Posting again

Maybe you are as shocked to see a new post from me here as I am.  Maybe not.

It has been a long time since I even considered posting here on this longest running of all my blog attempts.  It’s not worth the time to rehash or go back and try to analyze what was going on.  It’s best to see my posting this entry as someone walking in the door and calling out “I’m home.”  The only salient fact is that I’m back, not how long I was gone or for what reason.

Life has moved on for me, but I am back here and vocal again.  For better, I hope, or worse, if need be.

Why am I home again?  If I answer that honestly, I’d say it’s because I took a look at WordPress.com again, and I was delighted by the improvements that the Automattic team has made to the interface for writing a blog.  Everything is easier to do than it used to be.  I can focus on adding the content and what to say, and pretty much whatever I want to do (at least so far) I have been able to do intuitively and with remarkably little effort.  I so liked the interface, I decided to use it for this entry.

And so I’m back.    Welcome back me.

About Paul Moor

Most of you who know me know of my friend Paul Moor. He and I met online in a writers group back in the early 90s.

In February on the first, I think it was, he suffered a stroke that left him aphasic and unsteady.   His aphasia has improved considerably and even surprisingly already. At 85, he is still dealing with unsteadiness and that may be true from here on out.  But the good news is that he has made enough progress that he is being sent home to his apartment on July 20th.  His friend  Wolfi Petri who has been caring for Maxe, the wonder Dachshund, will bring him over on the 20th for a visit with Paul.  Whether Maxe and Paul hook up for good on the 20th remains to be seen.  I believe that Meals on Wheels will be making 3 stops a day at Paul’s house, and he has a busy schedule of therapy planned out for him.

I can only say, bravo, Paul.  You’ve made a remarkable recovery and your journey to do so has revealed some interesting things such as:

An amazing legion of supporters and well-wishers who sprang up and rallied to Paul’s aid.  His friend, Dr. Helmut Mueller, has taken the lead in overseeing the assistance that Paul gets.  He arranged for Frau Salien to be appointed administrator of Paul’s estate.  Paul said to me that even if he might be considered unpatriotic, he had to admit that he was glad this happened to him in Germany rather than in the U. S.   (Let the health care debate begin.)  He does seem to be under a good protective umbrella there.

Yesterday when Dr. Charles McClelland was visiting him, he shot this video (as an on camera interview) of Paul sending a greeting out to his friends.  This is a moment that a number of us weren’t sure we would ever see.  So Paul’s going home to his apartment is an enormous achievement.

Bear in mind,  this video is a one-take, extemporaneous dialog from an 85 year old man who is now but four months into his recovery from a stroke.  Pretty impressive to me.

Sometime back when I first read Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morie” and concluded that I planned to travel along this path to the end of the road with Paul, I realized that I should cherish those times we talk on the phone and joke and carry on as if we were in the same room.  I can spend however many days with Paul that we are lucky enough to have helping him  exercise his memory while I glean from him all the pearls of wisdom he wants to share.  Carpe diem.

Paul’s memory is getting a little ragged around the edges, but he is really looking forward to getting his hands on a standard desk set type telephone so that he can place and receive calls.

Soon he’ll be back at home.  I’ll take that for now.

Blogging 8 years

Today is the 8th anniversary of the day I first put pen to pixel and created this blog.  It’s been hosted at different locations from time to time, but it has been semi-continuously updated since that first Father’s Day in 2001.  My one-year hiatus last year will be the subject of a book about what I learned trying to lead the team out there in Las Vegas.  I want to reflect on what happened and my complicity in the outcome.

Since I’m mentioning my project for next year, let me point you to the site where I’ll post about it most often  so that you can follow me and be a part of the system I am using to hold myself accountable to achieve this objective.  The site is called Las Vegas MyOptic.  I believe the initial posts there will explain what I have in mind for the project.  The site is my way of keeping my head still in Las Vegas.

If you’ll indulge me for a moment

This is a note I sent last night to an audience that’s introduced in the note itself.   I decided to make it my entry for this morning.

