Author Archive: Steve Kinman

Outsource IT! I have been saying that for years now. But now I say; outsourcer beware!?!?! Really? How do you know if the company you are calling upon to keep your business up and running is safe and sound? Do they have certifications? Are they registered with the Better Business Bureau? Do they have scary fine print in the Terms of Service or User Agreement? Do you actually read those and understand them? How do you find out about all the questions above? Do you go to trade shows? Do you read about companies on the Hosting forum sites? Do you hear it from your friends? There are lots of ways to get that kind of information in today’s social internet jungle. Do you follow the company on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linked-In, or all of the above? Should you? So many questions…

I am going to assume that you think this blog is going to be about how SoftLayer is a reputable, certified PCI compliant and SAS 70 datacenter, with competent and caring employees that can put themselves in the customer’s shoes and understand the frustrations that can go along with outsourcing your datacenter needs. Nah, that would be too easy and not very much fun.

This blog is about mud. Yes, I said mud. I was driving down a county road in Texas recently and we had a bit of rain in the days leading up to my trip. If you aren’t from Texas then you need a quick definition of “County Road”. A county can be paved, gravel or dirt topped and can be a great road or a horrible road, it just depends on the county that it is in, the tax base, and the abilities of the crews hired by the county to maintain them. I was travelling down a very wet gravel top county road, following along on my cell with GPS and Google maps and was about a mile from my destination. In what seemed the blink of an eye the road surface went from wet gravel to dirt and within about 10 feet my truck simply slid off the road into a nice 4 foot ditch filled with rain water. Looks harmless in the picture below doesn’t it?

It was a nice soft splash landing but my city slicker tires had no chance of getting me out of that ditch even with 4X4 engaged. So when water started coming under the door into the cab of the truck, I knew it was going to be a bad hour or so. It was time to outsource. I called the ranch to see if they had anything that could pull me out but they said that I was in a pretty tough spot and didn’t think they could help. So what would any techie do, I googled mud towing in the closet town. Of course I picked the first place on the list and gave them a call. They said they had a mud recovery truck and they would be out in about 45 minutes. Awesome, just 45 minutes! This was at 4:30PM and it was pretty cold and still raining and the ditch was filling up even further with water. Outsourcer beware, I was expecting a “Mud Recovery Truck!” I had visions of monster trucks dancing in my head. Fail!

Now I have to say that there weren’t ten forums about mud towing in Navarro county that I could visit, or customer references readily available so I just had to take that leap of faith and trust in the skills of my saviors. And I have to give credit where credit is due, that truck really is a monster! It did things a Transformer would love to be able to do. It got stuck at least 30 times in the 5 hours it took them to get me out of the ditch. Yes, I said 5 hours. Did I mention that monster trucks can do very bad things to city 4X4’s? Thank goodness I have an Echo to drive back and forth to work.

So I don’t want to leave you hanging but my truck is in the shop now and I am still waiting on an estimate. Things I know are wrong; front right A-arm damage from forcibly pulling the truck over a stump in the ditch, alignment issues, check engine light on, cruise control doesn’t work anymore, passenger side back door pushed up about half an inch including damage at bottom from the same stump, muffler caved in and exhaust pipe dragging the ground, front bumper air damn ripped off and metal bumper bent outward, yea you guessed it the pesky stump again and last but not least I need an entire new jack assembly because it is either broken or lost in the mud or both I should say (attempting to jack the truck over the stump).

The moral of this blog, if you have the tools available to research the company you are going to outsource to and they have references be sure to use them. They might save you a $300 mud recovery bill and a $1000 deductible somewhere down the road.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Bodhi Day, Happy Santa Lucia Day, Happy Las Posadas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Boxing Day, Happy Kwanzaa, and last but not least Happy SASsy day!

You find yourself wondering what Happy SASsy day might be, well I am here to tell you. SoftLayer has done it. We put our processes and procedures on the line and let other people check them out, and we passed. I have never been very good at tests as my brother got 99% of the brain DNA in our family.

That means our SAS 70 assessment is complete, and we are compliant and exception free! We completed it without a single time extension and did it the first time through. What does this mean? This means that our customers are safe with us and our reseller customers are safe as well. It also means they you have been safe with us since day one and now we have been looked at under a microscope to prove it. We have procedures in place to protect our customers and we actually follow them. If you are a public traded company that needs structure, processes, procedures, great sales and support, and a customer portal that is most likely the best and most powerful you have ever seen then now is the time to come give us a try. You have seen the rest now come see the best.

