IPR – Race Results

11 Saturday Sep 2010

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Here’s your result for you Steve (just read your FaceBook query).  I’m sitting in my hotel bed watching the Ohio St. vs Miami game.  Totally spent for the day.  Good game though.  I’m following the CU vs Cal game via my ESPN ScoreCenter for iPhone app – but it’s depressing.  Sort of happy the hotel cable doesn’t carry it.  I don’t know where to start describing this run. It was such an extreme experience.  I’ll start with the morning.

The hotel in Ouray didn’t have alarm clocks or clocks of any kind really.  But at 48, I haven’t needed a clock in 20 years.  I don’t wear a watch and I don’t set alarm clocks.  I was staring at the blackened window waiting for some rays of sun to hint at the approaching morning.  Karen didn’t wait.  She woke up to brush her teeth sometime before 6am.  It didn’t bother her to turn on all the lights.  This killed my window sun ray measurements plan.  My iPhone was charging across the floor so without being able to check the time I laid in bed until I felt ready.  I didn’t hear any meaningful action in the street below (the race started outside our room).  But I got up and checked the time.  6am – imagine that.  Like clockwork.  I don’t need no stinkin alarm clock.

Rob and Sue called from the lobby a little before 7am.  Karen answered as I was in the bathroom.  While I’ve known of my lactose intolerance for over 30 years, I thought a malted milk shake looked tasty last night.  I met them in the lobby.  Sue was talkative – must be a morning person.  Rob was content to talk about coffee.  I think he eventually poured a cup.  We reached consensus that since it was fairly nippy outside, we’d wait in the lobby until 7:10am.

Once outside, I felt good about my wardrobe choices.  Nike DriFit running shorts. No, I didn’t misspell “dry”.  Click on the link.  WordPress provides me with stats of the clicks on my links and it irritates me readers don’t click more often.  I wore an Under Armour reversible AllSeasonGear fitted crew top.  I wore it to keep warm.  The flip side keeps you cool.  And I wore my Columbia Omni-Tech Waterproof Breathable hiking jacket.  Their current lineup might be called Omni-Heat now, not sure.  I walked outside with my Barr-Camp running hat but switched to my red fleece skull cap.  I wore some running gloves and configured my iPod nano and earbuds for easy use later.  I decided on the earbuds rather than my bluetooth headset – which I like very much but their batteries don’t seem to last much past an hour.  And because I didn’t require bluetooth, I left the heavier iPhone back in the room.  The jacket, gloves and hat were official race requirements.  Both Rob and I refrained from carrying water because the event arranged aid stations about every two miles.  Still, at least half the runners carried water.  I suspect some did it because their mini CamelBack completed their fashion ensemble.  And honestly, some of them looked really good.

The race announcer was a card.  He communicated this run had only one hill.  The pistol fired and we were off.  The first mile was similar to my prep run.  My calves burned and I was breathless.  Course options were offered that I didn’t know about yesterday.  You could choose to stay on the jeep trail or take steeper but shorter single tracks at times.  I chose the shortcuts because they were different from yesterday, and because it provided a chance to break from the crowd.  Probably a poor choice because the crowd followed me.  And because steeper is never better.  I caught my breath on the second mile just like yesterday, and I noticed this time the trail flattened out so that explains the recovery.  I was still running alongside Rob and he shared with me we were on a 12 minute mile pace.  I wrapped my jacket around my waist during the 2nd mile but kept my gloves on.  A little after 2 miles was the first aid station.  We slowed to drink some Gatorade and I turned on my iPod.  Sometime during the 3rd mile, the wind picked up and I put my jacket back on.  I can’t recall where exactly, but before 5 miles, we started walking in spots.  I took off my gloves but went back and forth on the jacket depending on the shade and wind.  A nice feature of the jacket was the velcro.  I didn’t have to bother zipping it.

Rob would gain distance on me whenever we walked.  He’s just such an incredible hiker and I couldn’t walk as fast as him.  But I was never too far behind and he’d wait for me at aid stations.  And sometimes I’d gain on him during running portions of the course.  After 7 miles, when I was feeling fairly pleased with myself, the course grew steeper.  And colder.  The boards that were placed across streams were gripped in ice and the shady spots were frigid.  But it was the increased incline that marked my memory of the upper 3rd of Imogene trail.  Each mile, from 7 to 8, then 8 to 9, and finally 9 to 10, increased in slope and cruelty.  I wanted to crawl.  Well, maybe I was crawling, it’s a bit blurry now.  But I know I never stopped my forward motion.  I know enough about finishing anything that perseverance is like the shark that never sleeps.  You just keep on truckin.

Personally, the race was over for me when I reached the summit.  I’d been concerned about the cutoff times and according to Rob we’d smashed them.  We reached the top in two and a half hours.  Maybe 2 hours and 45 minutes.  The results aren’t posted yet.  Rob waited for me at the summit aid station and we shook hands on our triumphant accomplishment.  The descent wasn’t what I expected.  I thought I would walk a bit until I recovered and then run as fast as I could handle.  I’d been training on trails and as I’ve mentioned before in these blogs, I really like running downhill fast when I can.  But I couldn’t here.  The course was so steep and the rocks so treacherous, I never felt like I was running.  For nearly the entire 7 mile drop into Telluride, I was hitting the brakes.  In this phase of the run, perseverance meant preservation mode.  I ran like James Tiberious Kirk clawing his nails into the Iowa top soil after driving his red Corvette off a cliff that looked more plausible in Idaho – or the Imogene trail.  This was 7 miles of putting more energy into thigh-burning resistance than controlling momentum.  Ironically, I could breathe going downhill, but my legs were burning, rubbery buffers between my torso and the rocky slide IPR certified as trail worthy.

Which is fine.  I made it up this hill, I was going to make it down.  What I don’t get is how over 100 runners screamed past me on the descent.  I know some of it is trail conditioning and fitness.  I didn’t note a pattern of men vs women kicking my ass.  The mountain isn’t sexist.  Most were younger.  And even more were lighter.  But the real difference was these people were insane.  With 90 percent of my energy directed at stopping, these runners’ momentum was balls out directed down the hill.  I like running fast downhill, but I don’t know how they were able to do it in these trail conditions.  They ran like stones skipping across water.  Their feet never touched down long enough to slide.  Traction was never in play.  And this ensued the entire 7 miles.  I got passed as much at mile 11 as I did mile 16.

My awe from watching this runners’ cirque du soleil tap dance down the trail was finally surpassed upon encountering the first views of Telluride.  It’s hard to describe such earthly magnificence.  Upon seeing Ouray for the first time the other day, I didn’t expect to be viewing a town that could challenge it so quickly.  But whereas Ouray is walled with stunning canyons, Telluride is set within a gorge of towering green pines.  And, if you want to get picky, the streets are paved.  Both towns are impressive, but Telluride offered a panoramic finish that Hollywood couldn’t reproduce with CGI.  The race finished down a shady tree-lined street into the center of town.  True to the last 7 miles, this street was also too steep for me to allow my legs to fully sprint.  The pavement was finally solid, but I was simply too weak at this point.  I crossed the finish line in 3:49:35.  I had secretly hoped to finish in 4.5 hours so I was impressed with myself.  And now I’m recovering.  Rob and Sue left after lunch and we’re already  planning dinner.