Friends,

I’d like to invite you, no let me make that “encourage you,” to view tonight’s entry at my personal blog, because I have made an important and unfortunately, a sad announcement there tonight.  I ask that you watch the video in the post as it will introduce you, better than I could do in any other way nor nearly as quickly, to my ex-wife Carole, who died last night of cancer.

Those of you getting this message are a diverse mixture, but by no means an exhaustive one nor even an adequate sampling, of ex-fellow employees and business contacts and, in the BCC, members of the inner group of my local Knoxville social circle.  I’d encourage any of you receiving a copy of this message to share it with anyone else that you feel would like to receive it.

I thank you for those tears you may shed in sympathy with our family tonight.  There is no greater gift nor any better way for you to comfort us than to allow yourself to feel our pain tonight.  Nothing more than that is required.

Thanks to Jimmy and Cathy, I’m “learning to dance in the rain” with a heart full of gratitude to you both, mostly for the gift of your friendship.  I read the little book you gave me when I was at the dentist’s office this past week.  Its message gives me strength and inspiration, and resolve.

Pete C. if, by some miracle of serendipity that Manpreet simply could not prevent, you actually receive your copy of this message (I had to guess at your address), please forward it to my fellow NA Ops managers.  I no longer have access to their address or I wouldn’t have asked it of you.  It seems that just as Carole slipped away from me before I knew it, so did my opportunity to say an adequate goodbye to that group before I myself became the “dearly departed.” 😉

Susie, maybe you could make sure, for Pete, that the group gets a copy, since I’m pretty sure you’ll get yours. Thanks.

David S., I hope you have access to all those now in (or formerly in) Indianapolis that might want to receive a copy of this message.  And Jim A., you have access to our mutual contacts on other continents who might want to receive this message.  Please do me the favor of sharing it with them.

I love you all.  You each contributed in a unique way to a wonderful year last year, for which I wish to thank you one and all.

And so with this message,  I bid you a fond adieu,

What I failed to say in that note but wish I had, was “Oh and please buy a copy of my book about the experience when it comes out next year.”

Note to self:  Remember to add that to my closing whenever I am speaking in public throughout this next year.

Leaving Las Vegas

Leaving Las Vegas is going to be a whole lot harder than I thought it would be!

And I’m not referring to closing the business or even to packing up the clothing and personal goods for the trip home. I’m talking about leaving the life I have here, the friends I have here, the freedom I have here and the fun I have here. Knoxville is where my younger son and his family live. My other son and his family have a home north of Atlanta.

Of course, I own a home in Knoxville and that has been the place I call home ever since 1979. By default it seems, because so many of my possessions are there and because some of my family and friends are there, and maybe just because I have been around there for so long, Knoxville is my home. And that’s where I’m headed, come Tuesday morning (the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise!). I’ll be going back to Knoxville towing my car behind me.

But in many ways my life in Las Vegas was more fulfilling than my life in Knoxville. Brodie has said that the alternate name for the “Land of Enchantment” is the “Land of Entrapment.” In some ways I can see what he means, because New Mexico is Enchanting to the point that one could become Entraped here. I’m feeling a connection to New Mexico that I didn’t expect to feel, and that is causing me to wonder how I could start over, since I’m going to have to do that anyway, but from here.

It is for me an interesting twist to this saga that I didn’t expect to have to deal with. Maybe it’s only a tremor; but one never knows which tremors are the beginnings of upheavals.

Cast in a new role

In what felt a bit like an unexpected call in the middle of the night, back in October, the 21st to be specific, I received an email from a former client of mine with whom I have consulted off and on since around 1988 asking whether I’d be willing to consider “an assignment for a year or so in New Mexico.” Having already retired and, I’ll admit, having begun to resign myself to the inevitable decline that leads to the end of life, I was surprised and invigorated by his suggestion so I followed up with him just to learn what the possibilities were. That conversation and subsequent events have now led to a new opportunity for me, a new role. And just this last week, I received a formal offer to become the Call Center Manager for the Vertex Outsourcing call center in Las Vegas, NM — not Nevada mind you, but New Mexico.

