Images by John 'K'

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve had another batch of visitors to sunny California. For 3 weeks now we’ve had my 2nd eldest daughter and her boyfriend visit from the UK. It’s been nice to see her again (hadn’t seen her since August 2005 when my wife and 2 younger children joined me in California), and it has also been nice to meet her boyfriend (who she started dating after she got back to the UK from her last visit). They make a good couple – both as mad as one another (which is probably a good thing), and they already sound like a long-time married couple (I should know). I hope this one works out for her, as they seem well matched and certainly seem to enjoy one another’s company.

 

Also with us for a few days (and will be with us for a few days more) is the current boyfriend of the elder of my two girls who came with us to California. She met him on-line through one of the games she plays – he’s already visited us once before, and he seems a nice guy (and he’s about the same height as she is!!). He lives over the other side of the country, so apart from these two visits this has been a long-distance relationship, but clearly he’s serious enough about her that he’s been prepared to fly over to California twice (so far) to visit her! What would be nice would be to see this be enough of a carrot for her to finally commit to getting a part time job, get some income of her own, then she can afford to make the return trip. Who knows – stranger things have happened….

 

Because of work pressures, I haven’t been able to spend as much time with our visitors as I would have liked to. I’ve had a lot of stuff that needed doing in the evening to keep on top of things, but I somehow managed to keep my weekends free, and we’ve managed a few fun trips out. We’ve done the usual visits to Monterey Bay Aquarium and San Francisco (both ‘must do’ activities for anyone visiting us now), we took them all horse-riding in one of the regional parks, and we’ve even chilled out with an afternoon picnic at the local sports park.

 

Things return back to normal next week. As with our Christmas visitors, it’ll be a shame to see everyone go, and it’ll seem odd having just the 4 of us in the house again, but it’ll also be nice to settle back into a more normal routine again.

 

Come the summer, we’ll be doing things the other way and we’ll be visiting back to England for a couple of weeks – after being out of the country for over 2 years, that’s going to seem very odd, and I don’t really know how I’ll feel about the experience – more on that as it happens.

 

Anyway – I have stuck some pics from some of the recent excursions up in the Photos section….

Well somehow I have survived into another year relatively unscathed by things.

 

Life has continued to throw some interesting challenges at me, money continues to be a bit of an issue – as fast as I clear up one problem and recover from it another set of big bills comes up and resets all the work I’d put in to sort out the previous problem, and I know I only have a few months to try and pull this one back before there’ll be another batch of demands….. but at least this time I see some light at the end of the tunnel – I’m a bit further through it going forward than I’d be looking at were I to just turn around and go back from where I came, so I’ll muddle through. It’s nothing I haven’t faced before – just was hoping not to be facing it again this year…. oh well. The bike will have to wait another year I guess.

 

At least from a personal level things could be a lot worse. My eldest daughter and her family were over to visit for 3 weeks and went back to the UK after Christmas. They seem happy, and the boys (my 3 grandsons) are all growing up fast. Even the youngest (who is now 3) seemed so much older than when I last saw him. They are all doing fine though, and a bit better off into the new year than they would have been had they been paying for more of the trip themselves. I’ve put a representative selection of pictures up to cover the fun from those 3 weeks – it’s a large collection, but any less wouldn’t do the trip justice. Needless to say things have seemed a bit quiet since they went back to England.

 

My other daughter still back in England is also doing fine. She’s visiting for Easter with her boyfriend, so we’re looking forward to seeing her then. We spoke with her at Christmas, and things seem to be going OK for her – guess we’ll get the whole story when she visits, as she tends not to be too talkative on the phone.

 

For those of us over here, December saw my wife start a part time job, working in the teaching profession, so she’s happy that she can put a lot of her knowledge from her years working in the UK to some use, and also happy that she’s got a reason to be out of the house a bit more during the week.

 

My youngest daughter is into this year’s basketball season and is losing a lot of her free time to games or practices, but she loves it. She does however need to make more of an effort at school, especially with getting homework in on time and completed, otherwise her grades could see her off the team. She’s doing generally well in class, but not completing projects or homework is pulling her grades down badly. We as parents need to keep a better eye on that, but she also needs to make more of an effort – she is 16 after all.