IPR – Pre Race Prep

10 Friday Sep 2010

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I’m committed now.  We arrived in Ouray Thursday and checked into the Beaumont Hotel.  The picture is of Karen and Ellie standing outside the hotel on Main Street, about where the race will start tomorrow.  The run will proceed up the hill in the background.  We met some friends, Khris, Janet and Sadie Mae, for drinks last night at the Hotel’s Voodoo Lounge and had an Italian dinner at Bon Ton.  The Voodoo Lounge has an extremely impressive wine list, especially what they serve by the glass.  Our friends own an eclectic cooking and kitchenware store in town where Ellie bought an apron – and wore the rest of the night.  Ouray itself is a spectacular setting, surrounded on three sides by dramatic canyon cliffs.  The Uncompahgre River flows through town and is encircled by hiking trails.  Ellie and I will hit the Ouray Hot Springs later this afternoon.

Khris, a graduate of NY’s CIA and accomplished cook and baker, ran the IPR several years ago and gave me advice.  He told me to expect the uphill climb to start immediately, along with the pain.  But that I could expect the early race excitement and associated adrenalin to get me through the initial shock.  And then the trick is to simply keep a forward motion and soon my body would lose sense of the strain and carry me up to the summit easily within the cutoff times.  I took this with a grain of salt since he completed the course in 3 hours and I’m planning on closer to 5 hours.

I ran the first two miles of the race this morning to prep, and I think Khris’ advice will pan out.  I was indeed shocked at how steep the course began along Hwy 550.  The route turned off the highway after a quarter mile and onto the hard packed gravel jeep trail that most of the race will consist of.  I was breathing heavily (this begins at over 7800 feet) and my ankles and calves were burning.  It occurred to me I should have included toe raises in my training regimen.  I can’t whine about this course like I did Garden of the Gods because the IPR makes no pretense.  It goes up for 10 miles.  And up means a steady and steep incline.  Even the apparent dips were still sloped upwards.  But after the first mile, I stopped noticing my legs and I actually caught my breath.  I’d settled into my pace.  I continued for the 2nd mile which was my goal and would make a nice 4 mile workout.  My lower legs did indeed become numb.  Apparently you don’t really need lower legs for running, wooden pegs suffice.  My thighs and hamstrings felt fine so perhaps I’m in sufficient shape for this little walkabout the San Juan Mountains.

At 2 miles I did an about-face and headed back down.  I checked my time and was surprised to learn I maintained a 10 minute per mile pace.  My confidence at making the cutoff times got a boost from that.  This prep run was brilliant.  I didn’t want to wear myself out with too hard a run before tomorrow, but I would have liked to go up 5 miles to the Lower Bird Mine.  Khris told that the course will leave the jeep road there and detour through the mine.  That will be cool.  Can’t wait until tomorrow.

IPR Fear and Loathing

07 Tuesday Sep 2010

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Imogene Pass Run

The Imogene Pass Run is this weekend.  I declined when Rob first asked me to run this race early in the year.  It didn’t seem like something within my physical capabilities.  But then a second friend Mike said let’s do it and I signed up.  Registering was good for me.  I would never have reached this level of fitness without such a fear of impending altitude induced pain.

Hopefully I won’t kill myself before the race gun fires.  I stumbled on my mountain trail run yesterday.  With less than a mile remaining on an 11 mile trail, my right shoe toed a rock and I fell forward on a downhill section of single track.  I was able to roll left while falling to keep my face from smashing into a rock the size of my head.  But the roll resulted in my left hip colliding hard with the craggy trail.  My roll continued spinning me left into another large rock and giant prickly bush – which spared my now bloody carcass from tumbling down a steep hill.

I laid there for a minute, contemplating how I might have just injured myself to where I couldn’t run this Saturday.  But the bush wasn’t comfortable enough to lay in for long so I extracted my body with a counter roll back onto the trail.  Because of strong pain in my left hip, launching that exit roll took more mental will than I could ever accurately describe.  I thought about waiting for help to come by before moving.  The exit roll and a tad bit of sideways scooting to the main trail was of course uphill.  It was a fair amount more strenuous and painful than standing myself back up.  Upon standing, a lone biker reached me and asked how I was.  He didn’t see me fall but did witness me crawling out of the bush.  He hung around while I collected myself.  He told me stories of his bike crashes on this treacherous trail.  I don’t remember any of them because I was in a fairly myopic self-centered state of mind at the time.  He left after he was satisfied I could walk.  Soon I began running again for the last quarter mile before reaching the trail head.  The injuries were largely superficial and the pain from my bruised hip gradually subsided – until this morning.  I recall laughing at some pain medicine commercial (Tylenol, Bufferin – not sure) that played during the Boise St. vs Virginia Tech game last night that pitched the concept of aspirin for breakfast.  I thought it was ridiculous last night but I could have been a use case this morning.  I ran a 4 mile recovery run later today and I don’t expect my injuries to worry me on Saturday.

Like I need more worries.  Did you click on the graphic to review the altitude and rate of incline?  The cutoff time to reach Upper Camp Bird is 2.5 hours.  4.5 hours for the summit.  That might seem like walking pace – actually it might be – but not at altitude man!  My biggest concern and as well as goal for this race is to make those cutoff times.  I’m less concerned about the 7 hour cutoff time for the complete course.  Assuming I shuffle up to Imogene Pass in under 4.5 hours, I can likely roll down to Telluride in 2.5 hours – now that I’ve had practice rolling.  Honestly, I hope to complete this race in under 5 hours, start to finish, although I have no idea what to expect in terms of time.  I know it will hurt.  I hit the wall at the 18 mile point in my first marathon.  I figure much of the 10 miles uphill will feel just like that – which is a nightmare.  Hence the loathing.  But I’m also extremely excited.  And for a bonus, this is my first trip to Ouray and Telluride.  Karen and I intend to visit our sister-in-law’s sister Janet and her husband for drinks on Thursday.  They’ve lived in Ouray for several years.  And I’ll be running with my buddy Rob.  Well, “with” being a relative term.  I hope to see him if he waits for me at the finish.

Mt Bierstadt Trail Run

28 Saturday Aug 2010

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Getting ready for bed but I want to blog this while my knees still hurt.  I ran up and down a 7 mile trail this morning on 14K foot Mt Bierstadt to prep for the Imogene Pass trail run in September.  And to be honest, my knees don’t hurt that badly.  At least not in a manner I’d associate with real pain.  It’s more like they just won’t operate without coaxing.  I feel like the tin man in need of oil.  And indeed I did self-prescribe lubricants.  Two Avalanche Ales for lunch at the Motherload Tavern in Breckenridge.  And it was hard to count the glasses of wine tonight as I kept refreshing them.