Las Vegas, NM, is a relatively small but historic town nestled in the northeastern quadrant of the state at an elevation of 6,424 feet, higher even than the Mile High City of Denver. This site was chosen as the location for the call center because of its lack of disruptions due to weather (316 days of sunshine a year) and because of the work ethic and skills of its bilingual local population. However, this small, historic (which also implies old) town became something of an obstacle in locating a qualified individual to move there and manage the operation. And that, it turns out, was what caused my friend to think of me. Because I am 66, unattached and don’t have small children who would have to attend the Las Vegas school system, my maturity and prior experiences made him think of me as a desirable candidate who might be open to moving there.

“A year or so,” as originally suggested by my friend, has actually turned out to be two years when we got down to specifying the details of the agreement. I will move to New Mexico, maintain my house here in Knoxville, and return here after the two year contract is up. My objectives are to develop and sustain a culture in the center that causes the employees to feel valued and respected and that results in their conveying those same things to the customers in the calls they take from them. Although there are of course performance metrics that must be met as well, the primary objective for me is to nurture the kind of environment that is rarely sustained in a call center, so that customers are treated as valued assets rather than interruptions in the representatives’ busy, stressful and sometimes monotonous day. That’s an interesting challenge that I have often tried in my consulting assignments to help other managers achieve with, I will acknowledge, varying degrees of success. Now for the first time in my career I’ll have the authority and accountability to do just that myself. I welcome the challenge, and I believe I’ll find it both educational and interesting.

The other major goal I’ll have while there is to identify and train my replacement. Through modeling the behaviors needed to run a call center in this way and by coaching this potential replacement in his or her use of those same behaviors, I’ll seek to create an environment that can keep going without interruption when my time on site is up.

I haven’t yet decided what this move will mean to my blogging. Since beginning to discuss the possible move, I’ve chosen not to update my blog because I didn’t want to discuss these events online until they were firm enough to be revealed. And once I do assume the new role, I’m not sure how much I want to blog about what will surely occupy most of my thinking throughout the day, nor do I know how much time I might have for an activity like blogging. I suppose I could keep writing about technology as I’ve done through much of the last couple of years, but there are other blogs that already do a better job of that than I do. So my blogging may be a casualty of my new role, but that hasn’t yet been decided and remains to be seen.

At least now you know what has been going on with me for the last several months and why I’ve not been posting here as frequently as I used to. I’m about to embark on “Perry’s Excellent Adventure” in New Mexico, so if you happen to be traveling through the southwest feel free to look me up. I’m sure I’d welcome seeing a face “from home.”

A new theme

If you are viewing this entry in an RSS reader, come on over to my blog and take a look at the new theme I installed today.  It is called 1BlogTheme and it was created by Javier Garcia.  It has a rich feature set that can be configured from the admin panel in the WordPress installation without having to delve into the mysteries of PHP.  Explore any of those new features that may interest you by clicking on some of the links that surround the post.  You won’t hurt anything by doing so.  If you find you have displayed something (for instance, the list of Bookmark Services) and you can’t get rid of it, just click on the link to Home above and everything will be restored to normal.  If anything seems to be broken for you as you surf around the site, let me know in the comments. 

One feature that attracted me to this theme was the dual sidebar which, as it turns out, can be displayed either at the right or the left, just by changing a setting on the setup page.  I’ve set it to display at the right because a number of my previous blog entries refer to something in the sidebar at the right.  The dual sidebar is, in fact, a triple pane because the main pane of the sidebar extends across the top of the other two columns (panes) of information.  At the moment that main pane displays the information contained in the About section, but any of the panes in the sidebar can be populated with any of the widgets that I might want to display there.

This theme looks more professional to me than my previous theme did.  And anyway I think it was time for me to make a change, if for no other reason than to make it more interesting for me to look at.  I have viewed this theme in IE7, in Firefox, and in Flock 1.0, and all of them seem to display everything about the same way.  Again, I would appreciate a comment from any of you who may use a different browser and see any idiosyncrasies in the new theme.   I can’t guarantee that I can eliminate every unique quirk introduced by different browsers, but I will try to make it as inoffensive as possible.

