Saturday, September 29, 2007

Why Term Limits are Bad

Tell me again why it's a good thing that I can't vote for this guy to be President again?!?

Hat tip to Apostropher for the link.

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posted by Tony Plutonium @ 7:34 PM 1 comments

End of an Era

I typically do not blog about work and I have no intention of starting but since I'm between jobs this weekend, I think it's okay to talk a little about what I'm leaving behind. I started working at Nortel (then Northern Telecom) in October 1987 after a year in South Carolina working for textile companies. I was still a techie doing IBM mainframe support back then. I stayed with Nortel as they hit some bumps in the early 90's then grew dramatically through the rest of the decade until they finally decided to outsource most of their IT to Computer Science Corporation in November of 2000. I was one of the ones that got traded to CSC as the senior manager for Windows server support for the Nortel account. It was a very interesting experience, with folks that had been coworkers now our customers and many of us still working at the same desk but with a different badge and different paycheck (and undeniably different business goals).

The good thing about spending seven years working for a large outsourcer like CSC is that I got many chances to get outside of the Nortel environment and do some work for other contracts, including the stint in Chicago last year supporting Aon Insurance, time in Newark, Delaware a few years ago supporting DuPont and a number of other contracts in a leveraged data center, and most recently moving to the Fed side of the company and managing IT support for a division of the US EPA. One of the great benefits of that was the opportunity to work in a number of different environments and learn what works and what doesn't without really having to change jobs.

So yesterday was my last day before moving on to a new job on Monday, this time as the global data center director for an international company that is NOT outsourcing its IT. It was an odd last couple of weeks - since many of the folks that I worked with at Nortel are still working for CSC, there are a few guys that I've worked with for 20 years now. I've done a good job in the last few years of keeping up with guys I've worked with at other accounts, so there were many, many people to IM, call, email and the like to say goodbye to all across North America and Europe.

All of that being said, I have absolutely no second thoughts. I'm pretty good about spending a lot of time weighing options before making a decision but once that decision is made, I'm good to go. So no, I'm not taking any time off between jobs because I'm really quite anxious to get going with the new company. I know I won't have as nice an office (few people have an office as nice as EITHER of the ones I had in this last position!) but I'm really looking forward to actually working for the company that I'm supporting!

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posted by Tony Plutonium @ 7:16 PM 1 comments

17-10

I'm not sure how long close losses are going to be satisfying for the Tar Heel faithful, but it's hard to feel too bad at this point with this young team getting within 1 touchdown in Blacksburg. It was great to see the defense really step up for a change and I saw some promising things in the early protection of Yates (didn't last the whole game but the Hokies are huge and fast). Before the season started I thought 5-6 was a good guess and that 6-5 was not out of reach and I still think they're capable of winning at least three more games, but that's only if they can keep their heads up after playing Miami and South Carolina the next two weeks. True, both are at home and a much better UNC team beat a much, much better Miami team here three years ago, but I'm guessing they'll go into the second half of October at 1-6.

The good thing is that in freshmen like Yates, Austin and Houston, you can see a really strong team just waiting to emerge - if Davis can keep them looking forward and not let them get discouraged, we're going to be a very good football team in a couple of years.

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posted by Tony Plutonium @ 7:05 PM 0 comments