Month: October 2024

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Be a Danny

Last Wednesday was my brother’s birthday. Well, technically he was really my stepbrother-in-law. While Danny was 15 years older than me and didn’t enter my life until I was almost a teen, I was proud to call him my older brother. He was a technical wizard. He introduced me to electronics, taught me how to solder, program and troubleshoot. I spent a few summers with him installing large HVAC systems in aerospace manufacturing plants. We built computers, framed houses, repaired cars, ran network cables, and even built an automated furnace control system using a PC and a game controller for the local glass plant (no joke!). Danny was more than a brother. He was a mentor. He took projects and took off work, just so he could spend time with me and teach me.

Eight years ago, we took Danny to Disneyland along with my sister, niece, and her family. We had a great time, but Danny grew tired quickly. We initially got him a scooter to ride, but he was too proud to use it at first. Eventually, the exhaustion won, he gave me his signature eye roll grimace and rested himself on the seat. The recently diagnosed cancer was wearing on him. He looked good and told me that he even felt good too, but the fatigue was overwhelming. My big brother was always active, always a helper. It was hard to see him succumb to the illness that was invading his body. We made wonderful memories that October, exploring the parks, laughing, reminiscing, and spending time together. Little did I know that it would be our last time. The cancer would soon take over. He would no longer be able to travel and all too soon, his body would give out.

I miss Danny, but I’m grateful for all the happy memories, the fun times and even the work times. He blessed me with his time, his talents, his wisdom, and his love. Our friends and family that surround us, shape us. They propel us, lift us up when we are down, and challenge us when we are behind. A light nudge. A lesson given. A sympathetic hug. They show us new things and remind us to cherish the old. Those small investments become the brick and mortar of our lives. We thrive because they cared. Danny was that for me. I’m forever grateful for his life, his impact, and the time we shared.

Who is your Danny? I suspect there is someone who has been a big impact in your life as well. If they are still with us, thank them. If like Danny, they have graduated from life, remember them. You don’t need to wait for Día de Muertos, you can start today. Pay respect, cherish, and celebrate their life and the blessing they were to you. And most of all, look for the opportunity for you to be a Danny to someone else. Pay if forward. Pour your time into others around you. We need you! Friends and family need you. You can make a difference in someone else. The time we have is short and precious. Don’t wait! Invest and create those memories today.

1984 – This was shortly after we met for the first time. I was 13 and eager to learn from my older brother.
Danny and Jason, 2004
Jason and Danny enjoying Disneyland on Oct. 19, 2016. This would be the last time we would spend together before his passing on December 3rd.

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Prepare for Turbulence

Turbulence. Frequent flyers can tell you tales about sudden and unpredictable changes in air pressure and airspeed that caused the aircraft to shake, wobble, or drop unexpectedly. I’ve been on many flights like that. When the turbulence hits, passengers will gasp, yelp, or add other colorful commentary to the situation. I just laugh or cry uncontrollably like I’m on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. 

In December 2022, Southwest Airlines hit serious turbulence. But this time, it wasn’t just in the air. The crisis was at the peak of the holiday travel season and is referred to in the news media as the Southwest Airlines holiday travel meltdown. What had gone wrong? Severe weather had resulted in some of the first flight cancellations. That meant planes, pilots and crews were not where they needed to be. The software systems Southwest used to track all of that was woefully outdated and was unable to respond to the weather disruptions and massive holiday travel load. Flights were getting delayed or canceled due to business process problems, missing aircraft, or missing crew members. It continued to spiral down. Their technology couldn’t handle the fluid turbulence of rapidly deteriorating conditions. Eventually, the carrier was forced to cancel more than 15,000 flights. Passengers and crew members alike were stranded, frustrated and furious.

Turbulence leads to learning. Last week in Las Vegas, Lauren Woods, CIO of Southwest Airlines, took the stage in front of a crowd of technology leaders at the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. She explained how the meltdown was the result of antiquated systems and processes. They were too slow and never designed to handle this level of change. But navigating turbulence forces you to learn and grow. They streamlined their business processes, insourced their IT and migrated their systems to the cloud, leveraging a serverless multi-regional highly resilient approach to build their new fare search, airline, and crew scheduling systems. They saw a 400% speed improvement over their previous solution. The crew scheduling system was replaced with a new tool with advance algorithms and specific capabilities to manage disaster scenarios and quickly adapt to scheduling turbulence. It could quickly track and optimize flights, planes, and crews. They called this new tool, Crew and Aircraft Integrated Recovery and Optimizer (CAIRO). The result? When recent turbulent moments hit, their system was able to respond quickly, adjust to unexpected conditions and ultimately deliver their passengers and crews to their rightful destinations. Southwest now has the lowest cancelation rate of any airline, thanks to this investment.

