SXSW

I was in Austin over the weekend at South by Southwest (SXSW) where we (Microsoft) partnered with the folks at the Film/Music/Interactive Festival to host 41 Wounded Warriors from Brooke Army Medical Center for the day. It was a fantastic time. It was a long day but as they were getting on the bus to head back to San Antonio, everyone thanked me and told me how much fun they had and how grateful they were to get off post.

There were 2 highlights for me. The first was seeing all of the smiles as everyone was enjoying dinner at Moonshine Restaurant. The second was the standing ovation they received when they when it was announced they were in the audience at one of the movie premiers. It just shows you, this country supports our men and women in uniform with great passion.

I’ll post pictures soon.

My Nephew’s Wedding

Life has finally slowed down enough for me to finally get back to blogging.  It’s been a while and I found the longer I didn’t blog the harder it was to start again…hopefully it’s like riding a bike and will come back easily.

We had a very rushed Christmas this year.  The week before, 3 of us came down with the stomach virus that was going around.  Oh what joy that brought.  I have not felt that sick in years and I was down for a good 4 days and didn’t really eat anything I wanted for another week or so after that.  Fortunately Maureen didn’t get it and the kids bounced back in 24 hours.  Everyone I have talked with who got it had the same experience, the kids bounced back quickly and the adults took a good 4 days or so.

Since Maureen was working, our ability to tag team on Christmas tasks was limited this year so we did a little scrambling at the end but came in just under the wire.  The added stress this year was we were leaving on Dec. 26 to go to Ft. Wayne, IN for my nephew’s wedding.

Although it sounds good, I will say there are probably easier times throughout the year to get married.  That said, we had a great time.  A lot of family friends drove in from Rochester, NY for the wedding.  It was wonderful seeing all of them and since we were all staying at the same hotel and all of the activities (other than the ceremony) were at the hotel, we had a lot of time to visit and catch up.  My sister did an amazing job to make it tremendously easy for those that traveled in.  Everyone was invited to the rehearsal dinner, she had cars picking people up at the airport and taking people to the church.  She made it all so easy and I know it was a lot of work on her part.

Marisa and Matthew were in the wedding and did a fabulous job.  Marisa was the flower girl and Matthew was the ring bearer.  Due to problems in Chicago, we were late getting in so the kids missed the rehearsal but that didn’t seem to faze them a bit because they did the ceremony perfectly.  Marisa was beautiful and looked like she was 16 and I had a lot of friends coming up to comment.  I was proud and a little nervous.  She’s still my “little” girl and this is the first time she looked so grown-up!  Matthew, at the request of the Bride, wore a Purdue hat down the aisle.  He looked very cute and was a little nervous but had fun doing it.

The reception was a fantastic party.  Since my nephew is in the Army, they did the crossed sabres when they were introduced and it was a wonderful entrance for the happy couple.  Since the bride had graduated only a week before and my nephew graduated only 18 mos. ago, there were a lot of  their college friends there which meant the dance floor was rarely empty.  Although I will say it was the girls that kept it full, not the boys and the girls regularly had to go pull them onto the dance floor.  It almost seemed like a middle school dance where, again, it’s the girls having to ask the boys.  I’m not sure what was going on there.

Matthew ended up stealing the show at the reception.  He was out dancing the whole night and doing moves I had never seen before.  He was having so much fun and everyone loved it.  The college girls were asking him to dance, the crowd would circle him as he did the robot or some break dancing, the adults watched in amazement as this 7 year old put on a show.  Maureen and I were as surprised as everyone else.  Like most 7 year olds, he can be shy in large groups, not this time though.  My nephew and his wife thought it was great and kept encouraging him.

We were all tired the next day and had a leisurely breakfast and lunch before heading to the airport for the trip home.  My parents and Aunt came with us and we were able to get them on an earlier flight.  Our flight left on time from both Ft. Wayne and Chicago and we got home at 9pm.  It was a long weekend but we have a lot of great memories, pictures and videos, got to catch up with friends and, most importantly, see my nephew start the next chapter of his life.

Welcome 2009!

It’s Jan 6, 2009 and I already feel behind!  I have lots to talk about from the holidays, including my nephew’s wedding.  More to come shortly.

Christmas Time

Christmas is my favorite time of year.  I like seeing all of the houses lit up, the Christmas music on the radio and at the stores, the anticipation of what gifts Santa will bring.  It’s also a time of year when I try and take vacation to enjoy all of it, help around the house and be with the family.  I look forward to Christmas all year and I am excited it’s almost here.