 

Our elder daughter still spends more time than is really good for her on-line, but less time than she was at the start of December, and she does at least acknowledge that it’s an area she needs to work on more; just doesn’t seem to have the will power to do it herself. She’s also become involved with a guy she met on-line – things seem serious, and he’s visiting us this month, so should be interesting – no doubt I’ll have some things to report on after it happens, but for now he seems nice enough fro the interactions I’ve had with him, and in the on-line circles where they met he is well regarded, so we’re hoping it works out well for them.

 

My wife and I… well.. what can I say? She says she’s happy and for the most part seems to be, but there are times when I feel she’s holding something back. It might be she feels insecure about us because I am spending time chatting to friends I have on-line. If that is the case, she should know that it is nothing more than friends talking (and helping one another out with a few problems). I’ve spoken to her about things and have told her what’s happening, and I hope she trusts me enough to believe me. If however there is an element of doubt there, I wish she’d say something, as I’m sure those concerned would be more than happy to put her mind to rest if she won’t accept it from me. If there’s something else that’s bugging her, I hope she’ll share it. It may just be that she’s feeling the impact of having our eldest daughter and family visit and then go back home again… On the other hand, if there really is nothing and it’s just my paranoia, then perhaps her response to this will be what I need to see that. I know I’m happy so long as she is, and at the end of the day I want to do what will make her and keep her happy.

 

As to those friends I chat to on-line, there are a husband and wife where I chat to both regularly – they’ve had their problems, but seem to be working through them, and I truly hope for them that things continue that way into 2007. There’s a separated wife whose husband hit her with divorce papers in the run up to Christmas, and who has been coming to terms with that at a time where she should have been having much nicer things to deal with, so she’ll be having a less than ideal start to this new year. Then there’s a husband and wife where it looks like things aren’t going so well, so I have been doing what I can to offer advice and support as best I can, and to them I hope they can sort out their differences and do what is best for them and their children and move on gracefully to something better in 2007.

 

Talking to them, and seeing some of the stuff they are dealing with, has helped me see even more clearly that what I have with my life and family is very special and dear to me, and regardless of some of the challenges that come our way, I want more than ever to see things work for us long term; not that 27 years isn’t long term already, but we are only in our 40s and so have much more ahead of us, and I would love for that to be together. Time will tell.

 

So I start 2007 in a reflective mood, but with hope for the future. There are some challenges ahead, but I’ll deal with them as best I can as they come up. I know where I want to be, and I’m making the journey towards that end much as I would a long distance car journey – some basic planning up front, but taking the journey mile by mile, dealing with what I encounter as it happens, and continuing on the journey, and much like a long journey I hope I’ll reach the destination – perhaps a bit late, perhaps after a bit of a detour, but barring some major catastrophe that I cannot foresee, I can’t see me not getting there.

I work in a small group of very dedicated individuals. They all are very family focused people, and so while we all mix well at work, we tend not to mix much outside of it. At home I have my wife and kids. I’ve said much about them already. I love them all dearly and more than I could ever say, but my teenage daughters are busy trying to establish their own identities and have their own lives, and my wife is busy trying to get involved in things outside of the home, and of course my remaining family members are back in England with an 8-hour time difference between us. As such, there are times I find myself needing someone outside of the family or the workplace to talk to.

 

As a result of leaving many friends, colleagues, and family back in England nearly 2 years ago, I branched out though an on-line ‘community’ of folks all interested in online gaming and made many contacts. Over time, a number of these contacts have become friends, and some have become very good friends. Most of these friends I have yet to meet face to face. I probably never will, but through on-line forums, instant messages, web based audio conferencing software and the like, I have grown to know these people and they me. While spread geographically all over the continent and beyond, through the use of the Internet we feel a bond through a shared enjoyment of a hobby, but in may cases our friendship has gone far beyond that.

 

There’s the usual bunch of folks in the IT industry who you would associate with such an online ‘community’, but then there are elementary school teachers, social workers, safety officers, schoolkids and college students, nurses, people struggling to make a new life in a new state with their family after having to leave everything they know and love behind. There are many military folks, a number of which are currently deployed in various locations around the world serving their country (and my prayers are with them). There are retired college professors, parents, husbands and wives. All good, decent, caring people, some struggling with various demons, some working through relationship issues, some seeking guidance at critical turning points in their lives, but all seeking in some way to help one another.

