That doesn’t tend to sit well with most folks. I think they really want to hear some juicy gossip about how I feel the big corporate entity did me wrong and I simply can’t continue to work there in good faith. Perhaps something about how the man was keeping me down? I’m not sure. The simple truth is that I have loved working at the bank and found a lot of joy there. I was allowed the opportunity to serve on numerous teams, afforded to ability to move from Chicago to Charlotte and continue employment at the same firm, and ultimately, the past year, to exercise my passion as a IT artificer and technology smith.

It is seldom that one gets the opportunity to do what they love alongside others who have the same passions and aptitude for realizing those passions, and there is no doubt that this was the case for me at the bank. I have a love for enormous, complex problem spaces, and the global nature of the organization afforded me just as many of those types of problems as I had an appetite for. There can be no doubt that I had fun and you should get no inference that I believe that would have ceased had I remained at the bank. Good times, good people, and a win-win situation all the way around.

The Lesser Reason

Of course, no job is utterly without its frustrations and rough edges. The nature of a global enterprise is such that change is slow and hard to affect, while a smaller organization can necessarily be more nimble and react quickly to changes. As a harbinger of change, the enterprise architecture approval process was my nemesis, sort of a primordial change resistant undertow constantly wearing one down. The enterprise technology team wasn’t incented to help solve my business problems; for example, it recently took six months to just get a new server racked and stacked. The promotion process is absolutely not about doing the right thing or even rewarding performance, it is all about who you know and whether you worked on a project that was important to them (and they realize it) the past year. The bank laptop is so standardized and “protected” that I felt it a better substitute for an boat anchor than a forge on which I might pursue my craft; and any conversation that swung towards changing that was met with a group of mercenaries hired to inflict pain and suffering. But seriously, the need for such process, methodology, and even social networking in a large organization is certainly needful and I would not present any argument that it is unwarranted (though I do have some ideas about making the laptops more usable!).

There are definitely some fun contrasts, and unfortunately for large organizations they tend to be contrasts that drive someone like myself to the smaller shop. In the new role, I was allowed to choose any laptop (Sony Vaio F Series, i7 w/8Gigs) I wanted along with any operating system (Windows 7 Ultimate) I desired … hello! That tends to be a pretty big win right there. I know the Bank OS builds would simply ignore any RAM over 4 Gigs … but even if they didn’t, wscript.exe would eat up all the resources anyway!

I get to innovate, really. Big enterprise will say, “Oh, we encourage innovation here. We desire innovation here. We reward innovation here. As long as the innovation is done on the reservation, within pre-defined limits, with pre-defined tools and technologies, in such a way that looks exactly like the 20+ man oversight committee has agreed to.” So, most people immediately realize that the sentence is flawed. We did innovate at the Bank, we did some awesome stuff, and we have the ROI calculators in place to demonstrate how we can attribute Tens of Millions of US Dollars back to the bottom line in 2009 as a direct impact due to the innovation, the reward was ok, but was, dare I say, significantly out of proportion with the performance and impact of the team, particularly over the past two years.

It would be great if big companies really did take the Google Innovation Time Off approach, but seriously … there are way to many risk averse bean counters at a Bank in America to be comfortable. How would they know that you are doing anything, much less something that will ultimately be worth what they are paying you to do, which is not to be fooling around with technology but solving real banking business problems. My new company encourages me to do what I love, play with technology, stay on the cutting edge, and if at all possible … define the next horizon, we be risky adrenaline junkies — Can I get a Whoot! Whoot!

You simply do not find guys like Joseph and Josh in big corporate cubicle farms. Oh, you might meet them in passing there (Drew Shields for example), but they are only moving thru on their way to positions that will allow them to leverage their skills in wild, wild, west of the unexplored. I want to work side by side with these guys, they are doing cool stuff! They are thinking uniquely cool thoughts! They are converting that stuff and those thoughts into reward while they are at it! Just imagine what we can do together, because that thought makes me giddy with excitement.

So, to recap, the new position allows me to do more of what I love, it allows me to do what I love my way, I get to work with some awesome guys, and all the while maintain the same standard of living (which was slipping away at that Bank). Had the opportunity not presented itself, I would not have been looking for a new job and would still be tweeting about how awesome the work from home program is, how fantastic the innovation team is, and how you do not want to invest time and energy in comparing your job with mine because you simply wouldn’t fare well. Most of you can stop reading here – you have some idea as to why now and it most likely satisfies you. However, it is the lesser reason.

