I was surprised yesterday when I returned to my desk from a career counseling class to find a bouquet of flowers on my desk. I was even more surprised to read the card and see it was from my Colleagues from around the globe (13 people in 8 countries). They sent them to me with best wishes in my future prospects. It felt good to know they cared enough to send flowers for my farewell!! They were a great team to work with over the years and many of them I have become good friends with and will cherish that friendship for years to come. I will miss them when I leave Volvo. My sincere thanks go out to the Service Runtime Managers for the Desktop environment and the Product Manager of FactoryPlace at Volvo.

Jennifer and I made it to the gym again tonight for a “meet with a trainer” session. This was a 3rd visit since Saturday, so we are on a roll! It is fun going to the gym, it just takes so much time. We are normally there for at least 90 minutes when we go.

I have reverted back to a paper time management system! I used to use a Day Timer for all my time management tracking. In 2001 when I started using Outlook at work, and using a PDA (especially when I got a blackberry tied into the corporate system), I stopped using a paper system. Now that I am about to be unemployed and don’t have a PDA, I decided to go back to a paper system. I actually think I might have lost some skills using all electronic over the years. Paper systems force you to look at task more as they don’t automatically carry over from day to day, you must re-write them. That forces a re-evaluation of open tasks, etc. Hmmm, Maybe paper isn’t so bad!

I read an article today announcing a new search engine that was created by former Google employees.  One of the employees created the search engine (or at least some of it) that Google uses today.  The article stated they would be open for business today.  If your interested in using or just curious,  the web site is www.cuil.com  (it is pronounced cool.com)

It looks like it may have potential with a fresh new look for a search engine.  Complete with pictures, nice color scheme, etc.  However, I don’t think they are ready for mainstream or ready to compete with the other search engines.  Most of my searches ended in messages indicating the site was overloaded, or could not find any items.  Seems the longer my search phrase the less successful.  I also found the pictures don’t always match the web site.  I did a search for “greg and jennifer cruise planners” and found this web site with a picture of somebody I never met.  (maybe he is a Greg Becker?)  I found other websites with pictures that I could not locate on those websites.  I did find some creative picture links to sites (explains errors as well), such as when I did a search for DeSales (the university I attend), it found an article on wikipedia and had the universities “character U” logo next to it.  That logo does belong to the University, but it isn’t anywhere in the wikipedia article.

I searched for all my websites and had very little success, yet the boast they have the largest search database with over 12 billion sites indexed.  Seems like I could find some of my sites!  I didn’t find anywhere that allowed website submissions.  Not sure what their bot is named, but I will have to watch my website analysis tool to see if any bots from them crawl my site. (this means they have automated means of exploring websites – hence bots and crawl).

Overall, it may have potential with a fresh new look and associated pictures (if they get them right)  But, not only does Google not need to worry yet, but none of the others need to worry either.  I will keep an eye on them, maybe they will get the bugs worked out fast.  They must since major news agencies have reported them as being up and running.  All it takes is one bad visit to loose a potential client forever (or at least a long long time.)  So I do invite you to try it out, but don’t expect Google results just yet!

Wow, where did May go, and I have no entries for that whole month! Well, I can only blame it on School. It has been very busy with 3 classes, but I will finish next week and hopefully you will see more writings from me then!

Nothing else has been going on. The weather has been nice for the spring. I bought a used riding lawn mower this year. The past three years, I had a service taking care of the lawn, but since I am not traveling much anymore, I had to let the service go. I was looking to buy a new lawn mower, then decided to see if I could find a decent deal on ebay for a riding mower. I did! I found a Craftsman 19.5HP 42″ deck, 6 speed for $350. The motor sounds solid and doesn’t smoke or anything. The transmission could be a little better, it is sometimes hard to tell what gear you are in. Cuts nice (after I sharpened the blades a bit), and works great. The guy also gave me a utility cart with the mower, and I find that is nice for hauling the tree clippings, etc. from the back yard to my truck. I am enjoying the mower.

I did go to Sweden in May for a week. This time of year is nice there. Still cool enough to wear a light coat most of the time, but daylight was abundant. I had daylight from about 4 am until after 10 pm. That always makes it nicer than in December when it is cold and dark all day! I was in a conference, so they had evening activities planned. That made for a busy week. One day we went to one of our team members house for a cook out. Then walked along the ocean afterwards. The second day, we had our meetings at Volvo Penta’s test facilities. At lunch, Penta took us on a 55′ boat. It had the new IPS system, which gives the boat 30% more power or fuel savings. The IPS system uses a joy stick when manuvering in a harbor. This allows precise control of the boat. You can even move the boat sideways using the joy stick. I got to try it out, it was really cool. That evening we went to the Amusement park in Gothenburg and had dinner there. The third night, they had a bus pick us up and drive us about 1 hour north of Gothenburg. There we boarded a sail boat and sailed back toward Gothenburg for 2.5 hours. That was very nice and peaceful. The last night I was there, most of the team members had already left. Asa Backman invited me to her house for coffee and cake, and she took me around a part of Gothenburg I wasn’t familar with. That was very nice.

Well, I better get back to my studies. I plan to write another entry under the College topic today, so check that one out also.

I can’t believe it is the end of April. The weather has finally given us spring, the days are growing longer and it is just a wonderful time of year! If I could just freeze time for a while, it would be on a day like today! The weather is in the low to mid 70s with an occasional nice breeze. Hopefully May will be this nice for the whole month. Yea, I know it must rain from time to time, but while I am sleeping would be the perfect time for that!