...And All I Got Was a Lousy Operating System

I'm feeling a little under the weather.

I joked on Twitter that it's because I'm about to take some vacation, and without all the stress of working, my immune system becomes excessively deficient. You think I'm kidding? (My London-based colleague responded that perhaps I should consider drinking some vodka. I guess it would certainly kill whatever germs I have!)

I'm just glad I don't work for Amazon in the U.K.

For my time away from the office, I'm planning on visiting the Panama Canal and also doing a little scuba diving. I've never been to Panama, so if you have any hints, tips, and tricks, feel free to send them my way.

I'm very excited about seeing the Canal up close and in person. I've been reading David McCullough's master work on the subject, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914, which, if you haven't read it, is a wonderful book.

To be sure, I don't think I'll ever view a large project at Big Blue to be so daunting again, at least not through the same lens or to the same degree. At least at IBM, I typically don't have to fight mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever, nor have to deal with excessive tropical heat or move millions of cubic feet of dirt and rock.

What I do have to deal with is inordinate layers of "bluereaucracy" and posting presentations on the Interwebs.

To make the latter easier, SlideShare has come up with a PowerPoint plugin that lets users edit and publish presentations directly to their SlideShare accounts, reports TechCrunch. The new feature also allows one to automagically notify others of the new presos via Twitter. Very cool. But, me so sad, because as usual, there isn't a Mac version available out of the gate.

That's OK. I got my revenge with a new T-shirt recently sent to me by one of my IBM running buddies in Toronto. The shirt has a really nifty looking Windows Vista logo on it, with the following tagline just below it:

"Farfromwörken."

Thanks for that, M. It's an instant classic!

— Todd "Turbo" Watson, blogger for IBM's On Demand Business Website