The Greater Reason

The single, primary reason that I left Bank of America to work for Joseph at Signature Tech Studio? I am convicted that it is the decision that will ultimately most glorify my God. If you know me at all, you had to know that was it. I was aware of the a calling to work for Joseph long before he made the offer and even after he made some tentative advances that I played down. Once the offer was on the table, Tracey and I spent a solid four weeks praying about the decision and determining that we are both in agreement that this is where our God leads us, as redneck as I might be, I certainly require Tracey’s conviction that this is the correct decision for our family. Additionally, I shared this information with a few friends trusted for their wisdom and counsel, and they all encouraged the move as well.

You see, as intellectually blessed, as cool as the stuff they are working on is, as ready as they are to dive into a crazy, chaotic, techno-challenge – these men, Joseph and Josh, love my God and seek to serve Him in all they do. They do this with a passion that humbles me and makes me desire to be more like them as they are more like my Lord. To simply be interacting with them on a daily basis with things so mundane as how to best configure scheduled tasks on MS Windows is fantastic, but we also praise God together. We have prayed together more than the number of day’s I’ve worked there so far, and that doesn’t appear to be slowing down! This relationship among the men I strive with is what I most covet.

Dad used to tell me, “Son. The grass always looks greener on the other side. Remember that it rarely is when you look at it.” Dad was, as ever, correct.

The keyword is in the last sentence, rarely.

The good Lord has seen fit to let it be that the grass really is greener over here.

Reckon it is about that time of the year again, and we are down right excited to be kicking off the Crawfish Boil this spring!

WHEN: 20 March 2010 – 3:00pm Eastern Time

WHERE: Bubba’s House

WHY: Seriously? I mean really?

WHAT CAN I BRING: A chair, if ye don’t want to sit on the ground. Ye favorite drink, if ye don’t like water or tea. Something else to share, if yer that type of person. (Cigars for the Chef’s will never be turned down!)

HOW: We need ya to RSVP by Sunday the 14th with a headcount of who will be arriving and eating crawfish. Turns out we will have ‘em shipped in from Louisiana and if we run out (Lord Forbid!!!) we can’t simply run down to the creek and get more.

Alright, I’ll work with the assumption that some folks really do not already know the answer to the question. First and foremost Tommy and I (along with our family) enjoy cooking and eating them, that settles it right there, if no one else shows up, we will be having a good time. Secondly, lot’s of people show up, and one our favorite things to do is hang out with (a lot) of good friends eating good food … with our fingers.

Given how many people show up and then do not actually eat crawfish, I believe there must be some magic in watching other people eat ‘em. I know I enjoy watching people eat ‘em, but I tend to want to participate in the sport myself. So we have a lot of the type of people I like to hang out with in one place, good and fun food, all outdoors with room to spread out, and can almost guarantee the fire pit gets going and the stories will be flowing! Drop me or Tommy an email, let us know you are coming!

A few weeks back, someone made a comment a comment about desiring to see some pictures of Tracey and I back in the day. It turns out that only a few days later, yet another person made the same comment, and then another. I’m sure that there is some sort of internet conspiracy thing going on.

However, today my mother-in-law showed up for a visit, and brought with her a number of just those photos. As we sat around the table, it dawned on me that this was precisely the sort of stuff those people had been asking for, and I do have this cool scanner sitting here, so why not go ahead and throw some up on the web?

First, here is a picture of Tracey and I. One year after our marriage we returned from Scotland to have a proper church wedding with all the fixings. Ages 21 and 19 respectively.

Just one year earlier, the following photo was taken, we were 19 and 20 respectively, newly wed, and on our way to Scotland, there is also a picture of me at the same time.

Tracey and Bethany, not quite sure of ages here, followed by Beth and Samantha (throwing things in the water), followed by a shot of all four of us!

A few short years later (1997) we celebrated Samantha’s birthday in our Pensacola Home.

That’s it for today, I hope that sates the appetites of those who were curious!

I recently received my copy of the book, and the kids think it is utterly awesome to find my name on the copyright page as a Technical Reviewer. For what it is worth, I think it is pretty cool tool!

I spent a lot of my free time last summer reviewing the roughly 550 page draft on a chapter by chapter basis, and ultimately I feel like I helped Mr. Abbot and Fisher deliver a relatively solid treaty on the subject matter. I would suggest that the title is quite apropos  in that they focus the majority of their effort on the less technical side of Scalability, and if you are looking for a book that delves deep into the technical aspects of scaling, this likely isn’t what you are looking for. Where they do speak to the technical, it is primarily about scaling Web and takes a bit of translating to non-web based architecture.

Additionally, if you have ever worked at a large organization, measured in the realm of hundreds of thousands of employees, then you likely already have a firm grasp of many of the tenets  proposed herein; though you may find some new manner of thinking about them. As the subtitle clearly articulate, the book is about Organizations, Processes, and Architecture; thus two of the three main topics are specifically non-technical. Engineers and Architects should not be surprised when they pick up the book and discover this.

