comes to life in the city

Smoking is bad for your health

Now that’s one big butterfly

Lots going on in this one

JUST FOR FUN, , , enjoy !!

Here are two of my favorite buddies (Corky and Boo) in my favorite series of photos.

Boo is just a “copycat”

Soaking up some sun

Hey Cork, how ’bout a kiss?

OK !

Family portrait

Hurry up, get your photo and let’s go!

A classic pose of our company Security Officer and Social Director
Looks like a late night out partying

Just being “us”

Enough already, , , I’m outta here

Our neighbors up the river from our Camp Liberty have a black labrador retriever named “River”, , , pretty appropriats as she stays in the Buffalo River quite a bit. To see her swimming alongside a canoe or just crossing the river is neat. She is as comfortable in the water as on land.

River is not only smart; she will play with you all day long, , , retrieving balls, sticks, even rocks. Here are some photos:

Yesterday, she played in the river with some people swimming and they were lobbing rocks to her. She went under the water to retrieve each rock and take it promptly to the bank. I thought our last flood created the rocky beach across from us (in the left background above), , , but from what I observed yesterday I’m not so sure, , , it may heve been built by River, , , one rock at a time. She will play and retrieve things as long as you are willing to play. 

River watches the Buffalo River after her play time.

River and Miss Liberty – two icons on the Buffalo River

Hope you have a great day. It is a big celebration day for us in the US. The 4th of July marks our Independence Day, , , something we are quite proud of.

Below are a few photos of our friends and family at the big cookout we have at Camp Liberty on the Buffalo River, , ,  doesn’t get any better than this.

Eddie always attracts a nice looking crowd

“The point” overlooks the river and is a great place to eat and talk

Our little party with river in the background

I’m lucky to catch these photos

How come Mike’s not in any of these?

Two of my favorites – Aunt Marty and Uncle Bobby

Back in the early days of minicomputers, IBM introduced systems that used diskettes for backup instead of tape which had been used for 20 years. The minicomputer brought into the fray a whole new type of client – the “first time user”.

If you didn’t experience this time (late 70’s and early 80’s), it was a new age when companies installed their very first computer system to run billing, accounts payable, general ledger and other key applications. It was a great time to be part of the computer industry and some of the experiences were truly memorable.

A great lesson I learned in those days was to inspect closely and to absolutely insure your client understands what you are saying.

It all began when I went to a client that I had inherited from another IBM Systems Engineer (SE) who had moved onto new opportunities. My first visit was to help the client upgrade to a newer disk drive that had more capacity.

This particular upgrade required swapping out the old fixed disk drive and installing a new one. Once that was completed, we had to reload the client’s operating system and restore their data backup, , , both items were saved onto groups of diskettes.

My job was to prepare the client for the disk swap when the Customer Engineer (CE) arrived and after the hardware change was completed to restore the system for operation. No big deal, , ,  I had done this procedure many times before.

After talking through the steps to be taken with the client, I asked about their Systems Backup and their File Backup at which point they told me they were in the file cabinets stored away. Excellent!

The CE swaps out the disk drive and hands the project back over to me. I immediately ask the client for their Systems Backup diskettes and for their Data Backup diskettes. As the lady hands me their data backup diskettes,  she asks, “What’s a System Backup?”.

My heart skipped a beat, , , have you ever had that sinking feeling in your stomach?

You guessed it, , , they didn’t have an Operating System backup, or at least none we could find. In normal circumstances, this would be OK but today I didn’t have a copy of the Operating System that I could use to reinstall their system.

I had to call our office 150 miles away and get a copy sent to me so I could finish the job the next day. The Operating System software I needed arrived the next morning and I reloaded the system.  The exercise took an hour versus the 10 minutes it should have taken, but I completed the job.

The client lost about 4 more hours of systems availability than necessary, but the biggest problem I had was the needling I took from my IBM pals.

This mistake taught me two key lessons:

1. A sense to inspect answers from clients to be sure they understand what you are asking and that you have what you need to do the job.
2. Always have a backup plan if things don’t go as planned. In this case, I could have finished the job if I had brought along a spare operating system that I could install in case their backup did not work.

