Once again, the 4th of July comes around and we have that time honored tradition of patriotism, no wait, fireworks, no wait…..YES, the Nathans hot dog eating championship at Coney Island. I told Steve O’Grady and Teressa Jiminez at RSDC that I’d be blogging this on the 4th of July, but I may not be blogging on a holiday, no one would read it, and how would you know not to miss this if I didn’t give any warning?

Of course, the undisputed champion is the waif - Kobayashi from Japan. His streak of winning this contest includes:

• 2001: 50 hot dogs
• 2002: 50 1/2 hot dogs
• 2003: 44 1/2 hot dogs
• 2004: 53 1/2 hot dogs
• 2005: 49 hot dogs

He of course has other records including 67 hamburgers in 8 minutes, 83 vegetarian dumplings in 8 minutes, 100 steamed pork buns in 12 minutes, 69 krystal burgers in 8 minutes and 17.7 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes.

He does it by swallowing the dogs without chewing. He breaks the dog in half, eats it then dunks the bun in water and puts that down.

THE COMPETITION:

Kobayashi will be up against other competitive eaters like Eric Badlands Booker ,Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas who put down 37 dogs in her 105 pound frame last year and others who will try and lose to the Michael Jordan of eating. There is an outsider from America, Joey Chestnut who has downed 50 dogs in a qualifier.
DISQUALIFICATION AND HOW TO LOSE:

There is a point in which you can’t eat any more and that is like hitting the wall in the marathon. You just run out of space. Then there is the deadly “REVERSAL” in which the contents of your stomach come back to life. When I mentioned this to Steve and Teressa, they both agreed that the word reversal will never be the same and the visual will be with them for the rest of their life.
PICTURE OF THE REVERSAL

So, it will be broadcast on ESPN at 12:00 PM on July 4th, don’t miss it. It only lasts 12 minutes, but eating will never be the same for you.

I just read today in the Austin American Statesman that IBM has the fastest 3 computers in the world, and 243 of the top 500 fastest. Also stated was that we can do more when we need to.
I also read that Rational Application Developer tool set has achieved top rankings for the second year in a row, according to a market research study as reported by eWeek.

Further, IBM’s partnering programs were rated number one by IDC .

I sense a trend here, it looks like our technology and our programs are working well. I know that it has been IBM’s mantra to serve the customer, and much of that is relationship as well as good technology. I think we’re on the right track.

Well, it’s finally here, the crowning of the next king of cycling.  The Tour de France start on July 1st, and fortunately for me, I have a DVR and can see it later on OLN tv…I just have to stay out of the blogs before I watch.  It’s always funny to hear Bob Roll mispronounce the Tour dee France…
It was easy the last 7 years, we pretty much knew who was going to wind up with the yellow jersey, it was just a matter of when he wanted it to happen.

So will it be Ivan Basso winner of the Giro d’Italia, Jan Ulrich - the last Tour winner before Lance, Floyd Landis?  Will it be Team Discovery, Phonak, Deutsch Telekom in the team championship?

The flat stages can be a bit boring, but the sprints at the end are good.  The team time trials are a ballet of coordination and aerodynamics.  The individual time trials are mano-o-mano, but the test of manhood is in the mountains.  Anyone who has ridden a bike uphill knows it’s tough, but do it for 6 hours against the best in the world?  The winner has a big set of stones.

Our WPLC (Lotus) announced Sametime 7.5 this week. I’ve been using it now for a while as a beta product. I use any number of instant messaging products depending on who it is and what they use. We at IBM use Sametime and up until now, instant messaging was IM to me, just another package to get work done. This announcement has the ability to change the direction of what IM is and how software can work together.
The fact that it is integrated into Microsoft applications, blackberry, Motorola Q and any Eclipse oriented environment changes things now. It just closed the world a bit for me. I’ve always wanted a one size fits all device and software that actually talked to each other. I view this as now headed in the right direction. We’ve even announced upcoming support for OSX Mac users. Don’t get me wrong that any one product should be a panacea, because I firmly believe that competition drives up quality and drives down price, but the point is to have things work together seamlessly.
Not trying to be a commercial here, but the audio and Video support brings in a whole new list of things to do on a device or through an IBM platform. Not that I think email is going away, but we are a society who wants things faster and better and Sametime 7.5 is a step in that staircase.

Note: Earlier this year, IBM announced that Sametime is connected to AOL, Yahoo and Google…I think most have heard of these companies.

Other Note: Good Technology also introduced a service for Domino users to remotely check email on any number of devices. Partners supporting your products and platforms are important factors for success (note to the micro channel marketing department there).
So more things appear to be working together, a good thing and maybe proof that our strategy for open standards is working. I find it interesting that IBM is reaching out into the Microsoft space to work with their software. I don’t think it’s as much an olive branch as it is a proof of what we are trying to do to get software to work together. It will be interesting to watch whether Microsoft closes the kimono more or opens up to us.