SoftLayer Technologies, Inc. SAS-70 Complete.

Next?

We are feeling SASsy here at SoftLayer!

You hear a loud whistle in the distance most likely someone’s internet clock set to 5pm. You are finishing up the last 20 or 30 emails you are behind on and getting ready for a little OT. Suddenly, out the window you hear a scream; “Yabba Dabba Doooo!!!!” and you see someone running from the building next door as fast as they can. You realize it is time for all the clock punchers to go home for the evening. Who else would scream “Yabba Dabba Doo”? No one screams it at 5am when the alarm goes off to go to work… at least no one I know, unless it is Starbucks and Krispy Kreme day.

Here at the SL Server Quarry we have some interesting similarities to the Stone Age Flintstones and this blog is intended to point a few of them out. Since a few of them were recently compared to Darth, Luke and their friends I just couldn’t resist. This is my blog so I make the rules, they can be based on looks, personality, or whatever I can come up with that is humorous.
So starting at the top… and the easy ones…

Fred “Lance” SLintstone – The shows main character and the designer of our highly automated quarry. Like Fred Flintstone, he is the task master that gently pushes Barney, and everyone around and makes them meet deadlines that a team of 80 might not be able to meet. These impossible requests keep everyone in the server quarry on the same path and going for the same goal. Rumor has it he is out playing in the clouds most recently.

Barney “Sam” Rubble – Barney is here every morning when I get here and is always here when I leave. In most cases he beats Fred; I think he has faster feet. I have tried many different times of arrival and departure to trip him up but I can’t seem to work longer than he does. I think maybe he just lives under his desk and goes out once a day to move his truck around so people will think he left and came back. That’s why he never parks in the same place. I always thought it was so his employees couldn’t figure out when to show up and leave but I have since foregone that conclusion! Barney keeps Fred SLintstone very happy.

Wilma “JenJen” SLintstone – Lance’s wife of course. Now you would think this would be off limits but she too has quite a role here in the server quarry. She is always ready to help us say things politically correct and get the word out. Unfortunate for her and good for me, PR groups can’t proofread every blog. They just don’t have the time as they have real work to contend with. If they had that much free time then they might want to consider a career change.

Pebbles “Amanda” Slintstone – is one of our SLales gurus. She is one of the best in the industry. I think she could play the part in a movie based on the similarities in the looks alone! If you need a server you can’t go wrong by contacting her.

Mr. “Sean” Slate has a goal. He wants us to have everything we need to make our customers happy. No matter whether it is internal equipment, new products, new toys, whatever, money, cables, pickaxes, sledge hammers, you name it and he helps in that way. Don’t let the smile fool you, there must be a little stress in his position since Mr. Slate is a little light on the topside.

Betty “Sam’s Wife” Rubble – Oh no, I am not falling into this gravel pit. This would be my boss’s wife, I know better!

Bamm Bamm “Michael” Rubble – Bamm Bamm sits quietly in his cube knocking out the sales. He is the pretty boy of the bunch. Even though the only thing he knows how to say is “Bam Bam” it must work in server sales as he does quite well. It is a rumor that he learned the phrase “Bam Bam” while chasing Doug Jackson around with a club. You have to watch that server quarry SLales team.

Dino “Daniel” SLinstone – Dino is fun loving and likes goofing off with Pebbles and Bamm Bamm, he can also be moved to anger, at which point he snarls and snaps. HR currently has Dino in obedience training so we feel certain that he will stop snapping. Rumor has it he makes a mean elephant chili, but I believe it to be exactly that, a rumor.

The “Techies” Gruesomes (Fred’s strange next door neighbors) – We love the Gruesomes. Without them we wouldn’t have the great support we have. They work hard all the time and anyone that knows about some of the things they do must be a little bit strange in a good way. These guys can help you with just about anything you need when it comes to problems in the server quarry. This is a partial pictorial of the industries finest!

Don’t forget The “Information Systems” Wayouts! (The English rock group mistaken for aliens!) – this group of four guys and their team keep all the quarry’s internal brains and lots of quarry customer stuff working as well. Most outsiders know them as humans but all good SLackers know they must be aliens. Who is that smart and human? I can’t tell which group is which, can you?

The Great “Ric” Gazoo (an alien exiled to earth) – The Great Gazoo brings a ton of alien gadgetry to SoftLayer. Without this alien technology we would be just another place on the web. With his alien brain power he makes Lance and Nathan’s ideas come to life.

