Site Format Changed (Finally!)
Well friends, I’ve decided to update the site to a more picture friendly website considering that most of my posts now involve pictures of our family. I’ve got to iron out the archives pages, but that will come soon. There are also some other cool features with this template as well, but the old one had to definitely go. You can do searches by category at the top of the site if your interested in finding specific posts that suit your viewing pleasure. Otherwise you can simply use the search drop down at the top and search by a key word.
On a side note, I left Speakeasy last month due to a significant economic change there. The primary drivers are a change in business direction and I decided it was best to take an exit and continue to further my career elsewhere. Right now I’m interviewing and am being fairly selective about it as well as reviewing a couple of start up opportunities. For those of you that know me, that’s how I got started in internet/hosting years back.
Hope you are all well, expect much more frequent updates. I may even begin to blog about my experiences about working at a company like Speakeasy and going through the various milestones of the BestBuy acquisition and post acquisition. Until then, be well!
Best Buy Acquires Speakeasy
Amongst other things, this is what I have been very busy with lately. This is very exciting news for our company!
So You Reach the Milestone and Then Lay Off?
So as you can see my last post, I reached a significant milestone with my blog. Writing for one-year, comments, number of articles, followed by a big thank you to my wife & daughter. And what’s the big follow-up that’s occurred? A big fat nothing, zero, nada.
Unfortunately, I’ve been super slammed lately with work and such, making sure we end the Quarter on a good note. However, I should be uploading a ton of pictures and videos here soon as we have had a lot of fun family activity, including a trip to New York City!
More to come tomorrow…
It’s Mike: 1-Year Anniversary
Well, exactly 1 year ago today I started writing and blogging on my own server! I’ve written 167 articles during that time frame and can say that I’ve really enjoyed keeping up with my blog. It initially started out to simply write about life, technology, and work, but grew to so much more. It ended up being more about articles on items that I’m passionate about (excluding work for obvious reasons) such as Technology, Internet, Athletics, as well as a lot about my family, pictures, and videos. So I guess I would classify my blog as more of a multimedia type experience given the videos, content, and pictures that I have published. I even had fun with some photoshop to spice things up a bit (sorry Ella, I love you though!)
I’m also amazed at all the folks that visit my site as well. While I obviously don’t get many comments (55 to date), I am often told by friends, family members, and colleagues that they visit my blog frequently. So many thanks to all of you that read it and have a glimpse of the different aspects of my life and family. We are truly blessed by it all and love sharing in our experiences.
To my Ella - You are truly a blessing in my life. Watching you grow over the past 14 months has been amazing. Words cannot express the joy that I have when I am around you and when you smile, talk, garble, yack, clap, hug, kiss, slap, and gaze at me. You are an inspiration to your Mother and I and we will always love you, teach you, care for you, be an example of God’s word to you, pray for you, and provide you the best life we are physically able to provide. You love it when I sing to you, play with you, walk and talk with you, kiss and hug on you, and read to you. Your smile, your cute little curls, and your big-blue eyes will always be forever burned in my mind.
To my Wife, Jennifer - Since the day that I met you I have loved you. You constantly amaze me with your patience, gratitude, warmth, desire for Christ, and being the best Mommy in the world. I truly could not succeed at life without you and know with out a doubt that you are in fact my soul mate. Your encouragement and voice are always on my mind, bringing peace to me daily. It’s been a joy and blessing to be married to you for 5 years, 6 months! You are my best friend, my companion, my love, by sweetheart, inspiration, and motivation in Christ. Words can’t begin to express my thanks and all I know to say is “Thank you for loving me”.