Tag, I’m it

Jerry Pounds has tagged me to participate in the meme that he wrote about yesterday that he called “A Favorites List.”  I received a phone call from him, in which he urged me to answer the same set of questions about myself that he answered, and I agreed.  I don’t go looking for these meme-type blog entries as do some of my blogging acquaintances, like Tish who says she enjoys them, but since I don’t get many requests for specific posts here at my blog, I thought I’d comply with Jerry’s request.  So hang onto your hat or hold your nose, whichever seems appropriate, because here are my answers.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

1. My first job out of High School was as a soda jerk in 1959 at Gene Duggar’s Dunair Pharmacy near the intersection of Memorial Drive and Indian Creek Drive in Dekalb County, Georgia.  The pharmacy had a grill in addition to the soda fountain, so I cooked hamburgers as well as constructing such delights as banana splits and ice cream sodas and, most strenuous of all, hand-packing pints and quarts of ice cream.  With the accumulated proceeds of my earnings from that summer, I purchased a desk from the Ivan Allen company in Atlanta that I have to this day, almost 50 years later.
2. During my first year in college at Georgia Tech, I decided to enter the Baptist ministry, so I transferred to Mercer University where I encountered my second job.  In 1962, I was called to serve a small rural church near Eatonton, GA, called the New Daniels Baptist Church, and a result I was ordained as a Baptist minister at that time.  Carole and I married in August of 1962 while I was serving that church.
3. After a time in the U. S. Navy and upon leaving the ministry, in 1966 I became a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor for the State of Georgia which first gave me the chance to work at the Disability Determination Unit for Social Security and ultimately led me to work at the same Mental Health Facility (Georgia Regional Hospital at Atlanta) where I met Jerry and from which I got into consulting, because of my acquaintance with Dr. Aubrey Daniels. 
4. After the experience of being in on the birth of one consulting firm (Behavioral Systems, Inc.) and the demise of another (Vernine and Associates, Inc.) over the period of about 30 years of consulting, in 2000 I went to work for ClientLogic, a company that contracted with BellSouth to do technical support for their FastAccess Internet Service.  This last occupation was one that finally allowed me to use my long-standing passion for computing technology (acquired my first PC in 1982) to help others with their computing issues and in the process to learn more about such technical things. 

Four places I’ve lived

1. My early life was spent in Stone Mountain and Clarkston, Georgia.  These two towns are about 5 miles apart.  I began school in Stone Mountain and finished school there, but between the 6th and 10th grades, I attended Clarkston’s schools. 
2. When I entered Mercer University, Carole and I moved to Macon, GA, and lived in a rickety garage apartment (it swayed when the wind blew) at 1361 Duncan Avenue for the last years of my college career and while I was serving the New Daniels Baptist Church as their pastor.
3. While I was in the Navy, Carole and I lived on James Island in the Charleston, SC, area.  We lived in a duplex at 451 Riverside Drive when our first son, Jeff, was born there on December 25, 1964.
4. While with Behavioral Systems, Inc., and doing a contract with Cannon Mills, Carole and the family and I lived in Kannapolis, NC, just outside Charlotte.
5. I’ve lived here in Knoxville, TN, since June of 1979, when I moved here to take a job with Vernine and Associates, Inc.   

Four favorite foods

1. As a small child I was given the nickname of “pie” by our neighbors the Lawson Jolly family because of my love of chocolate pie and I have been known in my own family for my love affair with Oreo cookies, so I suppose I’d have to confess that chocolate is one of my favorite foods.  I’ve enjoyed it in all of its many manifestations at some point in my life.  You could probably even say I’ve even built a monument to it along my 40 inch waistline.
2. There are very few foods that I won’t eat and don’t enjoy, so almost any answer I give to this question would be truthful.  For instance, I love a crisp, cold and juicy apple, and I often eat one of those (a Gala) for breakfast.
3. My son Mike and I have lunch together each Friday and we’ve both found that we are very partial to a Japanese restaurant here called Shono’s where I have Fried Rice and Chicken with the zucchini and other steamed vegetables that accompany it. 
4. And while I like Italian food, old-time Southern cooking (Fried Chicken and a variety of fresh vegetables), Steaks and Seafood, too, I could very easily be happy as a vegetarian, which I have heard derives from a native American word meaning “lousy hunter.”  I suspect we’d all be better off if we would be satisfied with mostly vegetables, fruits and nuts and very few meats.