Arnold “Mike” the Paper Boy – Arnold is the money guy around here but he also writes blogs in hopes that he can keep up with the Kinmans. It will never happen but he can be called the paper boy for those reasons. Not to mention his boyish good looks many, many, many, MANY years ago. We just need to teach him to let go of the flat rocks and chisel and get into the quarry’s more technical side.

Joe “Nathan” Rockhead – Joe is friend of the show. He and Barney go way back. I think they have some kind of collegiate relationship because they say the word Aggie all the time. I’m not quite sure what that is all about. Joe’s head is full of all sorts of things but I am not so sure it is rocks as he keeps us on the cutting edge of everything! I guess it is true; some people do like to read! Joe is kind of an enigma as you can see from his Flintstone comparison picture. (In other words a picture of Joe from the Flintstones just doesn’t exist!)

And last but not least!

Sam ”Kevin – Klaude “my name is not Klaude” Slagheap (Grand Poobah of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes) – is the Grand Poobah of all our loyal SoftLayer groupies. Yes, we have groupies. Kevin manages them very nicely and helps them with just about any crazy request they might come up with. Of course there are no Flintstone pictures of Sam either, but here is one of Sam in the SLintstone era just to fair to everyone! You can check out his handy work on our Facebook fan page!

So what you have witnessed here is a few of the many people that make SoftLayer as cool as we are. We all work hard to make sure of one thing; that our customers are as happy at the SoftLayer server quarry as we are!

Welcome to the Wide World of SLAS 70 (for those who use Google it is really SAS-70 Type II)! Shh, don’t tell anyone but we are in the final audit stages now (under review). For some reason this is supposed to be a big secret, well not really or I wouldn’t be telling you about it. Maybe it is just so you don’t jinx the whole process.

If you are over 40 and doing the things you are supposed to do at the doctor then you have a pretty good idea of what SLAS 70 is. So we open our company up for the scope. I will just leave it at that. SLAS 70 is us telling the world how good we take care of our processes and procedures when dealing with our customers and also our internal controls. Since we would like to have more publicly traded companies as customers we need to be compliant according to my brother (the other Kinman blogger) and Mike Jones, CFO extraordinaire. It really is a good thing because the investors in these public companies like the fact that they use compliant companies, well they demand it apparently, which helps give them peace of mind in their investment. I’m not sure how many investors are left in the world but even the 1 or 2 still out there count for something. In a nutshell, we have to be good at what we do and we have to let an accounting firm come in and look at everything we do and then sign off that we are the best. WE know we are the best and now we will show the world.

SLAS Hint #1 – PDF! So I don’t know how many sheets of paper I saved with good old fashioned PDF conversion but I can bet I saved at least 2 trees. If I had to print out all this stuff like in the old days it would have been scary.

SLAS Hint #2 – Stress! On my desk right now I have, a half full Monster, an iced RedBull, 1 baby rattle, 1 golf ball, 1 rubber ball, 1 tennis ball full of BB’s, and 4 Squishy stress balls. The stress balls de-stress me and the baby rattle calms me of course.

SLAS Hint #3 – Time! It is all about how much time you have or don’t have. I should have kept track of the hours for this project but they all ran together at some point last week. I thought Thursday was Friday, and was really bummed out when I was told it wasn’t. I bet everyone has done that at least once.

Ok, well it is back to staring at the screen and hunting and fishing, not the fun kind either, just for data needed for the scope! I don’t want my new buddy, the auditor, to miss me since we hang out and email so much. Hey, can someone please pass me some latex gloves?

SLayers!

Welcome to The Great Debate: Part Deux. The SLayer blog. It is really going to be hard for me to complete this one as I am a SLacker by heart. After my previous blog I found that there might be more SLayers than I thought or so I have been told. All the SLales folks seem to be SLayers. I think they like to believe with their mad skills they can SLay the competition, quite like SoftLayer does as a whole. Some people just don’t want to be associated with the term SLacker because of the unbeknownst to me negative connotation. Who would have thought being a SLacker could be a bad thing. All this SLacking we do around here is great but this blog is about the darn SLayers we have around here.

The SLayers are an interesting bunch; take Doug Jackson in SLales for instance, he is your typical college educated frat boy jock. The bad part is I am not sure if we was in a frat or not, but I would put my money on it that he was. He is a SLayer to the core. He likes getting customers the best deal for their money and the technology they need to succeed. He also has a deep SLayer desire to succeed himself and is the master at the VFB and other moves. Would you expect anything less from a “Type A” super SLales guy who I am guessing spends at least 24 minutes a day on his hair style alone? I wouldn’t.

