Mr T’s rants and ravings

There is an expression in German that translates to “work makes life sweet.” There is a corollary thought that translates to “but too much is too much.” I’m starting to feel that later expression.

Eleven days ago I left home for a business trip to Seattle. I’m still there and have two more days before I get home. And it is all starting to catch up with me. In that time I have had exactly one day off - last Saturday. Unfortunately (in some ways) I spent that day having a lot of fun. The list of things we did is embarrassingly long and started with breakfast and ended with a return to my hotel well after 1AM. Mentally relaxing but not physically.

People who don’t travel on business often don’t understand how much work it is. One generally starts with meeting people for breakfast and ends it with a long dinner also with a lot of work components. In between are meetings broken up only by more meetings. Think about having a school day that runs 14 hours long and continuing even while you are eating.

I was a little late for breakfast this morning - I just could not get up. Right now between sessions (this is a training week) I am trying to get some of my regular day job work done. There is a big party tonight (yes we do have some fun) but I’m not sure I’ll be going. If I do go I will be leaving early. The younger people and the people who only arrived this week may have energy left but I’m about spent. I am seriously looking forward to sleeping on the plane ride home on Saturday.

In the long run it is worth it of course. I am learning a lot of good things and meeting a lot of interesting people. There are 6000 people from around the world at this event and I have made some good contacts and added friends to my Facebook account. Last week was a smaller group of people and there I met new people but also reconnected with people I know from previous meetings. There are people from South America and South Africa, Japan, China, England and all over eastern and western Europe. It’s pretty cool actually.

Tomorrow I will hear Bill Gates talk to the conference and that should be interesting. But you know, part of me would like to go home tonight.

OK it’s short, very short, the whole clip is less than 2 minutes and I’m one of about four or five people in it. But for those of you who don’t know me in person or who haven’t seen me in a while - here I am.

The rest of the Channel 8 web site is more interesting.

Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

I just came across a new web comic site/blog called Office Offline. Very simple and very funny. It’s geek humor of course. And mostly around Microsoft Office products which is not so surprising since the cartoonist works in Microsoft’s Office Online group as a writer.

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I read with some interest that the CIO of Microsoft was let go. This was apparently because he violated company policies. Now on first glance this sounds bad. After all it is not good when someone who is a corporate VP gets fired. On the other hand I find it refreshing that the rules apply to him.

I am sick of hearing about cases where people get to a certain level and start feeling that the rules just apply to other people. At some places people get away with that sort of thing. We’ll avoid the obvious examples from government and some not so obvious examples from companies where I have worked in the past.

Now I don’t know what policies he violated. And I’d rather not speculate. But if CVPs can lose their job over violations of the company’s rules it is a clear sign that people can be held responsible even if they are high up. Somehow that makes me feel safer.