I enjoy is taking the kids to see Santa and yesterday was the day.  I love watching the expressions on their faces as they are talking to Santa.  You can tell when they are telling him what they are hoping for.  Their faces light up and they get a smile on their faces.   It reminds me of when I was a kid and anticipation of coming downstairs on Christmas morning.

Great Stocking Stuffer

I just finished reading a very good book and, if you are looking for one last stocking stuffer idea, it might be worth considering.  The book is The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.  If you haven’t heard of him, he is the computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon that developed late stage pancreatic cancer and reccently passed away.  He gained a great deal of internet and main stream media attention for that last lecture and you can see some of it here.

The book is an easy read, under 200 pages, and Mr. Pausch shares how he approached life and how he and his wife, Jai,  faced his terminal illness.  He, self-admittedly, can come off as a bit arrogant, but, he has some wonderful wisdom and experiences to share.  Although some things he writes about I have heard before, there are some great nuggets that I  will remember.  The thing that struck me the most is how positive he was through this ordeal.  He didn’t ask “why me”, at least not in the book and he tried to focus on how good he felt and he did not let the disease change his outlook.  His honesty about himself and what he was facing come through loud and clear.

There are parts that are hard to get through, like near the end when he leaves a message for his kids and talks about his wife, and although we already know the unfortuante ending, the good in it outweighs the sad…at least it did for me.

You can learn more about Randy and his legacy on his web site.

Black Friday

Black Friday is here. I don’t like shopping with crowds and I avoid Black Friday like the plague.  I guess for those that get a charge of being out in the crowds and finding the perfect bargain it’s a rush.

I started wondering where the term Black Friday came from.  The retailers talk of Black Friday with great anticipation and yet “Black Friday” sounds like a bad thing.  The day after Thanksgiving is considered the start of the Christmas shopping season and signals the start of crowded stores, lots of traffic and people short on patience so why is this a good thing?  After doing a little research, I found that the term “Black Friday” was first used by the Philidelphia Police Department in 1965 to refer to the crush of cars and people that came out the day after Thanksgiving to shop for Christmas. Again, this seems like a negative reference.  So I did more searching.  I then found that merchants didn’t like the negative inference of “Black Friday” so, in the 1980’s, they provided an alternate explanation.  It came from an accounting perspective.  Since profits are recorded in black ink and the merchants typically recorded profits on this day, they started referring to “Black Friday” as the success that stores experienced.  There it is…simply the color of the ink. 

Armed with this new found knowledge, you still won’t find me at the stores on this day.  I’m going to leave that to all of the hardcore shoppers and just bask in my day after Thanksgiving dinner glow.

Goodbye Jerry

Finally, Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, has figured out what everyone else already knew, he needed to resign!  I know he is smart but the company he founded has outgrown his ability to lead them.  Since the day he happily rejected Microsoft’s efforts to purchase Yahoo!, the stock has been on a fast track to the bottom of the heap.  Let’s see, Microsoft offered $33 per share, right before Jerry resigned it was under $9.  You can do the math.  The market promptly responded the next day by sending Yahoo! shares up 10%, I think that says what investors think.

The funny part of this is he, and his partner in this fiasco, Yahoo! board member Roy Bostock, have been telling the financial community and everyone else that will listen how great Yahoo! is going to do.  They are going to grow the business in double digits, take share from everyone and the shareholders will reap the rewards.  Of course Jerry and Roy have not been in touch with reality for a long time and none of this has panned out, including the deal with Google which was supposed to be a major revenue source.

The good news for Yahoo! shareholders is that Jerry will step down.  The only catch is that won’t happen until a successor is found.  I hope they find one fast.

Pandora

I just started listening to Pandora (www.pandora.com).  It’s radio over the internet and it’s pretty cool.  When you visit the site you can either listen to a genre which plays a particular style of music (rock, country, classical, etc.) or you can enter a particular singer or group that you like and it will look for similar music.  That’s it.  The music starts streaming and you can rate a particular song so that it knows what you like and don’t.  If you register, which is free, it will remember the stations you create so the next time you visit you are ready to go.

I love finding sites/services like this.  It helps me personalize my internet experience.

Reflections from an Amazing Weekend

I wanted to capture some of my favorite memories from last weekend while they are still fresh in my mind.

