Today (June 16th) marks my 3 #monthiversary in the brave world of sales and bizdev with Infoblox. I'll share some numbers from my first 3mo of performance.

2,286 emails sent
1,354 calls made
78,809 grand total minutes on the phone (mostly voicemails)
950 other activities completed
3 FOM (Field Oppty Meetings) created
My target number of FOM: a lot more than 3!

What have i learned?

* If you catch folks at the right time, right place, right mood, then they will take a cold sales call. My presumption was that no one would. Totally wrong there. It's just really hard to time.

* I thought emails would be far and away the most effective way to reach people. 99.9% wrong there. So now I am now completely changing my email outreach strategy.

* Surveillance data on people is very extensive. CONFIRMED. It doesn't mean it's necessarily up to date, but ALL OF OUR INFO is out there. It's both scary and fascinating.

* Rejection is a way of life. This one is VERY MUCH CONFIRMED.

* Don't take the rejection personal. TOTALLY CONFIRMED.

* A management style of RADICAL CANDOR can change your life. Didn't expect it coming in. Now I think I can never work anywhere else if it doesn't exist there.

* I imagined I would have more control over my destiny. Both true and untrue. We are part of a new business oppty building engine here. So some stuff is regimented. But I get to use a lot more of my creativity as compared to before as an SE.

* Ever since I learned about Behavioral Economics to explain the way people earn, save, spend their money, it's made more sense to me than any other explanation. Now I get a front row seat to the behaviors of people in how they interact with me.

* Trying to do technology sales during a global pandemic that comes every 100yrs has never been done before. The last global pandemic was the 1918 Spanish Flu. No computers back then. No one really knows what is going on now. Take it slow. Be patient. Keep working toward a positive result.

Thanks if you read this far <3. oh... I would be remiss if i didn't...

CALL/EMAIL me if you know someone in information technology who might be interested in our offerings for enterprise scale DNS, DHCP, IP Address Management, and Cybersecurity.

ABC: Always Be Closing !

all i can say is:

#yolo2020

As much and maybe, as about as eighties as any eighties child can be, me, what does being an eighties child like that do to my world view?

1. cold war
2. AIDS
3. the war on drugs

Cold War
The Russians, our sworn enemies for eternity, will drop nuclear bombs on us at any moment and we're all going to die in a spectacular burst of a thermonuclear fireball of atomization.

AIDS
If you have sex, then you will die a very painful and shameful death.

The War on Drugs
If you use drugs, you will cause irreparable harm to your community, and you will die of a drug overdose.

In other words:
1. death by nuclear war
2. death by sex
3. death by drugs

Yep.  That's the environment in which i grew up.

In the final stages of launching:

A radical idea:
if someone commits a financial crime, whether they acted alone as an independent financial "expert" or as an employee of an institution of any size, then they need to go to prison.

https://twitter.com/LuggageDonkey/status/1044842538694307843

​
Ep2 with Travis Kling:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/off-the-chain/id1434060078?mt=2&i=1000420049675

This podcast nailed it for me.  There are sections in there that make me jump up and down with agreement and enthusiasm.  When I was in college I remember the economic lesson of efficient markets.  It’s a vivid memory.  It’s extremely clear because after learning about what it is, i said to myself “that’s not possible”.  But then i thought “well, they teach it, so it must be true.  So, if they teach it, and i don’t get it, then i must be the dumb one."  So i bailed out of the study of economics and it was perfectly fine since my heart and skills were headed down the engineering path.  There is usually a lot more certainty in engineering.

Now years after several great books about behavioral economics have come out with some Nobel prizes given out too in recognition of it, and I am a rabid fan of the discipline, here is this super-engineered bitcoin in a completely irrational and inefficient market system created by super-idiosyncratic unpredictable humans.  How perfect could my timing be?  Travis Kling talks in this podcast about how behavioral economics really hit home with him.  And as he talks about efficient markets, he mentions that even when he went to school (more recently than i), they still didn't teach nearly enough about the irrationality of people and how that creates lots and lots of inefficient markets.