In our new STAT (SoftLayer Technical Assurance Team) group we have Justin Scott, he is also a SLayer. Ok, I pressed him a little on this and he claims he is a SLacker striving to be s SLayer. Not sure why he would want to switch his stance but it could be that he thinks it makes him tougher to be a SLayer. I just don’t see the thought process there but he is always thinking way outside of the box I tend to live in. I mean, who takes a perfectly good truck and guts it and puts all electric stuff in it to make it go. I guess you could say he is SLaying those gas prices with his electric dreams. Justin’s outside the box thinking is what makes him great for STAT and our customers. If you have a tricky technological nightmare in need of a solution, he can get it SLayed!

We really do have SLayers in every group in Development, Accounting, etc. In the NOC we have SLayers that are Slayer fans and then others that are Slayers fans! That is a quite a range if you ask me.

The great thing about SoftLayer is that be you a SLacker, SLayer, or even a SLoser (like Don) everyone is a team and welcome to come here and show off their smarts! If you are interested in finding out more about our opportunities send your resume to us, but be sure to tell us up front if you are a SLacker or a SLayer!

I am Skinman, and I approve this message.

-Skinman

At SoftLayer we have long been calling each other names (TRUST ME!). There are two that we tend to greet each other with as we walk the halls. You can either throw out “SLacker” or “SLayer”. Why you ask?

If you are an avid fan of all things SoftLayer, the Facebook page, the forums, and The Innerlayer, then by now you have heard the term SLales. We have lots of “SL” terminology here. There is the SLiki, the support wiki, there is the fantasy football league run by operations called SLoperations and the not as popular SLupport team (SLupport is a tongue twister it seems). So along those lines both terms seem to fit nicely.

When I started this blog I decided that I would ask around to see what everyone preferred and you would be amazed, it is about 50/50. The most interesting part is the loud and proud way you receive the response and it is often accompanied by the VFB, an elbow or maybe by the person “throwing three bars”!

I do have to point out that HR gave the canned “no comment” answer, so I will leave it at that, HR is always so professional. So let’s begin the debate and dive into the differences in a two part series. Today we will discuss the SLackers.

Every company has their fair share of Slackers but at SoftLayer we have SLackers! The difference you ask? SLackers are everything SoftLayer. They eat and breathe SoftLayer. They are SLackers to the core. They love to work hard, drink caffeine, work a little more, and play around at the office quite a bit. I would dare say that if you visited our offices or our data centers today you would see more smiles than you have in a while. They crack jokes, and make fun of each other, they blog about each other and the goofiness that they get themselves into and it makes work seem like play. They do that and at the same time respect each other and understand that they are surrounded by some of the best and brightest in this industry and in each individual department as well. They do all of this SLacking for you, the customer!

If you have seen the movie Slackers then take the passion those characters had for slacking off and their passion for beating the system, reverse it, and then apply it to 100% customer satisfaction and you will begin to understand how much they love to SLack! Everything they do is for the customer. If you ever feel like they have done something in error please let any one of them know however you can and they will do their best to take care of you with the utmost SLack.

Our culture might be the coolest around and the best part is we don’t have to talk about it, have endless meetings about it, advertise it, and beg people to drink the SLacker punch like some companies, it just happens. We have fun. We work hard. And we SLack off as much as we can for every customer. You can tell by my blogs that I am one of them; a Red and Black blooded SLacker and I am very proud of that fact.

It is now time for me to quit goofing off writing blogs and get back to SLackin! Next up, The SLayers!

-Skinman

For starters, let me say that if you were affected by IKE my thoughts are with you as you try to cleanup and get life back to as close to normal as possible. I can’t even fathom what it would be like to be away from home and work and not know what lies ahead or even be allowed back to see the damage.

A few friends of mine live in the area surrounding Houston and I have heard from them that they still don’t have power and gas is hard to come by. It sure makes me understand what I take for granted every day. Even with short power outages at my house due to spring storms I find myself opening the microwave and then realizing that my burrito isn’t going to be very warm when I think it is done.

This particular blog came to me when I emailed one of my friends in far north Houston at his work email address. He works for a company that is also located in north Houston. After no response I decided to call him to get an update but ended up leaving a message. Before he called me back that evening my email to his work bounced. When I did talk to him I asked him a simple question, “are your company’s servers sitting in a closet onsite at your office?” He responded with what I already knew, “Yep!” Now, he is a national account manager and he has been meeting at his boss’s house this week to go over what they will need to do once things are back to normal. I asked him if it would help them if they could still receive emails from their customers and if they could post updates on their website if it was still up and running. He of course said, “Yep!”

