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May 08 Long Time No Blog...It has been quite some time since I have posted a blog entry here (or even on my other professional blog). The reasons a varied and wide, are laced with intrigue, boredom and a lifestyle that has not allowed time for blogging, and I have to say that I really miss posting a blog here and there.
Alas, perhpas in some ways that will soon change...
In the very near future (next week in fact) I will be out on my own doing my own work and in addition to many hours of paperwork associated with my own business I hope to enjoy some of the finer things in life such as getting back to some blogging!
Yep that's right I am leaving my current employer where I have had a great journey and learnt a lot and heading out on my own to make my own Adam shaped mark on the world. So in the coming few weeks I will have my own company to do Portal and enterprise collaboration consulting (lets just say lots of SharePoint) where I really want to spend time helping companies figure out what they need around Information Architecture, Application Integration, Taxonomies (and Ontologies), Topologies and methodologies. Combine this with the creation of Governance and Standards that I hope to develop and I am really hoping to have a company that is in a uniqie position.
As part of what I am doing I also want to have time once a week where all those who work for (and with) me have time to write some type of blog entry. What I miss most about blogging over the past while has been that blogging on the topics that I did often helped me to resolve related issue by provoking a new thought or direction on how to look at things.
So lets hope that I have more blog time in the near future and here is to the world of blogs! June 22 Surface ParodyLooking for a break from the documentation I have been working on lately I decided to take a few minutes and have a browse on You Tube for any interesting or funny video's. If you have heard about the new Microsoft Surface (very cool) then someone has created a very funny Parody video that is awesome! June 18 Still Homeless and going stir CraZZy...Well it has been a little while since my last blog posting and as always it primarily been because I feel like I have a little too busy to have the time to blog. It's a shame really, I like to blog, as I find it to release just a little of the days stress hammering out my thoughts onto the keyboard. So I'm not going to keep this long but I thought I might provide some updates: The House Olivia and I have been living with my parents for a few months to save a few dollars while we wait for the construction of our new place to be completed. While overall it's cheaper living with my parents both of us are having issue adjusting to not having our own space. It's difficult having most of your own furniture in storage, very limited Internet (well for me at least) and no real food to call our own. On the other hand our new house is coming along quite nicely. This week the roof goes on and hopefully the electrical work will commence next week along with the brickwork. Overall Olivia and I are quietly hopefully that we can be in the house at the beginning of September, if we are then we are going to be having a nice big housewarming / my birthday bash. If not then, well we will see... Brisbane SharePoint Users Group The Brisbane SharePoint Users Group keep going from strength to strength. It feels like everyone is interested in SharePoint technology at the moment. Being the Owner of the group I am seeing some really interesting solutions and people come through the group and it's also great to see some new up and comers that are passionate about the technology. Joshua House is the Young Adults arm of Vineyard Pine Rivers that Olivia and I look after, unfortunately I really haven't been in a position over the course of this year to give J-House all the TLC that it really needs. We have a great program and we're visiting some really interesting places for coffee but Liv and I are really struggling to keep it going. We're thinking it might become a little easier once we're into the new place as then we'll have a central meeting place if we need it! V-LAN, this is my passion, what I love to do. See people connecting forming relationships and getting some great game time in. This is a hard slog though. Getting people to V-LAN is hard, while I know it's not the program there are a certain amount of people needed to make it work and once I get people their they can see the value. One thing I do know is that as V-LAN grows this is just going to keep getting better! As I have mentioned previously taking the Avanade job was an interesting move from the contracting I was doing before as it had been a number of years since I have been a full-time employee but I think the move was a good one and after almost 3 months of now working at Avanade I am feeling like I am beginning to settle in. I've completed my first project, working on documentation for the second at the moment and I'm seeing some interesting opportunities in the far away future.
So while I'm sure I could come up with some more interesting discussion topics that where we are at the moment. Hopefully my next post will be a little sooner in the future than this one was compared to my last post... May 12 Coming or Going, Not Sure!The past month has been massive.
I really need to take some time out and figured out if i'm coming or going! March 26 Is World of Warcraft the death of LANs?I'm close to finishing off my afternoon and heading home and while I was waiting for one of my servers to reboot I thought I would head out and check out a little bit of the news around World of Warcraft. I haven't had much time to sit down and play games lately and what time I have had I have spent playing other neglected games. My thinking this afternoon was that I would check out some of the news and potentially log onto WoW for an hour or so and grind for a while. Well logging onto Worldofwar.net I was immediately drawn to the article on the topic of Is World of Warcraft killing LAN's. As the co-ordinator of a young (but slowing growing) community LAN this article had me nodding my head in agreement. WoW has really taken something away from our LAN's, I know that at V-LAN we are about to implement a no WoW policy, so that we encourage everyone to play the same games and interact with people in the room, not people in a different country. In response, personally I don't think that WoW is the death of LAN's, I think it has hurt our little local LAN's a little bit. But at the same time I think that WoW is now on it's downwards spiral. I think that people are starting to look to other genres of games again for a renewed thrill. WoW will always be around but over the next six months people might just be willing to brave connecting with people at a little local LAN (like V-LAN) and once again make some physical friends. I look forward to it, greater competition at my LAN and every now and then (maybe) just a little time in WoW... Sold!What a weekend, things are moving so fast at the moment. This weekend gone and this coming week are such big weeks for Olivia and I. Here is the run down in point form!