 

To all of these folks that I think of as ‘friend’ I would simply like to say Thank You. Thank you for giving me someone to talk to when I would otherwise face silence. Thank you for being someone who listens when I need to let off steam about something. Thank you for helping me see other sides to problems I’ve faced, and thank you for your companionship and humor. To any of my Friends who read this, know that your friendship is valued much more than a few nicely written words could ever describe, and know that if there is anything I can do to help you with your own problems or issues, you only have to ask.

Well, it’s now been about 2 months since my last update, and as it’s Friday the 13th, I thought it best to do an update just in case some strange masked individual called Jason decides to end it all for me (we have a few Jasons where I work, so who knows!)..

From my perspective, work continues to keep me very busy. Being a ‘customer advocate’ in a company with a multi-billion dollar turnover is not a job for someone who wants a quiet life. ‘So why on earth did I take it?’ some might ask……

Well, I like to help out where I can, and find the best way to do that is by taking my own experiences, and using them in a way that others can benefit from them.

Up until 2 years ago (or there abouts), I’d always been in a role where I was directly interfacing with customers – those poor souls who buy the products of the company that you work for. I’d always strived to ensure that the buying experience was as good as possible, working on the advice of the old saying “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. If I am to buy something, the last thing I want is to be having problems with it, and if there are problems, I’d want them to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

So I started my working life in in-store sales, selling electrical goods (TVs videos, stereos, domestic appliances), and made it to department manager by making sure my customers got what they really needed (as opposed to what they thought they needed), which kept them coming back. When they had problems, I worked the support system to make sure they were looked after, and as a result they kept coming back. Sure the commission helped (especially when you are young and working for something close to minimum wage), but my main drive was to build customer loyalty.

Skip my next job – it was a way to get into the computer industry back in the day where a home PC was Commodore VIC20 or Sinclair Spectrum, and had me working shifts as a data centre operator for a big international supplier of technology to the military. It got me a regular paycheck and the shift bonuses were just what a young married parent needed! It wasn’t what I wanted to do though.

So, when I heard about a support position working for the company that provided the data communication services for a pre-internet bulletin board type system called Compunet (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compunet), I jumped at the chance. I was a major home computer hobbyist geek back then – wrote software to control devices through the RS232 interface, was a member of a local ‘users group’, and the idea of being paid to play with the technology that was my hobby seemed to good to be true, so I went for it, and they hired me.

Compunet was a small company, and even a lowly technical support person could make a difference. Based on my own experiences, and the feedback of the users/customers, I was able to work with the developers to enhance the system, and add new functionality. I even wrote some of the code that went into the system enhancements and the software copy protection we had (the service would let you download commercial software and run it so long as an integrated ‘dongle’ was present). I also got to rule as in house ‘wizard’ over one of the first commercial multi-user games (MUD – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD). This was a fun job. It was all about seeing what the users wanted, and trying to make the service deliver that. Unfortunately, management lost their direction, and I left shortly before the company folded.

From there I went to work for an emerging business computer manufacturer called Apricot Computers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_Computers). When I joined, they had just started to get interested in the aspect of computer networking, and my experiences with Compunet and my interest in the whole emerging world of computer communication made this seem like a good fit. I joined as a technical support engineer, and quickly found myself specializing in PC networking with the emerging Microsoft MS Net, and Novell NetWare. As a manufacturer looking to specialize in networking PCs, I got to see Novell NetWare grow through its early adoption phase through its position of market domination, and saw the start of its demise as Microsoft looked to dominate the PC networking industry. I also got to see Microsoft develop MS-Net into LAN Manager, and then into Windows NT and beyond into Windows 2000 and Active Directory.

Working in technical support, I got to see first hand how the decisions of engineers could cause pain for the eventual users of the products, and so worked hard to drive ‘problem ownership’ to its correct owners. During my time there, I brought engineering closer to the customers, got partner companies talking closely together about joint support issues, worked out ways to deliver enhanced support services to our customers through the use of the Internet, and tried to give our customers the best experience possible.

Seeing how the PC network industry was growing rapidly, and seeing as how server centric storage was not a sustainable model, when Mitsubishi Electric (who had purchased Apricot Computers in the 1990s) finally decided they couldn’t compete with the likes of HP, Compaq, IBM and Dell, and so pulled the plug, I looked at a number of possible jobs on the table. The one that interested me the most was for a company I had never heard of (who had about 30 people in the UK at the time), and who had this cool idea of taking the storage away from the server and stick it all together in a big consolidated system that could be accessible by anything on the network that needed it.

