By Nicholas on 4/27/2006 9:56 AM

So I skated on Jury duty, perhaps the Solano County courts read here and changed their minds. Regardless, I'm a free man and noone got offended which is a victory of sorts. Then again, I was going to have to be excused one way or the other since I was booked to speak at a SQL Server Protection Seminar with over 400 attendees. I think that's my largest audience to date. If not, it has to be close. I've done a couple of 300 person public speaking engagements in the past. No, I don't have a problem doing public speaking. I do get extremely nervous and paranoid that I'm forgetting something in the 5 minutes prior to starting. Then I'm fine and relaxed after the first slide pops up on the screen. I fall right into the groove. Just that last 5 minutes waiting that gets to me; weird. I've been asked over the years by a number of people how I learned to speak so comfortably with an audience staring at me. I never took any training so I guess that it is all natural ability or what is probably more the case, lack of concern. I think that the first key is to know what you're talking about. Next, you have to believe in yourself and your abilities. Next you have to speak up, I usually try to slow down my speaking since I normally tend to talk fast. My last bit of advice is to practice, practice, practice. Once you've been doing this for a while, you don't even really need to practice or warm up. About 7 years ago I was with one of my sales guys at a hotel for a small seminar, my side of the conversation went something along these lines: "Remind me again, who are we here to see? Me? I'm presenting? Ok, what's my topic? Ya, no problem, just introduce me I'm all set."...

Read More »

By Nicholas on 4/19/2006 1:15 PM

 

Read More »

By Nicholas on 4/10/2006 12:38 AM

Home at last! Long road trip. The Indy meetings were really good from my perspective so there's a bunch of good upside for my territory which means, Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money!!! On the family front, I made it back to Ohio for the rest of the week until today (well it was Sunday). I just got settled and thought I'd do a quick recap. I got to see White Bread's kids, which is always fun for me. I also got to meet his boys for the first time, they're 4, but I don't get back to Ohio very often. It's a huge pain in my ass to travel for pleasure and I know that the Poker action is few and far between. I got to spend Thursday night getting all liquored up and silly (ya, I know, you're shocked) with White Bread. Then I crashed on his couch. Apparently the kids were talking loud in the morning, but I never even noticed, I was out cold. It was WB's day off on Friday and when I finally awoke it was just me, him and the boys. So Uncle Nick got some catching up time. First off, they wanted to watch a movie so we checked...

Read More »

By Nicholas on 4/8/2006 9:03 AM

The next day I got to wear fresh clothes thanks the baggage jerk-offs finally removing their head from their asses. Today is Wednesday, so we have a couple of quick calls in the A.M. then we're off to Calgary for the remainder of the week. The Marriot: We arrived in Calgary in the late afternoon. I even managed to retrieve my bag from the carousel, although they did make me wait a bit; just enough to get me nervous. I had heard nothing but good things about the Poker games in Calgary, I did some scouting ahead of time and got directed to the Elbow River Casino. What with there being so much oil money flowing through Alberta I wasn't about to miss a Poker game. We checked in and then got a cab. I got right into a 15/30 and BD went on the list. He'd been asking me for months about playing Limit, since he'd never play anything other than No-Limit. I told him that he wouldn't like it and he'd be bored almost instantly. He initially got on the board for the 15/30, but I talked him down to the 4/8 to minimize...

Read More »