Hi Correlation: Sales/Mkting Careers and University Rugby

I’m getting a good chuckle wrt/ my anecdotal experience that playing rugby in University is a good indicator of a career in Sales and Marketing.

The story starts with my friend Greg’s kids. They are both excellent students and rugby players. He recently told me that his son took a co-op position in marketing. I thought that was strange, but I’m in tech marketing and so I didn’t think too much about it.

Today I made the connection that this co-op position is with a company who’s Marketing guy is a fellow McGill University rugby alumnus. It got me thinking, “Who else?” Let’s see there is: Tom D, Dave S, Pierre Mc, myself and even Chuck K gave up medicine for the business side. If I think harder there are probably more.

Non-Rugby aficionado’s would likely say (politely), “makes sense … rugby is a highly social group” of @#$%’s.

Jackie Burke Jr is Entertaining — Warning this is a Golf Post ;-)

I just finished reading It’s Only a Game: Words of Wisdom from a Lifetime in Golf
by Jackie Burke. It’s in the style of a book that I really like, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. Lot’s of little snippets. Easy, entertaining, and lots of solid ideas . That is if your a golf fanatic

Most of Burke’s solid ideas are simple & provide great results, but require a ton of work. For example, Burke is the source of the 100 consecutive 3′ putt circle drill popularized by Michelson. I work on this drill a lot. It really works and I tone it down to 20. But I didn’t know that it’s even more difficult. Burke says “no lining it up”. This guy is evil in a good way.

If you’ve got a golf fanatic needing a XMAS gift. This would work just fine. If the price tag of hardcover is too much go with Penick’s Little Red or Butch Harmon’s Playing Lessons.

I’m definitely a long-tail blog (rank 2.9Mth) — or am I?

After reading the latest laments of personal tech blogs falling down the rankings. I thought I’d check my blog’s ranking for the first time. Whew! It’s like looking at the one’s golf swing on video for the first time … “Man I suck” … but then I knew that already

• http://technorati.com/blogs/hnorth.wordpress.com
• Iain’s Chips & Tech
• Authority: 2
• Rank: 2,910,025

Trying to feel better, I wondered what percentile that is? There are lots of blogs, so maybe its not that bad. (one can dream)

How many blogs are there? David Sifry ( co-founder and CEO of Technorati) track’s all the Technorati State of the Internet stuff on his blog. In his April 2007 post he says. “Technorati is tracking 70M blogs and adding 120k per day.”

Now thats better. I’m in the top 5% of all blogs

You might want to check out his state of the blogosphere posts. They’ve got good graphics like this.

Hmmm — Dangerous Portfolio Model includes Real-Estate & ALU & PMCS

Today the globe and mail‘s stock analysis section has a piece on screening for “the worst quality US Stocks”. Not surprisely its got real-estate and lumber companies. It also includes my least favorite telco hardware company ALU. The surprise was that it includes PMCS I always want to think good things about PMCS, but looks like I’ve been drinking the “kool-aid” again.

globeandmail.com: U.S. stocks with alarm bells sounding DAVID PARKINSON November 30, 2007

Yesterday, we looked at CPMS Computerized Portfolio Management Services Inc.’s model portfolio of the lowest-quality TSX stocks, called the CPMS Dangerous Model Portfolio. Today, we examine the U.S. version of the portfolio.”

• 1=lowest
• 10 ALU-N Alcatel-Lucent
• 20 PMCS-Q PMC-Sierra Inc.

Setbacks for OLPC — the gorilla’s woke up

I’ve been hoping the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project will be successful. Seems like a noble goal. It is interesting how “noble goals” can quickly turn into “business threats”.

The WSJ reported earlier this week that MSFT and Intel have decided to act on the threat of the third world deploying Linux and non-Intel CPUs.

Mr. Negroponte’s ambitious plan has been derailed, in part, by the power of his idea. For-profit companies threatened by the projected $100 price tag set off at a sprint to develop their own dirt-cheap machines, plunging Mr. Negroponte into unexpected competition against well-known brands such as Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system.

Random Musing on Networking Semi

I’m finding it tuff to write on tech stuff lately. I’ve got lots of thoughts, but they are not gelling.

