Finding myself on the other side of the table in the consumer-vendor relationship has resulted in some eye opening experiences. These are things I look back on, and realize that I strenuously avoided doing during my Scalable days. But I see everyone doing it now, as they try to sell me stuff, or convince me to use things. One of the eye opening things is a bit of typecasting of sorts.

I should have something interesting to talk about over the next two weeks, though a summary of this is Scalable Informatics is undergoing a transformation. The exact form of this transformation is still being determined. In any case, I am no longer at Scalable. Some items of note in recent weeks. M&A;: Nimble was purchased by HPE. Not sure of the specifics of “why”, other than HPE didn’t have much in this space.

This was my first post. On 12-October-2005. I’ve written about many things over the past decade. 2000 plus posts, 200 per year, averages about 4 every 7 days or so. I’ve slowed down a bit in recent months, as work has grown more intense, but there are many thoughts I want to get down. To a large extent, my journey through HPC has been an interesting one, and only slightly captured in these posts.

Its been 3 years to the day since I wrote this. As we’ve been doing before this happened, and after this happened, we are going to a TSO concert on the anniversary of the surgery. Its an affirmation of sorts. I can tell you that 3 years in, it has changed me in some fairly profound ways … I no longer take some things for granted. I try to spend more time with the family, do more things with them.

My soon to be 15 year old daughter was engrossed with something on her laptop yesterday. Thinking it was fan-fiction, I asked her what she was writing. She knitted her brow for a moment, and looked up. “Its code combat Dad.” she said, quite matter of factly. I must have had a slightly startled expression on my face. I knew she had dabbled with it, and had recommended (/sigh) Python as a language, after she took (and aced) a Java class last year, as Python is inherently simpler.

Detroit had filed for bankruptcy protection a while ago. The rationale for this was simple, they simply did not have the cash flow to pay for all their liabilities. They had limited access to debt markets for a number of reasons, and they couldn’t keep cranking up the taxes on residents and businesses in the city to generate revenue. They were between a rock and a hard place. I have a soft spot in my heart for Detroit.

… appears to be normal working hours from a location that is not your office, home … I am supposed to be on vacation. A short one, as there are simply far too many things on my plate (notice my recent posting frequency?). Instead, I am trying to solve problems for customers, sign NDAs, handle support calls. What was the purpose of vacation or holiday again? I keep forgetting.

I am now on Facebook. Turns out my family and all my friends are there, so … … how soon before we have to change for the next great social network platform? I’ve got more than one Twitter account (@sijoe and @scalableinfo), a linkedin account, a google+ account (that for the life of me I can’t really figure out), and now facebook. Not to mention 2 blogs (here and at work).

On my vacation in NY recently, I happened to be able to tick off another item on my bucket list. There’s some background to it, but here’s the pics. [ ](/images/IMG_1454.JPG) [ ](/images/IMG_1456.JPG) and [ ](/images/IMG_1459.JPG) The background to this is a short story I’ve been working on for a while. A near future serum run in effect. Should be done very soon, though I’ve been working on it in very short bursts.

Took off work early to take family (and Captain!) to see Allison Schmitt at Canton’s Heritage Park. For those who don’t know, Allison won 3 gold medals, a silver, and a bronze at the 2012 Olympics in London. We watched 2 of her races, most of Ryan Lochte’s, Michael Phelps, and as many of the swimming contests as NBC broadcast (sadly not enough). My wife and I enjoyed the races, and, as it turns out, so did my daughter.