Today in the annals of "are you kidding me???" Congrats to the guys hauling halves of a double-wide trailer that's not making it through a construction zone. They're backed up so far, people are driving the wrong way on the shoulder to get out of the jam... #brilliant

"We will be performing system maintenance from Friday, 10/10/2025, at 5:00 PM CDT through Monday, 10/13/2025, at 11:59 PM CDT. There may be brief interruptions in service during this time." Un-sortable dates/times suck! And, are they hiring? Last time I had a "window" that long was early '90s! 🤦‍♂️

I’m not anti-AI. I am, however, anti the rapacious tech bros who selfishly hype AI for the purpose of increasing their wealth and power at the expense of our humanity.

a key thing about vought — and all of these guys — is that they have a totally top down and hierarchical vision of the world. they believe that the cultural changes they hate can be turned off by destroying the federal government because they can’t imagine that they emerged bottom-up in society

Stopped for some serious Waffle House on the way home (smothered, covered, and capped). Brought back memories of a friend who's passed and the hours we spent talking gaming at the Waffle House counter...

Flying west into the sunset is awesome. Nowhere close to keeping up in a commercial jet, but keeping it on the horizon, sinking slowly, for as long as possible... #ChaseIt

The chaos never ceases! Up but not that far up. Down but not that far down. How may different numbers will they throw out before TACO does his thing? Can't imagine any state or company trusting America anytime soon. ☹️

They at the quintessential heart of what Republicanism has become. They are single-issue voters, and their issue is doing as they please because they're "the good guys" if only in their own eyes. Give it time. If things turn sour, they'll endow anything and everything to rescue their legacies...

Dinner is off to a good start. Looking forward to pairing the Old Speckled Hen with fish and chips at #ThePub...

Wow... Just saw #Tron: Ares. Not sure how much 3D might add, but it was darned good in IMAX. Do I have thoughts? Oh, I do... Funny that Master Control Program and Model Context Protocol are both MCPs. 😇 It shows (in a good way) that they asked some actual #AI folks to consult. NIN soundtrack! 🤯

A beautiful day for #IBM #TechXchange to wrap up. Great to meet new people as well as names I've known for years. Catching up is always great!

I had never read any of the works listed for the big essay question on the English AP exam, so I came up with a major spin on the topic and used Faust as my "work of literary significance." Except, I had never read that in English either. I only read it in German for another class. #TryThatAI

A4) Build the business into your upgrades plans. What are their current pain points? What does their roadmap look like (to their horizon)? If possible, give yourself flexibility w/ smaller, cheaper, rolling upgrades over time. Boiling the ocean every 3 years sucks. #ciochat

#ciochat Q 4

A3) If it's not in the contract up-front, you can't really complain on the back-end. Had the SAP migration guru start a migration from the EU, get on a plane (before in-flight wi-fi) for 7 hours, then de-plane to find out things weren't right. But, no penalty for that. #ciochat

#ciochat Q 3

A2) For my particular niche, there's a ton of vendor support built in for rolling upgrades, hot patching, live migrations, etc. Nobody really noticed one hardware refresh since no service went down. (shilling badly) @IBM #Power11 and related tech have upped their game. #ciochat

#ciochat Q 2

A1.1) Lately, I've been lucky not to get a lot of push-back, but the way some manufacturers "incentivize" upgrades with huge hikes in maintenance costs after thr initial comtract expires helps a lot. Building a laundry list of biz wins for the new gear is good too. #ciochat

#ciochat Q1

CARTOON OF THE DAY 😕🇺🇸

Folks arriving at the back side of the convention center before 0730 on the last day of #IBM #TechXchange? Must be an Earl performance tuning talk!

🤯🤯🤯 Not on my bingo card for sure...

Not the way to make America great again... Or green... Or a leader... www.utilitydive.com/news/interna...

I seem to have ordered a mountain... Glad dinner was a salad!