For the past few years I’ve been thinking that developing networking gear for the “Internet companies” like Google, Yahoo, Akamai, etc is the right thing to do. This fits with my view of the network which is not kind to incumbents. Probably why I like the Telco 2.0 guys so much. But the reality is that this market is still in “innovators dilemma land” ( ie not big enough today to gain traction within a public company … but great for startups because the big guys can’t really go here yet. )

Way back in the ’90s I went to a “clustering/super-computer” conference in Monterey and heard a founder of Inktomi speak. It was so cool that they were using a “clustered” computer ( ie hundreds of PCs) and wrote their search software on that.

Anyways, Google has taken this to whole new level and along the way has designed their own servers and now networking gear. In Andrew@Nyquist’s recent post on Google 802.3 switches there were interesting comments from providers of Silicon & Hardware for these applications. It is interesting that they believe that BRCMs enterprise ethernet silicon can be beaten. This may be true because back in the ’90s the latency of Ethernet was an issue for clusters.

On another front I’m liking all the traffic shaping articles. The coolest was Telco 2.0′s review of PlusNet. These guys show the customer the results!

Kids Hockey – The recent “Fighting” episode … expect more.

Here it goes again The Globe & Mail has an article on a Novice AAA team brawl that occured over the past weekend. In case you’re not a hockey parent, Novice is 7 and 8 year olds. AAA is likely all 8 year olds.

I didn’t know that Ontario has AAA Novice. Here in BC we don’t stream until Atom. Doesn’t really matter. It’s too early for the kids in either case. But on a practical level it is not soon enough if you’re goal is the Bantam draft.

There will be more of these altercations in the future rather than less. The time & dollar commitment required for AAA level minor hockey is extreme. There are lots of extreme people involved. There is a strong perception that there is a lot on the line. The pressure is on.

The timeline of minor hockey is very short. The bantam draft happens at 15 (usually end of grade 9). Which means that there isn’t much time to prepare. A kid has to make a “pedigreed” Bantam team in grade 8, a pedigreed PeeWee team in grade 6, or maybe a pedigreed Atom team in Grade 4. The pressure is on. There isn’t much time. It is also “sad” that all of the hockey schools and programs are so good these days that they work. Not doing them really does set your child back. Especially if you live in an affluent area where a large percentage of kids partake in them.

The comments are also more of the same “hockey sucks” or “hockey is hockey” stuff. There are tons of them since this is the most viewed article of the day (according to their site )

Parting Note The thing that surprises me most with all of this focus on starting early is that our World Junior Team often has a large percentage of kids that come from smaller towns and thus don’t enter into this madness until bantam, or once they are in the CHL. They are lucky that they don’t live in a big city.

Burial –> Music for American Gods?

I’ve been listening to Burial’s — Untrue for the past week. It is great to chill with. Or maybe I should say “Great to chill with when one is living with American Gods on the brain”

Feelin’ Queasy After ;-) >> American Gods – Neil Gaiman

American Gods was my first introduction to Neil Gaiman. Wow! This was an experience and not all of it pleasant While reading it I was often reminded of Irvine Welsh’s “rivetting” Trainspotting. That was another one of those books where I kept asking myself, “This is so strange. Why am I reading this? Why am I turning pages so fast? Why is this so compelling? It’s so dark, crinkly, demanding, and often uncomfortable. Why is it so good? I just don’t know. But it is.”

I’d seen & heard recommendations for this book in lots of places over the past year, or so. It won Hugo and Nebula awards which matter to me. But I never pulled the trigger. It seemed to “darkish”. ( Like what Tim Burton would write like if he wrote books [ which was a correct impression] ) I finally took a chance when it showed up 12th in audible’s recently released Essential 100 this past month. I’m glad I got it.

Here is a link to Neil’s official website. There is lot’s of info on him and his works. I’m thinking that I need to look into the Sandman comic series.

The Stealth Startup “Vibe” is —- oh so addictive

My friend Steve took me on a tour of his “stealth” startup yesterday.

I was only there for 30min, but the “driven … we’re on a mission vibe” was overwhelming & very cool to feel. The “corporate herion” was flowin’ … not a good place for a guy like me

Of course the equipment room was far from “temperature cool” It is amazin’ how many watts can be fit on a blade these days. I’ve now got a better feel for the “power density” issues being discussed these days.