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For those who haven't caught up with the news, we have sold the Jethro businesses to IT Integrity and are now working for IT Integrity as a Business Manager. As a salaried employee again for the first time in 15 years (although I am part owner of the business) it means I now get to have publics holidays and annual leave. I have also continued with my scheduling of family time in my diary.

Yesterday I took the kids up to the park  behind our house while Jude went shopping. Jade and I decided to go on a bit of a photo hunt while Erin and Mercedes took their paper planes to fly. Miranda lay down on a chair and watched!

The following pictures tell the story of what we did at Cockatoo Crest Park.

I liked the shot I got of Mercedes about to launch her plane. Erin loved to run and launch herself into the swing stomach first. Then Jade and I took some water shots, the dribbling tap, followed by the three kids collaborating to produce water anklets. Erin ended up standing on top while Mercedes pushed the button so Jade and I could get shots.

Life has been going by too fast to write about it. Sorry about that – but sometimes it happens.

Here's a quick summary of the last few weeks.

• Major software development project that the Jethro team has been working on coming to the point where it is to be installed at the clients for testing. Now in testing, bug fixing and finalisation stages. This has been a massive project and taken almost every weekend for the last 2 months.
• Another software development job coming to completion this week.
• Firming up new contracts with clients so as to ensure a steady income stream for potential new full time staff.
• Finalising the hand over to Gordon of the Web Services Management. He now handles most of this on his own.
• Installation of two new servers and decommission of three old ones. Migrating all the users, setting up remote access for all our staff and troubleshooting the inevitable problems.
• Basketball coaching – preparing for a competition in September.
• Football – have had to skip due to some niggly injuries and inability to play.
• Photography – Nelson Lai came to me to take me through a professional shooting tutorial, followed by a real live model shoot and then post shoot editing techniques in Photoshop. Wow what an amazing day. I have started editing photos and will slowly display them as I get them done. There are already some up on facebook for those who connect to me there, and the public  flickr and redbubble accounts get the better quality versions.
• Family – with so much work on I have prioritised family time over other activities (including blogging). Hence why I have not gone to football training and skipped a game I would dearly have loved to play in. We went to see Ice Age 3 the other day and have also gone to game zone, gone to the bike riding park and spent a lot of time watching Masterchef together.

Yesterday was an incredibly stressful day for me. I am usually pretty unstressed and have great coping mechanisms for dealing with stress. I am able to easily recognise it and usually am able to manage it well. Stress for me is usually around deadline completion for clients. However yesterday I wanted to rip off the heads of _insert large animal here_ and throw things and scream like a 14 year old teenage girl having a tantrum.

Why?

Our internet stopped working early in the morning.

OK – so why is that bad, and why did it stop working? Well when you build a business that is based on having the internet running as much as it is based on the power running, not having either is very stressful. Made more so when you can do nothing about it. Now in the case of the internet, we have a very good relationship with our supplier, the best ISP in Australia Internode. We have a silver level business grade account with a dedicated service line, short phone queues (typically under a minute to be answered) and very good techs who provide great assistance. However yesterday they could tell me nothing about why the internet suddenly stopped connecting! We knew that the router was working – it was brand new and we switched between it and another one just to check, we eliminated potential network issues here by isolating the network and connecting directly, and they had no known reasons from their end for it not to be working, yet while the modem would handshake and attempt to authenticate it could not get authentication to occur.

Yesterday was a long day but very rewarding. I left home at 7:30am and drive until 10 AM to get to a client – through two mountain ranges and beautiful forest parks and past several large dams. Once there I sat in a meeting for 2 hours and then spent 4 and half hours preparing for my presentation at their committee meeting that night. The committee meeting kicked off and dealt with a lot of issues before finally getting down to me. As they had been going for 2 hours at that point I suggested a break first which was gladly accepted. I then lead them through some governance and management principles, using various examples from the previous two hours of meeting time to show where they were acting in a way that was not the most efficient use of their time. After looking at how to reduce time spent in the meeting rehashing the managements decisions on operational issues I lead them through an exercise in looking at the financials from a strategic perspective. It was so good receiving constant affirmations and nods from those present, as well as very positive body language. I closed with indicating the things we will be running through next week when we do some more specific training on how to manage their organisation strategically. Next week I will be travelling up there again to spend half a day coaching on on one with the executive director and then a mock committee meeting going through more exercises. The following day will be spent redesigning their executive reports both operational and financial.

I find this sport of work extremely stimulating and very rewarding. In this case the client is a small not for profit organisation providing a vital community service, but they are constantly tied up in dealing with issues and as a result many of their long term plans never see the light of day. I have been helping them streamline their organisational processes in order to be able to put the time required into the strategic and long term growth plans they have.

After the meeting finished at 8:15PM I drove home picking up a snake for Judith on the way. A long 15 hour day but so much fun. I love what I do!

I have entered a 2 day intensive of coding. I am effectively off the air. I have turned on my out of office notification on my email, handed my email over to my personal assistant to manage anything urgent, handed her my phones as well, gone offline on messenger and set Skype to do not disturb. Tweetdeck has been shutdown and i have placed a barrier in front of my office so no one can get in. I have got a fridge full of energy drinks, tonic water and bottled water. I will be posting some blog articles that were pre written so it looks like I’m still here if i get around to it in a break.

See you on the other side.