Hello New Brand; Bye NetFire
Hi Friends. It’s been a while and I’ve been super slammed with work and all. One of the highlights that I’ve been working on for the past 9 months or so is a huge launch at Speakeasy. As most of you know, the division that I manage is all services that are located in our datacenters. That brand at the moment has been channeled through NetFire, but as of 15 November we are now known as Speakeasy Managed Services. It’s such a huge milestone for us as Speakeasy really transitions itself from not just being a server provider, but really a solutions provider. For me, the NetFire brand is very sentimental because it was the primary brand of our company before Speakeasy acquired us in June 2004. We’ve seen a lot of changes over the past 4-years, most of which have been very positive. Regardless, this is very exciting for me and my staff and it’s a rare opportunity to take part in with a company as dynamic as Speakeasy. I wish that this milestone meant that things would slow down some for me, but it’s probably going to be the opposite. Therefore, if you are one of those complainers that says I never have time for you… well keep on complainin’. Haha! Just kidding! No, really, I expect to have some time available now and to update the blog more.
/mike
Terry Tate Deals with the Cake-Eating-Guy..
Yeah, this guy gets owned for eating someone elses cake at work …
More Terry Tate - the Office Linebacker
Haha! Back by popular demand, it’s v2 of Terry Tate. Let’s see what he’s up to now:
Changing Your Office - Let’s all Make it Better!
I forgot about these videos that were aired about 5-years ago, but it’s pure comedy for those in large working environments:
Speakeasy Wins PC Magazines ‘Reader’s Choice Award’
This week we received some really good news at Speakeasy! According to PC Magazine, we were the Reader’s Choice for DSL! Here’s a snip from the article:
“The best provider this year is one of the smallest: Speakeasy was head and shoulders above the competition. It wins a Readers’ Choice with the category’s only significantly above-average overall score (8.6). BellSouth gets an honorable mention with a better-than-average 7.6, and AT&T (including SBC Yahoo!) tanked, with a significantly worse-than-average 7.2.”
As a privately held company, awards like this mean so much to our staff as a whole as we work extremely hard towards driving a solid product and providing excellent customer service.
Busy Week; Again!
Hey friends. Been another busy week this week. Tons of work stuff going on and I bought a new car. Yup, that’s right - I got a new ride. For those of you that know me, I’ve been eyeing the 2006 VW Passat since last November. It’s really a great car, but the Tundra just wasn’t very practical for me any more. You see, I drive 35 miles one-way to work each day and that’s it. I don’t use the pick-up much for hauling stuff. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved my white pick-em-up truck, but at the end of the day I don’t need it.
The Passat’s a nice car, safe, more comfortable, cheaper on gas, and more practical for the fam. Oh, it’s also got 280 ponies under the hood; yeah, it moves! It’s also got the best crash rating and has 8 airbags, which is a plus. I’ll take more pics soon, but here’s a couple of quick snaps:
Wow, long time.
Hey friends, I was in Seattle all last week so I was unable to update the site. Been slammed with work, rolling out a big transition. I should have quite a bit of updates for you, however.
Interesting article earlier this month over at Wired regarding VoIP integration. Stay tuned..
Latest & Greatest
Howdy friends. Lots going on, especially with Ella. Just over the past couple of days she has begun to crawl. It’s like she just started taking off and scootin’ along. Man, watching her grow is amazing! We’ve got a couple of videos of her trying to crawl, but will most likely get some more this weekend when I’m home.
How’s Big-D you say? Hot. Yeah, it’s hot. Oh yeah, it’s also dry. We need rain. bad. Wow, lots of periods.
Ok, so I’ve been pretty slammed lately and haven’t been able to post as much as I like. I actually have a ton of stuff to write about, but alot of the things that I’m working on I can’t mentioned publicly. Whether that be work related or not. I supposed the main reason why is that it’s all work related, which I’m not at liberty to talk about. However, I can say things are going very well and we are continuing to build upon the Speakeasy brand, which is making a lot of head way in the SMB market. Honestly, Speakeasy is a brand & company that I truly believe in - especially in what we are doing as a whole. There’s a lot of very interesting transitions happening right now that I’m apart of, which makes for very exciting times. As soon as a few loose ends are tied up I’ll be sure to spread the word.
We’re also looking at the VW Passat, as it has some great incentives right now. I mean, I love my pick-em-up truck, which is a Toyota Tundra btw, but all I do is drive it up and down the tollway. We’ll see what happens and I’ll let you know.
