In the News

Well, its 2011 so that means its time to review my goals for 2010 and set some new ones. This post will be focused solely on reviewing 2010.

• Goal #1: work less – SUCCESS! I think that 2010 proved that I could be more productive at the office without putting in a lot of nights and weekends. My boss recently gave me the permission to say No! which has been huge for my productivity. I’m hoping that this current work environment continues through 2011. The future is exciting!
• Goal #2: 2 in 12. – FAIL! This was my running goal and while I did run more this year, I didn’t hit my goal. The best that I did when I was running quite a bit this summer was 1.5 in 9. 1 in 6 happened a few times but I couldn’t make it to 2 miles in 12. I was more commonly a 8 miler man honestly and it was only when I really really REALLY pushed myself did I hit those numbers. And to be honest, it was stupid when I did push myself like that. I always paid the price and couldn’t run for crap the next couple of times out. Nolan coming along kind of killed my endurance as I didn’t exercise nearly enough. But I’m turning that around.
• Goal #3: the 5 hour work week.– FAIL! I didn’t put in 5 hours a week, but I did do quite a bit better on the side business. More hours before Nolan but he’s falling into a nice pattern which is making it easier to dedicate that one hour back again.
• Goal #4: Inbox Zero! – FAIL yeah, not even close on this one.
• Goal #5: read one book a month. – SUCCESS! While it doesn’t seem like it, I read quite a bit this year. Maybe not every book all the way through, but a good majority of just about every baby resource I could get my hands on. A lot of them were fairly short and not near enough fiction books. But still, I call this one a success.
• Goal #6: Stop checking email first thing in the morning. – SUCCESS! I think it goes with #1 but I have definitely stopped checking things first thing in the morning. Maybe not as much now that Nolan is around and I need to pass the time while he sits up and falls asleep (typically) after his morning bottle.

Conclusion

It wasn’t a steller year, but still fairly successful as far as my goals went. While I fell short in quite a few areas, I did better than I expected while failing. I’ll live with 50% and look to improve this year. Onto 2011!

Do you live in the Brain Belt?

I’ve heard it called Silicon Prarie before, but I hadn’t heard of the Brain Belt. Back when I worked in Green Bay WI, we used to call it the Silicon Tundra. They of coarse are all just made up names to talk about the tech boom that is happening in the midwest.

Just in Des Moines, we have some pretty impressive tech companies. My current employer LightEdge Solutions is head quartered here. We’re the first company to tie Microsoft’s OCS messaging system to a Broadsoft VoIP platform for hosted consumption.

Its hard to really put into words how proud of my wife I am. She has given me a gift that I can never thank her enough for, a handsome baby boy. Nolan James Patterson was born on September 18th at 9:47PM. Weighing in a 7lbs and 1oz and a whopping 20 inches long. Ok, maybe not that whopping, but still a decent height to him.

So, as a good father, I promise to raise my son to learn all the important things. Things such as:

As I was checking in today on the latest tech news, I found out that Twitter has announced that they are building their own data center.

Death to the fail whale they are calling it. Maybe so, but what really got me was this.

Twitter will have full control over network and systems configuration, with a much larger footprint in a building designed specifically around our unique power and cooling needs.

If you follow me on twitter (@usrlocal) or facebook you probably already know this little bit of news. But here it is anyway…

My wife and I are please to announce that we will be expanding our family this year. We’re expecting our first towards the end of September. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about it.