Random Musings

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Experimenting with food...

I'm not much of a cook. I could be, I think. But I'm simply too lazy. I think the actual cooking part is fun - and if that were all that was involved, I think I would try to come up with something from time to time. But unfortunately, there are two much less sexy components to cooking - preparation and cleanup.

So although I don't cook all that often, I've somehow been attracted to various cooking shows (Iron Chef, Hell's Kitchen, etc.). About a month ago, I was glued to the TV watching HGTV (can't believe I'm admitting that) and more specifically some kind of Thanksgiving cook off reality show (really can't believe I'm admitting that). Anyway, the thing that stuck with me most was someone frying a turkey. I think I had heard of it before, but really didn't understand that frying actually meant boiling in oil. Since watching the show, I've wanted to fry my own bird.

I got my chance to experiment a bit last week when our family had a gift exchange. We had the typical Thanksgiving/Christmas food (ham, prime rib, mashed potatoes, baked yams, etc.) and I volunteered to take care of the turkey. I ordered my very own fryer and spent an whole bunch of time reading the manual and recipes that I found online. I even thought about doing a trial run the week before, but I really didn't want to eat fried turkey two weeks in a row, so I decided to just go for it without the trial.

Here's the turkey submerged in boiling hot oil:

The good news is that I didn't burn down the house. Actually, that's definitely the best news of all. Unfortunately, the turkey was a bit more burned (and dry) than I would have liked. I followed the directions perfectly, but I think that a couple of things through me off. First, I was told that I should count 3 to 3.5 minutes per pound. And second, I was told to add another 5 minutes for the bird. For the 14 pound turkey, this meant a cooking time of 54 minutes. Next time, I'm going with 3 minutes per pound flat - we'll see how that comes out!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Fatherhood...

On October 22nd, 2009 I became a father. I was going to say that I became a father for the first time, but that's not really true - you can't become a father for a second time. Once you're a father, you're a father for life - and no one can ever take that away from you.

I'm not a religious person, but I believe that my wife and I were truly blessed with our daughter, Victoria. The following is taken from a note I sent out to friends and family a day after Victoria was born:

Victoria Benitt was born at 3pm on 10/22. She weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces and was 18 3/4 inches long at birth.

We weren't expecting her for another week, but there were signs that made us go to the hospital a bit early. Once there, while being examined, the nurse lost the baby's heart rate for a few minutes (which was really scary when she called in four other people to help her) and when the heart beat returned it was decelarated to the 60-70 range from a previous range of 130-150. Due to the risk of the decelerated heart beat, the doctor determined that the baby needed to be delivered shortly, and since Thien was not experiencing any real contractions yet, she was started on pitocin (to induce labor). We saw a small contraction on the monitor that Thien didn't even feel, and at the same time, the baby's heart rate decelerated again. This happened one more time five minutes later, and the doctor pulled her off of the pitocin and informed us that Thien would need a cesarean section. No more than fifteen minutes later, Thien was in the OR and another 45 minutes later, we finally got to meet our beautiful baby girl.

In my note, I forgot to mention that we eventually learned that the decelerated heart rate was due to a short umbilical cord. Essentially, every time that Victoria attempted to descend into the birth canal, her umbilical cord got tighter, decelerating her heart beat.

Everything happened so fast that we didn't truly appreciate that things could have turned out much differently than they had. But with time to reflect, I've certainly come to the conclusion that we were extremely fortunate to decide to go to the hospital that day - and also extremely fortunate to receive great care from all of the nurses and doctors that tended to us. They made an extremely stressful situation manageable.

In congratulating me, one of my friends told me that this a new chapter in my life and that I should enjoy every letter. I wrote back to him that now that the first hurdle is done, I expect this to be the biggest, most complex and most enjoyable novel that I would ever have the pleasure of living, and that I would surely savor every last letter.

I've only been a father for less than a week, but the experience has already taught me that I am extremely fortunate and blessed. I hope to learn and enjoy much more throughout this journey.

Below are some of the first pictures we took of Victoria, along with a video of her taken just as we were about to leave the hospital and head home for the first time:

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Building for the Cloud

Image by mayhem via Flickr

A few of my lifelong friends and I recently decided to launch a new company (Help Desk Support Software powered by Assistly) in the customer service space. We've all been deeply involved in this space since 1996, when we were part of the early team at eShare Technologies, one of the very first companies to develop solutions for call centers to deal with customers on the web.

Things have changed significantly since the days of eShare. It used to be that you had to build a product and have it run within a company's data center. This generally meant that the software company had to waste cycles in developing and testing for different server operating systems and various database platforms and versions. I remember even having to work within a client's datacenter to discover and fix our software for different database drivers - that we didn't know had existed. Even after the decision was made to buy our software, there was a long IT process required to install and configure. Servers had to be ordered, procured, racked, wired, etc.

The cloud allows us to be much more flexible, and as such, we'll be providing that much more flexibility to our customers. I attended an Amazon AWS Cloud for the Enterprise Event yesterday, and Amazon's CTO, Dr. Werner Vogols had some interesting observations about what defines cloud computing. In addition to the typical definition, Dr. Vogols indicated that to be truly recognized as cloud computing, the operation should be completely on demand and it needs to be pay as you go. This is exactly the same guiding principle that we plan to pass onto our customers. There is no need to by a perpetual license for 100 agents to manage a one month peak if normal volumes call for only 20 agents - just scale up and pay for the additional 80 agents for the one month that you're using them - and then immediately scale down your usage.

