When You See a Deer You See Bambi, And I see Antlers Up On the Wall

September 1, 2011

John Simonds fishing, humor, hunting , , Leave a comment

This originally appeared 12/3/2007, but was lost during a transition to WordPress (fail there).  I’m re-posting it as it was my son’s first deer.  Since then he has harvested more food for us, and hat racks for the wall.

Here is the Post:

With all kudos to Brad Paisley, I took my son hunting… and here is his first deer, a nice 8 pointer.   To you vegetarians, sorry, but I’m an outdoorsman and I believe in being able to take care of yourself which is growing and harvesting your food…..both meat and vegetables.  After all, I love vegetarians….most of what I eat are vegetarians anyway.

It’s also because of hunting and fishing that I get to connect with my offspring.  I see many parents fighting with their kids, but we’re getting to spend hours together away from the computer, video games and other distractions that are potentially harmful to teenagers. We put the deer stand together, painted it camo, grew the food plots and reaped the rewards.

We also fed a herd of 50+ animals and worked the land from scrub to ecologically very fruitful and crop producing.

As Brad says, “but what can I say at the end of the day, honey I’m still a guy” .

Here is the song on YouTube:

Green Jobs – Teaching my Offspring about Capitalism

June 14, 2011

John Simonds Environment, family, fishing, Green, obvious, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Work , , , Leave a comment

Times are tough for teenagers to get a job.  I’ve heard that unemployment is more that 20 +% for teenagers.  My son has struck out getting a job, although he has put more effort into video games than looking for a job, so we started an eBay business.

It’s name is Neon Deal, Click on the name and see what he is selling, vintage fishing lures.   The one in the picture is worth a few hundred dollars.  Of course, I know something about it, but he built the blog and the Twitter account which you should follow and see what he is selling. He sold and shipped his first lures last week and made more money in one night than he would in a month at McDonald’s.  He’s learned a valuable lesson, work for yourself and it’s good to be the boss.  Michael Dell started a company called PC’s Limited out of his dorm room….It’s now call Dell Computers.  Hope my son gets that kind of  taste for the real green.  So he’s self employed for the summer and is understanding inventory, shipping, logistics, marketing, sales, blogging and if you don’t work…you don’t get paid.

Now, when I said green jobs in the title, I mean in terms of Money. If you thought I meant Green jobs in terms of saving the planet, they just don’t exist in real life.   One thing I learned is that if they really were a better solution, they would have succeeded on their own already.  That is the way business works.  After I spent a year working in Sustainability, I learned that the only way we still have any green jobs is because they are legislated or subsidized currently at $355,55.56 per job, not because they are better or really work or could stand on their own.  If you’ve bought into the globull warming hoax, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona I’d like to sell, and as George Straight says, “I’ll throw the Golden Gate in for Free”.  Read more on what’s really happening in this space.  The facts are all here: Watts up with That?

Beautiful Bikini’s at the beach

November 24, 2006

John Simonds Analyst, family, fishing, humor, hunting Leave a comment

Once again, I’m satirically inspired. This post is brought to you by a walk on a beautiful beach in Florida, in a winter coat. These guys were the only other beach walkers besides us. We were hoping for a Jimmy Buffet oriented post like “The weather is here, I wish you were Beautiful“…but alas, not this year as the weather didn’t cooperate.

We’ll make up for it with a huge family gathering and shrimp boil today to catch up on everything, which is always a pleasure as was Thanksgiving with my Mom yesterday.

And next week I’ll be in the other summer wonderland of Stamford Connecticut for the SWG analyst briefing we’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into. At least it’s hunting and striper season when I get home.

Things you learn about at your Analyst Relations team meetings

June 12, 2006

John Simonds fishing, humor 1 Comment

A while back at a Software Group analyst relations team meeting, I had the chance to sit next to Barbara E. (last name held by request) and she was lamenting why her husband needed liked to fish so much. I gave a completely logical answer that we men need an outlet at middle age, and fishing is a whole lot better than skirt chasing at the bar scene. In fact, I encouraged her to support her husband to fish more.

Well just before I went to RSDC, I was able to take him out and help her with that generous support of her husbands activities which now includes his very successful website where he is the leading distributor of Chatterbaits. As for fishing? He skunked me from the back of the boat as I had a day of casting practice and he caught all the fish. Here is a picture of Karl with a Roland Martin 8 pounder….SON.

karl fish.JPG

I also learned that another member of the A/R team played tennis for Rollins College and I dated one of her teammates in the 70′s….small world.

