[Verizon Galaxy Note 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] IT_Architect:
I've never heard of one that was in a Tier-1 Automotive supplier. BTW, I was also a CIO. Basically, when you are CIO, you are responsible for the direction and implementation of the corporate information structure. You do that after working with department heads and watching the department functions. You discuss your thoughts and direction with the CTO and flesh out the details. As CIO, you then budget the project. You keep the CFO in the loop on requirements, and for optimizations, you work with him to get him on board. During the board meetings, we hammered out the whens because it may be something not IT related makes the most sense to do first. Everyone also scrutinizes your plan and offer suggestions. The marketing side in a Tier-1 Automotive supplier is the sales team and/or organization, who work closely with the Engineering department for costs and timing. It really helps to be technical before you become a CIO.

Social life in high school for me was studying solid state electronics. In college studied automotive technology, and I designed an electronic ignition system for one teacher, and helped another who was writing a book to come up with the formula for calculating ratios for a compound planetary gear set. Prior to my CTO work, I also was military, but full-time guard, aircraft mechanic supervisor, then I bought a plane and learned to fly, then a military academy on an age waiver, then Signal Officer, which means wired and tower communications and COMSEC, then a command, then flight school on an age waiver, then served my commitment flying for the guard. Thus, in civilian life, they threw developing a Tool and Die CNC department, then sent me to their production plant to write an fully integrated ERP package. I used Faircom's C-Tree that time around, and wrote my own translator to use CB86 syntax. I also designed and built the electronic circuits for automation and was farmed out by them to, of all places, a large food distributor who needed a system to monitor their temperatures and gas on weekends so they didn't come back on Monday with thousands in loss. (Who was a friend of the owner) I started an Industrial Design company, only two of us, and did that for two years, but made a lot of money. Someone then made us an offer we couldn't refuse. One of the employees of one automotive supplier became part owner in another, that was in trouble from an IT standpoint and GM expectations, learned I was free, and they started taking me to lunch. I also authored a full ERP system for them, and we went from the cut list to the top 3% GM supplier rating. It was there I was featured in two national publications, one you may remember since you go back that far, was Application Development Trends. This was built on a DBMS. I publicly challenged Oracle at a developer conference on their query optimizer, and they could not deliver.

I enjoyed being high energy, but one day one a friend there said to me, "I have no idea why you do what you do. I would never do what you do even if I could." He got me thinking. I had lots of vacation time, but no time to take them. I wasn't sure of the ages of my kids or their birthdays. After a few months of thinking about it, I told them I was resigning to start my own business, and that I would give them 2 months before leaving. As the time approached, they said they wanted me to do a project, and if I finished it withing 5 months, they would pay me a sizable bonus, and pay me after I left for another 6 months to help start my new business. The CFO didn't think it was possible to get done in that time, and I wasn't too sure either, but I took the gamble. When they wanted to carve a week out of my time for another project, I then told them that they then also need to tack on a week to the 5 months, which they did. I was completely oblivious at the time how important my stipulation would be. It was implemented and in place, and working with only with just under 2 days to spare because I had to cancel 2 roll outs on other weekends for issues. (Shutting down GM can cost you your business) When I was about to get out, I had a daughter wise beyond her years show me her research about home schooling, and said she did that because she noticed how much more enjoyable it was to be around home school kids. I was concerned about socialization, but she did her homework, and in this area, they have a school, gym, and teachers for classes you can't do at home. There was far more socialization, and the kids were totally transformed in 6 months to being nice, with brothers and sisters tripping over themselves to help each other and others. In basketball, they mopped the Class A teams in our area, and finished 3rd Class D in the nation. They started college at 17, and Magna Cum Laude. I've been on my own for several years now. Well, they are gown up. It's easier to build and run a company than what I was doing. I have UNIX servers and one site that does 5 1/2 million unique visitors a month, so this may sound crazy, but I miss the board room and the pressures...and my dad tells me I am crazy to miss it. LOL! I think what I miss most is working with lots of people and lots of critical problems to solve. I also had fun as a speaker at quarterly meetings. While not every move I've made has been a good one, you don't know what works until you try. We seem to have a lot in common, and both like to learn. The chemistry, electronics, math, and physics has been fun to learn, but oddly, the most fun is working with people on projects, at the gym, or running. You may have some time over me, but I haven't been sitting still either.

Lest anyone believe that I had much of a hand in any of this, I will dispel that right now. There are heal marks from being dragged every place I've been. I bought a plane and learned to fly because when flying with them as a crew I would be sick for two days. One day a pilot took me aside and told me that he used to be just like me, and it took learning to fly to get over it. I went to a military academy because people encouraged me to, and that I needed to to achieve my potential. You can't name one thing in my life that didn't go similarly, and all of this happened from the Lord dragging me to through this to prove to me that through trust in Him, all things are possible. All I can say is it worked. An there is a huge thanks on my part to the people who spent time with me to give that opportunity, and I'm far from some religious or pious guy.

If you do a little research, you will see what happened there. You can also research and find that killing Windows Mobile was Steve Balmer's greatest regret. In his words, I put Microsoft way behind in this area. There are different kinds of users. Steve saw the boom in the gamey non-technical side, but he didn't have that market. He came late to the party using the gaming platform, but in doing so he lost his mobile business market and developers. Their developers were faced with one of two options, the closed platform of IOS and being Apple's slave, or the open Android market and fierce competition. The new Windows Phone couldn't even connect to Microsoft's own products, while the iPhone/IOS/BSD could. Things are better now, but until Microsoft comes back to the market with a real Windows phone to tie the Enterprise, desktop, and cloud back together, Google will be the Microsoft of mobile devices, and Apple will be happy with their high-end 15%.

And you AND I know darn well I shouldn't be playing with phones, but I have the same illness. Currently, we can wear our noise-cancelling Bluetooth and record conversations with customers. It's our note taker and we send them to each other to pick up on. It's a money saver when you confront someone with what they asked someone to do. Now add to that no backups after you get the phone all set the way you want it? I have NovaLauncher not because I don't like Touchwiz, it's because I can restore the setup without rooting, and Helium or Holo can do the non-embedded stuff, but the Bluetooth thing leaves me seething. As far as rooting goes, yes, that can be done, and it complicates things when one needs service. It just rubs me the wrong way when a phone built in 2009, using technology from 2002 (XP), can do what an Android phone from 2013 prevents me from doing without risking and hacking. With WinMo, when you did a factory reset, you actually got a factory reset. It erased everything on the phone, and copied back the factory operating system. I like to put things in place that are a thing of beauty, and get it behind me.

Of course what I really came here for, I don't have an answer for. LOL! How little can I get away with, when rooting a phone? Why do I want Safestrap when I don't want a custom ROM? Isn't just rooting, SuperSU, and Xpose all I want? This is new ground for me.