Category: Personal

My Blogoversary

I started this blog 4 years ago. My Blogoversary was yesterday. I started it as I was getting ready to leave Sun Microsystems. Sun is where I started blogging in September of 2004. Sun was a fantastic place to learn about blogging. It was very nurturing and supportive and encouraged people to be authentic. My Sun blog is still on the Sun blog site.

Now that Sun is being bought by Oracle and presumably will be swallowed up I wonder what will happen to the Sun blogging program. By googling Oracle blogs I see that they do have an Oracle blog site but it doesn't seem as free wheeling as Sun's. At Sun anyone could blog about anything as long as we followed some common sense rules about not sharing secrets etc. I think Sun's blogs have a really authenticity which is a reflection of Sun's culture.

In thinking about the fact that Sun blogs could go away I recently decided to print out my old blogs so I would at least have a paper back up. It has been fun to look at the blogs I wrote five  years ago.

Aidan has Minimal Change Disease Nephrotic Syndrome

While I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago I got a phone call saying that my grandson Aidan was at the doctor because he was having kidney problems. He was a healthy happy two and half year old and he had swelled up and put on 10 pounds of water weight. My heart sank. I don't want anything bad to happen to Aidan!

He saw a pediatric nephrologist (kidney specialist ) the next day and was diagnosed with nephrotic syndrome. His kidneys are leaking protein into his urine. Because the protein is being lost there is not enough protein in the blood which causes fluid to leak out of the blood vessels into the tissue and cause the swelling that Aidan experienced.

I've been doing a lot of reading on the web sites my daughter, Shannon pointed me towards. I've learned that Nephrotic syndrome can be caused by a number of diseases. They hope his is caused by Minimal Change Disease. The treatment is daily doses of the drug prednisone, a steroid. The best web site I have found so far in my reading is the Nephcure site. Minimal Change Disease Nephrotic Syndrome is fairly rare. The doctor told Shannon that most doctors will only see one or two cases in their careers. It mainly occurs in children between 1 and 5 and happens more often to boys than to girls. Apparently the steroids work for many kids but the chance of relapse is high. The good news is that most kids grow out of it by about 12. Because steroids suppress the immune system one of the many worries is that Aidan will be very prone to infections while he is on the prednisone.

I remember how horrible it was when my 9 year old daughter (Aidan's Aunt) was diagnosed with diabetes. You just don't want anything bad to happen to your kids. You want to protect them and a chronic disease that requires constant monitoring and vigilance is overwhelming and very scary. Aidan's Mom and Dad are trying to deal with this one day at a time. They have to test his urine for protein every morning. Of course that is not an easy thing in and of itself when you are dealing with a 2 year old who is still working on toilet training. Apparently prednisone tastes bad so getting it down him can be a struggle too. He will be on steroids for a while. If he goes into remission they will wean if off the steroids but will continue to test his urine daily. If he has a relapse he will go back on the steroids.

I get a knot in my stomach every time I start to read about all the bad things that could happen but I am really trying to think positive and not worry about things that haven't happened yet. I know that worrying doesn't help. But that doesn't help much.

I also know that my worry is nothing compared to what my daughter is going through. I know she is an amazingly smart, strong and determined person and she has a great network of supportive friends and family. Aidan will get through this. 

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25 Randon things

I very rarely do the things requested when I get tagged. But for some reason this Facebook meme grabbed my interest. Plus I am reading Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher and one of her exercises is to make a list of the things you have done so here is 25 Randon Things about me. I have also posted this on Facebook.

1. I was a certified scuba diver but haven't dived in 20+ years

2. I had a general class amateur radio license and I know morse code.

3. I have a computer science degree from Iowa State University. I
worked in the computer industry for almost 30 years at Boeing, Sperry
Univac, Spectra Medical Systems, Digital Research, Ansa Software, Sun
Microsystems and Intuit.

4. At Digital Research I managed one of the first software support
organizations in the home computer industry. Our product CP/M was the
first home computer operating system for micro computers.

5. I had never had a job before I graduated from college and started as a software engineer at Boeing

6. I took all the required classes and passed the CFP (Certified Financial Advisaor) 2 day exam

7. I went to High School in Australia but graduated from High School in London

8. I know how to sail and have basic keel boat certification. I was a sailboat racer in college.

9. I'm into Genealogy

10. I studied French and Latin in School but now I am teaching myself Spanish

11. About a year and a half ago I started taking Yoga classes.

12. I have taken flute and guitar lessons but most recently I took several years of piano lessons

13. I have two wonderful daughters and one very cool grandson who is 2 and a half.

14. I love to read. I just got a Kindle. I have a goal to read a
biography of each of our presidents. I'd like to write a biography some
day.

15. I've climbed Mount Whitney.

16. I love to hike and snow shoe. I used to cross country ski.

17. I consider myself a renaissance woman because I have so many
interests and am always interested in trying and learning about new
things. My goal in life is to be interesting.

18. I joined a sorority in college (Delta Zeta)

19. Charlie Rose is my favorite TV show. I would like to start a podcast interviewing interesting people.

20. My guilty pleasure TV is watching Survivor.

21. I have a blog. I started blogging in September 2004. Blogging is something I love to do.

22. I love to travel. My favorite country is England. I have a long list of places I want to visit.

23. My Mom died in July 2007. I miss her. My Dad moved to Reno last
year to be near me. I spend about 24 hours a week as his secretary and
chauffeur. My parents were always marvelously supportive. They are the
reason I am who I am today.

