Back on Air

Some pictures from the holiday for your viewing pleasure.

Happy New Year everyone and apologies for the extended holiday. I've been enjoying some wonderful time with family and friends and just didn't feel the urge to write or even read a heck of a lot if the truth be known. Father Joe joined us for Christmas and then my oldest son surprised me over this past weekend with a sudden appearance at our front door at 3 a.m. in the morning. He said he took a wrong turn and found himself in Atlanta and thought he might as well drop by and say hello. Given it's a ten hour drive from Northern Virginia to Atlanta I got to believe he at least thought a bit about it before jumping into his truck. Oh yeah, he also arrived with his new friend Colleen who turned out to be delightful and we loved every minute she was here. Bring her back soon!

So, from top to bottom we have: Father Joe with Joe and Ellie, Mom, Kate, Joe & Ellie, Patrick Jr., Joe and Mom, The family with all my kids, my kids again and finally Patrick & Colleen.

Today started my real efforts towards finding a new position. I met with a number of excellent recruiters during December and there are a few possibilities starting to incubate......nothing firm as yet, but there still isn't any hurry and I'm anxious to make a good decision, not one born out of necessity. I've still got a few months before that starts to become a driver.

Went to hear Jim Geiger speak this evening at the monthly meeting of the Holy Spirit Catholic Men's Club. Jim is the CEO of CBeyond and a member of the parish. He gave an inspirational talk filled with lots of humor and life's lessons. A very pleasant chap who unfortunately has quite a bit of disdain for old BellHeads, which obviously doesn't make me a candidate for his firm. While I certainly understand his bias having quite a bit of disdain for old BellHeads myself, it is unfortunate that I'm at the age where I now fall into that category..........23 years with the AT&T family is all most folks see even though many of those years were with relatively small elements of AT&T in far away countries helping to forge their global presence. Still, the label of AT&T reeks of big company and it is hard to get folks past labels sometimes.

Reading a new book by Don Tapscott (one of my favorite authors) and Anthony Williams entitled "Wikinomics". About a third of the way through and having a real problem putting it down. Fascinating stuff.........a must read for any tech enthusiast. It is about mass collaboration and how it is changing everything.

I promise to get back on track and start posting regularly now that the holidays are finished. By the way, did everyone see that article about "LinkedIn" in the December issue of Business 2.0?