As two-thousand fourteen draws to a close, I am reflecting on our travels and accolades, but more than that, the experiences that draw us closer as a family with relationships strengthened and renewed. It was a year to celebrate accomplishments, see new places, and help each other through challenging times.
Malloy capped his first year competing at rated A-show events as the 7th best Pre-Green Thoroughbred Hunter in the nation, traveling the Southwest from Waco to Oklahoma City to our local venue which brings the best in the country to our backyard. His flying changes have gone from spotty to nearly automatic. His other KPI (key performance indicator) – time to load in the trailer – has also improved remarkably.
I took a new role at BMC Software, which went private this year, as Manager of Unassisted Support Channels. It has me thinking about KPI’s a lot more than the common man. It involves steering activities in Customer Support to improve self-service opportunities, growing a peer assisted online community, identifying and targeting product areas to enable greater customer success and product adoption. On the plus side, the new position requires lots of new skills, developing and using metrics, working with many different roles across the organization, with a significant strategic-thinking component. On the down side: the nerd coefficient has grown considerably.
The new role took me out of town just once so far, in October, to a TSIA conference in Las Vegas – which brings together industry participants to discuss their biggest challenges, what they have done to address them, and insights in collaborative public sharing sessions. It was eye-opening, inspirational, daunting, invigorating, and overwhelming, and sometimes all of the above on 5 minute intervals. Diane’s experience in Las Vegas was slightly different – relaxing, rejuvenating, and romantic – at the spa, on the casino floor, and at Gordon Ramsey’s Steakhouse. I threw that last one in there to see if it sticks – we’ll see if she edits out the “romantic” part before you get this letter. The Steakhouse is our second excursion dining at a place made famous by a tv personality, and the food was great, but a little pricy with what I call the celebrity surcharge – $163 was dinner for two, AFTER deducting what I felt comfortable expensing to the company. We didn’t run into Gordon while there. He must’ve been out saving another restaurant disaster or yelling at sous chefs somewhere.
The trip to Las Vegas was actually our second out of town run to a casino / spa if you count our stealth trip to Dover Downs in February to surprise Judy at the Dan Patch Awards for Harness Racing, where she was receiving an award. Like all capers, that trip had a series of narrow misses, unplanned consequences, and near disasters – if you consider spoiling the surprise as the disaster. In the end, we did just fine, surprising her in the grand ballroom – while she was on camera, the last person to know we were there, and with us wearing our own clothes – when ten minutes prior, none of that seemed remotely possible. You can read more about my account of the event in the Chronicle of the Horse
here http://www.chronofhorse.com/article/awards-season
Alas, there were some trying times too. Cooper hurt his leg jumping out of the truck at a gas station, and went yelping around for a minute, for what would turn out to be a torn ACL. Watching your happy- go-lucky Corgi hop around 3-legged lame was hard on us all, and after 3 weeks of research, consultation, introspection and examination – we decided to get the surgery. It is a long rehab, but he is doing well now – taking walks around the block, jumping up on us when we bring left-overs home, and breaking into a run when it is Corgi weather outside. You don’t realize how hard someone is going to take it if they can’t play fetch each day. And it must have been hard on him too.
Through the year, each of us has had some physical maladies, which recede in time as mere speed bumps, and times we pulled together as a family. Diane developed a back problem, so now she visits my chiropractor, to get treatment and to tell on me for not doing the recommended exercises. Malloy developed a minor bout of albinism, on a tiny spot on his face, but so far it has not spread. He developed a sore on the outside of his mouth, like where he would put the cigar if he was a cigar smoker, but that has just about healed up. I developed an addiction to sunflower seeds, an affinity for stretchy pants, and leave most restaurants saying “I think I hurt myself”, but a good maid service and larger belts will get us through this too. Cass is probably the healthiest of us all. His life of leisure seems to suit him quite well.
It seems like forever ago, but the year opened with a business trip to India for me, the first in 9 years. If you are not familiar with travel to the subcontinent – I wonder if they ever appreciated being called that – it always begins with a trip to the doctor to recommend what immunizations to get. It is designed to scare the pants off of you, to make you careful. Before going to the doctor, you don’t think you want to contract Dengue Fever. After you learn what it does, you are absolutely positive you don’t want it.
That’s the power of knowledge. And fear. The trip itself is exciting, meeting people at work you’ve known for years but never met in person, and the country has grown up in 9 years, very modern, high- tech in many areas, with other areas left behind. Not unlike Katy, TX and Houston, in a way, growing up together, but with different experiences. But perhaps even more significant than the trip – it was the first time we had been apart for that long, a solid 9 days – and a distance that requires 24 hours of flights to reach. It was a scene in the driveway straight from but without the lines written by a team of Hollywood screenwriters. That was the hardest part – the leaving – and the rest was downhill, the countdown, the odd hour Skype meetings, the regular updates from home. It helped that I was traveling with Marike, the one who introduced Diane to me five and a half years ago. She who giveth can taketh away. Hey, there’s that Hollywood line I could’ve used back in January in our driveway!
It was during that trip the Chronicle of the Horse asked to run my Horse Husband blog in the magazine, and they’ve run a few so far. It is nice to see the various parts of your life come together in exciting and supportive ways. We are at a horse show now, in fact, in a La Quinta suite in Waco. Malloy is starting year two of his Pre-Green campaign against a field of 22 this afternoon, a year more polished and confident, looking to qualify for the Pre-Green Incentive Finals so he can take his talents to Kentucky in 2015. Cooper is with us, sleeping off the breakfast buffet bacon we snuck upstairs. The elevator smelled like bacon when I rode it down, so I suspect I am not the only one. Saturday night, we’ll be in the Hunter Derby again, one of the few Thoroughbreds, one of the few Pre-Greens, trying to add to Malloy’s Derby ribbons, so I can write about it in the Chronicle. Cooper will be ringside as usual. That’s life in 2014, looking forward to more of the same next year. Hope you and family are well. Happy Holidays.
Jesse, Diane, Cooper, Malloy, and Cass (various surnames and breeds)
Corgi Ranch, TX 