Looking Back

Howdy from Texas where we are getting ready for Fall by Falling Back on our clocks!

I was reminded today about some of my roots and origins and how I came to be what I am today and who I owe for it.  Simon Adlington and I were working in tandem today on a customers problem and once we had it fixed, I insisted we go back through it so that it could be well documented.  I am a huge believer in not just documenting problems and resolutions, but over documenting them.

 

Hey, there is the boss man Mark Uherek.  Must not have been happy that the COBOL program died with a SOC7 or SOC4 and ABENDAID wasn't helping - or maybe the IPACS report was out of sync as Nancy ran yet another X-REF.

I owe a lot of my skill set and expertise to a lady who I had the pleasure of working with @ Ross Perot's old company, EDS - Electronic Data Systems.  Nancy Gonzalez was the 2nd women hired by Ross himself and she was and still is a legend.  Nancy took me under her wing and instilled in me the necessary traits and habits to be a successful EDSer, computer programmer, and all around person.  Nancy was a stickler for documentation and we had file cabinets chocked full of documentation.  For every computer program we assembled or compiled, a current copy was safely stored away; and there were hundreds if not thousands of programs.  Not only did we have this documentation, every time a JOB, batch processing ran, we kept many versions of it for future reference.  If a JOB ran nightly, we would keep about 21 days worth of them, as a perpetual inventory.

 

I owe a lot of kudos to a lot of other EDSers on the NHIC team and what a team we were.   There is my long time friend Wayne Thomson.  We made a heck of a team.  Wayne was on-call one Friday and we went ahead and left DFW to go canoeing.   Well, about thirty minutes south of Dallas all heck broke loose with the nightly processing.  Fortunately, I knew the process by heart and was able to provide instructions via the pay phone, back when mobile phones were only used by Dick Tracey.  It all came down to documentation.

 

Anything but paperless back then.

 

Great team of people to work with.

 

That's Nancy's husband, Adrian.  We worked for EDS and became a legend as well.  He used to always tell people that on MAGNETIC TAPE they would sometimes run into bit errors and would take out his magic magnetic pencil and rearrange the bit and bytes..

 

At one time, that was state of the art equipment... 

Ah, the almost future to be back then Mrs. Allen...  Wasn't to be... :)

 

Well, Nancy Gonzalez, thank you for everything!  I need to give you a call.

 

Well, thank you for allowing me to share some good memories with you, it all came rushing back when Simon and I completed and documented a customer resolution...

Until next time, See You on Down the Road...

Shane Allen

Head of Synchro ERP North American Operations

The 4th Estate...

 

Howdy again from Texas, 

Just a quick post today as I thought I'd share the 4th Estates edition today with yours truly and my buddy Wyatt Earp.  Didn't even know we were getting our mugshot taken.  Dang, now my cover in the witness protection program is blown.  Guess I'll have to move to Montana...

Until next time, see you on down the road.

Shane Allen

Head of Synchro ERP North American Operations..

Thought I'd Share...

Howdy from Texas where we are in the midst of Fall.

Of course, with the way our congress gerrymandered the clocks a few years ago, we won't actually "fall back" in time until November 1st.  A time honored tradition of messing with the time for no good reason.  The cost of changing the time is wildly expensive.  All of the airlines, network companies, cell phone companies, internet providers, trains, etc. have to be "adjusted".  I was looking at a "revision" page to NetGear routers a few years ago when our congress decided to "extend" daylight savings time by several weeks and the number of changes required was wicked.

Texas, the state I domicile in, actually flirted with the idea of "changing from the rest of the country" and adopting one time and never changing it.  Fortunately, this did not come to pass as it is hard to schedule phone calls and meetings when Oklahoma is in one time zone and Texas is now in another time zone.  Plus, the cost to everyone was going to be huge.  The airlines would have to adjust flights that left Oklahoma City Will Rogers airport at 10am and arrived at Houston IAH airport at 10am, but only certain times of the year.  I can't tell you how frustrating this would be to our road warrior Simon Adlington.

Anway, animals are a big part of my life and always have been.  I've got a MinPin Wyatt Earp who came on board after Doc Holliday lived a long and well cared for life.  Next lifetime, I want to come back as a dog and have an owner like myself!  Anyway, Wyatt Earp and I went to the Blessing of the Animals yesterday and I have a few pictures to share with you.

So, until next time, see you on down the road...  CastExpo 2016 is coming up quick!  April 2016 in the wonderful city of Minneapolis Minnesota.  My BFF, Best Friend Forever, whom I've known since the 7th grade, lives there with his lovely wife.  I am the "GodFather" to his daughter, you can hum the music from the movie now,  I'll get up to Minnesota early so that we can go swing some golf clubs and tell lies...

CASTEXPO 2016

Until next time, See you on down the road!

Shane Allen
Head of Synchro ERP North American Operations