Jeremy Phillips

It’s been awhile since I posted any updates on what I’m doing with my life.

On the job front, I’ve got exactly 6 more working days left at Microsoft. I’m starting at Azaleos again on Monday February 8th, resuming my role as Director of Operations. Yes, this surprised me as well; it wasn’t something I was planning on. I’m looking forward to managing people instead of bits again.

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I very recently discovered LibraryThing.com, a very cool site where I am slowly cataloging my books. If you’re an avid reader I highly recommend checking it out and adding me as a friend. I always like to see what other people are reading.

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I’m considering going back to school and pursuing my degree with the unique difference that I plan to attend classes this time. Perhaps I’ll learn more obscure facts like how to use the semicolon properly, something I never knew and had to Google.

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I’m still in the process of cleaning my home office. It’s quite a bit less cluttered than it used to be but not nearly as ship shape as it will be when I’m done. No worries though, at this rate it will be immaculate sometime in Q2 2011.

It’s December, which means I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking about what I’ve accomplished in the past year and what I hope to accomplish next year. My list of accomplishments is fairly short but significant.

1)      Left Azaleos of my own accord |  I can’t say much about why (I’m still under an NDA and I’m generally a nice guy) but suffice it to say this choice was a Very Good Thing for me.

2)      Dipped my toe back into the waters of being an independent consultant | My original plan after leaving Azaleos was to go back to being an independent consultant, and I did for a short time. About 1.5 months to be exact; mid-April to early June. I only ended up traveling for one week but found it fun and exciting. I still run Cohesive Logic but honestly have not done a great deal of business there in the past few months.

3)      Took most of June off | I really needed this. I hardly ever even logged into a computer for almost exactly a month.

4)      Started at Microsoft | I’m not a full time employee (not a particular desire of mine) but I’ve been working on some fun projects supporting the largest Exchange 2010 implementation in the world since July 1^st. It’s good experience and has helped me mentally ‘reset’ to prepare for goals I’m laying out for the next few years.

5)      Watched my kids grow up some more | They are pretty cool little people, rapidly turning into young adults. I’m impressed by how well rounded they are and am constantly amazed at the sheer number of good decisions they make on their own. This tells me we’re doing something right in the parenting arena, which is always a good feeling.

Thinking about 2010 and beyond, I have a bit of a quandary as the path I want to take professionally is at odds with the path I want to take in my personal life. The easy answer, and one that I have heard continually, is “put your personal life ahead of your professional life”. Some people can do this but unfortunately I cannot be happy in my personal life if I’m not working towards the goals I have set for my professional life, and the goals I have for my professional life have a direct impact on my personal life. I have come to the conclusion that, for me at least, those two parts of my life are inextricably linked; I can’t prioritize one over the other without sacrificing my own happiness. I would much rather achieve 80% of my goals in both arenas than succeed at one and fail at the other.

How do I see this working? I was talking to a friend/mentor of mine once upon a time and asked him how he maintained balance in his life. His answer was quite simple but I didn’t really understand it at the time. “My personal life goes up, business goes down. So then I focus on business to bring it back up and my personal life goes down. Rinse and repeat.” Since then I’ve started thinking of the different parts of my life like biorhythms and the more I contemplate the idea, the more I realize that this is the approach I will have to take to achieve all my goals. Different parts of my life will be flourishing at different times, I just have to figure out a way for them all to stay in balance over time like the picture below. Luckily I have an understanding wife and great kids who always support me in the decisions I make.

I was going to type up my goals for 2010 but I’m not 100% complete with them at the moment so will reserve those for a later post in early January. Thanks for reading!

First I must say that this blog entry is not in line with the tone of the rest of this site. I generally try to stay out of the political arena and most of my entries are either generally pleasant or technology related. This is mainly because my true political views are in far left field compared to almost everyone I know and I’m tired of arguing, most especially with strangers. However I feel the need to express my opinion and think this is an excellent forum to do so. If you don’t like this please feel free to stop reading.

Lately, I have been dedicating a large amount of my free time to thinking about the future of America. I’ve recently had a number of conversations on this subject, mostly centering around health care reform. Today, I finally dropped out of a discussion on health care reform when I was essentially told that I was only thinking about myself and that I was not respecting the opinions of others in the conversation. I’ll get around to what my opinion is in a little while, but first I want to state that even if I don’t agree with your opinion, I still respect it. I would ask that you do the same for mine. Mutual respect and the ability for two individuals to have a polite discussion about a subject on which they fundamentally disagree is one of the aspects that a productive society is built on, and I think the decline of it is just another sign of our society beginning to fall apart.

I found this quote last night while browsing through lagesse.org and it pretty much sets the tone for this post.