Here’s a picture of me on my boat.  Part of Barbara’s question about fishing was, were all of the electronics on the boat necessary?  I answered that I have 3 fishfinders on my boat, so yes they must be necessary.  All is understood now.  Fishing is good for husbands and their wives should support this activity.
john on boat.JPG

I  don’t really remember what we discussed at the meeting regarding analyst relations.

Blogger Meetup Correction

May 30, 2006

John Simonds Analyst, blogging, fishing, ibm, technology 2 Comments

I had lamented that IBM was late to the party for meetups, but bragged that we were having a meetup at RSDC on Tuesday June 6th from 6-8 at the bar by the escalator at the Dolphin Hotel.

Well, the egg is on my face as blogger compatriot, Ed Brill let me know they’d already done it at Lotusphere. Way to go guys, you flew the flag for us.
So the good news is that IBM is not as behind as I described, and we’re still having ours hosted by Danny Sabbah, with the first round of drinks on IBM. I hope to see you there as there will be plenty to discuss from the first two days of the show and our blogging escapades.

And Steve O’grady, I hope to have fishing pictures by then as I’m going out on Friday to chase Redfish in Titusville with one of my best friends over the years.  Here’s what we’re after.
.10 lb red.jpg

Gearing up for RSDC

May 25, 2006

John Simonds family, fishing, ibm, racing 1 Comment

All attention for me from now till June 4th is on RSDC in Orlando. We have the next edition of the show blog by execs and analysts (we were the first IBM group to try this last year), we have podcasts. We’ll have the first IBM blogger meetup (see below). So it’s heads down and get the work done which includes all the announcement prep and analyst briefing.

Except that it’s memorial day and I’m going fishing . There is the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indy 500, the Coca Cola 600, all which have to be watched. I’m also going down early to see my Mom for the first time since my Dad’s funeral and I get to fish with a good friend on the Indian River Lagoon.

I also have a ton of followups from analyst briefings, reports and other IBM issues that have to be handled before I leave.

So I’m laser focused on all things RSDC right now with no distractions

Shocking Demographics

February 26, 2006

John Simonds fishing, humor, racing 1 Comment

I sit hear blogging on Sunday afternoon while watching the Bassmasters Championship , later today I’m going to be watching NASCAR. I find this press release on my RSS feeder where I track both (to my employer, I only check these after work, I’m busy with only analyst relations issues 100% of the time): Racing Car Industry and Pro Fishing Have One Thing in Common — Fresh Fish TV about a new Fishing channel.

Great, all I need is another channel, but heck, last week on my – You know you’re a Redneck Calendar was if you tape fishing shows….which is what I’m watching as I type (ok it’s TIVO, but I was at church).

The killer was this line in the press release, “One thing the producer’s of the Fresh Fish TV show realized is that fishing market demographics are very much the same as NASCAR.” They go on to state that the fishing industry is a 41 billion dollar industry. I don’t know the facts on NASCAR, but I’m betting it’s twice that. That’s more than a lot of countries.

Let’s see, here’s a list of some demographics between the two, I wonder if you can draw any conclusions here.

Fishing is the largest participant sport there is with over 45 million fishermen (not sexist, a woman is a fisherman also), Racing had 19 of the top 20 spectator events last year.
Both take place outside
Both are predominantly Southern oriented
Both are family oriented
Both fan bases are patriotic
Both fan bases are loyal to country
Both fan bases are loyal to sponsors
Most fisherman like to hunt
Most race fans like to hunt
Both handle a GPS with the ease of a fork
Bar-b-que is a staple
Both understand meteorology and know how weather affects performance
Both like big motors that go fast
Both could survive without a grocery store
Both drink a lot of beer (not the drivers, at least when they are doing their job)
Sponsors are crucial
They know how to make big money (some discount these two as a redneck crowd, but the winner of today’s tournament picks up $500 thousand for winning, another $1-2 mil in sponsorship, Jimmy Johnson won $2.4 million for the Daytona 500 last week, not chump change).
Fishing TV ratings are on the increase
Racing TV ratings are not only on the increase, but are passing most other sports (advertisers are not lost on this fact at all)
Fishing competitors are fan friendly (no fights in the crowd or dissing the fans)
Racing competitors are fan friendly

So they find that there’s a similarity between the demographics? How could that be?

Finally able to blog again, like missing a friend. Can I be that busy?

