To all the Veterans and active duty military, thank you for your service to our great country.

I would especially like to thank my father. He received his 1LT bars in 1970. It is one of the only photos of him in uniform where his head is not shaved.

It seems like I am always talking to people about buying eyeglasses online. This is an update of a previous post.

Almost 4 years ago, I realized that I needed glasses. The 20/10′s of my youth were done. I got a very nice pair at one of the cool places in Seattle. They fit great and looked really good, but they were not me 24/7. I came across the sites below and thought it would be interesting to try. At the same time, a friend who really needs glasses had his last pair broken for him (that is another story). I sent him these links and he ended up getting a couple of pairs. They looked great. Worked great, even bifocals. Encouraged, I took the plunge and have been very satisfied. To date, I have ordered from Zenni, Coastal Contacts and EyeBuyDirect.

What you need
You need your prescription and pupillary distance. Also you need to know the frame dimensions that work on your face. For the first couple of pairs, I mirrored my expensive, very nice, cool store pair. After that I learned what would work and branched out from there. I have about 4 pairs that I rotate and 2 $8 pairs for backup.

Where I have bought
Zenni Optical Dirt cheap prices and solid quality. Only $5 to ship, but can take up awhile to deliver.
Coastal Contacts More designer frames than other sites and prices range accordingly. Super fast shipping.
EyeBuyDirect Great turnaround. I had my order within 7 days. My current favorite pair is from here.

Check these sites for more information
GlassyEyes Definitive Blog
43 Folders: Adventures in $40 eyeglasses
Lifehacker: Save Bundles of Cash by Buying Eyeglasses Online

Overall, I wear the EyeBuyDirect and Coastal Contact pairs all the time. They are more pricey compared to Zenni, but look great and arrive quickly. If you have glasses, give any of the three a shot.

My thoughts and prayers today are with my old high school coach, Dave Perry, and his family. He passed away yesterday after fighting complications from prostate cancer. He was a coaching legend at Fenwick High School with 17 Water Polo and 3 Swimming State Championships in Illinois on his resume. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the team that captured the first swimming and first water polo titles in 1990.

Fenwick has been a swimming and water polo powerhouse since 1932. Success in the water requires dedication and commitment not found in other sports. We consistently trained 10,000+ yards (approx. 5.7 miles) per day during the swimming season. “Doubles” continued through the Water Polo season. We trained on average of 20-25 hours per week, not including meets or games. Over the course of the three years Dave Perry was my coach, I likely spent as much time with him and Jim Caliendo as I did with my own parents. As I reflect on those years, he was a great influence.

There are two moments that I will always remember about Coach Perry. Coach Perry was in his first year at Fenwick coming to the school from Mt Carmel. Our Frosh/Soph team was playing in a tournament at Loyola University during my sophomore year. We were up on a 6-5 situation and I had the trow-in from the 2m. We were either playing Loyola Academy or Brother Rice. Both were big rivals. The defense shifted leaving the hole man, Ben Brundage, wide open. This was an unorthodox defense. I could not see Ben clearly, but I knew if I could get the ball to the far post that he could grab it and score. It worked. Coach Perry yelled with excitement. He would always praise the smart play.

Fenwick had a dress code that included shirt, tie, slacks and dress shoes. One day during my junior year, I forgot my dress shoes. The team was weight lifting before school. The shoes never made it with me. Instead, I had red Chuck Taylor All Star high-tops. This was a for sure going to earn me “JUG”, aka detention or “Justice Under God”. JUG cut into practice and you don’t miss practice, so I tried my best to hide my shoes by putting my backpack over my feet. It worked until lunch. Dean Quaid spotted my shoes and cornered me. I quickly blurted out that I had dropped a weight on my toe in during morning practice and that Coach Perry said it was OK. He was not entirely convinced but let me go. I found Coach Perry who was working the lunchroom and let him in on my fib. He laughed and said not to worry. Never got JUG — that day anyway.

Dave Perry lived his life with passion and love. He coached with patience and dedication. He touched many lives at Fenwick and in Water Polo. He will be missed.

This summer I have come to appreciate the power of being unplugged. Just a few days here and there have made a big difference in my mental outlook. Being fortunate to visit some amazing places does not hurt either…

My son recently provided this gem while playing with Lego:

“I followed the instructions of my imagination.”

It reminded me that I need to follow those instructions a little more often myself.

