2024-11-25
Disjointed Thoughts
Please forgive the disjointed thoughts. This is more or less a brain dump therapy for me, not really intended for anyone else to read. Sometimes just putting things down helps air them out. The following paragraphs came out, and have almost no relation to each other.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about the bigger picture. Zooming out and taking the view from above. Ken and I came up with a couple of cool new patent ideas in the last few months, and we're engaging our lawyer for one. We should have another provisional patent filed soon. This could be huge for the HVAC commercial high volume fan industry. Another (more fun) patent I've been thinking on and journaling about is a product of my own imagination. Ken seems equally invigorated by this idea too. It has to do with AI, and it could be huge. It could also have the potential to bring a lot of smiles to the world. I promised LeBaron in a coaching practice session that I'd journal on it until the end of the year, but I've almost reached the end of what I can journal without being redundant. I wish I could start my own company and pitch this idea, I really love the idea.
I was sent to Las Vegas for a Q-PAC customer site troubleshooting mission. It went really well. I was able to prove the building needed to deal with a harmonics problem, and they were really grateful to me for that. It feels good to get to the bottom of a problem and add value to a customer's experience. Since I was going anyway, I found a way to get a sitter for the kids and dogs, and help Stefanie get away. She had been dreaming of Vegas for years, and she needed a break. For the first time in 7 years, she traveled without any kids. I tried to make the trip all about her, but the blessed woman still chose activities I would like. Did a cool trail in Red Rock Canyon called Calico Tanks. That was a nice view. We also visited Hoover Dam. That was so impressive.
Our new microcontroller-based product will release on Monday, and I'm pretty stressed out about it. I hope we don't disappoint anyone.
Annual departmental budgeting is due. I spent some energy this month figuring that out, and meeting with Kevin. Faced the same old challenge of justifying engineering spend. How do you know it's worth the money? How do you measure efficacy of the engineers?
I also finished my 300-day training on coaching practices with Heroic, and I became a certified Heroic coach. This will enrich my interactions when coaching my team and my kids. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could go to the Heroic events next year in Austin and Rome? Damn.... I should try and find a way.
Caught up with Jerry MacNamara today in preparation for our team strategy offsite. That went well - Jerry is a pleasure to speak with. He is a lifelong learner with a dogged determination to help his clients stay mission focused. He expressed the travel is a bit much lately - I hope he finds a better balance. He introduced me to a cool AI tool called mindpal. I'm going to have to play with it a bit.
Between hiring (Kari said she'll make an offer to Sudipta last week, and she's on vacation this week. I wonder what's going on???), product release, travel for support, family feeling neglected, and time spared thinking big, I've had to be really on lately. I've been practicing the art of context switching. I've been managing really well, and I attribute it partially to my Heroic training.
I've been reading Learned Excellence by Potterat, and it's really good. Looking forward to putting some notes down on that. Couple of weeks ago I finished "Build" by Tony Fadell. I lent my book to Nicole, since she recently became a manager at AllState, and I shared some wisdom from the book that landed with her. I hope she takes a lot from the book. I also hope she returns it soon so I can complete my philosopher's notes on it before it fades from my memory. But it doesn't seem that it will. I've been connecting ideas from Build in my day-to-day. Just today Matt was talking about a topic that reminded me of Nest's focus on customer experience. That's a great book, highly recommend.
Movember is almost over, and I've failed to raise any money. My fundraising this year has been non-existent. Oof. Time to make a social post about that...
Until next time.
Kane