24. I was born in Hibbing Minnesota and spent the first 12 years of my life in Bismarck North Dakota.

25. I met my husband Duke on Match.com We have been married for 5 and a half wonderful years

Thomas Jefferson’s advice on how to be interesting.

One of the podcasts I really enjoy is the Thomas Jefferson Hour with Clay Jenkinson. Jenkinson portrays Thomas Jefferson our third president  and has been doing so for many years. A podcast I just listened to is an audio recording of a iChat video conference he did with a fifth grade class in Naperville , Illinois (episode 757). It is great fun to listen to the questions the fifth graders asked President Jefferson and to listen to his answers. I especially liked his advice to the fifth graders in closing.

  1. Read, read read – As a child Jefferson said he read 10 hours a day.
  2. Learn languages – at least two. Jefferson knew 8 languages
  3. Learn to play a musical instrument – Jefferson played the pianoforte and the violin

Jefferson said that if you do these things you can not help but be an interesting person.

Be interesting is one of my big goals in life and I was pleased to see that I am working on all three of Jefferson's suggestions.

  1. I love to read and have been doing a lot of reading lately
  2. I have studied French and I am currently studying Spanish
  3. I play the piano.

Lessons Learned When I was fired by Carol Bartz

I admire Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo. A week or so ago I sent an email to reporter Kara Swisher who has been covering Bartz at Yahoo about the time I wasfired by Carol Bartz. Swisher published it on her blog here.

I was in my early 30s and had never failed at anything in my life. I had a Computer Science degree and had been a programmer at Boeing and Sperry Univac. I had managed groups at a small Medical Information System company and at Digital Research, the makers of CP/M the fist PC operating system. I had taken a job at a young Sun Microsystems as a manager of the US Answer Center, the group that supported all of Sun's software products. My organization consisted of 35 fantastic people. But all was not sunshine and roses. After two years Sun was growing quickly and I had grown my group to well over one hundred people. On top of that we had just released a new Operating System, Sun OS 4.0, and it was full of bugs. the Answer Center was overwhelmed with  calls and we were failing. I was failing.

A sales person went on a customer call and the customer used the speaker phone in the middle of the table to call the Answer Center. He was put on hold for over 30 minutes. We had a lot of very angry customers. These customers were paying big bucks for their support contracts. It was so bad that when I met a new VP of Sales at an all hands meeting he said  "So you are the eye of the storm." … not a great way to be known. Although I was in way over my head and didn't know what to do to get out of this mess I liked Sun and wanted to stay with the company. It is was an amazing company full of amazing  people.

So when Carol Bartz was named the new VP of the services organization and she scheduled a meeting with me I was not really surprised when she said "Marion, we are not going to take you out and shot you but you are not going to doing this job any more.". She said it directly and with compassion. I had to find a new job. Luckily I found one at Sun. But as I said earlier I was devastated. I cried for a week.  I was totally knocked off my feet.

For years after this experience I spent time thinking about what I could have done differently, what I should have done to succeed. Even though the support situation was an enormous mess and pretty much all of the management in the service organization was replaced there had to have been a way to succeed. 

It is a measure of the magnitude of this experience in my life that I am writing this post today. I thought I would share with you my lessons learned from the experience.

Lessons learned

  1. Sometimes good people have to go – I probably  could have been coached to success and I know some of my peers who were fired could have been successful in the Bartz organization, but what was needed at that place and that time was focus, action, and a clean slate. By cleaning house Bartz sent a message that could be sent no other way. At the time I didn't think anyone could be successful in service at Sun but Bartz was and her first step was to start fresh.
  2. You need a team who will work together as a unit – At the time I had two people, Sharon and Bernie, in my management team who hated each other. They were each good people but together they drained energy from the team. I should have got rid of one of them. We needed a cohesive team focused on results and working on team building defocused us from working on solving our problems.
  3. Measure, Measure, Measure. You Manage what you measure. – We had a horrible home grown call management system with virtually no reporting. I should have hired someone to just focus on reporting and then we should have managed to the results. Everyone including product development should have been able to see the spike in calls and the reason for the spike.
  4. Ask for help up the line. – When I asked my boss for help he said he didn't know what to do. I should have taken my metrics to his boss  and his boss. It was not only my problem but it was everyone's problem. They needed to help own it.
  5. Always have a war plan – In hind sight I realize that we were under attack. I should have had a war plan in my drawer developed by me and my staff that we could pull out if there was a big buggy product release. Having a plan is very important.
  6. In time of war treat the situation like a war – I tried to manage my way through the problem in business as usual mode. Instead we should have been in war mode. All hands on deck, calling for reinforcements, putting other priorities on hold while we repelled the attack.
  7. Leadership – I should have called an all hands meeting and asked people to rally around. Everyone needed to know that we were at war and everyone needed to go above and beyond. I needed to lead the forces. Lincolnesque war time leadership was needed.
  8. Communication – The whole company needed to know that we were at war. Much later in my career at Sun my boss (he came from the Department of Defense) had daily red alert calls that all the VPs attended. Most people hated these calls but they did the job and focused on our failures. Support calls. are failures and we should have been treating them as such and making sure that the root cause was identified and eliminated.
  9. Life goes on – Even though this experience seemed like the end of world to me at the time. It wasn't. My daughters still went to school and grew up to be wonderful people. I got a new job at Sun and eventually became a Director in Sun's iWork Group. I had ups and downs but I fondly remember my almost 20 years at Sun.

I'd be interested in any ideas of perspective any of you who read this have.