AT&T Changes the Game… ISP v2.0 Isn’t an ISP?
Hi friends. It’s been a while, but recall that we have been talking about the way the net is changing and how users are interacting more and more with media based services. We’ve talked about how the net is changing the way consumers experience broadband applications and media (Fiber vs WiMax), how in the near future that the net may be the next gen OS, and how ISP v2.0 is what will rule the online world by offering everything media. Well, AT&T is getting closer and closer with some of its new services that they are launching - but I’m not convinced that it’s the next gen ISP.
Wew - What a Week!
Hey Friends, bet you thought I was gone, eh? Welp, I’ve been in Seattle on business up at headquarters. Being that we just ended the quarter and all, I’ve been busy with providing multiple presentations on our progress and what’s up and coming. After a really long week, I’m on my way back home tomorrow to see the fam.
Jenn said Ella got up on her knees and hands for the first time on her own and began to ‘rock’ back and forth. Man, how things change with her - I can’t wait to see her and Jenn! Welp, that’s it. I’ve actually got some big news coming up, but we’ll save that for later.
Collaboration: It’s a whole new Web
Most of us have used MSN messenger, IRC, AIM, etc. Interesting article over at CNet about collaboration and Microsoft’s new initiatives. More importantly, however, is how users are beginning to interact with one another that leads to successful market-launches of different internet based products. One of the aspects that I’m interested in (as it’s part of my daily job anyway) is VoIP. As some of you may know, Speakeasy has made a pretty big investment into VoIP. It’s a solid product, but one of the key aspects of VoIP that I’m particularly interested in is software-based VoIP. Because consumers are collaborating more on a daily basis, it’s changing the way that online businesses market to consumers - especially if they can gain penetration on the said consumers’ desktop. No longer will we see products gaining popularity by large marketing investments, but by providing users with an application to collaborate with.
Encrypted Drive: Follow-up
About 2 weeks ago I wrote an article on TrueCrypt. Now that I’ve used it much more on a consistent basis, I’m really liking it alot. There are two main features that I like with TrueCrypt:
1. It’s encryption technique and set-up process
2. The fact that you can mount it as a drive, just like you would with Daemon tools, but as an actual partition.
For those of you that carry laptops, which is most of us these days, I highly recommend that you consider rethinking how you secure your data on your machine. At some point in time some of us may have our laptops stolen, lost, or compromised and at that very moment you need to know your files are safe. For instance, for those of you that file your income taxes digitally this would be an applicable scenario for you. Additionally, for those of you that use your laptop primarily for work and do not want non-disclosed documents ‘disclosed’ by some catastrophic event as described above, then this would even pose as a greater solution for you. I already use it on my laptop for all of my documents and even at home for the documents that people do not need to see.
Over the river and through the woods..
.. to LA we go. That’s right, I flew to LA and back today for work. 2400 miles in one day, fun!
Busy
Hey party people… been a few days since my last post. I’ve been pretty slammed with work lately as May is typically one of our busiest months. New products being deployed, E3 coming up, and quite a few meetings.
Most of you know that the Spurs won the other night, so they take a 3-2 series lead. Sacto is a lot better than I thought, but I’m still hopeful the Spurs can pull it off in 6. The Maloof Brothers bother me. Flailing around after wins, etc. I don’t know why, but 6-foot wide dudes cheering on their employees wearing small, skin-tight Mike Bibby jersey’s just kinda looks ackward.
I’m liking the Lakers vs Suns series. Lots of action and it’s pretty physical. Raja Bell thinks he’s all-world defender on Kobe, but I don’t think close-lining Kobe is how you beat him. I don’t know, you be the judge.
Ella’s eating cereal now, so that’s interesting. She kinda sticks her tongue out and licks it off the spoon. As one can imagine, she makes a mess. We don’t care, it’s a lot of fun watching her learn and grow.
I went to a Ranger’s game last night and witnessed a 12-inning marathon that ended with the Ranger’s blasting a walk off home run to end the game. That was exciting. Any of you that know me, I’m not much of a baseball fan. However, some folks from our Seattle office were down and so we did the entertainment thing. It was a nice evening and enjoyed the fans behind us. They cracked us all up and were full of comedy.
