2010 has been a year of….

Challenges

Right from the beginning of the year there has been a lot to deal with.

My wife Bryony had her operation over the Christmas of 2009 with the recovery and switch on happening in the January of 2010.

Unfortunately the operation didn’t work out as expected. While from a clinical perspective the operation went fine, practically it didn’t make any improvements. Bryony persisted with it as long as she could but the implant was actually unbearable to use.(she explains it here)

The specialists at the hospital were great but there was very little they could do other than tweak settings. The implant manufacturer even flew one of their specialists in from America as they were all very puzzled as to why it hadn’t worked.

To make matters worse shortly after Bryony also lost a considerable amount of hearing in the other ear, to the extent that her hearing aid was doing nothing at all. At the beginning of the year we hoped we were hoping that there would be a life changing shift in her hearing and here we were in the middle of the year and it looked like the life changing shift was happening – just in the complete opposite direction we wanted!

Bryony wrote three great posts at the time talking about what happened and how she was feeling about it all.

Scared is not the word

A life of complete silence

A life of complete Silence #2 – Working at work, working at home

As the months have gone on she has had some improvement, the hearing aid is of use again and while it’s not the same she has adapted to the new level.

While all this has been going on we were trying to move house. We’d lived in the same house for six and a half years but now we have two children there just physically wasn’t the space for us all to live there. This coupled with the fact our oldest, Alice would be going to school the other side of town meant we had make a change. Selling the house wasn’t quite straightforward though, with a recession and depressed housing market our house wasn’t that different from all the other homes for sale. We finally managed it and a house we’d made an offer on some time looked like it’d be a our new home.

With this being the year of challenges though it was never going to be that straightforward. We couldn’t get a mortgage on the new property. With lenders being more cautious we had a hard time getting approved. We had to admit defeat and look at something lower priced which meant we spent a frantic couple of days looking at house while I was on crutches (I’ll come to that in a bit!)

We managed to find something and had our offer accepted. After several weeks of hassle with solicitors, etc we were finally able to move into our new place (I’ve glossed over that – getting the paperwork sorted and physically moving was a pain in the rear)

We’re actually really happy with the house got instead. It’s located perfectly for the school run, is in a quiet street and there is a park at the end of the road for the children to play on. Maybe these things happen for a reason!

So why was I looking at houses on crutches?

After a very long wait I finally had my knee operation.

This wasn’t fun at all and it’s not experience I want to go through again and frustratingly it all happened just as everything was going on with the house move meaning I was looking at potential new houses on crutches. I got some strange looks from the various estate agents we saw.

The operation was in June and since then I’ve had varying levels of physio to get the knee back on track. I’ve even had to join a gym to help with recovery. I’ve never been a fan of the gym and in the past I’ve never needed one as I’ve played enough sport to keep me healthy and fit.

It’s been a long hard slog and consumed a lot of free time and thoughts. Hopefully I’m on the home stretch now. I’ve been discharged from the physio sessions and have to finish the rest of the strengthening work on my own. A couple of weeks ago I played a game of badminton and was able to get around the court normally and had no side effects afterwards. I really don’t want to go through this again. My original goal was to be back playing football in 6-9 months. I will probably change this to be 9-12 months to be on the safe side so currently I’m aiming for the start of the next football season to be fully recovered.

Coupled with plenty of challenges on the business front 2010 has been a year I’d rather not repeat anytime soon.

That said it’s not all entirely doom and gloom.

I’ve also had some really great experiences this year.

In August I turned 30 and Bryony organised a surprise gathering of friends. I was really pleased to see so many of my friends from AMITPRO there. Anyone that thinks a peer group is just all about business is missing a trick. Many friendships and relationships are made there and I’m really proud to be a part of AMITPRO.

As well as my birthday it’s been great spending time with AMITPRO friends at Pecha Kucha, the Replay event in Blackpool, the Retro Computer Museum, and the Vintage Computer Festival

Speaking at three different user groups (AMITPRO, Manchester and Reading) has also been a great experience. Standing up in front of a group of people and talking is not something I thought I’d ever be able to do yet here I am at the point where I actually enjoy it though enjoying it and being any good at it are two different things! I’ve got lots to improve on.

I was even fortunate to be named on the SMB Nation Top 150 list for 2010. I was very surprised by this, especially when I look down the list and see some of the other names on there.

I’ve sucked at blogging an awful lot this year for various reasons. I’m annoyed that it’s the last day of 2010 and this is my first post in December.

Thanks to everyone who has made the effort to read the blog and leave comments this year. As bad as I’ve been at it this year I still love doing it so hopefully I’ll pull my finger out more next year.