In addition to having a different overall philosophy with how products should be marketed and sold, it's my belief that we have a distinct advantage in building for the scale, resilience, availability, etc. of the cloud. I don't think that building for the cloud precludes us from going on prem at some point - or for allowing our customers to extend their data centers with something like Amazon VPC - but I think our product will simply be better as it's designed with the proper architecture right from the start.

I'm looking forward to the journey...

Friday, July 3, 2009

Updating firmware on my Samsung Blu-ray

I'm about twelve minutes into my latest firmware upgrade - on my Samsung Blu-ray player - and its now just 80% done. Watching the bar progress from 75% to 80% has been like watching moss grow - very slow and painful.

So here's what I don't get; in this day and age, why does the device wait for me to want to watch a movie before it decides to download the required software? Granted, I could have watched the movie and then downloaded the firmware later, but most likely later would end up being the very next time that I wanted to watch a movie. Haven't we learned anything from auto-updating software over the years? Even Microsoft finally has this down - download in the background - and then ask me if I want to install. Instead, I get to wait - but at least that gives me time to ponder life a bit.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Is it better to take a big bite from a small pie, or a small bite from a bigger pie?

Every once in a while, I find myself contemplating the idea of focus versus diversification... the question can be applied to large companies, nascent startups or even personal aspects of life, including family and friends.

In the case of family and friends, the question may be one of whether it's better to spend a lot of time with a few very close friends, deepening the bonds and relationships, while likely just having cursory relationships with other friends, or is it better to spread the wealth and have moderately deep relationships with a lot more friends. In a large company, a decision may be made to double down on an existing business and grow it, or to take a chance and use that same investment (time, energy, PR, money) in the pursuit of four or five other businesses. These questions are answered every day, but there are pros and cons to both approaches.

For the entrepreneur, perhaps more so than in my other examples, there is also the notion of risk/reward that has to play a role. Working at a larger organization, and getting paid a nice salary isn't likely to result in a big payout - but there's something to be said for a measure of stability - and the aforementioned nice salary. Going off an a completely new venture is sure to be more exciting, and can also be more rewarding at the end (with a ton of hard work and a bit of luck), but the most likely result is more experience - and experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

A more intricate question for the entrepreneur is whether to pursue one new venture wholeheartedly or to divide his time up and pursue a few somewhat related but diversified opportunities at the same time. Pursuing one idea gives you clarity of focus and can make the pie bigger at the end - assuming you've chosen which venture to pursue properly. Pursuing multiple fronts is likely to be more exciting and adventurous as there is always going to be something new, but it removes the focus - and any one success is likely going to result in a smaller piece of the pie as there would likely be more people involved.

No answers yet, but will definitely continue to ponder this for a bit...

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

We're having a girl!

A few weeks back, Thien and I went to the doctor for the usual tests at 18 weeks, and to find out if we were having a girl or a boy. Although the technician doing the ultrasound was very thorough, she couldn't really tell us based on the position of the baby and the fact that we were a bit early in the process. I think she said something like "I think I see a girl part" - but upon further questioning, she relented and said that she just wasn't sure.

Thien and I were ecstatic to "find out" that we were having a girl, but we found that we couldn't communicate that out to our friends and family - we ended up just saying that "we think" that we were having a girl. And this lack of confidence got depressing fast.

Thien set us up for a session at the Ultrasound Experience in San Marcos and we went last week. It truly was an experience - Thien was giddy the entire time seeing our baby in her womb, up on a 100" display. This was dubbed an "Early Peek" and not only were we able to see our baby, but we (or rather the technician) were able to confirm that we are in fact having a baby girl!

Presenting baby girl Benitt for the very first time, in full 4D glory:

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Stuck on week 5

About six months ago, I started using a Robert Ulrey's Podcast based on the Cool Running's Couch to 5K program. The podcast and program are based on a 9 week schedule of continually escalating runs, geared to get couch potatoes (like myself) able to fairly easily run a 5K distance - the equivalent of just over 3 miles.

In reality, I can run 3 miles and have often run in excess of 5 miles - but this effort is a struggle for me - and I took up this approach as a way to get more consistency for myself in an attempt to "easily" run a 3 mile distance without much effort. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, for a while I seem to have gotten stuck on the 5th week. Maybe it was the halfway point and the runs were starting to get more difficult or perhaps it was my move from LA to San Diego. Whatever the reason, I had definitely stopped making progress.

The good news is that I think I'm finally back on track. The big change for me was deciding to do outdoor runs by my house, instead of having to go to the gym. Apparently, the time and hassle involved in actually going to the gym was a major roadblock for me. For the past week or so, I've woken up, put on my shorts, and just started running. I'm now two thirds of the way done with week 7, and I'm confident that I'll get all the way through to week 9 in the next couple of weeks. And I get an added benefit of becoming more familiar with my new neighborhood.

The trick for me will be to maintain the runs once I'm done with this 9 week podcast. Any suggestions for other running podcasts that I can use for coaching and motivation once I'm done?