I’m really happy I hiked this trail today.  It was Rob Graham’s idea for a training run and I am now much more confident that I’ll be able to make the cutoff times for the 10 mile run up Imogene Pass.  The 7 mile drop into Telluride should be doable as well but no doubt will be the source of most of the post race pain.  All I can do at this point is take comfort knowing that gravity will smash my frame against the rocks with less force at 170 lbs than the 187 I started the year out at.  Rob and I started out at the Guanella trail head which begins above tree line around 11,500 feet.  The route started off flat and we ran for nearly a mile before the incline moderated our pace to a power hike.  We figure we maintained about a 2.5 mile an hour pace – which might sound slow but not after you throw in the altitude, steep plane and rocky terrain.  The trail was packed with hikers, 100s of them.  It was difficult to find a free rock to sit on at the summit with the crowd.  It reminded me of those penguin videos with thousands of birds packed on a beach.

We waited to run on our descent until the hikers cleared and the loose gravel thinned to hard packed clay.  With free range and traction, we let loose our legs and soared downward until our muscles were exhausted.  I know I won’t be able to handle a downhill pace like that for 7 miles at Imogene, just another good reason for this practice run.  But I also don’t expect to have to serpentine down the 4×4 road into Telluride like we had to on these single track switchbacks.  I actually enjoy the challenge of committing my footfall among the rocks as the momentum forces quick and sure decisions.  But the friction takes its toll.  The heat begins in the soles of my shoes and rises up my thighs.  And when the pain begins to shoot into my hips, I ironically begin hoping for a short uphill for the relief it could offer.

A comment on my last running blog, I felt much stronger this past week.  After 2 years of my brother advising me to take supplements, I finally acquiesced and bought some protein mix to take after workouts to enhance recovery.  I was tentative because some labels I read on supplements warn against consumption if you have heart ailments.  I was diagnosed with tachycardia arrhythmia at 24 – which isn’t as serious as it sounds – but I have to be careful about drugs.  And quite frankly I find specious anything ingestible that isn’t regulated by the FDA.  So I mixed this protein powder with smoothies or Gatorade this past week and felt stronger between runs.  It didn’t hurt that the weather cooled off this week.

Heil Valley Ranch

21 Saturday Aug 2010

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Not quite recovered yet, but just ran a 10 mile trail at Heil Valley Ranch.  Second time this week since Dave turned me on to it.  He mountain bikes it regularly.  I don’t think I’m giving myself adequate time for my body to heal between runs.  This was brutal today.  Everything hurt from start to finish.  Starting at the Picture Rock Trail head, this trail steadily inclines for 5.5 miles.  I turn around at the 5 mile marker though.  And the grade isn’t overly steep, but the trail is fairly rocky in spots requiring high knee lifts.  This picture shows my legs covered in dirt starting at my ankle line.

I ran back down today like a banshee; not to say I was running fast, but because instead of breathing my body involuntarily grunted the entire retreat down the mountain.  And I howled forth several screams upon stumbling.  I pulled something in my left thigh after one of my stumbles to stop myself from falling over a small cliff.  And at one point a thorn pierced my right shoe into the ball of my foot.  I’ve been pushing myself hard this last week to prep for the Imogene Pass Run in September, but I may have to rethink my regimen because the intensity is taking its toll.  And to paraphrase Captain Mal, you can’t run if you’re dead.

The first time I ran this trail on Tuesday, I sprung back down in confidence.  But my legs were so weak today I had to let them move at the pace granted by my downward momentum because I was afraid any resistance would lead to collapsing.  My knees went from sore to numb and I wasn’t assured they would support my frame.  Descending downhill was more a matter of faith than actual control.

My playlist helped.  I borrowed Karen’s iPod and played a shuffle of her dance tunes she uses as an aerobics instructor.  I was near tears as my exhausted flesh exited the canyon with 1 mile remaining, and by then the music wasn’t enough to keep me from walking.  But a strong breeze came from nowhere and cooled me down.  And again, with only a half mile to go, I considered walking.  But the oddest thing; a Christmas song played – Winter Wonderland.  It created enough of a fantasy world for me to think it wasn’t so hot and I made it to the trail head in stride.  I’m going to keep my distance up next week, but I might back off from squeezing in so many mountain trail runs.  I need to live to run another day.

Garden of the Gods 10 Miler

13 Sunday Jun 2010

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Garden of the Gods 2010Nice run today in Manitou Springs.  I under-estimated just how mean the hills would be.  I couldn’t count all the runners vomiting during the first two miles.  Reminded me of when I ran my first marathon at 16 in Dallas.  I drank beer the entire night before with my buddies, Mike O’Neill and Rob Graham.  I made it 15 miles before spilling my beans.  Finished in 3:10 though.

I finished today in 1:25 – an 8:30 pace.  It really surprised me because when I was crawling up some of those hills I expected to finish closer to 2 hours – if at all.  There was not a single mile of that course that didn’t contain massive hills that would have been impressive at sea level let alone 6000 feet.  By the 3rd mile though, the torment of the hills and grandeur of the vistas coalesced into oblivious forward movement while REM lost their religion on my Plantronics 903 Bluetooth for iPhone headset.

The half way point marked the top of the terrain where we went off road to run on a paved trail.  The setting was spectacular, like running on top of the world.  It was even relatively flat for  a half mile.  I nearly forgot all about the hills while the Eagles sang, “You’re losing all your highs and lows.  Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?”.  Then I became disoriented around mile 7 when I was certain that I was running downhill; but it felt as if I was running uphill.  I determined there was a strong wind assaulting my chest.  It kept me cool though.  The weather was actually quite nice for running.

I’m happy my neighbors talked me into running this event.  It gave me a great sense of what I need to do to prepare for Imogene Pass in September.  I like to joke that I’m considering a medicinal marijuana card; but what I really need to do is lose about 20 pounds.  That should keep my knees from hurting.  More importantly, running 10 miles up to 13,000 feet will feel much better at 165 pounds than 185.  I need to schedule a few more events to prep.  The Georgetown to Idaho Springs half marathon sounds good.  And I want to run up the Manitou Springs Incline.  Probably run back down on the Barr Trail.  The summer is shaping up nicely.

Running Again

21 Sunday Mar 2010

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Ran today, finally after recovering from that brutal RSA virus.  The Montrails might have been overkill for the conditions – mid 50s, melting snow and blinding sunshine.

Knowing that cold’s behind me has me motivated.  I have some thoughts around firing up a new fictional story.  I’ve been gathering ideas around security and privacy, corporate bullshit, innovation vs greed, and I don’t know; I might just summarize my 16 years at IBM in one big story.  The format might change a bit.  Longer reads.  Could stretch the thing out for the rest of the year.  Should I write a big one?

