...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.
Read more...

...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.

...about the dumbest looking new car I've seen yet

OMG, am I right or am I right?

The new Nissan Cube. Entirely inelegant, it's a very poor shot at asymmetry. I mean, I like the idea of the wrap-around window, but not on this rolling refrigerator. Yuck. And I thought the Scion xB was fugly...

...crap does indeed roll downhill

:-\ Nuff said.

Gotta work harder at climbing that ladder. I'd love to let some of this just roll right over me and smack into somebody else's face for once. Argh.

Gripe over.

...I can actually get better at jogging

I've never been a very athletic person. More the music and computers type, which always exercised my mind more than my body. Luckily I had been blessed with a metabolism that didn't require me to move much in order to maintain your average everyday okay kinda body. And I was just fine with that.

Then I had a baby. And my body went to hell. Caroline is of course worth it and so much more, don't get me wrong. But now, for the first time ever, I look at my body and know I'm going to have to work at it, and it's turning out that I have to work hard at it. :-\

So I tried the walking aerobics video I have. No dice, my hips screamed for mercy after a couple weeks and I couldn't even sit without being in pain. Then I turned to Plan B: Jogging.

At first I was terrified because I had tried jogging once or twice during college. It always ended in fitful spurts of attempting to breathe after a short period of time, which then led to immediate discouragement and quitting. But now, things are serious.

My first recent jogging session started with a commitment to 2 miles. I ended up walking about half of it, but I was okay with that and decided I'd try again. Two days later, I jogged 1.25 of the 2 miles, and two days after that I jogged 1.5 of it! In all honesty, this felt like a miraculous event to me, that's how much I had despised and given up on jogging in the past.

Now I'm slowly trying to work my way up to jogging the entire 2 miles and it actually feels like it's attainable. And that feels good. I certainly haven't dropped any weight yet, and I only jog about three times a week, but my hips feel good, my mind feels good, and I think I might actually be able to do this.

...there's a Catan card game!

OMG there's a Catan card game! And it's a 2-player game, so it's something Pete and I could play together (since we can't play Settlers of Catan when it's just the two of us).

It looks like a slightly complicated card game, and the estimated play time is 60 - 120 minutes so it would take a little brain power, but dang it looks like fun. Luckily there's an interactive tutorial that would help.

I still have an Amazon.com gift card from Valentine's Day..... cha-CHING! Amazon, don't let me down now!

Acknowledgments: Thanks for the heads-up, Mom! :-D

...the Krasl Art Fair is July 11 - 12 this year

We are once again excited to have the top 216 artists line the bluff and have art lovers intrigued and delighted to see amazing art. The venue, atop the bluff of Silver Beach, provides one of the most spectacular views of Lake Michigan coupled with the high quality of artists, truly earns the Krasl Art Fair on the Bluff its status as one of the top 100 art fairs in the nation. The country’s troubling economy poses a challenge for all of us this year, including the artists, whose livelihoods are based on local art fairs. Recognizing this challenge to not only our 216 artists, but our buying public, we encourage the artists to offer various price points of $25.00-$50.00 among their work.

Woohoo! $25 - 50? Maybe I'll actually get to buy stuff this year! It's usually a 'look but don't touch' fair for me every year, which I don't mind just because the art is so gorgeous and fun to browse. But if the artists actually go along with the encouragement from the Krasl Art Fair folks, I'll actually get to purchase one or two beauteous things! Excitement!

Read more about the Krasl Art Fair

...what "racking" beer means

Pete has just finished a gorgeous IPA. It has finally completed its dry hopping and is ready for consumption. However, looking at the beer in the carboy, there's a TON of crap on the bottom, primarily yeast and hops. I asked Pete if he was going to filter the beer before putting it in the keg.

The answer was absolutely not (apparently filtering beer is something you try to avoid in the craft brewing industry). He's going to rack the beer, which basically means making sure all that stuff you don't want is settled at the bottom of the carboy, then siphoning the good beer from the carboy into the keg, leaving an inch or two of beer left. That way, you leave all the crap in the carboy, lose very little beer, and don't lose flavor through any filtering process.

Now I know! :)

...how to make Pete's jambalaya

Pete and I cooked together this afternoon and he taught me how to make his fabulous jambalaya. Mmmmm.... so good! Here's what I remember:

• 1 package of Andouille sausage, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1/2 lb. of bacon, cut into small pieces
• 3 carrots
• 3 celery stalks
• 2 red peppers
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 onions
• some spices, like Cajun seasoning, Old Bay, Lawry's seasoning salt, and some other stuff to make it nice and spicy
• 3 cups of rice
• 6 cups of water

We let the meat sautee in our big pot first for a little while, as we chopped up all the veggies. Then we added the veggies and let those sautee a bit. Then we added the rice and water, brought it to a boil, let it boil for the appropriate amount of time for the rice to cook, and voila! So very, very good!