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.  What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.  The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.  When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.  You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

~~~~ Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

Today I read article in The Wall Street Journal, authored by John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. It’s title is “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare” and in addition to being very well written it also mirrors a good number of my ideas. What it doesn’t do is spell out what I believe the root of the health care problem is in this country: a lack of personal responsibility. Some who know me are probably, with good reason, rolling their eyes and asking what right I have to speak of personal responsibility. Well, see, I am well aware of the effect my choices have on my life and I am 100% willing to personally accept the consequences. I believe that is what personal responsibility boils down to – accepting the consequences of your own actions (or lack thereof).

When I look around at my generation and those younger than me I am continually startled by the attitude of entitlement. It’s incredibly prevalent in our society and while I am smart enough to know that I don’t know when it started or where it comes from I can give an example; When I was working at my last real job I interviewed a large number of people – I think at the high point I was doing 60+ phone interviews weekly. What did I find while talking to all these people? I found people who expect to make $50,000 a year right out of college, without any real world experience, while working 40 hours a week. I found people who want big houses, expensive cars and all the fun toys that life can possibly provide. I found people who had more questions about what the benefits of the position was than about what I was expecting them to do. What I didn’t find a great number of are people who are willing to actually work to obtain these things.

This leads me to my opinion; any form of national health care can do no good for this country. While I have most definitely not talked to everyone who is a proponent of national health care reform I’ve found similar ideas prevalent in everyone I have spoken to so far. They truly believe that their fellow citizens should pay for their health care. They say that health insurance is too expensive, they don’t make enough money to pay for it themselves, the insurance companies are greedy profiteering bastards and that I am most definitely wrong in everything I think. That’s OK, everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, I would really like to see some of these people go ask their neighbors for a contribution to their health care fund. That is what they are essentially a proponent of after all – asking their neighbors to pay for their health care.

This might be news to some people but most insurance companies are for-profit corporations. If you pay them $6,000 in premiums one year and it costs them $8,300 to cover your medical expenses, what do you think your premiums are going to be next year? They’re sure going to be more than $6,000.

If you truly want to be healthier then eat better, exercise more and stop doing all the things your parents told you not to do. Establish a Health Savings Account to cover the day to day health care expenses and sign up for some high deductible health insurance to cover major incidents. Don’t just stand by and let your neighbors pay. I don’t want to pay for my neighbor’s health care and I’m sure they don’t want to pay for mine. Yes, this approach requires you to actually put some thought into it and requires quite a bit of work to keep going but is definitely better than the alternative in my opinion.

If you have a better idea drop it in the comments, I’m all for a pleasant discussion.

“At 28-years-old my goals were met,” said Jeff Fray, Psychologist/Consultant.  “I had my doctorate and had built up a practice that included 8 or 9 counselors.  That was when I realized I was living life on a treadmill.”

While browsing around the intarweb this evening I came across an interesting article – Living the Purposeful Life, quoted above – that made me stop and think about what I am actually doing with my life. Until the recent past I have dedicated a good portion of my life to making money. I’ve probably made and lost more money in my short life than most people will ever make and the one thing I have figured out so far is that money isn’t real. It holds no intrinsic value. Granted, it’s a useful commodity to have but does a surplus of it actually make your life better?

So today I’m finally declaring my quest to figure out what I’m supposed to do with my life, set some plans and move forward with them. True, I may fail. That’s never stopped me before though and I don’t think it will stop me this time.

I’ve had more than a few people ask if I’m alive over the past few weeks so I figured I would post an update of what I’ve been up to since my last blog post almost two months ago. So, a brief summary of what happened after I got back from New Jersey, in no particular order.

• I worked remotely for a couple weeks providing support for a mining company doing an Exchange migration using Quest Migration Manager for Exchange. The servers were spread out all over the world on poor WAN links, so this was an exercise in patience more than anything else. This was also the first time I used GoToMyPC for any length of time and I can definitely recommend you try it out; It’s incredibly easy to use.
• I took most of the month of June off, which provided a needed sanity break for me – I only logged into a computer three times in three and a half weeks.
• I turned 30 on June 1 and my wife setup a surprise birthday party for me. This was especially difficult for her as she didn’t have contact info for any of my friends and I have a habit of locking my machine when I’m not using it. She was ingenious enough to wait for me to leave my machine unlocked and then search through my Outlook contacts for names she remembered. So don’t feel bad if you didn’t get invited.
• Participated in lots of end of year activities at my children’s school, including field day and my youngest daughter’s kindergarten concert among other things.
• Flew down to beautiful and exciting Vacaville, CA to see my niece’s high school graduation. I still can’t believe she’s actually 18 now. Yes, my sisters are quite a bit older than I am.
• My mother-in-law flew over from North Carolina and stayed with us for a little over a week. As her sister (Holly’s Aunt) lives in Wenatchee, we made a day trip to visit them in Leavenworth.
• I took the family on a hike down to Snoqualmie Falls. I hadn’t been there since I was about my son’s age, it was just as awesome as I remember.
