What have I done??

For some strange reason, I registered for next year's Tupper Lake Tinman (half-Ironman) race. Six hours of sheer pain. Whee!

I wanted to race in the Lake Placid Ironman again, but my wife suggested otherwise. Lots and lots of training for IM and usually considerable time away from home. She definitely sacrificed during 2005 so I understand her concern.

I'm starting to create my 20 week training plan which will commence at the end of January. As it happens, next year's season will be a challenge because while I was able to ride/run in my basement during the 2005 season (particularly during the winter), I now have to find a way to get in my long bike workouts. There is no room in our tiny apartment so I'll have to ask the Z-center if I can ride my bike somewhere in there (it's always recommended to train on the bike you'll be racing on).

I think I'm going to start running with the Sloan running club next year and definitely swim with the Masters swim team. I'm attempting to beat my 2005 Tupper Lake time: 5h 50m.

It's going to be a challenge, but now I have a fitness goal again.

Star Power

This week's classes were packed with celebrities. Thursday's Technology-based Business Transformation class (taught by Irving Wladawsky-Berger) seen John Patrick, President of Attitude, LLC (Internet Pioneer and former IBM executive) talk about the intricacies of launching potentially big ideas in the form of new product releases. A few of his suggestions:

-Your product's name is extremely important
-Fail and fail often
-When releasing your initial product, just enough is good enough/trial by fire
-Think globally act locally. Webvan actually did the opposite and went bankrupt.

He also talked about the future of the Internet. Which was very interesting and paralleled what Professor David Clark of CSAIL told me awhile back: the real plays are at the edge of the network. He was very specific and I'll have a separate post on this topic, later.

Today in my Software Business class Professor Michael Cusumano asked software engineering's OO and UML creator Ivar Jacobson to discuss his impetus to create OO and UML, and later RUP. Apparently OO was born out of necessity when Ivar was working at Ericcson and needed to create a fairly complex software product. He essentially studied other industries to determine how they solved the re-use problem, extrapolated for the software domain and applied those lessons learned to the creation of OO.

About UML, he said the language is getting too big because everyone's trying to add more and more functionality. While UML is still usable though, in his opinion, RUP is the future of iterative software development.

Speaking of celebrities, someone told me yesterday that MIT has 25 Nobel Laureates in its employ and there's a very good probability that at least 11 of them are on-campus during any given Fall or Spring semester. That I could accidentally bump into one of them is humbling.

This place ceases to amaze me.

Last Day of Work

Well after 7.5 years at Global Crossing, I finally got around to submitting my resignation today. It was a hard decision to make and it took a lot of soul searching to come to the conclusion that I needed to move on and fully concentrate on MIT. About 2 months ago I approached my boss Mike and let him know my intentions to leave right around this time-frame; I wanted to give an extended notice, not only because I wanted to adequately train my replacement but also because the semester would start heating up.

As it happened, I feel like I left on my own terms and in a position of relative strength. There are more things I would have liked to have on the way out the door, but overall I'm happy how it turned-out. Mike also said that if I ever wanted my job back, I needed to just ask. That's an amazing compliment.

As I look back on it, my time at Global Crossing taught me many things, chief among them: how to be a savvy operator at work. For example -and I shared this with a friend yesterday- from here on out, I'm going to be VERY careful what I volunteer for at work. I've seen other people (and this has happened to me as well) get roped into a job and were forever known as the go-to person for that terrible, on-going problem. Secondly, I'll be sure never to assume a leadership role in a group that's outside the core competency of the organization it reports to...particularly if it's severely understaffed; because when head-count is added, it typically goes first to the core competency groups. Lastly, there are things that I want to get out of my career and unless the jobs at my next employer that fit into that frame-work, I'll be sure to pass on them, within reason of course.

Now, at age 38, as a father of two girls, husband to a beautiful wife, having sold all our cars and houses, and in the face of all this future uncertainty, it's time to get on with the business of Grad School full-time.