The book follows a logical pattern by first addressing scalable organizations, then addressing scalable processes, and finally discussing how one goes about scalable architecture. This seems very reasonable to me in that if you do not have the right people (organizations) focused on the right things (processes) then you will not be designing the correct architecture, rather you will be designing an architecture that address (perhaps) less scalable processes due to those processes being defined by an organization that doesn’t approach the defining scalable processes with intentionality. Which means that if they happen to get it right, then all is good; but they are more likely to get it wrong.

Many people use the terms Scale and Perform interchangeably, and these two fellows do a fantastic job of explaining why that is incorrect and precisely how so; many others believe that if their design has proven to scale from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000 then it stands to reason that it would continue scaling, which is again a fallacy that too many startups fall into. If you have never designed, engineered, nor managed said activities for an extremely scalable system then this book is a great introduction to what that might successfully look like. If you have experience with building scalable solutions, it is still a good read and can help define and challenge some of your currently thought processes, I definitely suggest buying it and giving a copy to your project manager and leadership team!

To be clear, I don’t get any sort of royalty for you buying the book; and I reckon that the majority of my technical brethren can live without having read it. However, I’ve met a large number of people, typically small shop vendors attempting to sell a product to my large global organization, who could have really benefited from reading this prior to designing the product they were having. The number one reason large organizations do not invest in your company and product? You simply do not scale and you lack an understanding of what we are talking about when we necessarily broach the subject.

We love the projector which we have had for about two years now, and every time we go into Best Buy and see all those TV’s they have for sale at price points above $600 and significantly smaller viewing surfaces, we just sort of giggle. On top of the relatively inexpensive nature of the investment, we can also pick it up, take it into the back yard, and watch an outdoor movie on the backside of the house at night; or take it to the park, over to another friends house, etc. Tommy and Jodi have the same sort of deal, and went so far as to create an outdoor screen from a King Size bed sheet that can be hung between two trees in the yard, and we often take the kids over to BBQ, play outside, and watch a movie from their patio. All told, fantastic value for the price … in our opinions.

About once every two years, we do have to change the bulb, and that runs about $120, so we do not want to ignore the ongoing operational cost, but we still feel it is a great investment. We also appreciate that our main family room is not set up around a television, and it is certainly fun to have new people over to visit. They tend to look around for it, and then comment on the fact that they don’t see a television in our house – which provides a fun opportunity to turn on the system, transform a wall into a television, and play some Lego Indiana Jones! This especially fun with smaller children, who will continually walk up to the wall, then to the room behind the wall, in an effort to discover how the magic works; and did I mention the shadow puppet shows; kids love playing with shadows!

David Ammons suggested that a group from our community get together to watch the Super Bowl at our place, and he brought over a laptop with an HD tuner that could pick up the game to demonstrate how we could do it. Turns out that this was also the week that the projector began asking for a new bulb, and Tracey went ahead and ordered it so that we wouldn’t end up in some embarrassing situation with a group of people at the house watching the game and the bulb suddenly goes out! Friday afternoon, I changed the bulb and took the opportunity to clean up some of the cable connections, the sound system, and gamming connections. As I finished testing the system to ensure that we are good to go for having people over on Sunday, Tracey remarked that it would be very nice to be able to stream HULU and watch our shows on the big screen, rather than crowded around my desk.

If you grew up in the south, you know better than to mess with Mamma’s Stories! I decided to look into satisfying my wife’s whim. Amazingly, it only took a single Google Search to find PlayOn. To enjoy PlayOn, you need a networked PC, and a Wii^{In BETA}, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Moxi HD DVR, Netgear Digital Entertainer Live, or another supported device. PlayOn also enables you to stream your personal videos, photos and music from your PC to your Home Entertainment Center. It takes less than 3 minutes to set up! So, in less than five minutes of my wife commenting that she would like to watch Bones or Castle on the big screen, I was back downstairs and we were watching Bones!

Turns out PlayOn lets us do so much more than simply HULU, we can watch Netflix (we already could), CBS.com, ESPN.com, our media from Amazon VOD, and YouTube! Additionally with PlayOn Plugins you can get free access to The Food Network, The Weather Channel, and much much more. The library just keeps growing. Be sure to check out their free plugins. We are three days into the free 14-day trial, and I expect that we will be investing the $39.99 to pay for it at the end of the trial.

Ultimately, we didn’t have any embarrassing situations while watching the big game yesterday and we discovered a way to move Mamma’s Stories from the office to the living room, and with a family of eleven …. the living room tends to be a bit less crowded and infinitely more comfortable.