The Cat's Nuts

Today I gave my presentation on Open Source Business Intelligence tools and their place in the market. Overall the presentation went well, and I have to say that I am pleased with the response that I am getting from those involved. I have 4 people that are very much interested in helping me get this whole thing off the ground. One of the guys in particular is very interested in starting up his own business, and I can't blame him, with the skillsets that could be learned from this sort of thing, it could be crazy profitable to get involved in open source BI. Even if it was a small 2-3 person shop, implementing at $100/hr, I think I could be happy doing that.

We'll see, as we are still a very long way off from putting together enough material to convince the leadership to part with their hard earned revenue dollars.

In other news, I am finally switching my ISP. You know, I am very happy with the level of service that I am getting from them, but the problem is that I would rather have shitty customer service and excellent internet service, but unfortunatly, they have forced me to go to the dark side. I signed up for Comcast internet and phone service...I know, it's a disgrace and I hate everything they stand for, but when it comes down to it, I can either suffer through packet loss, heavy lag and slow throughput...OR...I can suck it up for 6 months while I live at Post and deal. Maybe I'll even get some money from a class action lawsuit against them :) Who knows?

This week, my co-worker is away from the office on vacation, so I am here by myself working on some stuff. We have the start of another UAT starting on Wednesday, so my last day here is going to be a pain in the butt. I have a meeting with an old co-worker, Chris, to get back his old ID and to pass off Melissa's resume. Hopefully, he'll at least be able to put her in touch with some people in the area that may be in need of a good marketing person...we'll see, as that's months away.

Anyway, I should be getting back to work, and seeing as how there isn't much new stuff going on, my blog is tending to be a fairly boring place...sorry about that. I'll try to be more interesting. Lord Favre would appreciate that.

Posted by Michael at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Wednesday. Yes...only Wednesday. Time is lurching along. I guess it comes down to me #1 not doing anything with my evenings other than watching TV and playing video games, #2 having something I am looking forward to (Melissa moving down), and the holiday approaching, but DAMN, it's been a slow week and it doesn't look like it's going to be going any faster from here on out.

Next week my co-worker is going on vacation for two weeks, so I'm going to be left alone finishing up the development of the December release and starting UAT the following week. I have a feeling that the shit is going to hit the fan, but at least it's going to be the Holiday season and I'm going up to my parent's house, which is always relaxing.

My mother decided to buy my plane ticket up the Stewart, so I'll be flying up on the evening of the 21st and heading down to NYC with Melissa on Sunday to finish up her final arrangements for the move. I don't think I'll be doing much other than possibly painting or taking apart some furniture, but it'll be the last time that I'm going to be up in NYC for at least a few months, seeing as how I won't really have a reason to be up there now that Melissa is going to be moving down. Sad times, but good...I dunno. Perhaps I'll be put on a project up there... I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing as the new year starts, so we'll see.

I scheduled my Open Source BI conference call this Monday at noon, so that'll be exciting. I'm going to be putting together a Powerpoint deck detailing all the various offerings, and how the open source business model integrates into the Consulting industry and how might my company benefit from partnering with them. I'm pretty excited about the whole prospect of it all. My goal would be that my company likes the idea and decides to pony up the cash to partner up with Pentaho, thus ensuring that we have training seats available. I would then get to go and do training, thus further bolstering my whole BI skillset and enabling me to eventually do solo client engagements, perhaps even going out on my own in a few years. Who knows. The world has presented stranger things.

One of the Directors at my job just left and went to a medium sized (1,500 consultants, 50 BI consultant) practice here in Atlanta. It sucks to see him go, but at the same time, it's just another contact that I have in the industry that likes me and would like to work with me in the future. Perhaps in a year or so, it would be worth looking into going somewhere else, and that could be a good route.

Last night I decided that it was time to test out my back and see how it responded to some excercise. I got on my running shoes and went for a 25 minute jog. Was it good? Ehhh...not great, and my legs burned like fire, but I didn't feel like I was terribly out of shape. I think that I'll go again tonight, but I don't want to jump into it too fast. My back is totally protesting today. Not really in pain, but making itself known that it's weak and not too pleased with the extra strain. That just tells me that I need to keep working on it and get it stronger. Perhaps I will venture into the gym at my housing complex and see how that is.

Anyway, it's getting to be almost 4:30, so I am going to start finishing up some dashboard development and head out at the turn of the hour.