So here is my plea to all you savvy IT gurus out in the world. Outsource it! Then you don’t take the brunt force of the storm when everything is down. Your servers, whether or not you are still receiving email, and whether your website is still up and running will probably and should probably be the last things on your mind when a disaster like IKE strikes. Leave that part to us.

-Skinman

It has been a bit since I last “bloghogged” so I figured it was time to see what I could come up with. There is just so much going on in the world that I am not sure I can control myself and keep my blog on topic. You have all seen it in the past where I go from topic to topic and then finally wrap it all up with nonsense in the end. I can only assume this one will be the same.

My choices are the Olympics and how they turned out, politics, servers, outsourcing of course, customer service, 4-year old flag football, or meat. It is a tough choice but I think this one just has to be about meat.

The SoftLayer corporate offices are really close, I dare say too close, to a little place called Rafain. Warning, if you click the link you will get hungry. In case you haven’t ever been to a Brazilian Steakhouse (Churrascaria) then you might want to consider finding one close to you and giving it a shot. It is servers, the human ones, walking around with 7 to 15 types of grilled meat on long metal skewers holding big sharp knives. They slice the meat of your choice off and it lands on your plate. It’s the point and click of steakhouses. Instant steakification! You can of course choose to eat fillers along the way starting with salad, or great little cheese rolls and you are also offered mashed potatoes and fried bananas. Some people eat that stuff but I go straight for the money meat. Beef! Lots of beef. There is Spicy Beef, Garlic Beef, Top Sirloin, Flank, and the house special. They are always hot and fresh off the grill. They have other meats like chicken, pork, leg of lamb, and sausage but you can get those anywhere. As our CEO would say, “If a meat is low fat by design, there is no point in eating it!”

How is the service you ask? Amazing. You have a small card that is red on one side and green on the other. If you have it on the green side they will keep offering you meat until you explode or you get smart and turn the card to red. Red means, “I am taking a small break in the action but far from done!” The real fun is when they bring you a clean plate and you suddenly forget that you are about to fall out of your chair and need assistance to get back in it and start all over and eat more.

Here is where the stretch begins. How am I going to tie this into SoftLayer and outsourcing and why we are the best at what we do? Well, I’m not. This blog is simply about Meat.

Ok, last funny story. A few of the crew here at SoftLayer worked together back in the early 90’s, general ISP technical support stuff. We worked long shifts and usually ate at our desks. We would occasionally sneak out and go to a local Chinese Buffet but we were on a serious time crunch. We could eat 4 or 5 plates of food in 10 minutes easily. We came up with a term we still use today, CPM (Calories Per Minute). We had fun little sayings like, “The CPM’s were very high that day my friend” (thanks Seinfeld!) and many others like it. I can only assume that the Chinese buffet, as far as calories are concerned, would still beat out “instant steakification” on the CPM scale, but I can assure you we would need a couple of SoftLayer servers and some serious Excel equations to figure out the numbers.

Eat less Chicken!

-Skinman

“Welcome to Starbucks!” “Uh yea I’ll have a half decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced white chocolate mocha, double-shot, gingerbread latte, extra dry, light ice, with 3 Splenda’s, one Sweet-n’-Low, and one NutraSweet please!” “…Coming right up, Next!” “Umm, I want a hot tall skinny upside down with a whip caramel macchiato” “Nice Choice! Next!” “I will have a Grande extra shot fresh skim milk latte, extra foam, 2 splenda’s and a dash of cocoa!” I am sure that makes sense to all of you. You can’t discount (and they certainly don’t) Starbucks for letting you have it like you want it.

It’s like the Burger King slogan, “Have it your way” I want a Whopper with cheese, extra cheese, bacon, extra pickles, no onion, light mayo, extra ketchup, a large fry and a chocolate shake with strawberry syrup mixed in. Well that just made me hungry.

