...good questions to ask a CIO

I was invited to an informal group lunch with our CIO today. He's an okay guy, but one thing he's notorious for is asking tough questions of the group if no one has any questions for him. Wanting to avoid being put on the spot (again), I naturally turned to Google for my daily dose of wisdom. As usual, Google did not disappoint:

7 Questions Every CEO Needs to Ask Their CIO

Obviously I'm no CEO, but the article looked promising. I chose question #5. Not only did Kevin think that was a good question (go me?) but he actually answered it in the way the article indicated a good CIO would answer, and it prompted enough follow-on dialogue to last the rest of the lunch.

Mission accomplished!

...how to play the Catan card game

Guess what came in the mail today!

Yaaaay, straight from the Amazon, it's our new Catan card game!

And it rocks, as expected. It took awhile to play, primarily because Pete and I had to keep looking back at the instructions for different situations, but I think we'll get the hang of it before long. We both enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

Klaus Teuber, you're the man.

...I really don't like artichoke

It's official. I've tried it on several different occasions and I just really don't like artichoke.

Pete and I ordered a Greek pizza today at Passero's for lunch. The differentiator for this pizza place against all other pizza places is that they really load the pizza with your toppings. The toppings are never, ever sparse. In fact, it's even hard to pick up your slice because the weight of the toppings makes it bend so much.

That's usually an awesome thing... except the Greek pizza we ordered had artichoke on it. And since we were at Passero's, it had a LOT of artichoke on it. And black olives.

I don't like to pick things off of my pizza because I think it's wasteful, but Pete made me feel better by eating what I picked off. So my artichoke and olives ended up in Pete's stomach. I'll just consider that a win/win.

...Documentum did NOT improve in this year's WCM Forrester Wave...

...even though EMC promised me they would.

This is not making my life any easier. Not at all. *groan*

...a Full House beats both a Flush and a Straight

The GIS picnic is coming up in a couple days, and I signed up for the Texas Hold'em tournament. Today Pete asked me if I knew the order of the poker hands (which hand beats which) and I began rattling them off:

Royal Flush
Straight Flush
Four of a Kind
Flush
Straight
Full House....

...and he stopped me. "Full House beats both a Straight and a Flush."

No way, I thought. I've been playing poker off and on for fun for awhile now and I know my poker hands.

...Pete and the internet proved me wrong.

Thanks for setting me straight, honey! Now I won't embarrass myself during the tournament on Thursday. Whew!

...some great customer reference questions

I'd like to personally thank Adam Kalsey for writing this blog post five years ago. The internet's a beautiful thing!

I'm in the process of getting a customer reference call scheduled with a Documentum web content management customer and needed a jump start on providing some questions up front. Adam's blog post was the perfect thing. I love the internets!

When interviewing references, people don’t often know what to ask other than non-specific questions about how they like the product and how good the vendor support is. This is certainly the information you want to get, but unless you ask specific questions, you aren’t going to get specific answers.
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...I really have it so easy with such a teammate husband

I think sometimes I take it for granted what a truly giving and concerned husband I have. He is a true teammate. Caroline isn't just my job or just his job... She's our job and we help each other. Neither of us feels "stuck" (at least I don't... I hope he doesn't!). When the going gets rough, we trade or double-team, and I appreciate that so much.

Tonight, Caroline poo-pooed in the bathtub for the first time, lol. :) Pete called to me, I rushed in like a pit stop worker with a diaper, he took her and the fresh diaper into the bedroom to keep dry and warm and happy while I cleaned up the bathtub, and then he came back in to continue Caroline's bath. Easy as pie with two people working together!

So Pete, if you ever read this, thanks again. And if you don't read this, I'll just make sure I remember to keep telling you in person.