As I mentioned in my previous blog, I went to Virginia and Maryland for Thanksgiving this year. Anj planned the whole trip for me :) It was great!! I had an absolutely amazing time. It was fantastic to see everyone, especially the kids. It's incredible how fast the kids grow up.
I arrived at Anjali and Jim's house on Wednesday morning. Isn't their house gorgeous, especially with the trees and all the fall leaves?
Anj and I took the girls to the driving range before Jim and I played 9 holes. How cute are they?
Maya's favorite color is pink... can ya tell?
Maya at the driving range
And a video
While Anj and her mom were slaving away in the kitchen, Jim and I took the girls bowling. Did you know bowling alleys are open on Thanksgiving but Starbucks is closed...who knew?
Maddie Bowling
Maya "Bowling," aka dropping the ball on the lane :-P
Maya wanted to take a video of Jim bowling... then she got a little silly.
Maya Bowling
Jim and Anj brining the turkey
The Feast!! It was delicious, especially the turkey which Anj made and the pumpkin pie and peanut butter balls which Anita made. Mmmm, delicious!!
Akshay and Shreya playing with a ball
Akshay being an airplane
Jim, Akshay, and I played Mastermind
Shreya and Grandpa
Shreya wrecking havoc in her PJs as mommy looks on
"Shreya, cheese"
Akshay, Sanj, and I all went to the Maryland basketball game on Friday. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures. Let's just say Sanjay and Akshay have more Maryland clothes than the Maryland Team Store :-P
Shreya devouring a cookie
Akshay put on a little show for us
Thanks everyone, this weekend was a fantastic break from work. I had a great time.
P.S. For all of you on the West Coast, our East Coast family is expecting a visit from you in the near future. You have to get out there and see these kids before they grow up and man, do they grow fast.
A bunch of you have been asking to see pictures... ask and you shall receive. I uploaded a few from my cell phone. Sorry about the poor image quality. Yes, I know I really need to invest in a digital camera :-P
This is the view from my favorite conference room, also known as my second home since I have been known to be there until midnight on a nightly basis. This is what I am talking about when I say there are trees everywhere.
As I said in my last post, it is fall now and the leaves are changing colors. I took a few pics while I was out on the golf course earlier today.
That's Steve, my golf buddy on the left.
Doesn't my truck look weird with NC plates? The guy at the car wash was making fun of me yesterday since I walked in there with flip flops on and my truck has a Cal Poly decal and a Raiders license plate frame. He points this out to me and says "man, you couldn't be any more obviously from California." I have to say, I am quite possibly the only person in NC with a Raiders license plate frame.
The Durham Bulls stadium. For those of you who have seen to movie "Bull Durham" with Kevin Costner, yes those Durham Bulls. Unfortunately, that's as close to professional baseball as we get around here.
My roommate, Andrew's "Redneck" Halloween Costume
The girls were "Nerds" for Halloween.
Liya sleeping when I went to visit her.
And awake...ready to start crying :-P
For anyone with a vehicle approaching 90,000 miles, let me give you some advice. "Just sell the thing!!" Auto maintenance is FAR too much work. I spent a full Saturday running around picking up all this stuff.
One week later, my truck is now past 90,000 miles and I haven't put a thing in. In fact, I even bought more stuff. Man, am I glad that's finally over with. At least now she's all ready for our road trip to Virginia next week :)
It's Fall in North Carolina and that means a lot more than it did in California. In California, going from Summer to Fall simply meant going back to school... apparently we were missing out on this thing called seasons. Although the weather is quite mild in North Carolina, this whole checking the weather because it changes all the time thing is still new to me. I swear just a little under a month ago, I was telling y'all about how it was in the triple digits and was 70 degrees at night. It's crazy, all of a sudden, with no warning, the weather will drop 10 degrees and never go back. Now, when I go to work in the morning, it's in the 30s, not the 70s. And at the peak of the day, its in the 60s, not the 100s. Apparently this is what seasons are!! Who knew? Fall is gorgeous out here though. Most of the trees have changed color by now and since there are so many of them, it quite a sight. It's definitely new to me, but a welcome change for now...we'll see how long that lasts :-P Everyone makes fun of me when I say it is cold and it is 50 degrees :(
We are still in the middle of quite an intense drought out here. We currently have about 120 days of water left in our water reserves. The city has gone as far as enforcing some extreme water rationing. We are no longer allowed to wash our cars at home or water our lawn using sprinklers. It's pretty crazy. It's something like a $250 fine for your first offense and over $1,000 for your second.
On a completely different note, a bunch of my buddies went to a Gun Show today. It was hilarious. I read about 2 sentences into the email and lost interest and deleted it, but apparently people are into this stuff around here. Granted, a bunch of my friends went just to see what it was all about and laugh at people so excited about guns, but I'm pretty sure Garrett was serious when he mentioned going to the shooting range for our Q1 team offsite at dinner the other night.
Then there's the whole religion thing. I was out volunteering for Habitat for Humanity last weekend. Before we got started, the leader of the group asked us all to hold hands, bow our heads, and say a prayer. It was very different than California, that's for sure. There is just no way that would ever happen in California. Regardless, she asked very politely, so I told myself "Hey, you're in the bible belt, just go along with it." Strange nonetheless.
