Friday, November 14, 2008

Why is it so hard?!?

2 posts in one day ... I hope my boss doesn't mind :-)

After listening/ watching Randy Pausch's talk on Time Management I've decided that my mom was right. It is good to take the time to say thank-you. Even better it is great to write your thoughts down and send them to the person you are thinking. However, have you ever tired to send a thank-you note (or e-mail) to a specific person at a company?

Now that I'm starting to work from home with more frequency I decided I needed to upgrade my internet connection. My cable modem had been working very well for years, but I decided to try out the new 20 Mbps service from Qwest. The extra speed would come in handy when downloading files and doing internet video conferences, so I decided to spend the extra money and upgrade. Long story short the DSL line was horrible. The modem was resetting itself every 30 - 50 minutes and when that happened the VPN dropped and my system briefly hung. Way too frustrating. A call to the tech service resulted in an appointment for a serivce tech this morning.

Again to make the story readable (or to not tax more poor writing skills any further), the tech showed called before coming to the door and after a brief conversation he had a line on the problem. 20 minutes latter Steve showed up at my door and said he thought things might be better. After another 10 minutes he reconfigured the modem and I was now receiving the promised bandwidth with a good strong signal. During the time Steve was fixing things we chatted about how he apologized for not getting the configuration correct at the time of installation and gave me his number in case any other problems arose.

Now that the service has been working flawlessly for hours, I wanted to say thanks to Steve (and let his supervisor know of his great work). I searched the Qwest web site and there is no way to leave a compliment. Lots of ways to complain, but no way to say thanks. (Actually I left a message in the "Other Problems" section and I pray the message receives Steve.)

So why does it have to be so hard to say thanks? It has to be a direct reflection of our complaint driven society. Hopefully Qwest adds a "Say Thanks" button to their web site, and maybe I can help my company do the same.

So a big THANKS to you Steve. You provided great service, I just thought you should know.

Manager Tools and Race, Don't Chase

I’ve been spending a bit of time in the car and to fill the drive time I listen to various podcasts. One of my new favorites is Manager Tools. These guys are very straight forward in their cast and discuss relevant topics.

Last week I listened to the 2 part series Race, don’t Chase (part 1, part 2) dealing with the topic of managing in difficult economic times. The thing that made this cast relevant to me was how I see Quantum acting and how it is modeling the macro concepts being discussed.

The challenge is to now put the topics into practice in our group. That sure means a bunch of work for me. But good work!

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Links for 11-11

Since I can't seem to get del.icio.us to automatically post some interesting links to this blog, I'll do it the "old-fashion" way.

Protecting VMware Environments with the Latest Backup Exec and Quantum DXi De-duplication Solutions

A webcast on how to use the Quantum DXi products to backup VMware Environments.

For some background on de-duplication checkout:
If you want to follow along with my bookmarks you can subscribe to my del.icio.us RSS feed

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Boulder Cup Cycle-cross


What a great afternoon! We had the great opportunity to hang out in Boulder this afternoon and check out the Boulder Cup cycle-cross race. My cousin Chad Cheeney, of Durango Devo fame, was in town with a few friends (Brendan & Greg) for the Boulder Cup race. These three guys raced in the Men's Elite class and treated us to some great bike racing.

I so blown away at the strength and agility of these riders and what amazing athletes they are.
Check out the whole set of pics @ http://picasaweb.google.com/jscusc/BoulderCup#

I will be watching more of this type of racing. It was amazing and lots of fun!

Great job Cheeney!
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Hawaii Fun ...

It's finally here ... the first post on this new blog.

As some of you know I took a little break between my assignment at Sun and starting the new assignment at Quantum. The family and I had a great trip to Hawaii, specifically the wonderful island of Kauai. The change in scenery served as a great transition between roles. It was great to slip away from the past responsibilities and into the warm surf. It amazed me how quickly the old job melted away while watching the kids hand out at the beach.

For this who want to check out the pictures, the rough images can be found on my Picasa stream.


Mahalo for your comments and friendship. Aloha!

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