Luckily, this wasn’t a catastrophe, , , but my IBM buddies helped me remember the mistake for a long time.

Just kidding, Jeff, , , if you are listening.

Jeff attended my 4th IT Manager Institute way back in 2004. He is one of many who have told me over the years about looking for something to help them manage their IT organizations better.

Jeff downloaded my free e-book, IT Management-101 and liked what he read, , , telling me later that it was practical and to the point, , , just what he was looking for. He attended my 5-day class because of it.

Jeff was the first to arrive in class on Monday morning and he did the same thing that some before him and many after him have done who arrive to the class first. He sat in the same position in the classroom as over 90% do who arrive first, , , in the back right part of the u-shaped classroom.

It doesn’t matter if the entrance to the room is on the left or the right, 90% who get there first sit in the same location, , , so who says IT people aren’t predictable?

Jeff is not your typical IT manager. He is actually one of the more outgoing managers I’ve met, , , one of the 30% who are actually more extroverted than shy and introverted like most of us.

Jeff is very personable and has a super personality to go along with a winning smile. Because he was one of the few extroverted people in the class (if not the only one in this particular class), we gave him a rather hard time, , , all in fun. He took it well and we had a great week.

Jeff, if you read this, , , I hope you are doing well and achieving many successes.

In the early part of my career with IBM, I was able to sit in on a national customer service desk in Atlanta for a week to support a hospital software package that I was very familiar with.

On the 3rd day, I receive a call from a hospital employee from Kansas, a nice lady, who was having some difficulty.

First some background: In those days and the system this lady was using, the data backup was completed using large 5 1/4-inch diskettes. In the old days, we called them “floppy disks” because they truly were a bit “floppy”.

When performing a daily backup, the system copied to a diskette until it was full, and then asked for another, , ,  and then another until the backup was completed. The system put a number notation on each diskette’s header record so it knew the proper sequence in case a recovery was required.

In her case, she had 5 diskettes so the system numbered the diskettes in the header record (1 of,   2 of,   3 of,   4 of,   and 5 of 5).

When the lady called, she was trying to restore her data from her backup diskettes for some reason and had encountered a problem. I asked a few questions and thought I understood her problem. The system error message she was getting sounded like she had inserted the wrong diskette, , , in other words I thought she might have gotten them out of sequence.

So, I asked her to do the logical thing – “It sounds like the diskettes are in the wrong sequence so try inserting the next diskette you have.”

She did.

There is complete silence on the other end of the phone.

I asked, “What’s happening? Are we working properly now?”

She answers, “No. I’m getting a different error this time.”

She reads me the computer error message. This message sounds like a hardware error, , , now, I’m more confused.

I’m still thinking the diskettes are out of sequence so I tell her, “Maybe the diskettes are still out of order, so try putting the next diskette into the reader.”

Silence, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I ask her, “What’s up? Is it working now?”

She responds with an answer I’ll never forget, , ,

“Honey, I have two diskettes in there already and I can’t put the third one in; it won’t fit !!”

The lesson – be sure the person on the other end understands exactly what you are saying.

Have you ever made a “pocket call”?

I was at a Golf Galaxy retail store looking around one day and my cell phone rings. I see that it’s my wife, Dorine, so I answer.

Dorine asks, “What are you buying?”

It really caught me off balance, , , I thought she might be in the store, , , I couldn’t figure out how she knew I was about to buy something.

Apparently what happened was that I accidentally called her from my cell phone. It was in my pocket and buttons were accidentally pushed. She listened to my entire conversation with a salesman about ordering a golf club and asking him when the club would arrive.

I’ve heard other stories about “pocket calls”, , , maybe you’ve had one yourself.

The moral of the story, , , be sure you know what your cell phone is doing when you have it on your person.

Interested in seeing some of the photos taken in the first five years of the IT Manager Institute?

Take a look at the photo album I created that includes the first 27 classes, , , years 2003 – 2007. At the end of 2012, I plan to do another one.

CLICK HERE to view the album online.

The service I used is great. It’s called MyPublisher.com