I don't really enjoy chopping vegetables, but it was fun to spend time in the kitchen with Pete.

...there's going to be a virtual exhibit hall during the ASUG Virtual Education Summit

ASUG is going to be hosting an online SAP educational event on September 9 - 10 this year, most likely in response to the big crunch on travel that all companies are going through. This event is totally free to ASUG members and is going to offer approximately 150 educational sessions all through webcasts and live Q&A.

I was pretty stoked about that, and then I learned they're even going to have a virtual exhibit hall!

That's the cherry on the sundae, lol! This rules. I love technology.

...how to create a small Gantt chart in Excel

MS Excel is no MS Project, but it works for little mini-Gantt charts when you need a picture to go with a small written timeline.

If you want your horizontal axis to be a little more meaningful however (i.e. Q1, Q2, etc.), I found you have to do a little manipulating. Setting the horizontal axis major tick marks manually is usually required, along with hiding the number values altogether and fudging it by putting text boxes with your own values by the tick marks. But it works beautifully for small timeline illustrations, when the tasks aren't in MS Project.

Read more about it...

...Super Mario Galaxy is way easier with 2 people

I knew that Super Mario Galaxy had 2-player simultaneous play before I received it from Pete for Christmas. I knew the second player could help collect Star Bits, which I of course assumed was a good thing for 1-UPs and other points. However, I had no clue that the second player could make my galactic life so much easier! Pete can not only hold enemies in place so I can pound them, he can stop rolling boulders, flying cannonballs, fireballs, all kinds of stuff that desperately want to kill me. It's awesome!

Unfortunately for Pete, it means that I ask him to play Super Mario Galaxy with me quite frequently. But he doesn't seem to be sick of it quite yet.

...Nintendo is releasing a new 4-player Mario game for Wii

Awesome! It's in the classic 2D style and up to four people can play at once:

"The number four is the key to Nintendo's next surprise," [Cammie Dunaway] said, unveiling a new Super Mario Bros. for Wii. The 2D game supports one to four players, and item boxes give one item for each player so you can all be on equal footing. The game looks like New Super Mario Bros, which means it looks great. Bill Trinen showed some of the interaction: you can pick up and carry other players; you can play cooperatively, competitively, or minute-to-minute, as players jump in and out. The big reveal is the propeller suit, which allows gamers to fly up and then float softly back down to Earth. The game is set to launch in time for the 2009 holiday season.
Read more...

Excitement!

...SAP put their Collaboration Portal plans on hold

Apparently SAP's trial run of their Collaboration Portal (with Sharepoint-like functionality) didn't get very well received with their pilot customers. So we're still stuck with Collaboration Rooms. Too bad... this time period was probably SAP's last chance to get their foot in the collaboration door at [insert my employer here].

...mixing absinthe with three parts water might be a little too diluted

I think I'd try just two parts water next time.

It was a fun experiment though! I had never had absinthe before, and Mom and Dad bought it as a new thing to try during my birthday picnic there. It didn't overly impress me, but I think mixing it with less water would help bring out the anise flavor a little more. I love sambuca and drambuie, so I think I'd love absinthe too, I just need that flavor to come out.

...I miss my brother quite a lot

Each time I hang out with Austin, I realize how much I miss that kid. It may be true that most of our comradery is based on video games, but that doesn't dilute the comradery itself. We love playing video games together. Period. And we laugh and laugh... I miss the days of non-stop laughing, but I also value our occasional day visits and slumber parties even more now.

I think it's time to schedule another video game night. :)

...the name on your driver's license has to match the name on your Social Security card in Michigan

Yeah. That's a new thing since last year.

But at least it forced me to finally change my name on my Social Security card. I got married 1.5 years ago... it's probably about time.

...feeling and acting confident can get you places.

Confidence is inspired by confidence. When I need to do any kind of persuasion, stating my position with confidence (not arrogance!) is so much more likely to prompt the audience's own confidence in me, even if I feel like I don't entirely know what I'm talking about.

It seems to be a very fine line to tread. I've seen people make very bold statements without having a clue about what they're saying and be regarded as dummies. I've also seen people who do know what they're talking about but cross far over the arrogance line, at which point they once again lost their audience. But I've also seen (too often) very good, sharp, intelligent people be disregarded due to not speaking with enough confidence. It makes me want to beg them not to be nervous, because everyone around them isn't worth being nervous about.

Maybe it's all a part of enjoying your work.