February 25, 2006

John Simonds blogging, delusions, fishing Leave a comment

I just went the longest period of time without blogging since I began. I’ve missed days because I just didn’t have anything to talk about, but this streak has a different cause. Before I get to the point of discussion, let it be known that I really missed blogging. It causes me to focus on a subject and be lucid about it. This comes naturally to some, not to me. I also have to line up future blogs as I can’t just sit down and write all the time.

Advertisement: I lined up Grady Booch, Drew Clark (IBM VC programs) and my favorite PHP programmer , as well as I”m going to blog about an analyst event next week that has in part kept me too busy to write.

I’ve been too busy, a pretty lame reason I admit but true. Now that I have that out of the way, I knew this the entire time, and even talked about being too busy when speaking with several analysts and co-workers.

This brings me to why. When talking to the others, I got the same answer, yes they were busier than normal and no, they didn’t know why either. Here’s my hypothesis.

Bandwidth
A few years back, we said the answer to problems was bandwidth. It was cheap and getting cheaper and we should just throw bandwidth at a lot of situations and it may not be the perfect answer, but it would solve the problem. Now we have lots of connectivity, anywhere, anytime and while not instantaneous, we can get what we want, who we want and can pound away at enough doors, one will open.

Tools
Handhelds, access devices, instant messaging, cellphones…more ways to do more stuff and reach more people. This has turned the volume knob up also. Before, we’d send out a request and wait for an answer, now we get it right away and are distracted to answer these requests. How did we find our way for 1000′s of years without a GPS, or meet up with someone else without a cell phone?

Attitude
We are far less patient for things now. I fish and patience is a virtue. You have to wait for the right conditions, the fish to move up to your space, the weather, sticking with a pattern, whatever. Patience is a virtue they say. On the other hand, my son plays video games….it is an attention span zapper, but a sign of the times. So like the gamers, a lot of us at work are expecting more and more now in everything. If it doesn’t happen now, run and gun to something else. Even as I type this, I’m getting IM’d about decisions on bathroom decorating from my wife.

So am I getting more work done? Outside of blogging, yes. My real job is analyst relations and I’m getting more done and working at a faster pace, doing more and being more efficient. I have to.

I need to find some more time to fish.

A Crappie day after a Crappy week

January 14, 2006

John Simonds Analyst, fishing, humor, ibm 3 Comments

This Fish is a Crappie

I could have done with out the events of this week, so I took some time to recouperate. That was why I didn’t post the last couple of days….

First things first. I got to hear about a report where our programs finished a gnats toenail behind another Software company (rhymes with Lycrosoft) and I got to spend the better part of 3 days figuring out why we didn’t know it was happening. As it turns out, the analyst group “forgot” to notify us, but admitted they should have, of the 2 analyst relations reps that covered this report, one retired and the other moved out of a/r 6 months ago, so guess who got left holding the “garbage” bag……moi.

So I needed something to take my mind off of one of the worst weeks I’ve had in a while by doing two of the things I like, Fishing and Martial Arts. Friday went to Judo class and threw some people around (O Goshi, Uki Goshi, Hane Goshi, Harai Goshi and Ju No Kata) and got thrown some also. I felt a little better.

Today I went to the I went to the Raleigh Bass and Saltwater Fishing Expo . This next sentence is for Nancy and Steve. I went shopping and it was at a fishing show.

Anyway, I got a new Crappie pole that I can’t wait to try out as they’ll be biting soon.

Next week will be better, it could only go one way after last week…I hope. Anyway, I’ll have a great interview with Doug Heintzman who will expound on Research, ODF, Software Group and some other really interesting things….don’t miss it.

What I did on my Thanksgiving Break

November 27, 2005

John Simonds family, fishing, racing 3 Comments


I didn’t work. In fact, I went to Florida to see family and enjoy the time off.

I also had one of my best days of fishing in a long time recording 10 good Redfish and sighting many more at Mosquito Lagoon. You’ll notice from my clothes that it was cold that day starting in the 30′s with wind. But it’s a good thing we decided to go. We had the whole place to ourselves with the fish cooperating.

I caught fish just like these for 6 hours and had the time of my life. The picture on the right is Brad Stine, the guide who took me. Give him a call at 386-566-6823 and he’ll put you on fish.

Then I enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner with my whole family. We haven’t been together for various reasons (mostly travel and living in different cities) for a long time.

After dinner, I got to take a drive in my brother in law’s Porsche GT3. It’s a red rocket that will do 196 mph and stop on a dime, then give you 9 cents change. I won’t say how fast we went, but it was in mid triple digits….what a rush.

Thanks Geoff for the ride of my life.

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