Jayashree – Epilogue

07 Sunday Mar 2010

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Jayashree was seated across the table from the customer representatives.  Raj was standing, delivering a PowerPoint on the scalability of Alibi Software’s backend content management infrastructure.  The customer referenced the competing system sold by Balamohan’s partners, stating how their portal seemed to provide more features.  Raj was now five minutes deep into a tangential discussion on data-centric vs application-centric content management programming.

“I’ve looked closely at their portal and agree it is very slick.  You can drag and drop just about everything.  And I think that tuning translates into the sense of being able to generate content, but think about it really.  It’s about the same level of control MySpace gives you in dressing up your web page.  It feels like there are so many knobs to adjust and it can be fun for awhile.  But how much data can you really retrieve?  And their output formats are limited to popular applications like PDF and CSV.  We give you web services APIs.  The APIs might be a bit complex for a novice user but with a limited understanding of URIs you can query terabytes of data and feed the results into your company’s own knowledge systems.  Admittedly we require about 30 days to develop new feeds for you.  But those feeds are rock solid stored procedures with sub-second response times.  The other guys give you maybe two pages of XML.  That doesn’t meet enterprise needs.  That’s little more than a toy for consumers.”  Raj paused to let that sink in.

Jayashree noted the reactions from the audience.  They laughed at Raj’s remarks and seemed to understand the difference between enterprise and consumer oriented products.  This was going to be another win.  The last year had been a whirlwind of success.  The investors were in negotiations to sell Alibi to Google and she was poised to retire if that materialized since her C-level position paid out 5 multiples of her salary in the event the company was sold.  That was Shankar’s idea.  Not that she would retire.  Jayashree was 27 years old and totally into programming.  She knew she was clever and driven but considered herself to have fairly junior skills.  She was a geek girl and planned to go back to school to get her PhD in software engineering after the Google deal closed.

The End

Jayashree – Proposal

07 Sunday Mar 2010

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Jayashree asked the man she was fairly certain was the lawyer, “Will your partners be joining us?”

“No, I’m acting in the capacity of Counselor representing my clients,” he sat down as she did.  “I appreciate you being so flexible in your schedule.”

“No problem, but I’m a little uncomfortable meeting without my partners.”

“Understood Jayashree, but I don’t want you three becoming defensive and arguing amongst yourselves.  I will talk to Raj alone later today as well.  Of course I’ve already spoken to Shankar.  I assure you however that I’m not going to ask you to commit to anything without first gaining consensus among your partners.”  The lawyer paused to pour a drink of water and served a glass to Jayashree as well.  My first point is to express to you that this is just business.  You should not take this personally as my clients maintain the greatest respect for you and your team.  This legal mechanism is necessary because we are still two discrete companies.”

Jayashree was not listening close enough to catch the lawyer’s drift.  Or she didn’t really care yet.  “You’re suing us to take our company away from us.  Your clients are foot wipes to me.”

The lawyer found Jayashree’s language offensive but understood her tempestuous behavior to be typical of young software developers.  He remained professional.  “We are not stealing anything Jayashree.  Technically, you might consider this a hostile takeover.  And don’t think of that as such a bad thing.  It implies you will be recompensed for a very favorable sum.  Let me explain.”  He took a sip of water and knew he now had her attention since she didn’t retort back to him during his pause.  “During our last round of funding, we gave Shankar several share dilution options.  Did he explain this to you?”

“He just said the funding would last for about one year and that it diluted our shares down to 50% of the company.”  Jayashree was still hostile but the discussion was out of her area of expertise and any semblance of humbleness or cordialness was due to that fact.

“Well apparently he decided for himself, but we offered him various levels of dilution up to 100%.  Our offer to completely buy ownership was for $172 million rupees.  Don’t be upset with Shankar because now we are prepared to offer you $500 million rupees.  That will make you fairly wealthy.  But also, I meant what I said earlier about us still respecting your abilities.  We want you to stay on in your current capacities.  We recently doubled your salary to $512K rs per month.  That puts you on the very high end for software engineers in this country.  But we are prepared to pay you more in line with being a CTO.  We will offer you $2M rs per month.  We’ll quadruple Raj and Shankar’s salaries as well.  As upset as my clients are that we not only lost a bid to this Balamohan character and we now have competition; we are comforted knowing we have a pipeline of customers that ensures some very nice profits in our future.  So, that’s the deal.  Granted, it’s a hostile takeover, but accept it and we drop the lawsuit.  What do you think?”

“I’ll think about it.”  Jayashree left the building in a dazed ecstasy.  She was close to realizing her dreams.

Jayashree – Inglorious Basterds

06 Saturday Mar 2010

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Jayashree walked into the Internet Café to find Raj and Shankar both waiting for her.  It gave her a sense of how important this issue was to them that they would arrive early.  She knew Raj wasn’t upset with her but hadn’t yet spoken directly to Shankar.  “Good morning guys.  I guess this is our first official day full-time on the new job?”

Raj replied, “Happy new job day Jayashree.  And this must be our new office?”  Raj seemed jovial.  That helped the mood.

“Well let me just start,” Jayashree began the meeting as she took her seat and gestured for the waiter to bring her usual morning tea.  “I met with Balamohan for dinner last night and he told me everything.  I was going to be coy but as soon as I said I missed him at the office Monday, he cut me off and came clean.  Not that he expressed any remorse.  He might have even been bragging.”

“Told you he was a jerk,” Raj again.  Shankar remained silent.  “So did he really start up a competing firm based on our idea?”

“Not exactly.  He fed our ideas to his partners, but they have one company and he has a separate business.”  Her tea arrived and she paused to thank the waiter.  “Balamohan is making money by recruiting the Ruby developers.  That’s what he mostly wanted from me – my social network of techies.  His partners might have formed their initial concept on their own, but they fleshed it out based on my blabbering.”

“So Balamohan made recruiting fees?”  Raj again the curious one.

“Not exactly.  He made his recruits purchase a bond to recompense their employers for their training and other expenses to cover their first two years of employment.  He charged a service fee for brokering the bond with a bank and received another fee from the bank for originating the loan.  Apparently he’s been doing this for several years and our venture helped him to go fulltime at it.”  Jayashree projected an incredulous facial expression.

“I’m not sure how I feel about that.  I don’t think it’s illegal because I’ve heard of the practice, but it sounds slimy to me.”  Again Raj with the response.  “He recruit anyone you know?”

“He wouldn’t say but I called 3 friends and they all confirmed he cold called and recruited them.  We can infer from this that their developers are local so we might have an edge on them with our Viet Namese labor costs.”  Jayashree was hoping to get Shankar into the dialog but he didn’t bite.  “My friends told me more.  He hired one DBA but no data mappers or architects.  They’ll manipulate most of the data at the application layer.”