I can’t believe I’m the only one out here that wants to have things work together without getting a computer science degree first.

With all respect to Thomas Friedman and his book, there are conditions that affect our ability to do our job sometimes. Technology has flattened things up to the point of social constraints.
For example, when we are trying to get a number of pre-briefs completed prior to an announcement, time has affected us. Mostly they are when we try coordinating a world wide event. We’ve dealt with the time zone issues via email and are able to live with a half day delay of communicating with the other side of the world, as long as it is straightforward. Every time you go back and forth there is the half day delay, but this is manageable. We even have a short window when we either get up early or stay late on both ends.

Now, it’s summer in Europe, and that means that many are taking advantage of the short periods of good weather (depending on how far north you live), so we come to a period where there are lengthy vacations. This changes the flatness of the availability. I’m not knocking vacation as the argument can be made that the quality of life is more important that 17 hour workdays. Half my family live in Europe and they think we Americans work far too much.

Nevertheless, it means there are certain geographies that can’t be addressed with the immediacy that the product owner desires.

A tangential issue of flatness occurs when we make a complicated announcement (I’m speaking for large companies and large analyst groups here) that can cross several ownership area’s on both sides. Analysts for the most part are very perceptive and ask deep and probing questions that affect other areas of our company, so we must bring in those respective areas….Again, geographical or political boundaries come into play. Then getting a hold of traveling execs or IBMers (I’ve Been in a Meeting) becomes an issue.
Conversely, we might be making a complex announcement that for large firms with specific areas, the analysts may not have expertise (or must also respect other analyst specialties or areas of coverage) outside of their focus. Small analyst groups can either be specific enough to a subject that the other information does not affect them, or are generalist enough (mostly they are educated enough and know more than us about a lot of our stuff) that this does not come into play. But put together a large company and a large analyst firm and you get complexity over a simple task.

Other speed bumps occur when an analyst (or the company person) shifts jobs or places. Then we have to try to hunt down the person(s) to solve the questions in hand.
Am I complaining? No way, that keeps us in a job to try and figure it out. But it just goes to show how technology can be overcome by social and people issues.

I’ve made the successful transition to a dual boot machine.  I’m posting this blog from the linux side with relatively little content, but doing it in linux for the posterity of it.

Now I have to figure out the rest of of the OS, but I’ve successfully migrated my Lotus Notes as my first application.

I will have to go back and forth until I have all my data, some applications that are Windows only, that sort of thing…..but just like blogging, I’m off to a new frontier.

One of the things we did at the RSDC blogger meetup was sign a get well card for Grady. As you may know from his blog, he’s had medical issues and he was the original host of the meetup.

So all the folks at the meetup signed the card and we sent it to him….here it is at the beginning of the signing.

Here’s a job that’s much better than flipping burgers.

Just like why I’m blogging, I’m installing Linux. I figured that if I’m going to talk about it, I need to experience it.

Fortunately, IBM has a desktop install that I currently have underway, approximately 817 files to be downloaded and installed. The only issue for me is that I work remotely and I had to go into an IBM facility to load it. So I blog here from a cube farm in a building that is half IBM and half Lenovo.

But the good news is that I’ll work as much as I can from Linux, except for the Windoze only programs that I have to keep until I find a work around.

I’ll have to speak with Steve O’Grady to see how he migrated his iPod/iTunes to Linux, cause that’s one of the programs on the table for me.

Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the reasons I’m switching is the millions of blue screens of death I’ve experienced, the delay’s in operating system releases, the bugs, security, and some amount of arrogance.  By the way, I’ve been at this since DOS 1.0, so I have experience with PC OS problems.
I also need to expand my boundaries technically. I can’t bear to sit back with the norm, it seems I have to push the envelope to test my abilities, hope I can pass the test.

A while back at a Software Group analyst relations team meeting, I had the chance to sit next to Barbara E. (last name held by request) and she was lamenting why her husband needed liked to fish so much. I gave a completely logical answer that we men need an outlet at middle age, and fishing is a whole lot better than skirt chasing at the bar scene. In fact, I encouraged her to support her husband to fish more.

Well just before I went to RSDC, I was able to take him out and help her with that generous support of her husbands activities which now includes his very successful website where he is the leading distributor of Chatterbaits. As for fishing? He skunked me from the back of the boat as I had a day of casting practice and he caught all the fish. Here is a picture of Karl with a Roland Martin 8 pounder….SON.

I also learned that another member of the A/R team played tennis for Rollins College and I dated one of her teammates in the 70’s….small world.

Here’s a picture of me on my boat.  Part of Barbara’s question about fishing was, were all of the electronics on the boat necessary?  I answered that I have 3 fishfinders on my boat, so yes they must be necessary.  All is understood now.  Fishing is good for husbands and their wives should support this activity.

I  don’t really remember what we discussed at the meeting regarding analyst relations.