Tales of Nothing….

First, my bad, but I meant to add Steve O'Donnell's blog to my roll long ago – it's one of the few I actually read. He's at http://www.thehotaisle.com/ He's not funny, but he is huge, bald, and a Scott – and apparently he sucks at golf, which I guess is sort of funny. Anyway, Steve is an enormously opinionated IT Operations guru with multiple-personality disorder.

It took me years to get IBM's Andy Monshaw to see the light and give me some business, and just when I house broke him, he's running off to Japan to become COO of IBM there. How selfish of him. He is a good man, albeit oft delusional. Finance guys in tech invariably spin themselves around the axle – they are too rational and logical. Tech isn't, or I should clarify – the world of Sales and Marketing isn't. That's why engineers, accountants, and IT geeks often prefer machines to people – machines are predictable. People are lunatics.

Sepaton, who has effectively been left alone at the top of the mountain in high-end VTL now that Diligent has been swallowed up by IBM, has quietly (that is not a compliment) been kicking butt. Having HP as an OEM doesn't hurt, especially when VP Storage Sales for the America's Chris Riley is an old time EMC'er from back in the day (i.e. I worked with him – that's old) with a penchant for huge deals. Terry Richardson, EVP Sales and Marketing from Sepaton is another Hopkinton alumni and the two seem to have made a symbiotic pact – Riley gets ridiculously huge deals (several multi-petabyte VTL deals just last quarter) to make his number, and Richardson is happy to cash the checks. HP has been OEMing from Sepaton for a long time, but spent most of it selling little boxes to the SMB market (lots and lots of them apparently), but little deals aren't that interesting to Riley and his boss Dave Roberson – they need to move the needle inside of the giant that is HP, so they have stepped it up. Their timing seems perfect really, with STK doing it's best Houdini impression IBM finds itself stealing share faster than it can change quota's --- and with the IBM Tape group owning Diligent, it seems as though they have no real incentive to push it while they are printing money on the big tape stuff. That leaves Sepaton as the only natural player currently up in the ridiculously large capacity and scale market – and while they would always have a tough time breaking through the walls of customers that large, HP can waltz right in.

I swear to god if I STILL am talking about tape in a year I'm going to end it – and if I continue to actually find it interesting, then someone should end it for me. It's 2009 and for the last year and half I've actually spent significant time thinking and talking about tape – and worse – power, packaging, and cooling. When I started my career in 1945 those were the things that companies gave the loser nephew of the CEO responsibility for. When you were 24, having a business card with words like tape, power supply, cartridge, or Wang on it was not helpful in the attempt to pick up girls. It was the occupational equivalent of driving a bright yellow Pinto with pink striping and a license plate that said "LUVBUN".

I'm dealing with my mother these days, who is 65 but looks 95, and is rapidly deteriorating mentally. It's sad and there's nothing that can be done other than watch and hope to god she doesn't hurt anybody. This holiday season we had several fun moments. My favorite may be when she elected to cook her favorite (only) meal, the grilled cheese sandwich (I will never trust anyone who doesn't like a grilled cheese sandwich). Unfortunately she forgot one small step in the 1. Put cheese on bread. 2. Put butter on bread. 3. Put bread in pan. 4 Put other slice of bread on top. 5. Flip over, process. Yes, that would be #3, the pan. Instead she fired up the electric coil burner, got it bright red and glowing, and went right to step 3. Yesterday she took scissors and cut a lamp cord because it was tangled somehow in the power cord of her PC. Why that mattered I am not sure, as it is a PC tower on the floor under the desk, but at the time it all made sense to mom. Perhaps the best of all is when she called me on her cell phone to tell me that her cell phone was broken. When I asked what was wrong with it, she said the Mute button keeps going on. When I had her explain, I figured out that when she uses it, the mute button lights up to indicate that in the event one wished to mute, you would press that button. Insisting I was wrong, she proceeded to yell at me for 10 minutes. The conversation went like this – exactly:

Mom: You can't hear me.

Me: Yes, I can.

Mom: No, you can't.

Me: Trust me, I really can.

Mom: No you goddamn can't!!!!

Me: OK, let's do a test – can you hear me?

Mom: Of course I can

Me: OK – now you try, ask me if I can hear you

Mom: Can you hear me?

Me: Yes

Mom: No you can't! You told me what to say! That's how you knew!

My fabulous wife makes very sure I take my Vitamins and Omega-3's every night now. My dad gave me a genetic gift such that my body never stops producing cholesterol – even if I ate sticks and twigs and ran 98 miles a day, I am guaranteed to die of a massive coronary if I don't take piles of pills each day (it might have been nice if he mentioned the fact that his mother died at 44, his father at 38 after 21 (I kid you not) heart attacks, his brother at 49, etc. Instead, I found out at 25 when getting my first insurance policy and the salesman called me and said, "do you know your cholesterol is 440"? I was a cheeseburger from death at 25.). From mom I inherit Alzheimer's and being short. I'm a genetic cesspool. No wonder I like to drink. My kids are screwed.

Here's the magic tie in – no matter how much you plan or what you do – eventually you find yourself in a situation you never even thought about. It's true in IT, it's true in business, and it's true in life. Roll with it, baby.

 

Comments

[Steve O'Donnell]

Hi Steve,

Just looked up multiple personality disorder and found that it actually exists but is usually known by the name Dissociative identity disorder (DID). This is a condition where the subject takes on multiple alter egos (kind of like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson). All well and good until I got to the bit that explained that there is general agreement that the cause of MPD is repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse.

I am telling my Mum on you....

Steve