“Hah, we got ‘em!”  Raj was suddenly very positive.  “Classic mistake, unfortunately made by just about everyone nowadays.”  Raj took on an authoritative tone as he explained.  “This is a huge data integration, or I should say content management, effort.  We built a data warehouse and focused on our data feed framework for the ETL processes.  We’re using Ruby for the front end, but we have stored procedures behind that written in Python.  Not to downplay the importance of the application layer  for aesthetics and usability, specifically the web services for ease of content accessibility; but we’re providing sub-second response time on our queries.  And we’ll scale at that speed for terabytes of data.  They’ll have to compromise on much smaller data sets – probably XML – can you say slow?  Their solution will be completely unscalable.”  Raj laughed and was enjoying himself immensely as he imagined the pending doom of this little competition.

Shankar finally interjected, “Well I should let you all know, our partners are suing us for malfeasance.  They brought forward the suit today demanding we forfeit all our shares to them.  Apparently this little company outbid our investors on a big contract.  And Balamohan has been talking enough to where our investors know more about our culpability for leaking intellectual capital than we do ourselves.  So we’ve got that going for us.”

Jayashree – Two Weeks Notice

05 Friday Mar 2010

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Jayashree asked to speak privately with her manager Monday morning and told him of her plans to leave the call center in two weeks.  “I wish you success in your endeavors Jayashree,” her manager was sincere but he also wanted to talk.  “Can you tell me if you plan to work with Balamohan?”

Jayashree didn’t see that coming.  “What?  What do you mean?”

“Well, I know you two have been dating and well, he gave notice on Friday to start up some venture based on Ruby developers.”

“No.  No I don’t have plans to work with Balamohan.”  Jayashree was no longer listening to her manager.  He began discussing why it was necessary to walk her out today and then explained documents that she needed to sign.  She signed them without reading the details.  She left the tech center campus in a daze wondering what Balamohan was up to.  She would need to discuss this with her partners and arranged to meet them at the Internet Café below her apartment when they got off work.  Turned out Raj got walked out immediately after giving notice too, so they were able meet before lunchtime.

“No Raj, Balamohan and I weren’t that close.  We only had dinner together.  And only 5 times.”  Jayashree wasn’t defensive because she expected these questions.  “But I have to tell you, I told him everything.  I mean, certainly quite a bit about our plans.  I told him about our funding.  And about our target markets.  I should have known better when a guy would be so interested in listening to my geek girl babble.  I gave him everything but our source code.  I’m an idiot.  I’m so sorry Raj.”

“No Jayashree, you’re not an idiot.  You’re a beautiful woman and you deserve better than that foot wipe.  And this isn’t over.  Now we need to glean information from him.  You need to act like you don’t know and have another dinner date with him.  You need to learn what his plans are.”

“I can do that.  That boy is going to buying some dinners at some nice restaurants.  He’d better be well funded.”

Jayashree – Dinner Date

05 Friday Mar 2010

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Jayashree was out to dinner with a guy she’d been casually dating for the last few months.  Being somewhat of a rebel herself, she liked the fact he’d go to work unshaven.  Balamohan worked at the call center with her and in addition to being fairly attractive, he seemed to enjoy spending his extra income on taking her to fine restaurants.  And he especially liked listening to her talk tech.

“When are you going to show me the data rack in your kitchen Jayashree?”  Balamohan said this quite nonchalantly as he spread butter on his naan.

“When you have a need to see it Balamohan.  It’s all very sensitive given the work I am doing now on the Alibi software.  I’m thinking of installing a biometric control to my apartment door.”  Jayashree enjoyed the coy dialog.  She’d have lost interest long ago in Balamohan if he didn’t express some forwardness.

“Well then, tell me my little princess programmer, when are you going to quit the call center and start fulltime on Alibi?”

Jayashree took a moment to finish chewing her bite of lamb vindaloo.  “Funny you should ask.  I plan to give notice on Monday.  You think I should give two weeks?  I’m not sure I want to.”

“You should offer two weeks.  It’s expected.  But it won’t matter.  They’ll walk you out the door immediately.  Ever since we signed that telecom client, they take zero risks.”

“Good to know, thank you.  You seem so plugged into everything at the office.”  It was a compliment as Jayashree was duly impressed by his political acumen.  “Would you excuse me please?  I need to freshen up.”

Jayashree left her mobile phone on the table as she rose and walked to the restroom.  Once she was out of sight, Balamohan picked up her phone and reviewed her recent call list.  He wrote down the numbers he didn’t already have or recognize.

Jayashree – Punch Drunk

05 Friday Mar 2010

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The 3 entrepreneurs walked out into the street.  The Ruby application designer, the Python content delivery specialist, and the guy with the smarts.  Jayashree began the dialogue.  “Shankar, you’re a good talker!”

“Thank you, Jayashree, but I didn’t really talk much.”  Shankar lit up a bidi.  He was the youngest of the three.

“Then you’re a good listener Shankar.  You’re good at something.  Good job in there!”

There was consensus among them that they did well and were positioned for success.  They could totally fail and they would still be making double what they could anywhere else.  Good times.

“So what did we agree to in there, Shankar?”  That came from a sobering Raj.

Shankar was on his game now.  He passed the bidi to Raj.  “We set the terms for our managerial discretion in a budget construct of 10%.  That’s juxtaposed to our ownership of 50/50, but it’s their money.  And it should be fairly easy for us to measure.  They funded us for what we both expect to last one year.  So they debit our commercial account once per month to establish the budget under our control.  We access that electronically so I’m thinking you could maybe give us some widget.  You know, like a mobile carrier gives you illustrating minutes used and remaining?  Can you do that?”

“Easily, although Jayashree would build the presentation layer.  And we’ll need people to claim their hours.”  Raj was quick to respond, thrilled at the spontaneous architectural discussion.  “I could download the balance twice a day.  We would compare that to our monthly plan budget.  Ideally it would always match but we will want to know when we’re over and under target plan.  It would be good to review that at least weekly so we would have room to stop development on either new feeds or support code based on maintaining the 90/10 split.  Yeah, this is really just more operational data.”

Shankar was just as excited.  He kept asking for more.  “Nice.  And make some headlights green, yellow and red when those programmers record their hours on time or are late.  We want to track that.  Can you provide access to this financial dashboard to our investors too?  That might demonstrate value?”

Jayashree – Conference

04 Thursday Mar 2010

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Jayashree wore a black skirt above her knees, and a white button-down shirt.  The shirt was new, the skirt still fit her from prep school.  Raj and Shankar were similarly dressed in suits as they strode into the investors’ conference room together.  On Shankar’s advice, they took seats almost before looking at their hosts.  He thought sitting down would be better than standing.  Jayashree smiled broadly and spoke to the 3 investors, “It’s been six months since we all first met; how are all of you doing?”

“Oh we’re very well, thank you.”   The lawyer continued, “We only have a couple of discussion items.  And I understand you have an agenda to bring forward.  Do you want to start first, or…”

“Why don’t you go first, I suspect our issues might run parallel to yours’,” Shankar fended the first question for the team.

