Wednesday

So it’s been a while since I have posted. I need to get in a better habit of publishing at least a handful of entries a month. So, given how just insane the last few days have been I couldn’t think of a better time to start.

Wednesday night before dinner I received a few IMs about some rumblings back home in the 918. More specifically there may be a few job losses that day. Given the current state of our economy I think all of us deep inside have some sense of paranoia so I dismissed it and headed out to dinner. About an hour later I started getting texts with names and I was simply just floored. 3 of my good friends and what many of us consider the “Old Guard” had been released. I cannot possibly explain what was going through my mind as I’m sure was the same sentiment for most of my co workers. All 3 of them have had such a profound impact on my career at SolArc that rather than raise hell I thought I would take a moment to thank them for hanging out with me for the last 10 years while looking forward to the next 10.

Jake actually interviewed me right out of college, and although he probably didn’t have any direct hiring power, I like to think that he gave me a Yes vote when he was asked. The last time I saw Jake was the first week of February doing what I always thought he did best; getting in front of a group of people (even though I knew he hated that part) and just getting excited talking about our new product and technology offerings. It was like watching a child describe the coolest toy he had just received for Christmas. Those Jake moments always got me excited about my job again and I am going to miss them. True to Jake’s character, even though I’m sure at the time he was extremely angry and confused, he remained stoic through the ordeal. There were no incendiary posts on Facebook or his blog; rather he encouraged us to push forward, there was work that remained to be done and we would get it done, and that, this is the most amazing part, if we needed any help navigating through his work - just ask him. One of the last work conversations Jake and I had was for the TC group to take over the .Net training while lecturing me at the same time for missing one day of training. Not exactly an ideal last work encounter to end on but it did make me go buy a 3500 page 10 pound .Net book and lug it over to Europe – I’m about halfway through. And don’t worry Jake; I still have an electronics budget waiting for you once I return.

Duke was my first manager at SolArc back when he still had hair and glasses. He spent a good part of my early career defending whatever mistaken action I had taken that day to our customers and never once took it out on me – only encouraging me to learn from it or use some OT to understand that portion of the software a bit better. More importantly he cultivated a group culture of self sufficiency and utilizing one another’s skill sets to solve whichever emergency was the most pressing at the moment – regardless if it was your customer or not. If you’ve ever worked with me I encourage the same principles. Back then there were 5 of us in the support group and our work was really defined by a wild wild west mentality. We fixed issues in builds, wrote release notes, qa’d the software, whatever was needed. We’ve since formalized those groups into their own but that first 18 months I worked were what laid the foundation for my career and much of that was either directly or indirectly fostered by Duke. My favorite Duke story involves a simple SQL script. Jason and I were struggling to fix an issue and we finally talked Duke into giving it a go. So as he is writing the table joins he joins DlHdrID on PrdctID. Jason immediately noticed and mentioned something to the effect of “Hey Duke your join is uh” and before he could finish Duke butted in and said “will you two let me finish.” So after about 20 minutes Duke completes his opus of a SQL script runs it - no rows returned. So after another 20 minutes of Duke getting increasingly flustered Jason points out the error and he laughed so hard he started to turn red. Now that is definitely one of those “had to be there” type of stories but it’s still one of my favorites. Duke was clever, but unlike me his ego was never out of control; he had no problem with just laughing at himself.

And finally there Tracy. Although I was never formally trained by Tracy I was a support disciple from his support tree; from Tracy to Denton and Denton to me. Of course through the years I had several run ins with him working within the accounting and especially inventory reconcile domains. Even when he finally shed inventory rec I would still ask him questions because I always forgot he no longer owned it– to which would he would start with “dude, seriously …” and then a small lecture about how Kyle now owned it would follow. Tracy always believed that people were capable of more and that pushing them to do so would only benefit them in the end. This was sometimes misconstrued as not being helpful but that was the never the case. I believe in the same philosophy, if you always do everything for someone they will never really learn and that is your problem not theirs. You could be sure you knew where you stood with him and he is one of the few suitable OU fans I’ve met. Purple Tracy is still an all time classic and will be missed in the lunch room. But my favorite moments were at a morning hockey games, when I was walrused out and just would give him the business whenever he came through the crease in his blue Nike tights. He scored a bunch but he earned everyone. I mean you never really expect to be clothes-lined by the keeper.

Gentlemen, I know you will all do fine and in the end I envy how you have all remained poised through this ordeal. I’m only sorry that I couldn’t be home to shake your hand one last time and tell you this in person. It definitely isn’t the end and I’m excited to see where you land next.