I have this crazy idea to get together a small number of like-minded friends and acquaintances who are speculators and investors who want to get exposure to bitcoin.  I want to pool together ten of us to put together a $250k fund to participate in Travis Kling’s new venture.  Judging by his history as a long/short trader, he knows what he is doing.  In the most simplistic view, either bitcoin goes to zero in the next several years, or it goes to levels seen in the recent past, and more importantly it goes to much higher levels that industry insiders and financial institutions are betting we will see.  Call me crazy, but that seems to be a reasonable bet to me if you can afford to lose $25k.  (Presuming ten equal participants at $25k each.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-21/former-point72-manager-set-to-open-crypto-hedge-fund-next-month
#skinInTheGame 

I decided after seeing someone on twitter that it was also time for me to get more real with who i am.  The image is what I was trying to do in the past.  Trying so hard.  The new twitter profile is a lot more accurate.  Such as life.
​#depressionSucks

Oh, and I left my day job as i liked to call it.  It was with a very large Fortune 50 company.  I had some personal and family priorities that needed to be handled sooner rather than later.

My new beginning here in 2018 is with Yellow Umbrella Ventures.  I endeavor of my very own.

My blogging has now turned into nano-blogging with tweets.  I ain't got time for shit these days.  So i count my tweets as blogging - LOL.
Just random thoughts that pass through my brain and the only outlet i have is twitter.  F fb.

I get mad at inanimate objects.
And it's ridiculous.
They have done nothing wrong (for the most part).
The interaction is all made up in my cave man pea brain.

Little kids = little problems.

Big kids = big problems.

The more I see, the more I am convinced that it's virtually impossible to make other people do what they don't want to do.
​

I am a big fan of SoA.

SoA = Suspension of Attention
​
It's the idea of letting your brain use a distracting activity to make it so that higher order thoughts and ideas can bubble up to a conscious level where you can analyze and articulate them.  It's from my good friends at Pathwise.

Some ways to get into a state of SoA that work for me:
- brushing my teeth
- walking
- driving (aka windshield time, which works great for me and @arryinSeattle for mutual windshield time)
- washing dishes
- putting away dishes
- cleaning up the house

Reid Hoffman calls it "where do you do your best thinking".  And he compiled all those places by his guests into this one podcast.
And as a side note, it is a fantastic episode if you're also on your journey to find your big idea.  Timing is more important than the idea.  Knowing yourself is more important than the big idea.

When Kevin Lomax blew his brains out at the end, he exercised his free will to do what he thought was best.  When it all reset, John Milton came back in the form of a journalist to have another go.  What was the reward he offered?

​Pride. 

Some pride is okay, but too much of it can also be a bitch.

#DevilsAdvocate

I wanted to end the year with a memorable post…
 
I can’t believe another year has gone by.  My son is almost two.  And I have another year of blogging under my belt.
 
Here I end 2017 with a situation I encountered in the latter half of the year that was very troubling.  
 
I started to feel a certain restless leg syndrome type of discomfort that was also very painful at times.  When I walked, pain would rifle up and down my left leg at random times.  Sometimes I would be laying there in bed and my left leg would want to shake or tremble randomly.  It was sort of like a tickle, but not in a fun way.
 
So I kept thinking like it was a network troubleshooting exercise.  What has changed in the last few weeks?  My body has been functioning just fine and I’ve done something different to cause this painful consequence. 
 
Was it a change in diet?  Maybe, I was still enjoying the same amount of junk food.  But maybe my tired old body wasn’t able to process it as well.
Was it exercise?  I generally don’t work out, but I did try to do some odd stretching of my back.  I had not done this kind of prolonged stretching ever before.  So it became my prime suspect.  I stopped doing it, but the pain got worse.
Was my sleeping pattern different?  Yes, there was another great disturbance in the way I slept because of my son.  But not sure how that was causing this pain.
Was it a resurrection of something from my motorcycle accident?  Maybe.  The pain was causing me to limp in a similar way.
 
When I would walk, the pain could be very slightly alleviated by lifting my jeans off my left hip where it seemed like I the nerve pain was originating.  So I kept working on alleviating that pressure.  The odd part is that I have always worn my jeans low on my hips, so there had to be another contributing factor.
 
