"In the trenches" product management - Jo De Baer's blog

Sydney Australia - Scenic City Run

jdebaer — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:02:50 +0000

I’ll be leaving just a week before the Sydney (half) marathon is on, so I decided to run the 21.1 track myself on Sunday. I had to make some adjustments, as they really seal off the highways for the event. (And when I called the major he said you know he just couldn’t pull that together for me on such short notice.) Not my best time ever (1 hour and 51 minutes), but a nice route featuring North Sydney, the Bridge of course, Circular Quay, the Botanical Gardens, Darling Harbour and a finish at the Opera House. Total distance this week: 54k.

I’m getting to know the city pretty well by now.

Adelaide Australia - Beach Run and Wine Tasting

jdebaer — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:20:19 +0000

Good time today: ran 13k in just over an hour, 12.9kph on average. A large part was on the beach. Bit better than my Provo run to the Utah Lake (average was 12.09kph), but then again that was at a much higher altitude. Today’s run brought my week’s total to 46k, which is more than my 42k goal. Was not easy, considering two time zone shifts of at least 8 hours each, and having a 6 day week (lost the 27th somewhere in the Pacific). I ran the whole week with my new set of shoes, Adistar Salvation 2. First impression is very good.

In the afternoon the people from our local Novell partner took us on a trip to the Fleurieu wine area. We visited D’Arenberg and Woodstock. I’m not a big wine drinker, but we had a glass of the 2004 Woodstock Cabernet Sauvignon during lunch, and I must say - “yum”.

In other news …

jdebaer — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:51:24 +0000

Ran a 21k from Intel HQ to Nike HQ and back. That’s in Hilsboro. Was there for work. Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes and 34,06 seconds. On the plane I read a really good book on running. The author knows what he’s talking about. Plenty of good advice in there, was doing several things (very) wrong. Work wise I have a few interesting international assignments coming up, related to Novell Cloud Manager. When I’m back from those my new place in Brussels should be finished … looking forward to moving in.

Pernod Ricard Australia pioneers Novell Cloud Manager (beta)

jdebaer — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:27:11 +0000

Together with our local partner Akurit, Pernod Ricard Pacific is testing Novell Cloud Manager. Read the full story here.

Old skool

jdebaer — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:02:44 +0000

Awesome - my dad still has a working Fujica, model ST701. As I’m starting out with photography (got myself a Nikon D5000 a couple of weeks ago) this is the perfect tool to get the base concepts down. There’s only so much to adjust: aperture, focus (manually of course), ASA/ISO, and shutter speed. That’s it! Zoom? Nope, you just have to move closer to the subject. Has a light meter that’s battery operated, that’s the most advanced feature. Need to find batteries.

21

jdebaer — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:43:08 +0000

Running is an excellent sport for people who are out a lot on biz travel. All you need is a good pair of shoes - there’s streets everywhere, and every decent hotel has some sort of a gym anyway. I started training around October of last year, and right now I’m at the point where I can do a half marathon under two hours without too much trouble. We’ve been doing three of those over the past weekends (I must say it took some slight pushing from my buddy Adam). I’m mostly worried about strain related injuries, but yesterday’s track was almost exclusively pavement, and I got no warning signals or anything. Sweet. Now we’re gonna gradually speed things up while running on pavement more often. Then the marathon. Then the Comrades in South Africa. Right.

The London runs were quite nice - I got to see most of the city while working out. The first one looped from Canary Wharf along the river all the way to the London Eye. Took us past London Bridge and Tower Bridge. The week after that we headed west, to Hyde Park, along sights like WestMinster Abbey and Marble Arch. I need to get one of those GPS watches, they make scenic running so much easier.

DADF#BE / DADDAB / DADABE

jdebaer — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:42:04 +0000

If you’re into classical guitar and in London, make sure to drop by in the Spanish Guitar Centre. That’s on Cranbourne. They got some nice high quality brands there. You can also have them craft something up for you, all custom. Brought my guitar from Brussels last weekend, as it had a weird ring to it (nasty fall). Repairing it did not take long for the guys. They also cleaned it up a bit, stringed it up, and hey - it looks like new now. Sounds like new too. Jacob documented some of the surgery.

Speaking of classical guitar - one of my favorite composers is José González. If you think you don’t know him, well, you likely do: most people will recognize his version of Heartbeats, from the Sony TV commercial. My personal favorite is Crosses. But anyway - he was in London two weekends ago with his new band, Junip. They played @Borderline. Great new material, and, as it turned out, quite a small venue … we actually got to talk to him after the gig! Junip will be playing in Belgium and the Netherlands soon, check out their site for details.

BrainShare EMEA 2010 Cloud Manager keynote

jdebaer — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:35:31 +0000

Linked to on novell.com here.

Ordering IT - new levels of ease and efficiency

jdebaer — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:40:49 +0000

I got carried away while playing with our internal Cloud Manager test system … but hey, how good does this look? A Paris la semaine prochaine pour visiter des clients.

Novell Cloud Manager at the Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit

jdebaer — Sat, 22 May 2010 18:54:37 +0000

London, June 15, Hilton London Tower Bridge - I’ll be there, and I’ll be showcasing the latest code cut of Novell Cloud Manager together with Hans Krogull, who also covers Novell Cloud Security Service. Enterprise customer looking to build out your private cloud, or Service Provider looking for cloud-ready federated identity - come on over and find us.