Welp, that’s about it. I’ll be watching some go-spurs-go action tomorrow night rootin’ for the away-from-home team.
Verizon, the Evil Warlock?
Often times at Speakeasy we get some pretty unique testimonials about our service. However, few times do we see some as quick-witted and hilarious as the one listed below! This is a pretty old testimonial, but I thought I would share it. It’s pure comedy
> ************************************
> Testimonial
> ************************************
> Greetings. I am the node known as roachware. My name is
> Timothy, and I have been Verizon Online sober since August.
>
> Internet access is very important to me, as well as technical
> support and customer service. Obviously, insanely fast
> download speeds are important to me as well. Verizon had
> been my ISP not purely out of choice, but because for a while
> it seemed like the only game in town. I live right down the
> street from them, and never got good speeds. My ping hovered
> around 220 (from my node to gateway). I was being billed for
> stuff I didn’t get, and service outages were to be expected.
> I would call in to the tech support line (which took a good
> half hour out of my life) just so I could get someone who was
> reading “ISP’s For Dummies (A Reference for da rest ov us)”
> and kept telling me to power-cycle my modem…DUH. Why don’t
> I try Ctrl+Alt+Del, Mr. Savvy?
> Anyhoo, I was fed up. I asked my dad why he had a smile all
> the time and didn’t seem to have rhoids, and he said his ISP
> was a wonderful mythical dragon named Speakeasy. Speakeasy
> would only come around if you had been a good boy all year
> long. So I clicked my heels together…
>
> So I called Speakeasy, found out that I don’t get the “NO
> APACHE SERVERS, YA DIRTY BUGGER!” from them. An open policy?
> What the heck is that? So they told me. Then they told me
> I can get a static IP too.
> WOOO!!! So I signed up.
>
> But then the evil warlock known as Verizon tried to slay this
> beautiful creature. Verizon saw the Speakeasy dragon as a
> threat to his power, and since he owned the magical “phone”
> line that the dragon needed to use, the evil warlock did
> everything in his power to try and stop Speakeasy.
>
> For poor Roachware, it seemed like all was lost. Until one
> day the Speakeasy dragon (while listening to Roachware gripe
> and moan about Verizon and their crappy service) mentioned he
> had a new power known throughout the land as VoIP. What?
> Let us look at Speakeasy services mathematically…assuming
> X=Onelink and Y=VoIP, then X+Y=Zeeya later Verizon!
>
> Okay, long story less long, Verizon dragged their feet for
> their portion of the deal when I was trying to get my Onelink
> service up, so that as soon as it is available in my area, I
> can get VoIP phone service. They even tried to push back the
> service dates. I didn’t have to do anything.
> Speakeasy kept fighting with the evil warlock to get the
> original install date back to where it should have been.
> Then Covad came out and installed my Onelink line. So…I
> now have DSL service and the groundwork is laid to cut
> Verizon completely out of the loop. Because there are still
> companies like Speakeasy out there who actually care about
> the consumer, I will soon be free of the clutches of Verizon.
> I cannot thank all of you enough, from the managers handling
> escalations, to people like Dathan handling my install. Now,
> I have my old Verizon modem back to good use: I hung it from
> the ceiling to ward off evil spirits. I get a CONSTANT
> UNINTERRUPTED STREAM of data to my Speakeasy modem. I know
> now that I made the absolute best choice in Internet Service
> Providers. I feel sorry for those poor souls still using AOL
> or Verizon. All I ask of your company is one more
> favor…could you be so kind as to send me a Speakeasy mouse
> pad? I ask because I have a Verizon mouse pad. As much as I
> enjoy making the little booger look on helplessly as I use
> another ISP, I would much rather use it to soak up the oil
> under my car.
>
> Thanks again. It is hard to imagine how I got along without you.
>
> –Tim
>
> P.S. I will spread the word throughout the villages in the
> clutches of the maniacal Verizon warlord so that they to may
> know the taste of freedom.