Was it my age?  Maybe.  I’m only getting older.  Which sucks.
 
Not knowing how long this issue was going to be around, I kept doing the one remedy that seemed to work: alleviating the pressure on my left hip.  I bought some Mork & Mindy suspenders.  That way I could keep my pants up, but also keep the pressure off my hip nerves completely.  I did that for a few days and again, the symptoms got better.
 
I remembered reading an article a long time ago about women who wore their jeans too low on their hips who might experience some weird pain.  I’m thinking to myself that’s the exact same problem I’m having now.  How is that possible?
 
My sleep has been crappy all year.  What about my sleep has changed?  I think I might be sleeping on my left side too much.  So I started sleeping on my right.  And the symptoms continued to get better along with the use of the suspenders.  What else has been different about my sleeping habits?  It didn’t happen that often, so I didn’t think it would matter, but occasionally I would accidentally fall asleep with my son at his bedtime.  The routine we do is that Arry and I would take turns going to bed with him to make sure he fell asleep.
 
It turns out that when I would lay down with him, I would do it fully clothed: jeans and belt and everything.  I wasn’t intending to fall asleep, but I was so exhausted that I couldn’t help myself.  So I changed that too.  I started to strip down to my undies as if I am going to bed for the night.  And that was the last culprit that was probably the trigger that started it all.  My jeans and the leather belt were putting pressure on that perfect spot when I slept on my left, which was the side that allowed me to face my son to watch for him to fall asleep so I could get the hell out of his room.
 
After changing all the different ways that I saw that I was putting pressure on my left hip, within a week my nerve pain was all but gone!!  No doctor intervention.  I forgot to mention I was trying to medicate myself back to health by using lots of ibuprofen – sometimes up to 600mg in a single dose with no great long-term results.  I was thinking it would reduce any swelling around the nerves that were having the problems.  Sometimes I seemed like it worked, but it never lasted.

To conclude, once I finished all the troubleshooting, I was very self-gratified.  I was able to fix a very mysterious health ailment by practicing the three golden rules of troubleshooting:
 
1.  Find out what has changed lately
2.  Use the process of elimination to isolate the issue
3.  If an idea seems to work well, then do more with that idea
 
Indeed, it was some very self-gratifying troubleshooting I did on myself! 

Happy New Year, y'all!
​

You’re a medium-sized country with a moderate to flat to shrinking economy, with no immediate plans for higher growth when your citizens are yearning for more opportunities.  Do you stimulate the economy by pumping a couple of billion dollars into all kinds of political and economic plans with no definitive history of success?

Alternatively, maybe you sweet talk Jeff into opening up a few fulfillment centers and allowing organic and natural demand for Amazon’s goods and services to stimulate industry, innovation, and economic velocity.  Oh and by the way, you can take a billion of those dollars and buy some $AMZN so you can have a stake in the success of Jeff&Co.

https://www.fastcompany.com/3067455/why-amazon-is-the-worlds-most-innovative-company-of-2017

I have a special ambivalence in the world of raising children.
A wise friend of mine told me:
The days are long.  But the years go by fast.
​

I randomly needed a cooler while traveling.  So I bought one.
And then I realized that I needed to decorate it.  So I did.

"you are the bouncers, I am the cooler."

ASP can be Active Server Page. At least that's the definition with which I'm most familiar. It's about how web pages are controlled and rendered in your web browser.

My take lately is Asymmetrical Sensitivity Profile.

A person with an Asymmetrical Sensitivity Profile can present themselves as really blunt and harsh and critical towards nearly everyone around them, but if that person has one hint of a word said to them about anything that is in the slightest way direct, or against their opinion, or slightly coaching, or emotionally unexpected, they will treat you like The Beast himself who has come to rip their soul from their bodies. In their eyes, you will be the biggest POS on the face of the earth.  And for that matter the most evil person in existence in the universe.

e.g. someone shares an idea in a group setting, and the Mr. Asshole in the group says to them "that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard in my life." And he doesn't think twice about it. But if someone tells Mr. Asshole that his idea doesn't really fit within the scope of the project at the moment, then he'll think to himself, "You are a prick and you're trying to sabotage my career. I can’t wait to stab you in the back you freakin' moron."

