The past couple of weeks (and the next couple, for that matter) have been (and will be) the most active professional and personal periods in my life that I can remember in many years.  Reminds me very much of when I began Sumner Systems Management some dozen years ago.

I’m in process of delivering one high profile gaming app today and starting the second in a set of deliverables due next Friday.  I’m also in the middle of a sixty day engagement with a local web services company that processes millions of transactions a month for medical insurance eligibility, doing a ton of .NET work and learning the ways of (yet another) corporate customer, that while unique in many respects is exactly like every other big company I have done work for.  Enjoyable, but predictable in many respects.

Aside from that, we close on our existing house two weeks from today and close the following day on the house we are buying in Winter Park (Orlando), FL.  Which means a bunch of packing, moving wife, children, belongings, and livelihood 750 miles - all in the all-too-very-near future.

All of this activity has given me pause for reflection on how very fortunate I am for the following:

• Having a wife and sons who love me even though I have been entirely absent for the most part the last two weeks, and have not been my normal lovable self,
• Knowing and working with extremely talented and personable people
• Having work to do, and having the work be both challenging and informative

Quite honestly, the past 20 minutes that I have spent writing this blurb is the longest span of time - other than eating and sleeping - that I have used for something other than billable work in recent memory.

I know that my life is out of balance at the moment, but it is for a very good cause - “storing away the nuts for winter” as it were for the move South and all the things that go along with relocating a family and a business.

I can feel myself growing - even at my advanced age - through this process: professionally, personally, and - dare I utter it? - spiritually.

When we left Florida in 2005, it was immediately following the hurricane season that saw four major storms hit the state - three of which travelled right over where I happened to be at the time.  The analogy of the chaos, noise, and turmoil of those storms - and the false quiet when the storm bands pass - are a great analogy of the place I happen to find myself at the moment.  Time to reflect, but not safe to go outside and relax until the storm totally passes.

I’m looking forward to rejoining the human race in a few weeks.  And seeing what it looks like after the latest storm has passed.

I have been buried under a TON of stuff this week.

The week began with me leaving my house at 4:00 AM to catch a flight to Orlando for the sole purpose of leaving town with a contract on a house - mission accomplished.  I arrived back in Nashville around 11:00 PM.

Tuesday saw us signing a backup contract on our home; Wednesday was the home inspection on our current home; and Thursday was the home inspection on our new (to us!) home.

By day, I have been working on a .NET contract with a large online health care company and by night, working on a set of new Facebook applications to launch this week and next.

Needless to say, I have been a very busy (and pooped!) boy.

I am finally beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m reasonably sure that it is not a train.

I hope to be back on a more even keel by the end of next week and actually taking a little bit of time off.

But for now, I’m still digging into the pile of stuff in front of me - looking for a pony.

This is what I hope to be the ** last ** update on my appearance in this month’s ( July 2008 ) SmartMoney Magazine.

I was contacted this week by Anne Kadet, the author of the feature article in which I was quoted, “Trophy Kids.”  Anne called after reading my response post here to the article, genuinely upset over the fact that the magazine had gotten my son’s name wrong in the article and wanting my feedback on what my expectations were going into the article and thoughts afterward.

Anne offered a correction on my son’s name, and we had a very open discussion over the article and my reaction to it.

I learned a great deal from the whole experience - positive and negative - and I know I’m better prepared to ask more questions for any similar situation in which I may find myself in the future.

Again, thanks to Anne for being stand up and calling me when she could have just let it ride.

And one final thanks again to SmartMoney for allowing my son and I to have a blast at a fun photo shoot and creating a great memory in the process.

For those of you in the market for a great photographer (and a really nice guy), here is John Schweikert’s (the photographer who took the fine photo in the article) contact information:

John Schweikert Photography
113 Westover Park Court
Nashville, Tennessee 37215

http://www.schweikertphoto.com/

The coming weeks will be very busy for me.

We are in the process of moving from Nashville to Orlando, FL and along with all of the fun things that accompany a cross-country move, I also have to do a little something I like to call “work.”

In fact, my banker is sorta insisting that I continue this thing called work.

Anywho, what all of this means is that I am pretty much double and triple booked on paying gigs for the next several weeks to the extent that I might be a little - or a lot - more scarce here in the wilds of Social Media.

Fish gotta swim, bird gotta eat as Nigel says in Finding Nemo.

I’ll try to post Utterz and Photos when I can, but it may be a little thin between substantive posts until the World Wide Corporate Headquarters of Sumner Systems Management has been relocated to its new home down South.

UPDATE 6/29: We signed a contract on our current home here in Nashville last evening and are now putting the pressure on our Realtor in Orlando to really kick things into gear. Still showing the house in the event (hope?) that we will get a backup / fallback offer should the deal fall apart before closing in early August. But that’s a different problem for a different day.

UPDATE 6/29 10:45PM - we received a second offer this evening on the house. We have signed a counter offer, so now it is a race to see which signed counter (along with an earnest money check) arrives back to us first.

Well, everything is definitely NOT ready, but it’s ready enough.  Our house has been on the market now not quite 48 hours.

We finally got the house listed in MLS Saturday 6/21 (MLS #992443) and I saw that it was in Realtor.com just a few minutes ago, though not with all of the pictures and Virtual Tour in - yet (should be fully featured in the next day or so.)

