Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Diet and Exercise milestone - 1 YEAR!

1 year ago I weighed 176 and my blood pressure was 149/95 with a resting pulse of 90. My doctor told me if I left it untreated I'd probably have a stroke within 3-5 years! That scared me. But I HATED the BP medicine he put me on, so I learned about the DASH diet. It works. I now exercise 6 or even 7 days a week, and follow that diet about to 85% compliance. New stats, weight 161, BP 120/78, resting pulse 56.

How do I stay motivated, well, I wake up in the morning and say, hmmmm, exercise today or die young....easy choice...

K

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Home sweet home...ideas come around again and again

After 8 days in Orlando, there is NO place like home...back to the real world and weather where you CAN be outside allday without drenching your clothes in sweat.

I saw Hunch launch, reminds me of an old shopping aide that AOL had, I don't remember what it was called, but it reminded me that there are no new ideas...just ideas whose time has come, or who changes her stripes

I first learned about Virtualization as part of MVS on IBM mainframes...now we virtualize PCs and servers

I used to try to sell emulation boards that made PCs look like dumbterminals...now we sell dumbterminals and make them look like PCs...

Wasn't delicious a lot like Backflip???

Remember GrandCentral? Check out mashery!!!

Every time the compute platform changes, new startups and tools emerge, then get gobbled up...is the cloud + virtualization one of these times? I think so...

Of course, some companies try to reinvent with these changes...any every succeed???

Monday, June 8, 2009

Cloud Cloud, Everywhere the Cloud...

Seems like the cloud is now everywhere, even in last weeks business week ON THE COVER!!! (BTW, thanks to the folks at B-Week for continuing to send the magazine, even though I stopped renewing, guess they need the eyeballs, but that's another blog altogether...)

So, what's the cloud to you, a catch all, marketing hype, the next bubble, or the real delivery of utility computing?? Where are the "plays", IT service management (and the big boys are cranking up their drive the "Open" efforts! ), Virtualization, Security (see Bruce Schneier's post here...) ???

Opinions welcome, even if there bad ones...:)

McAfee Network Security Launches, A nice wrap for me...

Though I didn't hit the road with Dan R, the package of announcements I drove for launching McAfee's Network Security biz made it out pretty dang well...a lot of the coverage looked like this...McAfee takes on Cisco, etc...and this McAfee pushes ePO and this , you can also read the press releases here.

This is really nice positioning work (if I may say so myself:), and the products are strong. I just hope the sales and channel teams can get behind this bucket of stuff with vigor and aggressiveness. The old sidewinder firewall is getting a nice re-launch with some cool app and identity awareness and virtualized and virtual versions, and look at the V aggressive GTM on the mail/web/DLP Internet Gateway bundle...look out Cisco!

As you can see, I take a lot of pride in this chunk of work, and am genuinely pleased to see it hit the market. I wish my old team and the gang from SCUR well with their ongoing journey to #1 in Network Security. I am pretty sure our paths will cross again - soon???

K

Sunday, June 7, 2009

COBRA, Haste makes waste

I waited too long to deal with COBRA, and now we are stuck in the EXPENSIVE, Cadillac plan, because Blue Shield declined us (appeal in process, see comment on process!) , even though we are pretty damn healthy. And to add salt to the would, our income is too high to be subsidized...So, if you are facing COBRA, make it your very first task to get alternative coverage lined up, AND USE A BROKER, the system is ridiculous to deal with as an individual, trust me...

About this blog

In April of 2009 I found myself in the job market. As a guy with 25 yrs of experience, 19 in the valley I wasn't sure what to expect. Much of what I did surprised me, much didn't. I thought I'd start this blog, part to vent, part to share experience, and part to entertain others in my same situation. In it you'll find tales of Cobra, Twitter, Facebook, endless coffee meetings, and others. Along the way I am learning A LOT about companies, funding, networking, new technologies and trends, etc...So come join me on my journey's and adventures.

Cheers for now, happy trails...
 
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