Also thanks to everyone I’ve interacted with this year. Whether it’s been virtually through Facebook, Twitter, Xbox Live, etc or in person I appreciate your thoughts, company and input. 

Finally, one thing that makes any hardship during any particular day go away is coming home to my kids. They have both grown so much during 2010 and I’ll leave it to them to wish you a happy new year!

If you’ve made it this far through such a lengthy post thank you!

Catch you in 2011

Is it really October already?

I’ve just noticed I haven’t posted anything on here in just over a month.

I really had no idea it had been that long!

Everything has been very crazy recently for a ton of reasons. The main one being I’ve just moved house.

The last few months have been some of the most stressful I’ve every encountered and while everything is still a bit chaotic at home I’m glad it’s generally all done and dusted.

I had my broadband installed yesterday so I can finally call it home (I think I’ve also had my upload speed increased as per a recent announcement by Virgin Media)

My focus has been so much on the move I’ve been spread a little bit thin and this blog has been one of many things that have suffered. I didn’t even blog about the fact I’ve recently taken over the running of AMITPRO which I’m very honoured to have responsibility for.

Now I’m all sorted I’m hoping things will start to get back to normal and I can give my usual routine the attention it deserves.

That’s it really – nothing much to report but wanted to get back in the blogging habit.

Have a great weekend!

My impending operation

A little off topic……

On the 20th September I posted this as my Facebook status

Turns out I was right

Some five months later I actually found out what I’d done

Anyone who knows me also knows that playing football is one of my biggest passions and it’s taken a couple of days for it to sink in that I may never actually play again. It’s been hard enough the last five months so adding another six months (minimum) has been hard to take

Of course that’s looking on the negative side of things. Susanne wrote a great post about how putting the correct spin on things can help get anything off to a good start so I’ll enter the rehabilitation with the mindset that I WILL be playing again next season

The geek part of me also needed to know as much as possible about everything to do with this, especially with the length of time it’s taken

So I know more about the internal structures of the knee, MRI scans and what’s involved in the operation itself (don’t click that last one if your squeamish….seriously) than I care to think about!

So fingers crossed I’ll make a full recovery. Thanks to everyone who has commented on Facebook and Twitter

This’ll be me again sometime soon!

Technology Changing Lives

My job means on a day to day basis I try to help businesses improve by the use of technology. It’s very satisfying when you see “the penny drop” for someone after explaining a concept. I saw this after a SharePoint demo at the back end of last week – I love listening to conversations afterwards as co-workers start bouncing ideas off each other

Technology isn’t just for business though, smart use of technology in our everyday lives can have a huge impact. Whether it’s families in different countries staying in touch via Skype, or re-connecting with long lost relatives via social networking sites there is potential everywhere

We’ve had some news recently that shows how technology can have a dramatic effect on someone’s entire life

If you know me personally or have read this blog for any period of time you’ll know that my wife is deaf and has been since birth

Six months ago she decided to take a look into her options and the hearing team at Selly Oak hospital started an investigation to see if it would be possible for her to get a Cochlear Implant

Last week we had the “big decision appointment” and it was a yes. In addition to this they even had a date so on the 22nd December she’ll be having the operation! (less than ten days time!!) Bryony wrote a blog post about bringing the equipment home and the details of the appointment here

The big switch on will be in January so we’ve got a massive start to the year ahead of us

It’s not an exaggeration when I say this is HUGE. If all goes well Bryony will get as close to “normal” hearing as she will ever know, all down to a tiny computer that she’ll wear behind her ear

It’s certainly a different way to spend your Christmas and New Year!

Spreading the word

Slightly off topic but I haven’t posted in a while so why not

I’ve become quite familiar with the inner workings of WordPress recently. This blog runs on WordPress but I’ve also done a couple of installations for my wife (who is amazing by the way!)

Photo Blog (www.bryonyparkes.co.uk)

This is pretty self explanatory. Bryony is a keen amateur photographer so she’s been posting photos and writing about the things she’s been learning as she hones her technique

I think she’s pretty good but obviously I’m biased

The Deaf One (www.thedeafone.co.uk)

I’ve mentioned it a few times on here but Bryony is profoundly deaf. She has a type of hearing loss that generally gets worse as the years go by. She has started to look into a Cochlear Implant (the link explains what they are). It’s something that various different doctors have suggested down the years but until recently decided it wasn’t for her

The blog is a journal that talks about the whole process and a bit of an outlet for all the thoughts and feelings that go with it as such it’s a massively life changing procedure

Hopefully it will also give friends and family an insight into process and also what it’s actually like to have no hearing

I just wanted to share so that if you or anyone you know may be interested go take a look!