A few punch list items - a very few - and then it’s in St. Joseph’s capable hands (yeah - he’s buried in the backyard and we’re on day three of the Novenas).

The house was shown a couple of times Sunday, is scheduled to be shown later today, and is also scheduled to be shown tomorrow.  I definitely realize that we are in a marathon and not a sprint with regard to getting this thing under contract, but I am very heartened by the response - so far - of the local market.

Nashville has been very fortunate, in that it never was part of the go-go housing boom of this past decade and as a result prices have still appreciated rather than going backwards.

As is the case with almost every house that I have lived in, the only time I have everything the way that I like it is just before we sell it.  C’est la vie.

My powers of compartmentalization are always pushed to their limits when we sell one house and move to another - particularly when moving long distances (this will be my third long distance move in the last six years).

But I am oh so eager to be back among my friends in Central Florida - and getting ready for the upcoming school year.

My “twitterpal” Ruth Marie Sylte showed some love for my LinkedIn Contacts Facebook Application in her blog today.

Thanks, Ruth, for a very nice endorsement.

As I have mentioned ad nauseum, I am quoted in the July 2008 SmartMoney Magazine, in an article titled Trophy Kids.

My participation in the article occurred because I was contacted by Anne Kadet of SmartMoney on the strength of this blog post.

I was motivated to write the post because I was disappointed in the general direction of social networking applications, and I was attributing at least part of the reason for the general craptitude of these apps on the low barrier to entry for writers, and comparing the situation to travel sports and how travel sports differs from rec league sports.  The original post does a better job than I can summarize here.

As represented by Ms. Kadet, she wanted to interview me for a feature article on parenting and sports.  True enough, as the final product is about parenting and sports - albeit from the point of view that is clearly meant to make the parents who did contribute appear to be on the fringe and to be nut cases (emphasis mine, but explicitly stated in the article - twice).

Because my participation in the article was precipitated on the basis of a blog post, I thought - mistakenly or not - that my views presented there on how sports can provide children with focus and commitment would be communicated.

Wrong and wrong, as it turned out.

Out of an hour phone interview, my contribution to the article was whittled down to a single quote - and used in a context different than how the quote appeared in my conversation with Ms. Kadet (my other contribution was a great photo of my son and I - of which I am so very proud - and that I hope will mean something to my son when he is older and I am no longer around).

Please bear with me while I make a mountain out of a mole hill.

Let me say that Anne Kadet and I have never met in person.  The interview we conducted was by phone.  When she writes that “David just shrugs” - how could she know whether I shrugged or not?  She was 1,500 miles away.  Unless I had a mouse in my pocket, I’m pretty sure I was alone on my end.

What was lost in the details on how I supposedly “shrugged” over the cost of $2,500 for my son’s hockey “habit” were the following facts, of which the quoted $2,500 amount represents an annualized cost of all my son’s hockey related expenses:

• Approximately $550 for House (Rec) League Ice Fees
• Approximately $750 for Travel League Ice Fees
• Travel Related Expenses (Lodging, Food, Gas, Entertainment)
• Private Skating Lessons
• Equipment Costs

We spent $50 a year on helmet, pants, and pads by renting from our league’s equipment locker.  I spent $75 on a carbon composite stick and $200 on a set of Bauer skates.  No where near the many hundreds of dollars quoted for skates, helmets, and sticks.

Regarding the comment I made about being resigned to the costs, it was made in the context as to how if one wishes to play competitive high school or college level sports, coaches look first to athletes who play travel league sports, and not that I am resigned to $2,500 a year because my eight year old wants to play hockey.

In truth, the one thing I was most disappointed in within the article was the one thing that was easiest to fact check - my son’s name.  His name is Macgregor, not Gregory.  Even though Anne and I traded emails, even though I spelled it out for the photographer, even though I spoke to a magazine fact checker - they still got his name wrong.  For me, if you can’t get the easiest of factual things correct, it definitely casts a pall over any of the other “facts” presented in the article.

One can’t turn on the news these days without seeing how Americans are raising a nation of fat, spoiled, lazy kids.

It seems now, that when you do challenge your child to compete and - gasp - keep score - you’re a nut case.

Here’s a news flash - life isn’t fair.  We’re not all created equal.  And you don’t get trophies in life for just showing up.

We’ve created a fiction that if we shield our children from resolving their own conflicts, if we protect them from failing, if we give them everything they want, that they will lead happy, stress free lives.  Look around - how’s that working out?

Since Ms. Kadet doesn’t have children - I asked her during our interview - I’m not surpirsed entirely by the judgmental tone of the article.  Nothing I write here will change anyone predisposed to a certain view of parenting - and that really isn’t my intent.

I guess what I am trying to say - here, as well as in my original post - is that when we ask more of ourselves, when we raise the barrier to entry into an endeavor, we wind up with a higher quality of play, a better product, increased focus - in short, if not excellence, something approaching it.

My sentiments are best summed up by a line from the movie The Incredibles; When everybody is special, no one is.

I want to thank Anne Kadet and SmartMoney Magazine for allowing me to participate in the article.  I’m definitely using this article as a learning experience for my son - and bragging like hell about my Trophy Kid.

Postscript: After the magazine article was published, I was contacted by another “hockey dad” about a new company he was putting together - and that he wanted my participation.