For the saner (sleeping ;-) folks at #IBM #TechXchange, the SpaceX Falcon-9 (Starlink) launch was actually visible from the Hilton a little before 3am... Pretty cool even at this distance...

Looks like everybody is lining up for the #AI circle of finance. Architected FOMO reaches far and wide... www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/hita...

And that, oh my children, is the difference between "spell check" and "grammar check". If you're posting really important stuff in public, it's best to do both...

Holy irony, Batman! The company paying a fine to the Australian government for using #AI where it shouldn't? Say it ain't so! www.cnbc.com/2025/10/06/a...

Well, that may be the most messed up popup ad I've seen in many a winter moon. Who would ever think of inviting Marsha Blackburn to an #AI summit? Even Skynet would leave her alive as "too dumb to be any threat."

Nothing like a red ale to go with a Big Blue #TechXchange... #yum

unceasing[dot]grift[dot]gov would be more accurate, but I guess this is where we are now in America...

I forgot what "far from the elevator" really meant in this hotel. In fairness, it's been 7+ years and a major remodel since I was here...

Oh, sure! Come to sunny Orlando! It will be great! 🤭 Glad the hotel has a covered walkway to the convention center...

And our pilot coming on the speakers as we idle on the tarmac at Charlotte (paraphrasing): "The government shutdown has reduced air traffic control to the minimum, so they're spacing our takeoffs about 30 miles to keep things more manageable. We should take off in another 15 minutes..."

Mercy! They are not lying about the *picante* in the picante margarita! A good start to what is technically breakfast. 😇

Ready or not, Orlando, #IBM #TechXchange folks are arriving!

A relative is retiring and interested in buying a computer for home use once she gives back the employer's machine. She asked for some translation of specs and advice... I think she released the kraken... 😇

People using terms that have specific meanings in contexts where, at best, they can't prove that those specific meanings hold drives me up the wall: "He's lying!" Can you prove that he knew what he said was false when he said it? Got evidence? How about just "He was wrong!"? #MayBeDefamatory

And, the hits just keep coming! Yet another stressed link in the #DataCenter and #AI supply chain threatening to both slow things down and strand investment... www.cnbc.com/2025/09/30/a...

As if I didn't think the #AI race was unsustainable before? Definitely not a bubble. Definitely not bursting all over certain people. I hope this article is wrong... www.tomshardware.com/pc-component...

Wise words and very much what sets military professionals and real leaders apart from ragtag militias...

A4) Another one of those questions where my war stories are generally about surviving the opposite. Adding "lasting / sustainable" to that makes it even tougher to think of positive examples. Change of #CIO, C-suite, M&A&D can derail positive change underway... #ciochat

A3.1) Moving from the easy-to-capture into the hard-to-sythesize/-visualize range. One I've seen is charting the normal stuff and overlaying the spikes and disruptions then talking about how they did or didn't derail the "real work". #ciochat

A2) That depends a lot on the org chart and what frameworks / mindsets it reflects. Slack may actually be slack, but it may also be the "if it ain't broke, improve it" time. Ruthlessly down-sizing teams is definitely the anti-pattern and a sign of wishful thinking. #ciochat

A1.1) Emphasize lead over lag metrics. Get the teams involved in their own success through setting goals, exploring how tatical changes can move strategic needles, public dashboards, and gamification among other things (Four Disciplines of Execution). #ciochat

This is a more interesting story than the headline suggests. It will be interesting to see whether this catches on with other power providers and interconnects to try to get #DataCenter developers (and others) to be more realistic with their estimates... www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aep-...

Well, @foreignaffairs.com wins the award for "most apt thumbnail" in my e-mail for today. It's not even close... 😇

Not a fan of the headline, but I don't disagree with their conclusions. America pivoted into areas where we didn't have to compete (a de facto #BlueOceanStrategy). Inevitably, the sharks have come to redden our ocean, but our next pivot is unclear at best. www.foreignaffairs.com/japan/how-am...