Posted by Michael at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know, the planets do align themselves..no, really, they do. It just happens very rarely, but if you wait around long enought, sure enough, those little buggers all get in a nice neat row. Well, that's kind of how my life is, and sure enough, all my buggers are all in a row.

Some stuff happened last week that made it possible for Melissa to uproot herself from her life in NYC and join me in Atlanta, so as of the end of this month (still crossing my fingers on this one), she's going to be heading down to HotLanta to spend a few months. At this point, we're still calling it a trial run and not dead set on doing anything past Feburary or whenever she looks around and realizes that life is good :) Anyway, it's pretty exciting and I am very stoked for December to get here, and considering how Thanksgiving is next week, it shouldn't be that much of a wait as I'll be busy with the whole holidays thing.

So, let's see...relationship is aligned..what else...ahhh....work. Yes, the every present, ever important, often unstimulating work. Well, as it turns out, even though I just got a raise last June, because of the merger in my company, we're having anyother evaluation period that will culminate in raises and promotions at the end of January. Well, besides having stellar references from the Managers that I have been working with, this past weekend I passed my Siebel 7.7 Professional Application Developer exam, and that being a main criteria in helping to decide promotions, I have my fingers crossed. Also, I have been working on getting some Pentaho stuff going at work, and that's been coming along pretty well. I am going to be putting together a slideshow tonight highlighting how Pentaho could work in a consulting atmosphere. We'll see how it goes. Either way, there has been a lot going on with that, and it's been good visibility, thus hopefully I'll be in line for a promotion. Will I be crushed if I don't get it? No...but I'll be dissapointed.

Apartment is good...with Melissa down, I have a feeling that it's going to start to feel a lot more like home. I've been really lazy about decorating it and havn't put in the time to get pictures printed or anything like that, so I still have all these picture frames with nothing in them...it's rather sad actually. But not very interesting.

Last weekend, when Melissa was down, we were walking through the Virginia Highlands and found this house that was having it's old windows replaced. All of the old, antique windows were sitting on the street in a pile. We snagged three of the nicest looking ones and are planning on sanding them down, painting them and putting a mirror or picture behind them. Should look quite nice when it's all said and done...just going to be a bit of work.

Anyway...yeah, so the planets are aligned and life is going well. We'll see how long it lasts.

Posted by Michael at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whenever I call Brad, I usually ask him, "So Brad, what's new and exciting?" and his usual reply is something along the lines of "Nothing new and exciting....I have old and exciting, and new and boring, but nothing new and exciting."

Well, Ladie and Gentlemen, I have some new and exciting. Through a strange turn of events that I'm not going to get into, it turns out that Melissa may be moving to Atlanta. I don't know when. I don't know for how long, and I certainly don't know what she's going to be doing while she is here, but we'll see. In actuallity, it's all conjecture at this point. Mostly on my part, but I think I'm working on her :)

Things are going to be very interesting in the next couple of weeks as all the dust settles and we find out what's really going to be going on. I for one, am very excited, because no matter what, in a month, I'll know what I'm doing in a year. I know it doesn't make much sense, and I know I'm being quite cryptic, but I figure that if it all works out, it'll make sense. I just don't want to put anything down here that's not true, so I'll let the cat bite my tongue...hmm..gross.

Posted by Michael at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This evening, after I got home from work, I was hanging around my apartment. It was rather boring and I didn't really do all that much. Played some computer games and studied for my exam that's coming up (Siebel Certified Application Developer), and that's about it. Around 8:00, I left my apartment to go and meet my Aunt Deb who had flown into Atlanta.

I met her at the Doubletree Inn over on North Druid Hills, which, for some reason, isn't allowed to be plugged into my GPS unit. For the life of me I couldn't get it to go in there. So after driving around for a bit, I finally found the place. Turns out that there must have been an accident behind me on 85, because I sat around waiting until around 8:45 before my Aunt finally showed up.

We decided to go out to Fogo de Chao on Piedmont road. It's a Brazillian Churascaria. Damn good stuff. If you have never been to one of these places, you need to go. You sit down and they give you a little coin with a green side and a red side. You flip the coin to green when you are ready for the guys to come around and bring you meat. And bring meat is what they do. Damn! It was like they could smell you flipping over the coin and would run over and bring you all sorts of different meat on a stick. It was quite good and I'm going to have to go back there again when Melissa comes down to visit.

Anyway...that's my meaty goodness. That's all I've got.

Posted by Michael at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)