Have you ever told someone something innocuous like "you have some ketchup right there" (pointing to your own chin), then they react with a sour look on their face?  Like they are thinking "what the fuck, man?  I can't have a little ketchup on my face while I'm enjoying my fucking fries?  Why do you have to be so fucking annoying?!"

One time I told a guy who came by my cube that he had something on his face. It looked like a dab of lotion.  I couldn't help myself because it was so obvious and I didn't want him to walk around too much longer with it.  I wasn't laughing at him. I wasn't actively clowning on him for having it on his face. I simply stated a fact in about as dry and nice way as I could.  But maybe I unintentionally sounded like an asshole???.  He promptly simultaneously turned around, brushed off the piece of tissue and left.  He abandoned whatever conversation he was about to start with me.  It felt like he was mumbling "Damn you Dae. Why the hell you gotta be like that?"

I tried to think about it from his point of view. Maybe it was that he was too embarrassed or something. But what's crazy is that he was one of the most brash and confident dudes in the office. He would not have any reason to be embarrassed around a lowly engineer like me.  He walked away and I went back to work and to this very day I have no idea what was going through his head. 

There is that very popular TV show called Survivor.  There will inevitably be some players who are really good at the game who you don't like.  And there will be others who don't play the politics very well who you do like.  Their likability plays a factor in their ability to survive, but it is not the sole factor by any means.

Even though I might not like a good player, there is a certain level of respect I will give them.  And that's the way it sometimes works in Corporate America.  Layoffs, rightsizing, downsizing, mergers+acquisitions, the profit motivation, and maximization of shareholder value have made it so that many companies are the same Survivor Islands.  And all the players are the employees who are fighting for their survival.  Information hoarding, treachery, lying, and backstabbing are traits you need on the TV Survivor Islands and the Corporate Islands. 

So while I do respect the players who survive, I don't have to like them.

<originally drafted May 2016.  very late to publish.>

You might be wondering, WTF is that?

I carry two phones.  One for my day job and one is my personal phone.  Some people hate dual-phoning.  I didn’t know what I was going to think of it.  After trying it out now for over a year I have determined that I LIKE IT.  It’s like having double battery life.  The most ironic/tragic part is that even with double battery life, I still have to charge BOTH DAMN PHONES multiple times a day in order to make it to bed time.  It’s pathetic.  One of these days I'll write up all the thoughts I have about how pathetic smartphone battery life is.  

Anyway, it’s been over a year.  Being a typical guy, I’ve been carrying the phones in my front pockets.  Yes, it’s sort of a PITA (Pain In The Ass), but for me, the advantages outweigh the PITA part.  Recently, I’ve decided to stop carrying the phones in my pockets.  I try to set them in the passenger seat, or generally away from my pelvis as much as possible.  It is because I’ve been obsessing about the far-fetched notion that I’ve created a VORTEX OF SEMINAL CARNAGE (VSC).

Here’s how I came up with it.  I don’t know exactly how the radio energy comes out of the phones.  But if the radio waves from each phone emit from the antennas in basically a omni-directional way, where the phone is at the center and you can imagine circular waves of sinusoidal patterns transmitting in three dimensions, then it would look like kids blowing bubbles where the bubbles get bigger and bigger and bigger until they pop.  Except with these radio waves, the bubbles don’t pop.  They just go and go and go and dissipate until all the power is absorbed or naturally gone.

So then with two phones bilaterally surrounding my testicles, now you see the VORTEX OF SPERMATOZOAN DEATH (VSD) right at the center where the arrow is pointing.  It is where the energy waves from both phones would intersect and overlap each other.  All I can think is that my poor little microscopic seeds won't stand much of a chance being nuked from both sides. 

I will still be a dual-phoner, but I won’t carry both phones in my pockets if I can help it.
​
I’ll carry them in murse.