PhoneBoy Says

Can't wait to try it!

via Osfoora

Before my father passed away, I went to visit him and saw the state of his relatively small house. There was stuff everywhere, stuff I had no idea why he was keeping or what (if anything) he was planning to do with it. It made me realize just how deep the packrat genes run in my family. And that's just my dad's side. It's just as bad on my mom's side.

I'm determined not to be like that. Even though I fully expect my kids will wonder what crack I was smoking when they go through my accumulated possessions after I pass away, hopefully there will be less possessions to go through.

And thus, why I think I am on a drive to simplify. Not just my possessions, but what things I do and how. I want less obstacles between me and what I want to do. I don't want to have to continually troubleshoot everything. I want everything to just work and stay out of my way.

It's one of the reasons I've decided to move my personal blog(s) over to Posterous--it's got a drop dead simple interface that mostly gets out of your way. It does lots of cool things without you having to think about it. It even imported my older "personal" blogs without a lot of effort.

I'm also looking a lot at what I am doing and the value it brings me. Twitter and Facebook are services that bring me value without huge amounts of effort. I also have work-related reasons for using these services. Blogging is a huge effort that had stopped paying off as much, so I cut way back.

Evaluating what I am doing is a bit more difficult. There are a number of concerns I must balance, and the calculus is not easy.

While I was driving around today, I heard a couple of very loud BOOMs. Turns out President Obama was in Seattle pimping for Senator Patty Murray and a seaplane breached the restricted airspace around the area. A couple of F-15s scrambled to the area, causing a sonic boom that was heard all over the Puget Sound. People were talking about it in Gig Harbor, that's for sure, though at that point, nobody really knew. Twitter eventually got the story out.

One of the things I did recently was go through my dad's old camcorder videos and digitize them. Fortunately, he had a camcorder with a Firefire port, and I had a Mac, so getting the videos off was pretty easy, albeit time consuming.

Given that I barely communicated with my dad during the past couple of decades (and won't ever, now that he's no longer alive), the videos were interesting to watch, if only to catch a glimpse to see what he thought was valuable enough to capture and save.

What struck a cord in me was that most of the videos involved nature on some level, whether it was the birdbath he made out of an old satellite dish (the birds never came at least in the video he took) to the sheer natural beauty that accompanied his drives to visit customers all around Northern California. And yes, there's even videos of his animals, too.

I took a few screen grabs of some of the videos he took and posted them below:

While I'm thankful I don't have to drive all over creation every day to make a living, I'm pretty certain that if I had to, I would enjoy it more if I saw what my dad saw when he did it.

Top to bottom:

1. The base station for a Skype phone (the Skype Dual Phone)

2. Linksys Cable Modem (CM100)

3. Check Point VPN-1 EDGE W

4. Safe@Office 500W with ADSL

5. Linksys WRT54GS

Yes, I actually do use all this stuff in my network.

I haven't been blogging much lately. Also, it seems like every time I go onto any one of my blogs (and I have several), I have maintenance to do. Upgrades. Plugins. What have you.

Quite honestly, it's more overhead than I want right now. Even though I prefer to "own" my content on a server that I pay to use, it's just not something I want to mess with.

So here I am "starting over" on Posterous for, um, well I lost count how many times I've done the personal blog. But I'm doing it here. The fact I can get everything in from my old Vox blog is a huge plus. The fact that posting is dirt simple is also a plus.

Theoretically, Posterous is not a roach motel, so I should be able to get my content out at some point if I so choose. At least "there's an API for that." We'll see. The content distribution options are also a plus.

Eventually, I will redirect phoneboy.info here. I'm also going to move the Gig Harbor Tweetup site over to Posterous as well. I'll probably leave my main blog over on Wordpress for right now until I figure out something I like better.

Of course, the next step: coming up with something I actually want to write about.

I was listening to one of President Obama's weekly addresses where he was complaining about the recent Supreme Court decision that lifts bans on corporate spending to influence elections. While I'm all for disclosures on who is really behind these campaign-related attack ads, I made a connection that I hadn't made before.Obama mentioned the famous line from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." If we've more or less extendedcorporations the same rights as people, does that mean that our government is of, by, and for corporations?Given everything that's happened in my lifetime at least, it sure seems that way.

I believe everyone has a right to exist--a right no one else has a claim to. I believe in pursuing your own rational self-interest and happiness. I believe no one has the right to force their will on or unwillingly extract value from others. I believe in free, voluntary exchange of value to mutual benefit.

A comment I've heard from a number of people is that my new job at Check Point has me traveling a bit more. My wife certainly thinks so. Between more trips to the office and speaking engagements, I'm in the air at least once a month now.This time, I'm going to San Diego for Check Point Software's Sales Kick Off. It's a corporate rah-rah session of sorts. A gathering of the troops. And, for me, a chance to dry out for a few days and meet many co-workers for the first time.It's funny. With 3 trips to Israel in the past 9 months, I have a different perspective on travel. Compared to the nearly 24 hours it takes to get from Seattle to Tel Aviv, pretty much all the other flights I take are short by comparison. Also, TSA could learn a few things from the Israeli airport authorities.

More than a decade ago, I made a name for myself helping customers with Check Point firewalls. I was a technical support engineer that supported customers directly. I helped out on the mailing lists of the day (and even started my own). I ran a fairly popular FAQ web site about the product. I even wrote two books about the Check Point firewall! The mention of "PhoneBoy" to a long-time Check Point customer will often evoke a fond memory about how my site or book helped them out of a jam.Of course, that was ages ago, at least in Internet time. The product suite has changed substantially since then. I haven't been tasked with doing technical support for the Check Point firewall in quite some time. I shut down my mailing list last year. CPUG has taken phoneboy.com's place as the top independent repository of all things Check Point. And, more recently, I became employed by Check Point.Now it seems I am doing what I used to do 10 years ago. No, I'm not a guru on all things Check Point like I used to be, and phoneboy.com won't return to it's roots anytime soon. But I am helping Check Point customers again--and it's my job to do so.Ok, it was my job before, but only in that I worked in technical support and worked for Nokia for most of the time. A lot of what people knew me for was my "extra-curricular" that I did because I wanted to.This is different. Instead of working things through the technical support channels, I now pretty much have access to the entire Check Point organization. While I won't dive into the technical details of an issue anymore, I can help make sure the right resources are engaged to resolve it. I make sure customer feedback gets where it needs to and that customers get the appropriate feedback, And, yes, I also help clarify uncertainties around upgrades from NGX to Software Blades licensing :)I should note that this isn't the only thing I do at Check Point. I have a "real" job as well (i.e. something that has nothing to do with representing the company online), though everyone involved knows--and generally approves--of what I am doing online. Better yet, the "real" job puts me at the right place in the organization to get the information I need for our customers out there who are talking about us.I'm pretty much doing this by the seat of my pants. I haven't been given any formal guidance on what I should be doing, though I do get the occasional email from someone inside the company asking me to take a look at something. I also periodically check in with our PR and Marketing teams to make sure my messaging is consistent and that I am aware when new products and services are launched.The general feedback I've gotten (internally and externally) has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been making a difference for our customers and for the company as a whole. It's quite gratifying. And fun.