I joined my current company as a professional services engineer in a newly formed division of the company (I believe I was the 3rd such hire world-wide at the time I joined), doing installations and on-site troubleshooting. My desire to have customers get the best from their purchases quickly led me to develop standardized installation processes, performance audits, ‘system availability’ audits, and other such services that we could provide to customers to ensure they got a consistent experience, and could get the most out of their purchases. These early ideas were seen by our corporate folks back in California, and soon got rolled into standard service offerings that are even now being delivered world-wide. As our team grew, I realized that I didn’t just want to be a people manager, so looked to build on my problem solving experience, so started specializing in on-site diagnosis and resolution of the difficult issues that time and time again seemed to stump our remote call centers.

One thing I found was that as solutions get more and more complicated, and as technologies from different suppliers get more and more intermixed, having a component level view of support doesn’t always work (and in this game we are typically just a component in a much bigger ‘machine’).  Being able to understand the whole machine, and being able to look at everything that happens inside that machine (as opposed to the very restricted view that a remote based support engineer typically sees) is key to quickly diagnosing and fixing problems, and so I became our first ‘field escalation consultant’, working as a troubleshooter for the really hot and painful customer escalations that we could never seem to get to the bottom of with a remote support infrastructure.

Many times, the problems our customers had were not as a result of our contribution to their overall infrastructure, but were more often than not integration or environmental issues, and being able to quickly identify these issues and work with the customers to resolve them earned our company a lot of loyalty with our customer base- we became people they could trust. We’d deliver a solution that did what they wanted (and needed), and we’d understand their environment such that we could even deliver support for parts of their infrastructure that on paper had nothing to do with our part of their solution. Having that level of customer trust and loyalty is invaluable.

For the times where a defect in our products was to blame for the problems, I’d work closely with the various departments back at our corporate HQ to get a quick and effective resolution to the problems, and always made sure that the folks in support and engineering were aware that the customer experience always came first. This was great, and helped us to build a strong base of loyal customers in the UK, however it was always reactive.

As such, when an opportunity came up to take this experience, and take it closer to the folks who design and build our solutions, I jumped at the chance. I’d always been interested in the idea of moving to and living in America, and many visits from the UK to California only helped strengthen that desire, so when an opportunity came up that would take me to our HQ, and have me working on behalf of our customers world wide to influence the ongoing quality of our products, I did everything I could to make it happen.

Over the past 2 years, our products have seen a lot of extra complexity added, and the scope for screw-ups increases exponentially the more complexity that gets designed in; however as a part of a small group of dedicated folks who consistently strive for positive changes in our product quality, we have not seen that trend. In fact, we have seen our quality get notably better over the past couple of years. Sure there are still issues (what company doesn’t have them), but we spot them early, deal with them early, and make sure that our customers are looked after every step of the way.

Oh, and by the way, the role I started (that of Field Escalation Consultant) has now been mainstreamed by our services organization, and we now have teams of such folks dotted around the world, ready to help our customers through those difficult times.

Only the other day, I ran into the area director that I used to report into while working in the UK, and after upsetting him by assuring him that I didn’t want to move back, he said that in his position (as director of customer services for Europe), he’d seen a notable positive change in our quality over the past 2 years. Needless to say this felt good, knowing that at some level I had contributed to this change. If folks at that level are having to spend less time talking to customers after a painful escalation, and can focus more on making our service and support deliverables even better, we all win.

… So what brought on this outburst from me? Well, two things really. One thing that made me sit back and appreciate my job recently was a thread on a message forum that I participate in where someone posted a message titled ‘My Job is FUN (post your job)’, and proceeded to post a number of photos of where he worked (which looked like fun), so I looked at my job, which is now mainly office based, but has over time taken me all over the world in support of our customers, so I dug out a load of those photos and put them together in a collection. Sure enough, as I look back, not only do I get job satisfaction, but I really have gotten to visit some cool places and have fun, and that continues, even now.

The other thing was a comment left in response to a blog entry on one of our competitors sites, where the head of worldwide marketing for HP was singing the praises of their own products in our technology space, and threw a challenge to his peers in some of their competitors (including us) to show that our products were as good as theirs. In response to this, one of our customers independently posted a response that hit home that we really do have that level of customer loyalty that looking after our customers at all levels brings. (see http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/campbell/archive/2006/09/27/1658.html#comment1716 – this really made my morning).

Oh, and let’s hope it’s not another 2 months before I do another entry…..