Finding our Fix-It Chick. Got yours?
May 22, 2013
As I write my offices are full of the sounds of saws, nail guns, feet shuffling across old floors and power clicking off and on. Let me explain. We’re making a change or 57 here, something that feels as profound as any transition project — whether to an emulator for homesteading, or the revisions for migrations.
People as old as most 3000 veterans can marvel at what the Web has brought since we began our careers. These days I talk to experts who started computing when modems were 110 baud, instead of the networked 18 gigabits that don’t even require a modem. We've upgraded our Internet speed pipe here at the NewsWire, a company that has always called our house its home. That home, like your server, is in need of changes.
For 18 years, our back two side-by-side bedrooms have bristled with wires strung between the rooms of our offices, added for one new device or scheme. We upgraded our infrastructure, as an IT manager would say; much is wireless. But we’ve been doing much more, changes with a senior future in mind. Perhaps like you. Fortunately, we have help to plan, as well as implement. We're clever and bright, but we need the help. Perhaps like you, or like our ally Birket Foster has long suggested.
Abby and I are doing our latest, largest renovation of our 36-year-old house this spring. It’s a task with details, surprises, planning and delight in the results. This morning while I write, we are watching new Ikea cabinets rise in a kitchen that was gutted, but still working before the demo of tile countertops and a stove and oven with many turkeys and pies in its history.
We have moved walls, painted and removed the antiquated ceiling popcorn, watched the sculpture of drywall floating and mudding, the art of tiling with glass. On and on it goes, from a ‘70’s bathtub to a steam shower, from chipped and unforgiving floor tile to nature-friendly bamboo, to creating a space where my lovely yogini can practice her stretching arts in a guest room with a Murphy bed to make a studio floor appear.
Long ago my friend Birket had his kitchen in his Chesterville home remodeled. This too was a house where a business grew up. The basement of his first location had 3000s networked into racks and employees who arrived at the kitchen door to sell and create software and follow a vision.
After his remodel, Birket began to compare a big project like migration or renovation to a remodel. You succeed, he always said, with a great plan and a good guide. Abby and I have been lucky to have both of these, but the most important is our general contractor, designer and now friend, Kristi Copeland.
Kristi left the world of software at Convio to follow her dream of building the dreams of others. It’s been more than four months since we started to work together. My mantra by now, when a cabinet doesn’t quite meet a ceiling or a steam unit delivers Error Code 5 or the automatic closet light misbehaves — my confidence comes from, “Kristi will know.”
I hope that even in this era of Web brilliance, when the sparkle of IT wisdom is a click away, you can find your own Kristi. She blazes through updates via email and texts and shops the Web with passion, so the Internet is making our transition possible on our modest budget. Having someone who will know saves more than money, however. It saves relationships between partners. Abby and I do not need all the knowledge and experience so essential to transforming our office and home. We rely on our Fix-It-Chick, something you can find for your future, too.