Consultants are trained to ask questions. Some good, most are bad and total waste of time and energy. This has the effect of making clients feel like you are wasting their time. I like to keep it direct and too the point. Inital client engagements are a success if I can answer these 5 questions in no particular order:

1) What do your expectations of a service provider?
2) How do you see out team helping you address challenges and opportunities?
3) Why are you changing providers?
4) How do we learn about the business since we are responsbile for action and implementation to ROI?
5) What are the good, the bad and the “do not repeat”?

I do not necessary ask these directly. It entirely depends on the client and situation. Think about what you need to know and why that knowledge will make you and you client better. Then ask those questions. Seems obvious, but it is not.

What is your go to question?

Very excited to be working with the Brian Otis, Ken Myer, Henry Berg and Mike Clarke on the Bumblebee wireless sensor this summer. Apparently, you have to have 10 letters or less in your name to work on this project. Kidding aside, this is a very slick processor with some amazing capabilities.

Check out the video for the high level:

A big thank you to the Institute of Translational Health Sciences for the fellowship that made this possible. Another big thank you to the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Michael G. Foster School of Business for the opportunity.

I have been in the pool most of my life. Competitive swimming started at 8 and I still occasionally do an open water race or Masters meet. Taking a page from Parenting Young Athletes the Ripken Way: Ensuring the Best Experience for Your Kids in Any Sport by Cal Ripken Jr., I would like my son to learn how to swim, if he competes it is up to him.

He is at the age where actual lessons begin. Goggles certainly help the enjoyment. I recalled many frustrations with goggles as a youth. Foam seals coming loose. Water in the goggles. Fogging up. Most of the pairs today have fixed the foam seal problem but not much else. I was intrigued by the Aqua Sphere goggles that seal against a young forehead rather than eye socket. My son loves them and more importantly they work. If your little swimmer needs some goggles that work. Check out Aqua Sphere.

Aqua Sphere Seal Kid

Received an interesting email yesterday. One of my “mentees” from the UW SEBA mentor program asked me a question. He is a super sharp doctoral candidate and taking in internship with the World Bank this summer. He is anxious about how he will fit in a large office of a large organization with tons of outside interaction. Pretty natural stuff. He wanted to know if I had any advice for him. Here is my reply:

1) Be yourself. Your hard work and friendly personality got you the job. Don’t forget that.
2) People like to work with people they like. I have found this to be true working on 4 continents.
3) It is easy to be liked when you are being yourself.

Also think about what you want to accomplish from the internship. What will make it a success for you? Then work towards those things as best you can and it will be easy to be yourself — anywhere.

Then this morning in my Inbox was this very timely newsletter from Steve Yastrow. Yastrow goes in detail about the great Tom Peters article, “The Brand Called You.” My mental hamster-wheel turned over to generate a spark. There really is no difference between “Brand You” and being yourself. Simple stuff, but true. Even a snake like Polonius figured it out, “This above all: to thine own self be true.” So very true.

Having a hard drive fail is never a great situation.

I have been pretty fortunate only 4 drives have failed in 20 years.  Probably about 100 drives in total which is a 4% failure rate which is about double the norm. It is infrequent, but traumatic. I can remember every one.  The most recent was the newest hard drive I purchased a Kingston SSDnow 64 GB solid state drive. this drive lasted 4 months. Before the failure, I was very happy with the drive. Quiet and fast. I could cold boot in less than 20 seconds. Then nothing. Drive not found said the BIOS. Tried the drive on another PC. Drive not found said that BIOS. Wonderful.

The best thing about this drive failure was really understanding that my data was not impacted. Dropbox, external drives and a FTP server had everything that was mission critical. I was able to swap the original drive into my Dell Vostro V13 and was back to work. Kingston was very responsive once I navigated their site. Drive replaced upon receipt of the original drive. Total turnaround was 5 days. A half-day to reinstall the drive with OS and programs and I am back. Not thrilled that I lost the original drive, but it could have been much worse. Kingston was great. They should make it a lot easier to find how to get help. The current site is difficult to navigate when your blood pressure is up.

The lesson: PCs are now merely the tool to access data, not the repository of data. Email, files, etc. all live off-device. More and more capability is pushed off the PC until we have a true “network computer.” The biggest issue I now face will be replacing the iTunes Library. Moreover, this will make me think about how we interact with computers and how that will change in the future.