Back in the UK

I briefly mentioned in my last post I was off for a holiday

I got back yesterday, a few days later than originally planned

We went to Puerto Rico in Gran Canaria and had a great time

Halfway through the holiday we noticed our youngest daughter Evie, had a couple of spots on her body. Having already been through chickenpox with our other daughter Alice, we took her straight to the doctors

They confirmed what we thought and promptly cancelled our flight back (which should have been on the Saturday)

After various discussions with the insurance company their original plan was to fly myself and Alice back and leave Bryony and Evie there. I pleaded exceptional circumstances as Bryony’s deafness means she can’t understand English speaking Spanish people (it’s the accents and it’s sometimes hard enough for me!) and they kindly agreed to let us all stay.

What originally sounds like a free extended holiday isn’t quite what it seems. Evie obviously couldn’t be in contact with anyone who hadn’t already had chicken pox (mainly children) so she was effectively confined to the hotel room. No swimming pool, beach, taxis, buses, etc, etc. We also were only expecting to stay for a week so had only taken enough clothes, money, etc to last that amount of time

Once we finally got the all clear on the Wednesday we got flights back to Gatwick (instead of Birmingham where we originally flew from) and were then driven back home. Our flight landed just after midnight and we opened our front door around 4:30am

I popped into the office yesterday afternoon and today is my first full day back. I’ve got a lot to catch up on!

We had a great holiday and tried not to let it ruin things but at the end we were just hanging around and all wanted to come home. My geek cold turkey was in full effect since my mobile phone was the only bit of tech I took with me and I’m dreading my next bill!

Never one to miss an opportunity though I made several observations while I was away that I may be able to apply to the business!

You can stop reading now if you were just interested about my holiday

Sales

Qualifying your prospects is important.

I saw lots of guys trying to get people into their restaurants and the most common opening line was

“Hello, have you had breakfast (lunch/dinner) yet?”

They then didn’t waste any more time on people who had eaten

Obviously they didn’t give up that easily so the next line usually was to ask if they were thirsty!

Pestering people will just piss them off

I don’t like to name and shame (much!) but this is a classic example.

On our first day we walked into the village and were immediately stopped by someone promising us free event tickets, drinks, etc, etc as long as we had a look at their facilities. He told us the idea was that we’d take a look and if we liked when if came back next we’d book with them.

It was quite a hard sell but I declined explaining it was just our first day.

We were stopped several times other people doing the same thing and on one day we walked from our hotel to the beach and were stopped nine times and they really don’t take no for an answer. It’s hard to be polite after a while

The company they were representing was Anfi (I’m not linking to them!)  and we were told by our holiday rep it’s a timeshare thing. The guys actually stopping people claim it isn’t which they are technically correct on. The website says it’s “membership”

Why is ‘Vacation Membership’ different to ‘Timeshare’?

Genuine timeshare is a potentially fantastic concept because it offers flexibility and affordability. However, Vacation Membership goes beyond this by filling in the gaps, expanding on the overall concept, and setting new standards you deserve and that only Anfi can achieve. Vacation Membership is what, in an ideal world, timeshare should have been.

That’s still time share in my book but even if it’s not the constant pressing just got on my nerves in the end and even if they were giving away free money I wouldn’t listen to them

If you are lucky enough to have a captive market you can charge what you like

Once you have checked into the airport and moved into the departure longue you HAVE to buy from their shops. Obviously their are security aspects to this but is it really an excuse to pick a prices out of the air?

I paid for 3 soft drinks, and 3 sandwiches and it cost £20. I wouldn’t mind if the food was high quality but it really wasn’t.

Service Delivery

Our insurance company fell down pretty hard in this area. While I agree they fulfilled their obligations to us the way they did it wasn’t great from our perspective.

Communicate

Several times I called and was told someone would call back. That’s fine as long as you actually do it. There were lots of times we were waiting for news that never came and I had to chase it down.

We were scheduled to check out of the hotel on Saturday morning yet when we were eating dinner on Friday night I had no idea if the insurance company had arranged for us to stay in the same hotel or if we needed to go elsewhere.

Empower your staff with good systems

The insurance company obviously run a 24 hour operation in case of emergencies so I understand that I’m unlikely to be able to speak to the same person every time. If this is the case you need to give them the tools that anyone deal with issues. I called lots of times and had to wait while our file was hunted down. It was obviously a paper file sitting on the desk of whoever had it last!

Communicate better!