For those of you who don't know, I won't be in California for Thanksgiving this year. I will be joining our East Coast family in Virginia for Thanksgiving. I'm pretty excited about it!! It will be very nice to get away from work for a little bit and see the kids and all. I just hope traffic doesn't live up to it's expectations... I hear it's crazy. I have about a week and a half off of work for Christmas, so I will definitely be in California then. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone. See you soon.
This week, I had the opportunity to have my first Telepresence session. I have to say, Telepresence is one of the most impressive uses of technology I have EVER seen!! It is simply Ridiculously Cool Technology!!
For those of you who have not heard of it, Telepresence is basically video conferencing on steroids. I'm talking 2 identical conference rooms with 3 60" 1080p plasma screens which mesh into the conference table perfectly. There are directional speakers and microphones, so when the person on the left side of the conference room speaks, you hear the audio coming from the left speaker. Then you look to the left, and you see the person speaking on the left screen.
No words can explain it. You really have to see it to believe it. If I didn't know any better, you could have convinced me I was in the same room with Garrett when he was actually in Toronto.
Check out this video of the next generation of Telepresence we are working on. Chambers is at a meeting in India and the person he is talking to is in San Jose.
Here are a few images from Garrett's Facebook I thought I'd share with y'all. That's right, my manager is on Facebook :)
Yup, that's my manger, "G Money" as he calls himself :)
Garrett and the kids on Halloween. No, they're not all his although he and Bridgett do love kids. The one dressed in all foil is his oldest, Carson. One of the twins, Braden, is next to him dressed as Superman. The other twin is Avery, over Garret's right shoulder, dressed s Super Girl.
Garrett and Avery out on the lake.
And who could forget Davis, the 14 month old.
Avery, Braden, Carson, and Davis. That's right... A, B, C, D... who knows what else is in store? Garrett has the energy for it, that's for sure!!
Garrett likes to open every meeting with a YouTube video. Here's an example:
Garrett and Braden putting together the 985 piece Millennium Falcon in Time Lapse Photography. It took them two days. Watch for the wardrobe changes... they even get a little silly towards the end.
Thank you very much for all your support to our JDRF Fundraiser everyone!! I am extremely pleased to announce that this fundraising effort was an absolute success on every level!!
Here are our final totals:
I had a personal goal of raising $1000 which was far exceeded. I received a total of $1,427 in cash donations!!
As a team, we raised, $31,404 and I am happy to announce we are the top performing team in this year's Sales Associates Program!!
"So how did we raise so much money?", you ask. First all, we held a Charity Silent Auction which was an extreme success. I used my connections at Best Buy to get a Video iPod, Digital Camera, and 2 MP3 Players donated. All in all, I was able to get Best Buy to donate $650 worth of merchandise to our cause. Believe me, this was no easy feat. It took everything from cold calls and letter writing, to store visits and tax documentation, not to mention following up with managers for about a month selling them on our cause. It was a lot of work, but extremely rewarding and a great experience in the end :)
Someone donated their Beach House for a week. Garrett got one of his church friends to donate a round of golf at TPC Wakefield. He even auctioned off a weekend on his boat! Audrey pulled a basketball signed by the entire Duke basketball team. A bunch of the girls donated babysitting time. We even got a few VPs to offer to have dinner with the highest bidder. It was a true team effort!!
In total, from the auction, we raised $8,616. Of course, Cisco, being the amazing company that they are, matched every penny of the donation for a grand total of $17,236 from the auction.
My portion of the auction sold for $770, $1540 after the Cisco match.
Now that was only the start of it. At orientation, Garrett said he wanted to form a band. I didn't think much of it at the time, but he really followed through on it. He and a bunch of my coworkers formed a band, and practiced relentlessly for a month, and put on a killer show. Garrett even pulled off getting them a studio to practice at 3 days per week.
Garrett got one of his college buddies who is a graphic designer to make us some killer posters.
Zach booked us the Pour House in downtown Raleigh as a venue. We had a packed house of over 200 people show up including Scott Brown, the VP of Worldwide Sales Enablement. We made over $1,800 in ticket sales, of course, all matched by Cisco for a total of $3,600.
Here are a few videos from the concert. Sorry about the quality. Garrett has been really busy recently and hasn't had a chance to get the High Def feed off of the department's camera we use for our presentations yet.
The encore, "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz And yes, the big kid in the green t-shirt, that's Garrett...my manager :-P
And that guy who hopped up on stage at the end ... that's Gordon, Garret's manager :)
And no, of course he was not buying rounds of shots for everyone at the bar the whole night long :-P
James shredding the guitar playing "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses James is AMAZING!! We auctioned off 10 hours of guitar lessons with James. They went for $800:) He's well worth it!!
And finally, as a company, we had an aggressive goal of raising $140,000 this year. A grand total of $167,913 was donated to JDRF from the Cisco RTP campus!! This far exceeds the $120,000 raised last year and is by far the most we have ever raised for JDRF!
Thank you very much for all of your generous donations everyone. Results as amazing as this could not have been achieved without YOU and your support!!
The Cisco Family Wearin' Our Stunna Shades... NOT My Idea
The Subset of Region Fantastic 4 That Were Warriors Enough to Make it to the Walk the Morning after the Halloween Party
