This year I got a team together at H2E Incorporated, or otherwise known as work.  I am hoping to raise at least $250 personally and get at least $1000 for the team.  Ambitous I know, but doable for sure.

Last year I was in Mystic Lake, MT most of Movember, but this year I will be in Spokane pretty much the entire month.  Last year I grew the Mo below, otherwise known as the Trucker (Mo Style Guide) this year its Undercover Brother all the way.

You can start donating now by going to http://mobro.co/capebretoner, or you can wait until you start to see some of the fuzz on the upper lip. I will be sure to be posting some pics here, or on my Flickr Movember set.

One other thing, who ever makes the largest donation before Nov 1, 2011 I will let them choose the style of Mo that I grow.  Only 8 days to get your donation in there.

My 2010 Mo

I think that I can do better than this in 2011.  But to do so I will need some donation money.

It seems that there should be no issue then getting started.  I am a self-starting individual who likes to stay on schedule and can get the work done without someone looking over my shoulder.  In fact I think that I do a better job when left alone and am working late into the night at the office.  The challenges lie with communciation and soft skills.  These are skills that we are not taught in school, especially in engineering.  We succeed by having face to face meetings and yelling over the wall.

So what do I think about this first try?

1. You are still working

Unlike what Mr Ferris may think, if its an 8 hour task in the office, it is going to be at least an 8 hour task at home.  The efficiencies that you gain by not getting interupted often are removed by the inefficienies of not having everything at your finger tips, getting questions answered by email rather then yelling over the wall, and new distractions like the dirty laundry, etc.  I am hoping to make this less of a concern over time while I improve my process, our VPN gets better and my preparation time gets shorter.

2. Email sucks

Email sucks as a communication tool.  If you want to use email to get your point across with out a lot of time going back and forth it is a lot of effort to word it correctly.  You need to know what you are looking for and convey that to the recipent.  This is a skill that I am lacking greatly, I thought that I was good at it before this week but I have realize that it is very time consuming to write an email long enough to get the background in, while short enough that people will not miss the question.

3. Herding Cats

When everyone is busy, then the sweakiest wheel gets the grease.  By not being in the face of the resources back at the office I am sometimes forgotten.  This is not malicious by any means, other leads, PMs, etc are just there to poke the individual to get what they want.  I have found myself flagging emails to followup on daily to ensure that I am still high int he queue, where if I was in the office I would be simply mentioning it to them as I saw them.

Being back in the office I am consciously working on my management skills, email writing and team building.  As requested by a colleague I have started summarizing what I believe are the deliverables for the week and following up when I don’t get a response.  This will take some getting used to as team lead, but I think that it is a great suggestion to ensure that people are moving forward.

The team building is going to be a harder one, I am struggling for ideas to create a “team” on the projects so that people want to cover for each other and realize that you are not the only one on the project.

The view from Cidatel Hill in Halifax can pull on the heart strings.

I will be heading back to Halifax for the first time since this picture was taken.  I told everyone that I would be back in less than a year, it has been 9 months, but I was expecting it to be sooner.

If you want to meet up for a brew give me a call (see my resume), Facebook/Twitter/GooglePlus/Comment/email.  One thing is for certain there are now shortage of ways to get ahold of me.

Cheers,

Jeff M

I got my invite to Google Plus a while back and started using it right away.  As much I have reservations with putting all my eggs in the Google basket the alternatives out there don’t allow me the control that I like.

Google+ Invites

If you haven’t been able to find an invite, Google Plus invite.  Or you can click on the massive logo to the left.

Headed out to The Globe tonight and since it is First Friday they have set and a guy doing caricatures.

Hints of Spring are starting to fill the air in Spokane.  The weather is warming up, and I think that I can safely say that there will be no more snow in the city.  Not that I am going to take my winters off quite yet.

It has now been over a week since I got back from Austin for the IEEE-USA Annual Meeting and I have just started going through my pictures.  I really have to start taking pictures of the people that I meet, I met so many great people and yet I don’t have a single picture of any of them.  Luckily a few of them are on Facebook and have been nice enough to put some of the tamer ones up for the world to see.

I will try to get some more of the shots that I took up and maybe even a short re-cap.

Well it is 277lbs. I was going to get some other measurements too, but it appears that I don’t own a measuring tape.

Yes, I have read the 4-Hour Body (well a couple sections) but I haven’t been playing nice on the slow carb diet quite yet. I did have my first cheat day on Friday, and I am down 2 lbs this week.  This will be my true first week and we will see how it works out for me.

My current goal is to be sub-250lbs by June 1.

I will giving an update post every couple of weeks on my progress, etc.

While I was in Halifax I was able to take some shots around the city.  This was from up on Citadel Hill, which I haven’t visited in the last 6 years that I lived there.

I was having coffee with my buddy from Amazing Escape and we started talking about our 2011 goals. One that overlapped was the lose the gut!

So we are going to make it public, not sure what all of the rules, timeline, stakes, etc will be, but the weigh in will be on Jan 14th.  His goal is 20lbs and mine is 20lbs by June 1.

Watch while I kick his ass!

The rolling hills of Montana.  I haven’t been East or North enough to see the vast expanses of these rolling hills, without the mountains poking up on the horizon.

There are a lot of neat shots in Montana, I wish I had the time to spend weeks just wandering around this tiny corner of the state.  There are some trails in the mountains shown in the background that I would like to spend a week or two this August hoping from peak to peak, lake to lake.