It was arranged that a car would pick us up from Gatwick airport and take us home. I made it clear we’d need a car seat for Evie as she’s only five months old. Our car seat was several hundred miles away in my parents car as they were originally picking us up from Birmingham

When the driver arrived he had a booster cushion and a child booster seat. Evie can’t even sit up on her own yet so how was she expected to sit in a booster seat for the three hour trip back? Legally in a private hire vehicle she could sit unrestrained – on Bryony’s lap, but from a parents perspective we didn’t want that. Especially when it could have been easily communicated to the hire company

Go the extra mile

The places went to eat got our repeat business when they went that extra mile. In one place Alice got a free ice cream as encouragement to eat her main meal. A lot of the staff were extra friendly and helpful and made a fuss of the kids. All these people got our repeat business

Our hotel came under this too. The staff were great with us even after news broke of Evie’s chickenpox. I lost count of the amount of times someone asked me

“Is the baby ok?”

If I ever go back to Puerto Rico I’d more than likely use the same hotel

The insurance company did get some plus points too. They could have been insistent and made myself and Alice fly back so I was very appreciative of that. They also paid extra for EasyJet’s “speedy boarding” on our flight back which brings me onto our next point

Being organised is key to a smooth running operation

Our boarding experience was what can only be described as shambolic and at one point I actually worried for my children’s safety. I’ll post about this separately though as I think it deserves a post all of it’s own but at this point in time if i need to fly anywhere EasyJet won’t be the first name on my list

I’ll stop there as I’ve wittered on long enough

I’ve enjoyed my time off but I did miss my tech, though it did give me lots of time to reflect on where I am from a personal and professional perspective and I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead

My corner of the office

** Random post warning! **

I’ve spent my afternoon giving my corner of the office a bit of a spring clean. Anyone that knows me will attest to the fact I’m not very tidy so every now and then I like to clear everything away and start from scratch. It took much longer than i planned and for a while i created more mess than i was clearing

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyparkes/3491986870/

I spend so much time sat here I’ve got a few personal “decorations”

Click through to the flickr page for notes

Enjoy your bank holiday weekend!

Blogging for….

I’ve had a bit of a crisis of confidence when it comes to blogging recently

When i moved away from WordPress to my own hosted blog i was really excited but for some reason my enthusiasm has worn off

One of the reasons i think is that I’ve gone back to lonely feeling you get when you first start blogging

When i first created my wordpress account i knew full well no-one would be reading and i was effectively talking to myself

Over time as other blogs linked to me and i wrote a couple of posts that people found via Google searches people left comments and all was good

I knew when i moved to my own domain I’d pretty much be starting again but for a while i really did feel like i was talking to an empty room

When Microsoft release a new product sometimes people say their biggest competition is their previous version (XP vs Vista for example)

In some ways I’ve had this

My old blog gets more comments and views then this blog

If you do this Google search my old blog appears fourth in the list

I’ve spent most of my time recently figuring out running the blog than actually posting stuff. Then i did start writing posts i started and then ended up trashing the posts as i didn’t feel they were very good

So what’s my point here?

I don’t have one really.

Your probably thinking “stop whining..it’s just a blog”

It’s a valid point but this was something i needed to get off my chest

In my last post on the old blog i said i was going to leave the blog in place for archival purposes but I’m considering deleting it. I don’t think the fact I’ve duplicated the content has helped on a Google search perspective (I’ve learnt more about sitemaps and the like recently more than I’d care!)

Right…I’ll stop the self pitying and get on with it!

Introducing……

Evie Elisabeth Parkes

Born 27th January 2009 at 01:17 weighing 8lbs 8oz

Mother and baby doing great – in fact we’re home!

Clustered Redundancy Offspring

Blame Vlad for the title

Just a baby update!

Last week we went for a “4-d” scan

This is different from the usual sonograms in that you get to see a lot more detail

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyparkes/2935907828/

I think some of them are a little weird looking but others are amazing detailed. You’ll have to decide which one ours is!

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyparkes/2935907714/

The people who did this for us really looked after us as baby didn’t want to play at all and we ended up getting scanned four times!

For our money we got a DVD of the scan, a CD with about 60 still images, six regular size prints and a large print

There are various companies that provide the service but we used a family run company called “Window to the womb” (they also sell packages on eBay!)

The packages aren’t exactly cheap and I initially wasn’t keen but the experience was great and I’m pleased we went in the end

The other reason for going was that when we went for our 20 week scan at the hospital they were unable to determine the gender

I didn’t want to know – it’s like opening your presents before Christmas – but my good wife got her way this time around as I could understand her reasons for wanting to know

I’m keeping the information to myself for the moment though