From the Mind of Wayne Abbott...

It's a new year...time for a few updates...

I know some don't like forced vacations but I've been a big fan of Sun's US shutdown the July 4th week. I usually take an extra week off to give me a nice 2 week block of time to spend with the family and catch up on home projects. This break I've done Sesame Place, lots of bike riding, installed a new garage door, chased down an electrical problem, put together furniture in the kids rooms, and worked out to stay in shape.

A new fiscal year has started and it should be an interesting one. The account I cover is going to have some changes given the upcoming merger between Lucent and Alcatel. Of course Sun is reducing it's workforce so that always throws a few curveballs into the game but I'm hopeful that Sun is heading in the right direction.

The first thing I'll be doing when I get back is working with Sun's NJ/NY Black Employee Network to host 100 students from the NJ Governor's School for Engineering & Technology at our Somerset office. The Governor's School is a summer enrichment program that nurtures the talents of one hundred of New Jersey's top students who are entering their senior year in high school. The students are generally in the top 2% of their high school classes. The program is focused on the fields of engineering, information technology and technology. Through courses, projects, labs, trips and other activities, students achieve a higher level of understanding of the engineering process. Some of the technology projects they will be working on this summer includes things like researching challenges associated with rebuilding New Orleans, researching development of alternative energy sources and exploring opportunities for building communities in space.

Given that I'm a proud '91 RU gradute in EE I'm very happy to work with the students and hopefully give them some insight into how many of us leverage our technical education at Sun. It should be a fast paced day with 9 breakout sessions covering 9 topics with lots of room for small group interactions.

Here are the topics we will be covering:

1. Alternative Careers
2. You & The Participation Age - The Big Lesson You Learned in Kindergarden
3. Information Security for the Participation Age
4. Overview of Sun Java Technology
5. Sun's Virtual Desktop: Sun Ray, SGD, and more
6. Sun's Customers
7. Solaris & Galaxy Engineering
8. A Day in the Life of a Field Service Engineer"
9. Open Source, Open Minds

And of course no day like this would be complete without giveaways . We'llbe taking lots of pictures and I'll be video taping the opening and closing sessions so as long as I get clearance I'll post them on mediacast.sun.com. More to come...

My minor update to a previous blog entry is that I did finally get my 1st degree black belt. I'm fortunate to be in the first class (there were 3 of us) to achieve this level at my school. The test was hardcore - it lasted about 4 hours with a brutal regiment of katas, self defenses, sparring combinations, kicks, and 3 rounds of full contact sparring. It didn't help that I injured my left hamstring 2 days before the test so I wasn't at 100% but of course you can't make excuses and expect to get any sympathy. There was some ringers thrown in the mix but the killer was at the end of the test - we had to do a brutal fitness session of 100 jumping jacks, 100 push up, 100 sit ups, 100 squat jumps, and 50 kicks on each leg without putting my foot down. Needless to say I was in major pain for days after the test. When I got home that night my left hamstring cramped up real bad and I threw up in a garbage can my daughter fortunately brought over to me just in time since I couldn't move. My body essentially did a hard reboot that night A week later I got the bad news that I had to retest on my kicking section - I knew that part was lacking a bit because my leg was bothering me as I started my drills but I thought I did a decent enough job to pass that part of the test. The problem with retesting on that section so soon was that during my 3 rounds of sparring my ankle got hurt (I suspect I had a hairline fracture) and it made doing kicks on my right leg difficult so now I had 2 bum legs. In any case I figured I'd just go all out as best I could and nurse my injuries later and that did the trick - my instructors said my intensity and techniques were the best they had seen from me in a long time. I took a long 2 month break from class to give my body time to heal since I pretty much had been practicing non-stop for 3 1/2 years and that takes a tool on an aging body. I'm now back in action and of course class has been taken to another level. I'm learning the type of stuff where you can really do some damage to someone now - not that a kick or punch wouldn't do that before but you would be surprised how proper choking and hand lock techniques can bring someone down to his knees. The conditioning has gone way up now as well - at the end of class when I'm dead tired I'm doing stuff like running laps with a medicine ball over my head or doing incline push ups while balancing on a ball. I'll keep you posted on how things progress since I'm sure I'm in for quite a few surprises as my training continues.

Posted at 10:10AM Jul 14, 2006 by curtaintime in General  |  Comments[1]