So that being my weekend this week I'm busy with the following:
So yeah, stay tuned! March 19 Naturally SupernaturalThe past few days have been a massive event for Olivia and I, we were really privileged to be involved with the east coast Vineyard conference, Olivia was involved with the music and I was looking after the sound and recording. At the conference we were really blessed to have Gary Best author of the book Naturally Supernatural out from Canada. Gary is an awesome speaker who I thought had some really good insights into walking our lives with Christ. A couple of the things that really stuck with me following the conference are:
It was really good to just serve at this conference and now it's full steam ahead for our Joshua House Soul Survivor event in June! Catching up with old friendsOlivia and I we're really lucky yesterday afternoon to have time to spend with old Friends of our Greg and Heleena. It was an awesome time as they have just had their first child Evangeline Bella Brown. Evangeline is really small but very cute and it was really cool to see one of my best friends as a dad! It was also great because it has been some time since we have had a chance to talk. Greg and I have always strived to raise the bar with each other with regards to our careers, our walk with God, challenging each other on facing upcoming challenges and I found it awesome to spend a couple of hours (and a couple of beers) just chewing the fat with great around some of the topics! All in all we had a great afternoon, and we realised that we don't get to do these things as much as what we would like these days, perhaps we need to make more time for lazy Sunday afternoons like this! March 05 God vs. Super MonkeysThis morning I was having a little bit of a read through Slashdot and I came across this interesting article on Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity?. The article itself was an interesting point of view from the scientific community trying to understand something supernatural but what I really find interesting is the discussion threads that occur following. Some of these guys you can tell are so far against belief in God that they would most likely get violent if you decided to have a discussion with them about it. Others you can tell are Christians and are defending their beliefs. Others still hold the middle ground. The funny thing is that by the time you have read through a number of comments the discussion around the article topic has almost disappeared and its now a discussion around God vs. Super Monkeys (I picked that up in one of the comments). Around these discussions it is always interesting seeing the backwards and forwards and the anger that builds up the further down the comment tree you go. The really strange thing about it is that a lot of the angry comment (from both sides) are not based on facts but rather a single persons point of view that ‘they’ are right and that their view is the right one. In all of this I find myself in an interesting position, I am a very technical, intellectual, analytical person. I like to understand things before I commit to anything, I like to know how something works before I am happy to work with it. But I am also a strong Christian and as such there are a number of things in my life that I can’t explain. In all of this though I am attempting to gain a better understanding of my faith on an intellectual level and one web site that I found that is really good for those that do and don’t believe in God is http://www.doesgodexist.org/ the guy grew up not believing in God and is now a strong Christian so he brings a very unique perspective on it all. At the end of the day it’s what you believe that is important. Find out what you believe, debate it, but don’t get angry with other people because they believe something else, If you beleive in God pray for people don’t get angry at them because they don’t believe what you do, shouting at them or writing angry comments on a technical discussion thread isn’t going to make them believe. On the other side if you don’t believe don’t call us stupid and get angry at us, we just believe in God! Talk to us and let us talk to you and don’t worry about someone else’s belief be it God or Super Monkeys. Well that’s my take anyway….. Beginning the process of Building the houseIt has been almost two years since Olivia and I began the process to build our house. But at last it has begun! There are a couple of reporting options that we're looking at and the main one will be a daily blog of which I am in the process of setting up! But if you're after a photo here is the blog pre cut
Here is the block now cut ready for footings!
Stay tuned, more to come... February 12 Building Community HurtsSometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it, like most people I go through good days and bad days and these I can understand but sometimes it’s the days where have potential to be good days but everything overwhelms you that hurt you. On one hand I’m truly excited a couple of weekends ago V-LAN was launched. A community LAN I spent months planning, building and getting things ready. I setup what I believe one of the greatest monthly LANing events that Brisbane has ever seen. Unfortunately I feel like I did something wrong and we only had 8 people at the height of the V-LAN launch. I find myself questioning if I should be doing this. I talked to so many people, e-mailed even more, yet no one turned up. Is it worth it? The one answer that I can come to is that Building Community Hurts. Nothing great comes without pain, nothing worth having is ever easy. These are the things that I tell myself to keep going, but its a struggle. Of the guys that did come we had an absolute blast and kept going through the night. The gaming revealed true character (and my poor aim!) plus all the guys that came have a chance to get in for FREE next V-LAN if they bring two friends! Last night also saw the kick-off of Joshua House for the year. This year I have accepted a whole lot more responsibility for Joshua House and in actual fact my role is that of the front man, I honestly don’t know how this is going to run but I am willing to serve and lead where possible. My plan this year is to get Joshua House really focused in on Young Adults and really connect these guys with events and information for them not just more advanced Youth focused material. And Finally this week will see the Brisbane SharePoint Users Group kicking off for the year on Wednesday. This year I’m hoping to get the group really pumping along, we’ll see how it goes. I guess it hurts more because i’m personally invested in all these groups, but also I can’t imagine any other way of building communities. January 31 Creating Water from the airHere in Australia we are in the Worst Drought that we have seen since the English settled here over 200 years ago. Our dam levels are as low as they have ever been, Governments are talking about recycled water and purifiying our sea water and there is no forseeable end to this water crisis in sight.