SoftLayer isn’t much different than a Starbucks or a Burger King. With our full line of servers, services, network and locations you too can make your order as easy or as complex as you like. And yes you can have it like you like it, need it, or even have it your way! It could look like this:

“uhh, yea I would like a server in Dallas, TX. A Quad Proc Quad Core Intel 7320 2.13 Ghz Tigerton with 8gb of Ram, 3000 GB of public bandwidth, 8 secondary IP’s, redundant power supplies, Four 300gb 15K RPM Scsi Drives configured in a Raid5 array, Windows Server 2008 Standard, Business continuance Insurance, TCP Service monitoring, Automated reboot from monitoring and an ASA 100Mbps Firewall. I would then like a server in Seattle, WA. Make it a Quad Proc Quad Core Intel 7310 1.60 Ghz Tigerton with 16gb of Ram, 6000 GB of public bandwidth,168 secondary IP’s, redundant power supplies, Two 250gb SATA II drives configured in a Raid1 mirror, Debian, TCP Service monitoring, Automated reboot from monitoring and an APF software firewall for Linux. Then I need a Quad Proc Quad Core Opteron 8346 1.80GHz in Washington DC with 32GB ram, 10000GB of public bandwidth, 128 Secondary IP’s, a single 1TB SATA II hard Drive, 1GB Lockbox, 250GB NAS, 80GB of iSCSI SAN Storage, a 500GB Evault backup, Redhat Ent. Linux 5, Plesk 8, Urchin, 24x7x365 NOC Monitoring, notification, and Response, McAfee Virus Scan and McAfee Free PCI Scans for life oh and I almost forgot I would like a CDNLayer Account as well!” “…Coming right up!”

As you can see an order from SoftLayer can be just as fulfilling and just as hard to say in one breath as a special burger from Burger King or even your favorite drink at Starbucks. Don’t let the crazy amount of options we offer make your ordering experience any harder than it should be. If you have any questions at all, one of our fine upstanding SLales folks will be glad to walk you through it from beginning to end. Happy Ordering!

What is your Favorite Starbucks order?

-Skinman

I know what you’re thinking; here I go again talking about why you HAVE to outsource your datacenter and infrastructure. Not this time. In previous blogs I have talked about doctors and baseball players, etc and the ways they outsource. It hit me that everyone most likely does some sort of outsourcing every day and it is just part of our evolving society.

Think about how fast things changed from Y2K until now. So much technology; the way we listen to music, HDTV, BluRay, Hydrogen, Electric, and Hybrid automobiles, the green movement. Change is everywhere. If you look back to 1900 or even the 1950′s changes were much slower and they weren’t nearly as life-changing. A change to someone’s daily routine back then wasn’t a life changing stressful event like it can be now.

So how do we cope with all these fast changes today? Some form of outsourcing. Think about it, even going out to eat is outsourcing. Some of my single friends have never even used the kitchen equipment in their homes. They outsource their kitchens! Most use the fridge to keep the adult beverages cold but that is to drink with the Papa John’s pizza they have delivered.

Ok, so now for the real reason this blog fell out of my head. I was talking to my mom yesterday and she was talking about quilting. She is a quilting nut. My whole house is buried in quilts. My wife loves them. I am pretty sure my brother’s house has quite a few as well. We have a wedding quilt with pics of the wedding and signatures and quotes from people that were at the wedding. We have a “charm” quilt with 1020 or so different fabrics in it including fabric from my favorite shirt (at that time). We have too many quilts to name and I don’t know what about half of them are called really. They all have “quilty” names.

So for those of you who don’t know a whole lot about quilting (and I don’t either) there are machine quilted quilts and there are hand quilted quilts. Machine quilted quilts are faster to finish but aren’t worth as much money and can stand the test of time better. Hand quilted quilts take much longer to finish and can’t stand up to as much punishment but are worth more money in the long run.

So, I have always wondered how my mom can bust out all these quilts so fast. The ones that are machine quilted always made sense. She can make them faster and they are tougher. But she gives us several that are handmade and I could never figure out where she got all this free time. I mean she is retired and sleeps till like 11am! Anyway, to make a good quilt you have to go search for all the right fabric, sew the top all together, then the bottom, and then quilt it all up nice and pretty – like toilet paper really. Batting on the inside makes it fluffy.

It takes time to do all those things and she just keeps on making them at blazing speed. So I finally figured it out yesterday when on the phone with her she mentioned she dropped 3 quilts off to be quilted. It didn’t even faze me at first and then it hit me, she is cheating! I said, “You did what with the quilts?” So I learned yesterday that some of my quilts I thought my mom hand quilted, were finished by people I don’t even know! I guess outsourcing is even to the point where grannies can do it to trick their grandkids! Where will it all stop!

In this fast moving age, it probably won’t so don’t miss the outsourcing train; it can save you some time – time you can spend with your family making quilts if you choose.

-Skinman

P.S. I wonder if I set the record for using the letter “Q” the most times in a single blog?