As you can imagine, spending 3 days with the Wounded Warriors was tremendously humbling.  These men and women are in their early 20’s.  They have clear purpose and devotion to our country and to keeping it safe.  They consider their injuries as part of the job.  They take it in stride.  Here are some reflections on the weekend:

• Listening to SGT Joel Dulashanti share what he was thinking when he was at the hospital after he was shot 3 times while pursuing bad guys in Afghanistan.  Here he was, having been shot 3 times, one of the bullets would cause his leg to be amputated, and as he is lying on the table he wants to make sure he doesn’t lose his watch and he is embarrassed because the nurses are going to see him without clothes since they were cutting everything off of him to find his wounds.
• Listening to SGT Dulashanti describe the first time he went out with only his buddy on a mission.  He is a sniper and the role of a sniper is predominantly to watch and gather information.  On this mission in Afghanistan, it was the middle of winter and very cold.  He and his buddy had to walk 2 miles in a mountainous area and set up a position to watch a village.  There was intelligence that a bad guy was there.  They were dropped off in the middle of the night to start the trek in.  They couldn’t take a straight path because that would give them away so they had to take an indirect path around mountains and through passes and it was night time.  They made it to their position and set up and started watching.  The reality for SGT Dulashanti became very clear.  If the bad guys found them, they would have to hold them off for at least 15 minutes before help could get to them.  Those would have been the longest 15 minutes of his young life.  Fortunately, they were not found and they completed their mission without seeing the bad guy.  His story stopped me cold.  What courage he and his buddy demonstrated on this mission.  They faced down their fears and the danger.  It’s men like this that make America strong.
• Sitting at lunch on Saturday with a table of Marines.  These guys are all focused.  They have unity because they are Marines.  They stuck together all weekend.  They shared their stories of boot camp and training.  They were from all different parts of the country but bound together as Marines.  And a very vivid memory was when the option to go back to the hotel instead of Ground Zero was offered because it was raining.  There was no hesitation from them, they were going to Ground Zero.  That moment when the World Trade Center was brought down by Al-Qaida was a key reason they joined.  A little rain wasn’t going to stop them.
• Listening to GEN Chiarelli at Ground Zero tell these men and women he had never come to Ground Zero alone because it wasn’t right.  He needed to come with those that had given so much to defend our country.
• Hearing Chris Cortez talk at Ground Zero.  He’s my friend and co-worker.  He’s also a retired USMC General.  I saw GEN Cortez that day for the first time.  Very moving.
• Listenting to Stephen Cochran sing at dinner on Saturday night.  He was fantastic.  Check out his web site…I posted the link in an earlier post.
• Talking with ADM Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and seeing how passionate he is about taking care of our Wounded Warriors and making sure they have jobs when they get out.  He doesn’t want what happened to our Vietnam Vets (his generation) to happen to them.
• Seeing the smiles on everyone’s face after the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.  Having people come up to us and thank us for making the tickets available.  I felt 10 feet tall and very proud to work for Microsoft
• Seeing the amazing Salute weekend that the team had created come off flawlessly.  They did a fantastic job.

At a time when the country is going through such a tough time on so many fronts.  There are so many changes that we are experiencing.  I am encouraged though to see the support for our troops from all Americans.  And we can’t forget their families.  They are there with them every step of the way.

What I had not thought about until I was writing this is how close to home this hits.  My Great Uncle served in the Army in WWII.  He was with the group that went ashore on D-Day at Normandy.  He carried a flame thrower and would flush the enemy out of their positions.  When he went ashore on D-Day the flame thower exploded on his back.  They evacuated him and he did survive.  But, he did not have the use of his arms or hands…they were paralyzed.  My Great Aunt (his sister) took care of him the rest of his life.  She never married, although she had  the opportunity.  She was there to take care of him every day.  She’s still alive today at 90 and is still sharp as a tack.  Her devotion to him is why we can’t forget to thank the families too.  They are the unsung heroes.

Veteran’s Day…A Day to Remember

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I want to thank all of those men and women in the military for keeping our country safe, for giving selflessly and for the daily sacrifices they make.  They are the shining example of what makes this country great.

I also want to thank all of their families.  Their support and strength make it possible for our troops to keep us safe.

Having just spent 3 days with an amazing group of individuals from Walter Reed and Brooke Army Medical Center, this day takes on more meaning.  I was tremendously humbled by those men and women and I know there are thousands more just like them serving all over the world.  Their devotion to our country is unmatched.

So to all of them I want to say, Thank you…You make this country great and I can’t thank you enough for the sacrifices you make.