Turbulence happens. Are we ready for it? What is going to shake up our cabin and disrupt our businesses? Whatever it is, we need to prepare for it. That means investing time and resources into making our process and systems more reliable, resilient, and ready. Are we ready? Where do we have opportunities for improvement? Let’s talk… before the turbulence hits. It’s time to fasten our seatbelts and prepare for takeoff.

Have a safe flight!

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A Blueprint of Encouragement

The floor creaked when I walked into the foyer. Above me hung an old gas lamp that had been converted to electricity. The spirt of the flames cast warm pools of light on the old wooden floor. I glanced to my right and saw a row of desks and an executive office suite tucked away in the corner. A familiar laugh burst through the door, along with my dad. “Jay-boy!” He exclaimed. Enduring, but slightly embarrassing, especially for an eleven-year-old. His long arms wrapped me in a bear hug way. “Let’s get you set up!” He led me around the staircase, past the kitchen area to a door that plunged down into the basement. It was lit with overhead office florescent fixtures, but the dark walls seem to absorb all the light like a cave. We walked around the corner to a small room with a huge machine that took up the width of the room. 

My dad flipped an electrical switch, and the beast came to life with an intimidating hum. Big hidden fans started quietly whistling and winding up like a jet engine. My dad got busy twisting knobs, adjusting metal shields, and moving across the metal monster like he was playing an instrument. “Here we go!” He twisted a metal valve. What was that? My wonder was soon removed as the answer came to me like a punch in a face. Ammonia! My eyes started watering immediately and I coughed. My dad burst out laughing. “You’ll get used to it! Help me with this.” He directed me to the metal drawer and pulled open a black plastic package. He pulled out a large sheet of paper that had a faint yellow tint all over it. 

“Here, align this drawing on top of the yellow paper.” He instructed as he put a translucent engineering mylar drawing over the top of the paper. “Make sure it is perfectly aligned and then feed it into the light roller here.” I noticed that the machine was starting to glow. It seemed to have a blue tint. I could feel the heat radiating from the clear glass cylinder. I followed my dad’s direction, aligned the sheets, and fed them into the machine. It rolled up and over and appeared in the tray just above the light. 

“Notice how the yellow is gone where there was no line work.” It was true! The light had burned off the yellow. He continued, “Feed the yellow paper into the developer. Keep it tight against the conveyor belt.” We curled the once yellow paper into the top part of the monster. It took its time but finally started feeding out into the top tray. The ammonia round-two hit me again. I’m pretty sure I had tears coming down my face by now, but I couldn’t stop looking! The paper was full of blue lines. “See, that’s the blueprint. That wasn’t too bad, was it?” My dad asked, ignoring my gasping and wincing from the smell. “I need to go back upstairs to make some calls. Run the rest of the prints for me.” He started walking out of the room and glanced back at me. I must have had my mouth open because he burst into his signature laugh. “You can do it! I know you can. I’ll be upstairs if you need help.”

Now it was just me and the ammonia dragon. I shook my head and half-heartedly encouraged myself, “That’s right, you can do it, Jay-boy.” Well, it turned out not to be that difficult. I managed to get all the prints he needed and would subsequently run hundreds, no, thousands of prints on that machine over the years. It was magical every time, or maybe it was just the ammonia.

That metal dragon retired many years ago. That old office house is gone, demolished to make room for a new highway. My dad is gone too. I miss him but will forever remember his trust in me. “You can do it, Jay-boy.” It was fuel to face the ammonia behemoth at the time, but more importantly, it taught me the power of encouragement.

Have you encouraged someone else recently? I need to do more of that. We can all use some encouragement and so can those around us. Take a moment today and think about someone you know, a team member, a loved one, or a friend. Encourage them. I know you can do it, and hopefully you can do it without ammonia. 

Have a great week!