In a funk…

It’s been over a week since my last blog post and with so many people asking me about what I’m up to I figured I’d offer an update. I’ve been in quite bit of a funk as of late: I’m tired, I’m overwhelmed, I’m overworked and just dealing with some rather looming and final deadlines both personally and professionally and change is, well.. scary.

First up, Shockey Monkey launch went far better than expected. It’s been far more popular than we expected. Unfortunately, everything we thought we’d deal with when it became a problem became a problem at the exact same time. For example, we didn’t think anyone would be interested in integrating with it – everyone is. Which stretches thin resources even thinner.

Next up, the launch of our UK business has been sloooow. Brits work at a different pace than the one we’re accustomed in United States – and the amount of red tape and financial challenges is immense. To my UK partners who have begged us to charge in pounds for years – I love you – but it would be easier for us to outright rob you and steal your office supplies than to properly collect and account for stuff in UK. It’s getting done though, we even launched Exchange 2010 and SharePoint 2010 in European Union this week to our biggest partners.

As usual, Microsoft is killing us. We have been preparing for our Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 upgrade for two months now and the amount of surprises has really,  really, really worn on me. Not just because it seems like every week I have to apologize for people for another maintenance interval or a @#% unexplainable failure in a clustered service, but also because I’m stuck explaining to IT people s@%@ they are paid to explain to their clients while making it abundantly clear they haven’t read the documentation. Without getting into details – there is never a “down” situation in our hosting environment – there is always ExchangeDefender LiveArchive. But that’s cleverly hidden in all our advertising, marketing, sales and every single webinar I’ve ever done on the product. I can’t say that so I just apologize, offer service credits, give people a month of charges back for a 10-15 minute interruption because the guy claims it was “at least 90 minutes” – and they still make me out to be a bad guy for trying to move them to the 21st century.

“This ain’t a winery mother@#%, @#^$ doesn’t get better with age.” –Vlad Mazek, MCSE

The book is almost done.

We’re expecting another baby boy in November.

The conventional wisdom is to just put the head down and work through it because problems don’t go away if you don’t deal with them – but it would sure be easier to keep on coming back to work if it didn’t involve being kicked in the head every day. I do believe that the stuff we’re building and making possible is really going to transform us and our partners and that’s what gets me through the bumps and bruises and makes me show up for work even when I say I’m taking a day off.

Which is pretty much the attitude I have had ever since I lost my voice in DC.

Like I said, in a funk.