Four places I’d rather be

1. I can honestly say this is the hardest question on the list for me to answer because I can’t think of any place I’d rather be than where I am now.  I can easily think of times in my life I’d rather be because of the innocence of them and the friends and relatives who were there then.  And I can think of some positions I’d rather be in, for instance substantially wealthier, or ages I might like to be, but I am very satisfied with where I am, and I can recall very few times in my life when this was not the case. 
2. But to try, even if just allowing myself to fantasize about it, to answer this question, I think I would enjoy being on a white sand beach in the Caribbean with the warm breezes blowing and the waves lapping the beach with no one else in sight.
3. I made a visit to Berlin to see Paul in 2003, and I had a taste of what was there to see.  As is probably true whenever you visit some place far away, I had just enough time there to realize what to try to see on my “next” visit, so I suppose I could say accurately that I’d enjoy being in Berlin again while Paul is still living.
4. And although I wouldn’t want to live there, I’ve always loved visiting San Francisco because the city is beautiful and I love the atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance that exists there.

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. At the head of this list is “My Fair Lady.”  This is perhaps my favorite movie of all time.  I love the music, the performances, the story, the humor, and the lesson that it teaches.
2. Another favorite of mine is “The Music Man.”  Another musical (which is a genre of movie that I enjoy), but this one is a favorite because of the presence of The Buffalo Bills, and the performances of Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Paul Ford, and Ron Howard. 
3. A non-musical favorite of mine that doesn’t get very good reviews from the critics is “Memories of Me” and another of Billy Crystal’s movies, “When Harry Met Sally.”  Whether either of those are critical favorites, I enjoy them so the critics can just stuff it!
4. To round out the four, I’d have to list “The Princess Bride” and “Raising Arizona.”  Both of these comedies are a delight every time I watch them. 

Four TV shows I like to watch

1. Good Eats on the Food Network.
2. Criminal Minds on CBS.
3. 24 on Fox.
4. Almost anything on PBS, but in particular Frontline, Nova, and America’s Test Kitchen.

Four web sites I view Daily

1. For me this question is not very relevant, and here’s why.  Every time I open my browser (Firefox) it opens two web sites.  One is “It’s News to Me” which is of course my own blog and the other is Google Reader where I am subscribed to 70 different web sites’ RSS feeds.  So I view the content from at least 70 web sites every day, though I may not visit those web sites each day.  One beauty of reading an RSS feed is that you don’t have to go to the web site to see new content.  When there is new content at a site, the content will “come to you” in your RSS reader. 
2. There are three web sites that I find particularly productive for my areas of interest though, so I’ll list them in response to this question.  One is Web Worker Daily which on Labor Day celebrated it’s first anniversary.  This site is a constant source of information about useful new tools or techniques on the web.  Again, because I’m subscribed to the RSS feed for this site, I see any new posts made there when they occur.
3. Another of those three that I find particularly well suited to my interests is a site called Windows Tips and Tricks which is a blog run by Vic Laurie that I discovered when I searched the web for the answer to a simple question I had about how to alphabetize the listing of All Programs in Windows XP.  Vic describes himself as a retired Chemistry professor who has been using computers since 1956 and as someone who is active on Seniornet.  I personally value finding someone nearer my age who is knowledgeable and attentive to what’s happening with computers.
4. The final one of the three that I want to focus on is called MakeUseOf.com.  This blog is a collaboration between two main authors, Aibek and Kaly, and a couple of other people who contribute articles from time to time.  On the About page on the blog, Aibek summarizes the philosophy and approach of the site by saying, “On makeuseof we don?t write about any new web applications that comes around but only about ones that are COOL, FREE and USEFUL.”  No matter what your level of technical sophistication, this site will point you to may sites and tools that you’ll find interesting and perhaps useful if you choose to explore them.  Subscribing to this RSS feed and checking it out whenever there is new content, which is quite often, is an excellent use of my time.

