Adventures in systems land

I never really got casual Friday. Here at IBM, Friday pm is Think Friday, no repetitive meetings, time to think and urgent meetings only. Yep, I wear my jeans in on Fridays and try to catch up on email, not much time to think. Casual Friday for me though is more than clothes, it’s a state of mind thing for me, that stems back to my time at Chemical Bank out on Long Island, NY in the early 1980’s.

When we started at the data center, the place was still a building site and we wore what we liked. Over the next 15-months though things quietened down, other people started working in the office and a bunch of mid-20’s mainframe geeks with t-shirts, sometimes shorts etc. stuck out a bit for a bank. Then the day came, my boss, Phil Gross, pointed out we were possibly amongst the highest paid people in the building, we were paid to think smart, and so we should dress smart. From then on it was back to normal shirt/tie etc, apart from the twice yearly lobster parties in the parking lot. One day perhaps we’ll get John McNic to start a web site with pictures, hopefully I’ll be retired by then…

So now we have chinposin Friday. If you are on twitter or flickr, post a picture that reflects you in a chinposin mood. This week I’ve been reflecting on my past and my future, so this chin pose is a good summary. Great fun, pretty simple, some people have been doing very funny things! Here’s to chinposin.