The Long Path

For years as an IT diagnostician, my most sought-after skill was being able to know someone’s mind (and thus their technology needs) well enough to anticipate needs, or at the least being able to translate needs into something I can deliver. Later as an IT Director and V-P, when onboarding beginner Tier 1 tech support […]

Leadership & Reputation Academy

Awhile back, I changed the blog header up top to  “Leadership, Technology, Design.”  I feel that’s a better teaser for what you’ll find when you visit… Looking back, even my tech-related musings have been more about technology leadership than pure tech — the human decisions that advance the mission of the university, college, HMO, or […]

“Home…is where I want to be…”

One of my interests is architecture and urban design, so allow me to introduce you to two little books by Witold Rybczynski… Between Home: A Short History of an Idea and City Life, you can’t go wrong. If you’re like me and love older homes and former streetcar neighborhoods, Home will explain much about why we […]

The Kids Are Alright

From earlier: I joined TU in 1990 to run the campus computer labs. Since I was still young-looking, when Bob Chappelle hired me my first task was go undercover — bring a backpack and visit all the computer labs masquerading as a student lab patron: see what the student lab workers were doing, etc. etc.  It […]

The Internet comes to TU: A history

I started working in higher education IT in February of 1990, when the Internet was still the private playground of academia.  Because of our computer science faculty requiring access to supercomputer sites for their research, the University of Tulsa was connected to one of the original NSFNet backbones.  Our upstream provider was MIDnet in Lincoln, Nebraska […]

Ghosts of Victoria, and Vancouver

May 12, 2016:  I’m in Vancouver, B.C. this week for the United Way Worldwide conference.  It’s been GREAT being back in the Pacific Northwest — for all too short a stay.  I haven’t been here since 1997 and it reminds me of all the ways in which it’s different than Seattle or Portland and the […]

Welcome to Marysville!

I love my neighborhood. It’s official name in Bryn Mawr, which means “high hill” in Welsh.  We are almost the tallest point on Lewis Avenue; up the hill from Monte Cassino.  But I always think of Bryn Mawr as really starting a few streets to the South; I informally call my little area Marysville — […]

“We have a cash flow problem”

That title is a tidbit and snippet of family lore from my Father in Law, Kenneth Gibson. He was a commercial realtor for Grover Bauer in Tulsa in the 1970s-80s, and he told me a story once about selling a commercial property for a client. The client was being a bit slow on paying him his […]

Happy Year of the Monkey!

So we’ve already covered that I’m a pack-rat where data is concerned.  It’s easier to keep track of than boxes of paper, and backup tapes and the equipment to read them can fit in one box… Yesterday I exchanged Lunar New Year greetings with Hoo Kok Mun — one of my favorite student workers at TU […]