“OK then, I will.  We understand that as the operational management team, you’ve provided work direction to the development team counter to our initial direction,” the lawyer paused for comment.  No comment ensued.  “We’re actually fine with that.  We’re comfortable that you did this in a smart manner.  To disguise the support work as value-features we think is brilliant.  The reuse of operational information as dashboards for the consumer is a sustainable offering.  Well done.”  The lawyer again paused to allow a response.  This time one came from Shankar.

“Thank you for supporting us on that one.  Our issue is related to the development team itself.  We weren’t considering global resourced labor.  To adjust for the initial communication latency, we believe it prudent to recognize now that our target launch date should move to the right 20%.”

The lawyer interjected, “Are there any other concerns on working with the Viet Namese?”

Shankar was on point, “Not at all.  But our experience suggests timelines will slip a bit, at least the first year.  Might as well plan for it now.”

Another investor responded, “Shankar, we really are very impressed with your team’s managerial decision making.  We want you to know that you have earned our trust.  We want you to move forward on your projects that involve anything at all, and fit within 10% of our plan budget.  You don’t need to consult with us.  But we also want you to make resources sufficient to developing based on our market research and partnerships for the other 90% of the budget.  Does that sound like a viable plan?”

“The three looked at each other approvingly and Shankar responded for them, “It seems very doable.”

“Good,” continued the owner, “then let’s discuss our next opportunity.  Garmin is concerned about losing market share on their GPS navigational products to Google Maps mashups on the iPhone and other smart phones.  The want to feed us their street data.  It’s superior to Google Maps and they feel it will generate sales to their mobile navigators.  Down the road, they plan to provide us with streaming audio as well so that anyone can use their smart phone as a fully functional Garmin product.  In other words, their partnership with us is to move off their appliance model to a SaaS business model.  We haven’t worked out the licensing yet, but we’ll pay them a percentage of our SW sales for their content.  We told them we could deliver this in our first release.  What do you all think?”

Raj responded enthusiastically, “That’s brilliant.  I just need to add a few tables and this is very doable.”

The two teams discussed other business topics and finished their meeting on very positive terms.  It was now time to focus hard core on Ruby and Python development.

Jayashree – Plan Phase

02 Tuesday Mar 2010

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Jayashree gathered pillows for her partners to sit on the floor.  They decided it best to continue their meeting at her apartment after the café proprietor chastised Jayashree for her profanity.  Raj restarted the discussion with a positive focus.

“Let me ask you this Shankar, is it too late to request some Python skills?”

“No, it might cause some delay but it’s not too late.  I’ll do that immediately.”

Raj continued, “Good.  I also imagine we would be managing these staff correct?”

“Yes, it’s expected, but the investors will set their initial expectations as part of the hiring process.”

“Of course.”  Raj was smiling and appeared quite comfortable now with their situation.  “We can easily direct these staff to work on what we determine.  They won’t be surprised that our tasks differ from what some suits told them.  We’ll still have to develop new data feeds but we should be able to focus enough efforts on audit logs and error checking to keep us on track.  We’ll be fine.  By the way, what are some of the new data feeds they want us to focus on?”

“Oh, I forgot to bring that up.  They already have agreements from a consortium of auto insurance companies to provide us with data they have on driver’s mileage and related information.  They want us to correlate it with other data and feed it back to them.  Apparently, there’s a lot of money in the insurance business.”

Jayashree heard this discussion from the kitchen where she was making tea.  She served the drinks now to her partners.  In truth, she’d become a bit distracted thinking about having doubled her income.  She was over her anger from earlier and was now feeling pretty good about things.  She picked up her guitar and played songs for her partners into the evening.

Jayashree – Selling Out

28 Sunday Feb 2010

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Jayashree watched Shankar’s face as he stared into his tea cup.  “I really thought Raj would be here by now.  Just tell me the deal Shankar.  Raj probably had something come up at work.”

Shankar looked at her directly for the first time since he met her at the Internet Café.  “Well, that’s a nice segue into our investors’ feedback.  They expect you to both give notice right away.  You said you were cool with that, right?

“Depends.  How am I going to pay the rent?”

“As soon as you quit, you go on salary.  They’ll match your current rate with a 20% raise.  They would like to see your last 2 pay checks as artifacts.”

“No problem, Shankar.  What about our programmers?”  Jayashree was in an intense mood although the thought of a raise nearly distracted her.

Shankar looked out the window as he said, “You sure you don’t want to wait for Raj?”

“I’m sure.”

Shankar faced Jayashree again and looked at her for a few moments before finally saying, “Like I expected, they want to hire the programmers themselves.”  Shankar knew she expected this too but waited for a response.  Anything to delay the coming storm.  No response from Jayashree, just big round, unblinking, dark brown eyes.  “The programmers will all be skilled in Ruby.”  Did she blink?  She might have.  “They are being hired to expand our data feeds.  These guys said support features can wait until we need support.  They want to go to market with as wide a scope as possible.”  Shankar lost his train of thought as he saw Raj walking up through the window enabling Jayashree to respond.

“Holy cow Shankar!  You total foot wipe!”  Jayashree stopped as she saw Raj walk in and simultaneously realized the entire café heard her outburst.

Upon entering Raj noticed everyone in the café looking at Jayashree and Shankar, and was unsure whether to talk to them or the crowd.  He nodded toward his partners in a hushed voice, “Hey guys.”  They just stared at him quietly as he took his seat.

Jayashree maintained the hushed voice and pointed to Shankar with her left hand as she exclaimed to Raj, “Our partner just hired ruby programmers to develop ETL for new data feeds.”  She paused to let that sink in for Raj.

Raj stared at Shankar for half a minute before asking him, “Clearly, you lost the argument for developing a robust product, but did you not know that our ETL is in Python?  It’s just the web services and Jayashree’s stuff that’s written in Ruby.  This is a train wreck.  What else should we know Shankar?”

“Our ownership will now be diluted to half with these guys.  So Jayashree, you go from 35% to 25% and we each go from 17.5% to 12.5%.”

Jayashree broke the hush and shattered all sense of decorum as she shrieked, “WTF!  No deal Shankar!  No deal!  Are you hearing me?”

Shankar remained his composure and his hushed voice as he responded, “They said if you had issues with that, they could double your rate.”

East Boulder Trail Conditions: Muddy with a chance of cow paddy

27 Saturday Feb 2010

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After several monotonous months of running 4.5 miles around the neighborhood, I finally broke out an 8 miler.  It wasn’t the best trail conditions, but I can’t run that far without something to look at.  The East Boulder and White Rock Trails are one of my all-time favorite routes.  The picture is of my MonTrail Cryptonites afterward.  I only saw one other runner on the entire 8 miles.  He was wearing some YakTrax for traction.  I’ve considered those but haven’t read any good reviews on them.  I’m curious though so let me know if you have tried them.  Consider this a 5 minute video blog…

Jayashree – Investors

27 Saturday Feb 2010

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Shankar sat in the waiting area for 90 minutes past his appointment time.  He watched 3 groups of people come in after him and meet with his investors before he was finally called into their office.  As he walked through the door, he discovered the office was really a conference room.  His 3 investors were seated seemingly random around the table.  Papers and left-over food were everywhere on top of the table and he wasn’t sure where to sit.  And no one offered him a seat before beginning with questions.