• While Ryan went on a 7 day Rite of Passage Journey (to simplify; that’s kind of like summer camp except it’s backpacking) I took Taylor & Tori camping. We went to Turlo in the Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest.
• My sister-in-law graduated to become a ritual leader. I’m not exactly sure what that means but she’s happy about it so we’re happy for her.
• On July 1st, I started a long term project at Microsoft as a v- consultant supporting Outlook Live and Live@Edu. It’s a VERY large implementation based on Exchange 2010 and it’s pretty damn fun so far.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. Hope it answered all the questions that everyone keeps asking me but feel free to ask in the comments. I’ll finish up with a quote that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit:

Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. -Robert Thurman

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.

– Lucius Seneca

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, 1920. Mountain Interval

As originally posted on Facebook. Yes, I’m that bored.

1) I don’t have many friends. The friends I do have I would do anything for.

2) I’ve been poor and I’ve been wealthy. Honestly I would rather be poor as trying to keep money is ten times harder than making money.

3) I like reading. If I enjoy a book I can blow through 300+ pages/day.

4) I secretly hope for the end of the world as we know it. While the stress wouldn’t decrease it would at least be a different type of stress.

5) The only thing that has challenged me in my life so far is being a Father. Everything else has been relatively easy.

6) I own thousands of dollars in backpacking gear but rarely go hiking, let alone backpacking. This is strange as the only place that I am truly calm and happy is the middle of the forest.

7) I studied butokukan karate for quite some time. I doubt I could remember the Kata by now.

8 ) I don’t remember most of my childhood. There are quite simply years that I can’t remember anything about. At 3am this is a disturbing fact.

9) I’m proud of my children. They are amazingly smart and wonderful.

10) I’m trying to simplify my life. We left half of what we owned in Virginia. I’m trying to get rid of another half this year. Material things do nothing but complicate everything.

11) I LOVE music. Every major event in my life has a song I associate with it and I frequently hear a soundtrack during the day.

12) Whenever I’m unsure about parental decisions I do the opposite of what my parents did with me. It’s worked out well so far.

13) I believe telephones and e-mail have seriously harmed the evolution of the human race.

14) I think there is good in everyone but never expect to actually see it, and rarely do.

15) I give money to homeless people and hope they don’t make their lives worse with it. My life has become infinitely better since I started doing this.

16) I’ve been to most of the US. I realized during my travels that people are strange in general.

17) I’m a libertarian and believe the government should stay the fuck out of my life. I would opt out of all government services if I could.

18) I wish my job was more challenging.

19) If I don’t risk everything on a daily basis I’m terribly sad. I sometimes wonder if I’m actually living or just coasting through life.

20) I don’t own any guns at the moment, but I firmly believe in the second amendment.

21) I don’t like large gatherings. Or small gatherings come to think of it. People make me nervous.

22) My sisters moved out when I was 7. I miss them and rarely see my nieces and nephews. Seeing them more is one of the big reasons I moved 3,000 miles yet again.

23) I think bringing back public hangings would greatly lower the crime rate in America.

24) I once sang karaoke in Greenwich Village with a dutch guy, closed out the bars in Manhattan and ended up eating breakfast with a group of strangers at 7am – one of whom looked exactly like Rickie from My So-Called Life – before returning to my client at 8am. For the $2200 I spent in those 10 hours, the experience was a bargain and something I will remember until the day I die.

25) What’s Up? by 4 Non Blondes is my absolute favorite song. I hate the rest of their music.

I used to regale friends, family and strangers on the street with random facts to know and tell. I don’t do that anymore, but I’ve decided to start posting random snippets about the past and present of my life.

Once upon a time I sang Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd at the top of my lungs at 2:15AM in a Wawa. I’m tone deaf but the fact really didn’t bother me at the time. I remember making a few people laugh, and even if they were laughing at me it was most definitely worth it.

Wawa has good coffee by the way. REALLY good coffee.

So I’ve finally put together some goals for 2009. It’s taken me awhile but better late than never. In no particular order…

1. Get Healthier – I’ve already started eating (somewhat) healthier but aim to quit smoking once and for all as well as getting out and exercising.
2. Tech Consolidation – This one is probably a little out of left field for anyone who knows me. I’m trying to simplify my life so I’m going to be getting rid of all my servers and consolidating down to a single Windows Home Server. I’m also eventually going to give the $600 paperweight that is my laptop to my wife and turn her current laptop into a kitchen table laptop for general family use – which it essentially is already. This relates to item 4.
3. Become More Frugal – Honestly I was quite good at this at one time thanks to my father’s influence growing up. However the past few years have been one step forward, two steps back. I wrote a blog post awhile ago that touched on this and I feel I’ve been very out of touch with my goals here.
4. Simplify My Life – Although I’ve made some great steps in simplifying my life by quitting traveling and such I still haven’t achieved exactly what I want. I guess it would help if I knew what I wanted, but I’ll get there somehow…
5. Get Outside – I have a 12′ pop-up trailer in my parent’s driveway still that I intend on using heavily this year. I also want to get out on at least two overnight hikes and use the many thousands of dollars of backpacking gear I have.
6. Figure Out What I Want To Do When I Grow Up – For some reason I feel like I’m finally ready to take this step. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m turning 30 in less than six months or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve spent the last 15 years hopping all over the damn grid. I’ve made pretty good money from it but I’ve also come to realize that money isn’t nearly as important as people think it is. I’m going to start thinking about what I want out of life and run with it…