So at long last we come to the end of my response to the meme that Jerry threw at me.  He has one other section where he tags four other people, but since I treat incoming memes the same way I do incoming email chain letters, I’m not going to tag anyone else with this meme.  If you are a blogger and feel inclined to join in, be my guest.

Now, Jerry, does that satisfy your curiosity?

Month Three

Just to update those of you who pay occasional attention to this web site, I’m now back after taking a month off from blogging. Also today marks 90 smoke-free days. With each passing day not smoking my pipe becomes easier, but lest I be complacent, I know that the only thing that matters is not smoking today. So I continue in my resolve to remain smoke-free today.

A lot has happened in the month that I spent not blogging so I’ll try to catch you up on some of those things and some of my discoveries during that time in subsequent, perhaps short posts, as time permits.

Proof of Life

In an email exchange this morning with my friend Juan, who recently celebrated turning 60, he commented that he had been somewhat concerned about me because he noticed that I hadn’t updated my blog in “many days.”  He is right of course in a manner of speaking , but in another way he is overlooking that the blog actually is updated each day, even if there isn’t a newly composed post like this one.  Since others of you may not be aware of these daily modifications either, I thought it worth my time to point them out to you and to share some of the insightful remarks that Juan made in our exchange. 

First, he observed that in this age of electronic communication watching someone’s blog is a way of keeping an eye on them to see if they are okay.  He noted, and I recall, that in earlier times we used to look for signs that our neighbors were okay and attend to signals that we might need to check on them.  He mentioned seeing them walking their dog or noticing their newspapers accumulating on the driveway or observing whether the light on their porch went on and off at the “usual” times.  If you noticed that any of those ordinary events didn’t occur at the usual time or in the usual way, then that might be a signal that you needed to check on your neighbor’s well-being.  He was thoughtful enough not to use the phrase “elderly” neighbor, but that would have been appropriate both in his example and in my case.

Nowadays, of course, as he pointed out, our neighborhood is significantly larger and less constrained by proximity.  The signals have changed to things like whether there is a new blog entry or whether the person responds in a timely fashion to email and through such things we can keep tabs on friends and web neighbors and still express our interest and concern for them when we see behavior that is out of the ordinary.  So I was grateful for his thought-provoking insights and for his concern for me, but as Mark Twain, I think it was, is supposed to have said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”  I am alive and well.

But, you ask, how would you know that, since as Juan says I haven’t updated my blog in many days.  Well the answer is you might know it if you looked in the sidebar at the “From my RSS feeds” section and saw there were new headlines there, or if you followed the “Read more” link at the bottom of it to read them.   There you would find the items I’ve shared from my scanning of the 64 RSS feeds that I read more or less daily.  And if you examine that link you’ll probably find that even though I haven’t written a blog entry such as this one in the last 15 days, hardly a day has gone by that I didn’t share at least one entry from my reading of my RSS feeds.

Juan wanted to know if it weren’t possible for that to happen “automatically” since it is an RSS feed and wouldn’t that be deceptive evidence that I was alive and well.  The answer is that the items in that group are things I have consciously and manually chosen to share with those of you who may be interested.  According to the statistics in Google Reader, in the last 30 days I have read 4,030 items from my 64 RSS feeds and of those items I have shared 43 of them in my so-called link blog. 

To say it another way, those 43 things are things I might have otherwise forwarded to someone (or several someones) in my distribution list by email, if I wanted to tell them about those items, but instead of “imposing” them on you in your email inbox without your requesting them, I choose instead to put them on my blog where you can scan through them, if you choose.  Think of it as the filtered result of my reading the web, filtered of course through the prism of what I find significant.

But for the purpose of determining whether I am still living, you can assume that if something new appears in that list of items, it got there because I put it there.  Regardless of whether you consider them either interesting or worth reading from your point of view, it is at least “Proof of Life.”  So when there is another long pause in postings like this one, as there is sure to be, if you want to check on me, check my link blog.  If new items are appearing there, you can be sure that I haven’t yet keeled over at my keyboard.

 

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