“Are we ready to staff up Shankar?”  This came from the tall, thin businessman to his left.  Shankar understood him to be the lawyer of the team.

“Yes, I think so,” Shankar responded – striving for confidence but it came out sheepish.  “We have identified the skills we need to make us ready for prod…production.”  Shankar noticed the businessmen already each had a copy of his five bullets; apparently forwarded to them by the receptionist while he’d been kept waiting.

“That’s excellent Shankar, but you know of course we’ve already identified the skills.  We have acquiesced on meeting your demand for Ruby on Rails.  But understand the development focus will be on creating new data feeds.  Raj will need to start full-time to lead this team with data modeling and data mapping.”  This came from the stout, well-dressed man to his right whom Shankar understood to be the brother with the third man in the room who had yet to speak.

“We think we should focus on making the code more robust, more supportable…” Shankar wasn’t allowed to finish his argument.

“The focus needs to be on enabling more data feeds.”  This from the other brother who was speaking for the first time.  “More market opportunities.  We’re not going to be successful simply starting with the American criminal justice system.  What is it you guys are always saying?  Data is reusable?  Well, we need to reuse it.  We need to start off with as many markets as possible.  Once we have some rupees flowing in, we can turn our attention to perfecting the product.  Steve Jobs didn’t include copy/paste or a decent camera in his first rev iPhone.  If Alibi 1.0 is successful, then we can be confident of funding Alibi 2.0.”

Shankar knew better than to challenge these men, but as there was a pause he interjected.  “American crime is not a small market.  Texas alone could be lucrative.”

“You don’t understand Shankar.”  Again the tall lawyer.  “No market based in America is smart right now.  The rupee is steadily gaining value over the dollar and this will continue.  We need a stable currency or we’ll be chasing our tails for profit.  We have to go after AP.  And AP is seriously security conscientious.  That’s our target market Shankar.  Now, let’s talk share dilution.”

Jayashree – Balls Out

26 Friday Feb 2010

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Jayashree and Raj sipped tea in the Internet Café waiting for Shankar to meet them.  “I see him.”  Raj had been scanning the sidewalk.  “Remember Jayashree, we need to be clear with Shankar on our priorities.  He can talk tech, but he doesn’t have the experience to understand what’s important.”

“Gotcha Raj.”  Jayashree shifted the chairs to better seat the 3 of them.

Shankar saw them through the window and nodded his head.  Upon walking inside he greeted them individually.  “Jayashree, good morning.”  He shook her hand as they weren’t very close yet.  He sat down before acknowledging Raj as they were childhood friends.  “Raj, you look tired man.  Been moonlighting?”

“Yeah, on this little project.  Here, we printed out our funding priorities for you.  It’s paramount that you communicate this clearly to our investors.  Feel free to show it to them.”  Raj handed Shankar a sheet of paper with 5 bullets on it.

Shankar was about to ask for soft copy when Jayashree took over the conversation.  “Let me summarize for you what we need with this next round of funding Shankar.  We can’t go prod with the present state of our code.  I know it passed all our test cases, but you have to trust me when I tell you that in prod, stuff breaks.  We need audit logs.  Especially on the ETL processes.  Then we need error checking on all our web services queries.  If a query fails, we need to control what the user sees.  We have to start on these things now because we won’t have the cycles to respond to all the potential issues after we go live.  But this isn’t complex stuff either, we can recruit junior programmers.  You think your investors are going to be good with us hiring?”  Jayashree stopped talking and took another sip of tea waiting for Shankar to respond.

“Absolutely.  They understood this second round of funding would be to staff up.  A couple of things you should expect though.  They are probably going to want to recruit these programmers themselves.  They have other businesses they want to support; so I’ll be surprised if they let us hire anyone directly.  Next, I expect they will want to begin funding you both fulltime.  You need to consider dropping your safety nets and committing balls-out to this.  Are you ready for that?”

Jayashree and Raj responded in unison.  “We’ve been ready.  Don’t mess this up.”

Jayashree – Alibi

26 Friday Feb 2010

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Jayashree was back at the Internet Café conducting end user testing.  She was the end user.  She logged into the web server racked up in her kitchen.  A Google Maps mashup of the city filled her browser.  She’d coded the mashup.  Her app paired Google Maps with either GPS coordinates or GPS-like coordinates generated from cell tower triangulation of people’s mobile devices.  In other words, her app was Loopt.  Jayashree didn’t claim to be an original thinker, she was into value-add.  Her market wasn’t consumer, it was the enterprise.  And she took the functionality into the security domain.

Raj worked at a company that made monitoring systems for criminals.  Ankle bracelets.  He administered the database for their customers’ sensitive personal information.  They used some off-the-shelf criminal justice software and it wasn’t very sophisticated.  But by having access and knowing what data fields were important, Raj was able to model a data schema that would map data feeds from the entire criminal justice industry – if one could call it that.  Considering there are roughly 2 million Americans incarcerated, it’s a healthy market.  But that’s just one market for this information.  As Raj liked to say, “data is the ultimate reusable resource.”  Using the same system, interested employers will be able to track their employees everywhere and maintain logs of their whereabouts.  Likewise, employees will be able to demonstrate compliance to industry regulations based on such logs.  Raj and Jayashree called their app, Alibi.

This software could be applied to almost anything involving people and geography.  Back in the Internet Café, Jayashree tracked Raj and Shankar on their GPS-enabled smart phones.  She then correlated their locations to a mashup of the neighborhood crime index and their eBay reputation scores.  The test results were looking good.

Jayashree – Home Data Center

25 Thursday Feb 2010

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Jayashree looked up at the hazy Indian sky as she strolled through the marketplace.  The aroma of spices and vendors’ cooking made her think of her kitchen – when she used to cook at home.  She dropped off 200 audio CDs among the various vendors.  The payment arrangement was consignment, so she’d go back in a week and collect based on how many each vendor sold.  She expected this to provide a decent income source for the next couple of months.  Her job in the call center covered most expenses, but she chose to live in a nice neighborhood with steep rents.  And she had expensive toys.

