Sam's Blog

More thoughts...

Never, EVER, let the wife pick out the Halloween costume
So...Here I am at Matias' first b-day party (in which everyone was supposed to wear a costume because it coincided with Halloween weekend). And what do I have to wear? An 80's rocker costume - leopard pants (tights), leather shirt (actually vinyl), red scarf,.... At least I got to sling one of my guitars over the shoulder to (somewhat) hide the belly...(I was in the gym by 9:00 this morning...). How embarassing. I even made Lisa get out and pump gas (I wasn't going to be seen like this in public - in broad daylight)...

Good Reading
I finally got around to starting to read Lighten Up by CW Metcalf. I had the opportunity to hear CW Metcalf speak at the Management Symposium last year while working for Sutter Health. His presentation is about maintaining a sense of humor to combat the stresses of work and life. It was a very funny presentation. What made if so riveting though was his drawing on personal experiences (he actually flatlined several times due to a number of illnesses) and how he was able to make it through by keeping a sense of humor. The book goes deeper into his personal experiences...

ITIL Hell...
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a model for IT that is gaining in popularity in the US. ITIL provides ITIL provides a cohesive set of best practice processes, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally. That said, there is much left to interpretation...and that's where the issues are. Some use it as a framework for processes and use the "swimlanes" as a format for the processes. I'm OK with that. Others think that everything has to have its own process - and anything that doesn't fit into an existing process...needs a new process. I sat in five hours of meetings on Friday discussing two (that's right - 2) processes...I was in swimlane hell.....

posted by Sam @ 2:42 PM