But reading through Slashdot this morning I cam accross this really interesting article on a guy who has created a windmill that can create Water from the air! Reading through the article I am very impressed. If it can truly work then this might be a way to extend our water supplys further while we wait for rain! January 23 Have You Registered for V-LAN???well it's been a busy few months preparing for V-LAN and now it's under two weeks away!
Launching on the 2nd of February V-LAN will be a great gaming event for the north side of Brisbane. if your interested check out the V-LAN web site http://vlan.joshuahouse.org.au for more details. (oh and don't forget to register!) December 22 What are we Affriad of....Over the past few weeks I have been placed in a couple of conversations that have made me think a lot about how we react to situations of a personal nature. In our western society we often joke about our partners and a lot of us will not acknowledge how we truly feel towards our life partners. When it comes to the topic of Wives and Husbands we as the Austrian / western culture will shun everything and brag about how independent and great we are all the while degrading our partners while they are not there. For example I was visiting a client a number of days ago and while I was there I have both a man and a woman in the room with me. Both were people with industrial backgrounds and the sexist jokes were in abundance. But when for 30 seconds the topic turned serious towards how they truly thought of their life partners both of them avoided responding to the question like the plague! Are Men in our society so Proud and our Women so jaded that they will not seriously tell people about how they feel? For myself I have been with my wife for over six years now (married for over 3 of them). I cannot imagine a day without her for to me she is my centre and loves me without question. When I was queried about my feelings towards my wife I responded honestly and told them how much I really care about my wife. Upon here this my client labelled me as soft and ‘girly’. But is it more that those of us who can truly love and care for our partners all the while telling people how much we care for them are strong and perhaps a little more (well in my case) of a man! Perhaps if we were to publicly and positively talk about our partners relationships might last a little longer... November 22 Walking (not running) the road of lifeWalking (not running) the road of life
I find it interesting that for the first time in a number of years that I am slowing down coming into the Christmas season. It’s almost a refreshing change, over the past few years the month leading up to Christmas has been hectic with work, projects, sign-off’s, etc. But this year I don’t have any of that and it almost feels ‘wrong’. When all is said and done though I know I am going to enjoy a slow paced Christmas. November 02 Changing this blogs focusChanging this blogs focus
As you may have noticed from my previous posts over the last few weeks I have now split this blog in two! I have now moved my profession blog here where I will talk lots about Windows, SharePoint and Office over here to Word Press. I will be keeping this blog here as a purely personal blog, where I will talk about life, religion, politics, WoW and anything that impresses me as even remotely funny (even if you don’t think so) So if you’re after the serious Adam Clark blog don’t stay here but go to http://adamclark.wordpress.com but if you want to know some personal views of mine and the occasional humorous post then by all means keep this blog on your RSS feed! Telemarketing Phone CallsTelemarketing Phone Calls
How do you deal with telemarketing calls 1. Listen to what they say (No) 2. Hang up on them (Sometimes) 3. Ask them to hold on and never come back... (maybe) 4. Scare them senseless like these guys did! October 09 Trial of new Professional BlogTrial of new Professional Blog
So following on from my post last week on finding s new blog site to serve as a professional blog I have chosen to put Wordpress on a 4 week trail and see how it goes. You can now find my (trial) professional blog over at http://adamclark.wordpress.com/ and here I’ll past up any of the goodies I come across in the world of SharePoint or other related technologies! If it works well then this is where my professional blog will stay! I'm a Geek not a SuitI'm a Geek not a Suit
You know it's quite interesting I have been working in the IT industry for most of my life now in one way or another and I have always strived to try balance myself between the true geek that sits at home tickers with his gadgets all day with the corporate suit (even though i'm sitting at work in daggy cargo's and a crappy t-shirt) who is out just pushing to the clients how great this new application set is and how it will save your business money... But now I read this blog entry on the Suits vs. Geeks from Scobleizer's Blog and I realize that I truly am a geek. I might not be an absolute coding guru, or I might not always have the read all the latest articles on Slashdot. But I would rather sit, tinker, play and tell the suits how cool this stuff is then be a suit and never get to play! |
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