Jeremy Phillips

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!

I’m glad they care about my security (they even went so far as to replace my normal e-mail signature with *Protected* in their reply) but why list an e-mail address on your site if the only replies you send are telling customers to call your customer service center? I’m cancelling my service tomorrow and would recommend you don’t even signup in the first place.

—-
Dear Customer,

We have received your e-mail request to cancel your Identity Guard® membership. In accordance with our security policy, we are unable to accept cancellations via e-mail.

We urge you to reconsider. According to the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America. Identity thieves can rob you not only of your money, Time, and credit – they can steal your good reputation. Don’t be left vulnerable to this growing threat. For financial peace of mind, continue your Identity Guard service today.

If you would like to cancel – or learn more about the valuable benefits of your service – please contact our Identity Theft Specialists toll-free at 1-800-452-2541, Monday – Friday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

Thank you for choosing Identity Guard.

Sincerely,

A. Mohamed
Identity Guard Member Services
www.identityguard.com

–Original Message–
From: jeremy@phillfam.com
Date: 10/17/2009 1:11:02 PM
To: customersupport@identityguard.com
Subject: RE: Public Record Report Error [#661081]

Great, thanks. How do I cancel my service now?

Jeremy Phillips
*Protected*

—–Original Message—–
From: IDG ICD [mailto:customersupport@identityguard.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 17, 2009 8:45 AM
To: Jeremy Phillips
Subject: Re: Public Record Report Error [#661081]

Member Number: PROTECTED

Dear Valued Member:

Thank you for your email. We understand you have some concerns regarding your online account with Identity Guard. Please contact our Customer Service Department at 1-800-214-4791 so that we may resolve your concern. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

We are available Monday through Friday from 8:00 A.M. until 11:00 P.M. Eastern Time and on Saturday from 9:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M. Eastern Time. Once again thank you for your email. We value you as a customer of Identity Guard.

Sincerely,

C. Perdomo
Identity Guard
Identity Guard Member Services
www.identityguard.com

–Original Message–
From: jeremy@phillfam.com
Date: 10/15/2009 3:57:14 PM
To: customersupport@identityguard.com
Subject: Public Record Report Error

Hello,

I’ve been seeing this error for about 18 hours now.

System Error
We are currently experiencing problems and can not process your request at this time. Please try again later. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
· Source xml is not able to be parsed

Seriously, where does Facebook get the images for their ads? I would be embarrassed if my company placed an ad and this image showed up along side it.

I’ve done a lot of things in IT but above all else my favorite task has always been DNS management. The rigid structure and logic behind it just seems to fit my personal preferences. Accordingly, I’ve always been upset when DNS is not done right and after looking around and trying out a few different services I couldn’t find one that was both reliable and affordable. The closest I came was RollerNet but at $60/year it isn’t exactly affordable and came with a lot of extras that I personally had no use for. So, like I sometimes do, I went and did it myself. The result is DNSlogic, a managed DNS service designed for, and squarely aimed at, small businesses and enthusiasts with home networks.

It’s affordable (starting at $1/month), incredibly reliable (99.98% uptime so far) and nicely does everything I want it to do. Currently there are three nodes in Seattle, Dallas & Texas; I’m looking to add two more nodes in Europe & Asia sometime in the next 3-6 months as well. I built the service with PowerDNS & MySQL running on Debian Linux, then modified an existing web interface to meet my needs. If you’re looking for either primary or secondary DNS, I would ask you to give it a shot and if you’re not ready to shell out $1/month, contact me and I’ll set you up with a free account for a couple months so you can try it out.

I found this on David McNett’s Live Journal and got quite a kick out of it. I highly recommend you head over there and read through the whole thing, this is just a snippet from the top.

Author unknown, I’m just a parrot here…

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

Bad decisions make good stories.

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.