In the space designed for the fridge in her kitchen, she had a floor-to-ceiling data rack.  Mounted in the rack were two 865 Watt APC Smart UPS servers.  Those powered a general web and application server, 2 database servers, backup DASD, and networking equipment.  A mini fridge anchored the data rack – and added some color.  The most expensive part of all was the monthly utility bill to keep these systems powered and cooled.  She originally hosted peoples’ websites to support her home data center; but now for security it was dedicated to her partner’s application development effort.  Raj knew databases and Shankar ran the business end.  She was the programmer.  Their project was her idea and so she owned 50% of the partnership.  Well, that 50% was now really only 35%.  Investors had diluted the shares somewhat with needed funding.

Jayashree – Ruby Hacker

25 Thursday Feb 2010

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Jayashree checked her savings balance online while her program compiled.  Just enough rupees to cover rent, but what would she do for food?  She started up another little program of hers that queried all the shared iTunes playlists visible in the Internet Café where she was working.  The program then copied the top 20 songs based on quantitative parameters she defined – essentially popularity.  CDs from that were easy to sell in the market around the corner.

Technically as an interpreted language, her Ruby on Rails program didn’t need to compile – but she used that term out of habit.  Both programs completed at nearly the same time.  She began ripping CDs off the purloined iTunes playlists.  That would cover her food for the month.  The other program would make her rich.

Great Day to Run

14 Sunday Feb 2010

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Man, what a fantastic day to get outside for a run!  Fresh, white powder.  Crisp but no wind.  And intense sunshine.  I strapped on my MonTrail Cryptonites and played a James Blunt playlist – in honor of Valentine’s Day.  I slipped once on some ice under the snow on a street near my house, otherwise the shoes grabbed the trail with confidence.  Afterward, it was too nice to go inside; so Ellie and I went sledding on a hill at Sunset Middle School.

The Painter

26 Tuesday Jan 2010

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Beautiful Young Woman PaintingMy 18 year old daughter is in NY this week with her mother, auditioning first at NYU and then Syracuse.  I wanted to wish her to break a leg as I dropped them off at DIA at 7:15 am Monday.  It should have been at 6:45 am.  That would have been better for my schedule of a 7am staff call, feeding the 7 year old breakfast, and making all my much more important obligations.  But Brittiboo pulled an all-nighter doing God-knows-what in her room and was late.  And then forgot her driver’s license so we had to turn around.  Plus she kept me up all night knowing she wasn’t asleep.  I really can’t put into words just how pissed I was at her other than to say I dropped Brit off at DIA for what is probably a hugely exciting event for her without saying anything nice.  Did 16 years of IBM make me such a dick, or have I always been this way?

My life was different at her age.  I didn’t work Sunday’s in a trendy coffee shop.  During the 100 degree summers in Texas, I painted houses.  Mostly new construction.  I expected to attend college and never pictured myself doing manual labor when I grew up.  But I never thought myself above my peers and worked hard.  That paint crew taught me to appreciate the quality of our work when we were finished.  We did mostly high-end homes on Cat Mountain and Lake Austin.  The thing about painting, or construction work in general, is afterwards you can see your end product – and feel proud.  But it was 10 hours each day of intense labor.

Something I learned from it, or developed, was work ethic.  I mean, you would think that’s what I learned.  But it’s more complicated than that.  I also learned something that took me years afterward to appreciate.  I had my first experience with the anti work ethic.  I say that because it’s not non-work, it’s a different credo.  I’m not sure how to describe this but I’m referring to how intelligence equates to laziness, or the inverse.  My 1st summer, I worked alongside a HS buddy.  I’d always be hustling, working my tail off.  I’d sweat off 10 lbs. from morning to end of day.  Rob generally worked as hard as me but this one time he questioned me.  We were carrying unpainted doors to another part of the house and I’d clearly outpaced him 2 to 1.  “Ed, what the hell are you doing?  We make $5.25 an hour, and when the day is done, we’ll still be making only $5.25 an hour!”  I’d been racing like some mad dog chasing a ball.  Rob was pacing himself because he’d considered the end game.  We had different value systems.  Or Rob had one and I was still developing mine.  That was over 30 years ago.  He’s a personal fitness instructor and volunteer search and rescue dude now.  He was in the search party for that guy who died from exposure in Oregon a few Thanksgivings ago.  He moved to Grand Junction recently to run some college athletic program and he’s got me into mountain hiking.  He got me to hike my first fourteener – Pike’s Peak.

So I worked hard through high school.  I worked every semester of college – usually delivering pizzas until 3am whilst running varsity Cross Country in the fall and Track in the spring.  I got through a Masters program and to where I am now – which is comfortable.  Brittany left a dirty room for me to clean – knowing the plan was to get the carpets steam cleaned while she was out of town.  But I don’t know.  Is my teenage daughter as lazy as I think?  Or even if she is, does it matter?  Can what’s important today be what was important for me at her age?  Rob taught me I didn’t exactly have a plan when I raced to the end of the day.  Brittiboo wants to be a performer.  On Broadway.  She practices her lines, her songs and her monologues.  She got the lead in her high school play.  She seems to know how to get what she wants.  And she has a plan.  I never did at that age.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not going to ease up on her lazy ass.  I’m a dick remember?  But I will try to appreciate that she knows what she’s doing and will very likely be a star at whatever she does.

Cyber War – Game Over

22 Friday Jan 2010

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“Are you kidding me!  WTF Sarge!  I mean, do you have any idea what you’re asking me to do?  You might as well just ask me to kill my first born!”  I/O was inconsolable, fairly incoherent and in a state of complete disbelief as he absorbed his Console Sergeant’s command to wipe the drives of all honeypots and pwned bots under the command of the Cyber Force.  This was over 50,000 computers world wide.  But it wasn’t the difficulty in carrying out the task.  Computers are automated if nothing else.  Apparently I/O had developed an emotional attachment to his bots.

“We’re withdrawing from this theater of conflict soldier.  Report back when it’s complete.”  The Console Sergeant turned and walked out of the war room.

Nearly everyone in the room was empathetic to I/O, except Tyler.  “Let it go I/O.  We have bigger concerns.  Game over man.  We all need an exit strategy.”

“What are you talking about?”  I/O was coming to terms and seemed ready to talk logic.  “Exit strategy for what?”

Tyler addressed the entire room, SecIntel along with the Ethical Hack team.  “You heard the Console Sergeant.  We’re shutting down operations.  And we never existed.  Most of us are within a year of returning to the private sector.  What do we do for resumes?  We can’t talk about it.”  Tyler paused but everyone stared at him with blank faces.  Clearly they must have understood his point but no one had a response yet.  “So, we need an exit strategy.  We need to latch on to opportunities where the employer has at least some implicit knowledge of our experience.”

Jane was the first to suggest a plan.  “My older brother went to work for the NSA after he left the Rangers.  And after two years there he had his pick of employers.  NSA will know what we’re about.”

Tyler liked that idea.  “Sounds pretty smart.  We all need to think about this.  This war might be over but it’s not like cyber warfare itself is going away.  And we’re not going away – in terms of our skills.  We need new homes.  And those new homes are going to need a new army of bots, so you might want to be selective in how you carry out your command I/O.”

The End