The basement is finally nearing the end of construction. We are SO excited to have it finished so that we can organize our home in preparation for Baby Jarrett to enter our lives. We are so very excited for him to come in just a little over 3 weeks. Here's a fun photo of the kids in the pool at the hotel:
We are in the hotel while the painters finish the staining, sealing and lacquering of the wood in the basement. We will need to stay in this hotel for 3 days before we can return. We are checking things out everyday and opening up the basement each day for them to keep things moving. In fact, yesterday, the painters did not even show up until Amy called Greg and then Greg had them get out to the house to get things done. I must say that I haven't really been impressed with the painting crew - they've been one of the major sources of delay through the entire project. Oh well!
This week was probably one of the hardest weeks of work that I've had in a while. Greg Dix even worked till 2-3am multiple days this past week. It was REALLY crazy! I spent the first three days in California and then had a very stressful day on Thursday (after getting in from the airport at 1:30am). It was a super long week. Friday was actually pretty good since I only had a couple of meetings and I was able to close up on some big issues. Here's a summary of the week:
- Monday - great visit with LSI in the morning. We reviewed their "advanced IP" team offering and they have some pretty slick stuff for us to consider looking at in the future. I then spent several hours finalizing my slides and material for the meeting with Francis and his team at Insieme. The meeting went really well as we walked through the risks and issues associated with the migration to 16FF+. I think we are on the same page now and things should go well moving forward. I also spent a couple of hours on Monday night meeting with my staff as we started to discuss names from our team to consider for workforce reduction through this process. The goal for the week was to finalize the headcount for the new team moving forward and it led to some very tough discussions. We did finally decide on one name to remove from our team moving forward.
- Tuesday - all day long with LSI in meetings. We started at 8am and I didn't leave until 3pm, where I had to hustle to a meeting with GSM at Cisco. We walked through all of their technology at a very high level and we had some really good discussions. I was amazed at the number of people they have allocated to methodology and tools (easily more than 10X what we have been using). The Cisco GSM meeting went great - they are also on board with our plan for migration to 16FF+.
- Wednedsay - I had a 16FF+ transition meeting with Elway in the morning, I spent several hours working on my methodology slides for the meeting with the N7K guys at Cisco and then I enjoyed lunch with Venkat Yillisetti. Here's a photo of my outside the Indian restaurant where we had lunch. It was awesome. My meetings with Cisco GSM and the N7K guys in the afternoon and early evening went great and then I flew home on Wednesday at 8pm from SJC, arriving home around 1:30am. Long day!
- Thursday - the day got emotional very quickly. I had all day meetings with LSI in FTC and our methodology leads walked through how we do things. It was a really productive set of meetings (even though several of the key leads got ZERO work done that day). The goal was to demonstrate the power behind our methodology leads and ensure on-going success of our teams moving forward. I think the meetings went really well and I'm excited with the future. We also had to work through some potential head count reduction plans and it's very possible that we will be using LSI memories in the future (not Avago memories). Honestly, this is probably the right plan, but there's a ton of work to be done before we can fully transition. I was able to get on my soap-box and set expectations with what needs to happen in order for our chips to be successful through the transition.
- Friday - a pretty relaxing day overall. We had a celebration for the Elway win at the Mainline Grill in old town Fort Collins. Unfortunately, Brian Misek, one of the key contributors to winning the business, was not able to attend as he passed away from Colon cancer last weekend. What a huge loss for our company. He was only 52. I also found out that Phil & Ellen Yastrow have split up. From the way they are talking, they have already divorced. I find Ellen to be extremely high maintenance and selfish, so I can't say that I blame Phil, but I'm always so sad for people that have to go through those issues.
- Okay - time to jump back in the pool!
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment