Category: Notes

One of the easiest ways to miss something important is to receive too much information.

My daughter’s school communicates well. The problem is volume. Deadlines, events, assignments, permission forms, and routine updates all arrive through the same channel. Everything is available, but finding what requires action can become work of its own.

So I started building a small system to help.

School messages flow into a dedicated mailbox. A local agent reads them and classifies each one as an action, event, deadline, or general information. A simple dashboard shows what needs attention and how soon.

The interesting part is not what the AI can do. It is what I have deliberately refused to let it do.

The system has read-only access. Every finding links back to the original message. If something is unclear, it must say so rather than invent an answer. It can organize information, but it cannot decide what matters to my daughter or act on our behalf.

That distinction is important.

We often talk about AI as though usefulness requires autonomy. I am increasingly convinced that many of the best uses are much simpler. Reduce the noise. Surface what matters. Preserve the source. Leave judgment with the person responsible.

This is still an experiment, not a success story. It may save us time and prevent something important from getting buried. It may also become another dashboard demanding attention.

That is the real test.

If it works, it will not feel futuristic. It will simply help me spend less time sorting through messages and more time being the parent those messages are meant to inform.

In complex organizations, having executive support for an initiative is important. Knowing when and how to use that support is equally important.

Recently, I was exploring a potential collaboration between two organizations with a long history of operating independently. The opportunity was promising, but I knew that the approach would matter as much as the proposal itself.

My intention was to engage my counterpart directly, establish common ground, and build support before involving additional leadership.

A miscommunication changed that sequence. An executive-level message reached the other organization before the initial conversation had taken place.

Nothing in the proposal itself had changed. But the dynamics surrounding it had.

What was intended as an opportunity for collaboration could now be perceived as an initiative being pushed through organizational hierarchy. In institutions where authority, autonomy, and established relationships carry significant weight, that distinction matters.

The immediate priority wasn’t determining who made the mistake. It was protecting the strategic objective without damaging the relationships necessary to achieve it.

That required managing in two directions. Internally, ensuring executive sponsorship remained intact and expectations were aligned. Externally, making clear that the initiative was exploratory, that no decisions had been made, and that meaningful collaboration required participation from both sides.

The resulting discussion was considerably more productive than I had anticipated. In fact, the other organization demonstrated a level of openness that had historically been difficult to achieve.

That doesn’t mean the initiative is successful. A productive conversation is not an agreement, and an agreement is not execution.

But an avoidable communication problem did not become a structural obstacle.

There is a difference between having the authority to advance an initiative and creating the conditions for it to succeed.

Executive sponsorship can open doors. Applied at the wrong moment, it can also reinforce the very organizational boundaries we are trying to overcome.

Sometimes effective leadership means knowing when to use influence, when to hold it back, and how to correct the course without turning a misunderstanding into a contest of authority.

The objective was never to win the conversation. It was to make the collaboration possible.

Cigarette smoke filled the internet café. Old Pentium machines sat on the desks. AltaVista was the starting page.

Pakistan, February 2000. The first time I used an internet-connected computer.

Twenty-six years later, I still remember where it started.

A lot has changed since then. Technology became my work. Curiosity acquired responsibilities: systems to keep running, people to support, decisions with consequences. You learn that something can be technically impressive and still be a terrible idea.

But I still like getting my hands on something I don’t understand yet.

These days, that often means running an AI model locally, breaking something, figuring out why, and trying again. Some experiments turn into something useful. Others mostly explain why I should have gone to bed earlier.

There is a practical reason for it. In this field, experience matters, but it doesn’t do your learning for you. Knowing how the last thing worked is a starting point, not a permanent qualification.

The less professional explanation is that I still enjoy it.

I don’t remember what I searched for on AltaVista that day. I wish I did. Looking back, it would be convenient if it had been something profound.

Probably wasn’t.

What stayed with me was the willingness to sit down in front of something unfamiliar and start figuring it out.

That has been useful far longer than anything I could have found in that first search.

The first time I met Jim in person, we were attending a meeting to establish a new workgroup at the University. We happened to be wearing identical green pants. Before anything else, he looked at me and said, “It’s a relief that we have identified an unofficial uniform trouser for the team.”

That was Jim. He could make people comfortable without making himself the center of attention. His humor was quick, but never at someone else’s expense. For a man who knew so much and had accomplished so much, he carried himself with remarkable humility.

Dr. Jim Ruble passed away⁠ earlier this week. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. It is difficult to accept that there will not be another meeting, another conversation, or another perfectly timed joke.

Jim was a pharmacist, an attorney, and an educator. He devoted much of his life to the difficult questions where healthcare, law, and ethics meet. His biography is full of accomplishments, but those only tell part of his story.

What I will remember most is how he treated people.

He was brilliant without needing to prove it. He was funny without being cruel. He had the kind of humility that put others at ease rather than making them feel small.

His passing has made the fragility of life feel very close. We make plans, fill our calendars, and assume there will be another conversation. Usually, there is. This time, there won’t be, and that hurts.

I’m grateful I got to know Jim and work alongside him. I only wish we’d had more time.

Running an AI model locally changes where the risk lives, but it does not automatically make the output better, the data safer, or the use responsible.

That distinction matters. As organizations develop AI policies, the conversation often becomes too focused on where the model runs. Is it in the cloud? Is it installed on an organization-owned computer? Is the data being sent to an external provider?

These are important questions, but they are not enough. A local model may keep data inside the organization and provide greater control over access, retention, and configuration. But local does not mean safe.

It can still expose sensitive information, connect to systems it should not access, produce harmful recommendations, or become part of an important workflow without clear ownership or oversight.

The hardware may be under our control while the risk is not. The opposite is also true. A cloud service is not automatically reckless. A properly evaluated service may offer stronger security, identity management, monitoring, and contractual protections than a locally assembled system with limited operational discipline.

The real question is not simply where the model runs. It is what the system can access, what it can retain, what it can influence, and what happens when it is wrong.

A local model summarizing public documents on a disconnected computer is not the same as one that can search confidential files, access institutional systems, send messages, or make recommendations affecting real people. Both are local. The risks are completely different. Good governance should follow those differences. It should consider the sensitivity of the data, the purpose of the system, the people affected by its output, the actions it can take, and the level of human oversight. It should also assign responsibility.

Who owns the system? Who approves its use? How is access controlled? How are outputs reviewed? Who responds when something goes wrong?

Local AI may be the right architectural choice. It can offer privacy, control, customization, and independence from commercial platforms. But those benefits come with responsibility.

Someone still has to maintain the infrastructure, secure the data, manage access, monitor usage, test upgrades, and document dependencies. Moving a model from the cloud into a server room does not eliminate those responsibilities. It transfers them.

Policies built around a particular generation of hardware will age quickly. Principles built around data, access, capability, accountability, and impact will last longer. Where an AI model runs matters. But it is only one part of the risk. Govern the data. Govern the access. Govern the actions. Govern the consequences. Govern the risk, not the hardware.

Uncertainty makes organizations restless.

Budgets tighten. Leadership changes. Priorities shift. Rumors move faster than facts. Before long, someone starts drawing a new organizational chart.

Move this team here.

Combine those functions.

Centralize one service. Decentralize another.

Cut something.

The problem is that organizations often begin changing the structure before they fully understand the work.

I have spent most of my career in technology organizations. I have lived through restructures, leadership transitions, budget reductions, mergers, modernization efforts, and more strategic plans than I can remember. Some produced meaningful improvement. Others simply moved the same problems into different boxes.

The difference was rarely the quality of the organizational chart.

It was whether the people making decisions understood what the organization actually did.

That is why I believe a service catalog is far more than a list of IT services.

A service catalog is a map of institutional capability.

It tells us what work is being performed, who depends on it, who owns it, what it costs, what systems support it, and what happens when it fails. It exposes duplication, but it also reveals dependencies that may otherwise remain invisible.

A laptop may look like a commodity until you account for procurement, configuration, security, identity, software, inventory, support, replacement, and disposal.

A classroom may look like a collection of screens and cables until teaching begins and thirty students are waiting for the technology to work.

A system may appear to be owned by one department while its success quietly depends on five others.

None of this becomes visible on an organizational chart.

When the future is stable, an organization can sometimes afford ambiguity. People compensate through experience, relationships, and institutional memory. They know whom to call. They know which process is not written down. They know which person has been holding an entire service together for years.

Uncertainty makes those informal arrangements dangerous.

People leave. Budgets change. Responsibilities move. The person everyone relied on is suddenly no longer there, and the organization discovers that what looked like redundancy was actually resilience, or that what looked like a simple service was supporting something mission-critical.

A mature service catalog forces difficult but necessary conversations.

What do we provide?

Who are we providing it for?

What level of service are we promising?

What does it truly cost?

Which services must remain local?

Which services would benefit from being shared?

Where are we carrying unnecessary duplication?

Where would consolidation create efficiency, and where would it destroy responsiveness?

Those questions should come before decisions about structure.

This does not mean documenting every task before making a decision. That can become another form of avoidance. The goal is not perfect documentation. The goal is enough clarity to make deliberate choices.

You cannot intelligently consolidate, outsource, invest in, reduce, or eliminate work you do not understand.

And you should never mistake visibility for bureaucracy.

Done correctly, a service catalog does not slow an organization down. It gives leaders a common language for making decisions. It helps teams explain their value without relying on vague claims about how busy they are. It connects technology work to the people, services, and missions that depend on it.

Most importantly, it tells us what must remain dependable even while everything around it is changing.

Uncertainty does not always give us the luxury of knowing what comes next.

But we can define the work.

We can understand what matters.

And we can make sure the things people rely on do not disappear simply because nobody took the time to name them.

Far from perfect.

But one hell of a life.

I don’t want to leave this world with a mint condition body. When my time comes, I won’t hand the dirt something untouched. It’ll be worn. Scarred. A little broken. Not because life was unfair, but because I lived it.

Not because I collected scars by accident. Anyone can do that.

I want every scar to mean I was in the arena.

That I left home to build a new life. That I took risks. That I failed and got back up. That I built things worth building. That I loved deeply. That I made mistakes I still carry, and learned from them. That I became a father and decided the cycle ended with me.

Some scars are visible. Most aren’t.

Theodore Roosevelt once wrote:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much.”

That has always resonated with me.

I don’t fear the dirt. I fear reaching the end and realizing I spent my life trying to preserve myself instead of using myself.

I want to be able to say:

“I used everything I was given. I didn’t keep the good china locked in the cabinet. I wore the engine out instead of letting it rust. If this body is broken, it’s because I asked everything of it, and it answered.”

A mint condition body might tell the story of a sheltered life.

A worn one tells another story.

It speaks of oceans crossed, mountains climbed, children carried on tired shoulders, sleepless nights solving impossible problems, embraces that lasted longer than they needed to, and countless mornings when getting up was a choice that had to be made again.

Life has a way of changing what we think matters.

When I was younger, I thought success was measured in titles, wealth, and accomplishments. Those things have their place, but they aren’t what stay with us.

What stays are the walks with no destination. The conversations that changed us. The people we loved. The memories we gave our children. The moments that quietly became part of someone else’s story.

Maybe that is what growing older really means.

Not becoming smaller.

Becoming clearer.

One day, if my granddaughter asks my daughter what Grandpa was like, I hope she doesn’t say I was successful.

I hope she smiles and says,

“He lived.”

Far from perfect.

But one hell of a life.

Here’s to living.

There was once a man who kept two ledgers.

The first ledger was easy to understand.

It tracked mortgages, salaries, budgets, investments, square footage, interest rates, and retirement accounts. Every month he opened it, sharpened his pencil, and added new numbers. The ledger grew thicker every year.

The second ledger was invisible.

No bank could see it.

No accountant could audit it.

And for most of his life, he barely knew it existed.

The man had arrived in a new country with almost nothing. He learned early that security was fragile. Money could disappear. Jobs could disappear. Even entire futures could disappear.

So he became very good at building.

He built a career.

He built teams.

He built systems.

He built a reputation.

He built a family.

And eventually, after decades of effort, he looked around and realized something strange.

He had become successful.

Not pretend successful.

Not “one bad month from disaster” successful.

Actually successful.

The kind of successful his younger self would have thought was impossible.

Yet every morning he still woke up with the instincts of the man who had nothing.

One evening he was sitting alone beside a swimming pool in his backyard after everyone had gone to bed.

The water was still.

The house was quiet.

The kind of quiet that only arrives when the people you love are asleep.

He found himself thinking about investments.

Should he buy another property?

Should he keep more cash?

Should he take more risk?

Should he take less?

The questions chased each other in circles.

Then he noticed something floating in the water.

It was a cheap plastic diving ring.

His daughter had forgotten it earlier that day.

He stared at it for a long time.

And suddenly he remembered another pool.

Not this one.

A different one.

A pool from decades earlier.

The kind of public pool where a kid would stand at the fence and wonder how other people afforded the things they had.

The kid at that fence had made himself a promise.

One day, he would build a life where his family never had to worry.

And sitting there by the water, he realized something.

The promise had already been fulfilled.

Not perfectly.

Not completely.

But enough.

Far more than enough.

The house.

The vacations.

The education.

The opportunities.

The safety.

The stability.

The little girl asleep upstairs.

The kid at the fence would have looked at all of it and been speechless.

The man laughed quietly.

Because he had spent years trying to solve a problem that no longer existed.

The fear remained.

But the reality had changed.

Then another thought arrived.

A better one.

Maybe the purpose of success wasn’t to eliminate uncertainty.

Maybe it was to buy the freedom to choose what matters.

To choose family over another meeting.

Health over another drink.

Presence over another dollar.

Memories over another spreadsheet.

The invisible ledger finally made sense.

On one side was money.

On the other side was time.

And every day, whether he realized it or not, he was spending from both.

The first ledger would eventually go to his daughter.

The second ledger never could.

Only its results.

The bike rides.

The ski lessons.

The vacations.

The bedtime conversations.

The moments when she felt safe because Dad was there.

Those were the entries that survived.

Years later, when the man was gone, nobody would remember how much cash sat in his checking account.

Nobody would remember his annual raises.

Nobody would remember the exact value of his investments.

But his daughter would remember the way he showed up.

The way he listened.

The way he made her feel like the most important person in the world.

And in the end, that was the only ledger that had ever mattered.

The diving ring drifted quietly across the pool.

The man stood up, turned off the patio light, and headed inside.

There would still be decisions tomorrow.

There would still be risks.

There would still be uncertainty.

But upstairs was the reason he had fought for everything.

And for one evening at least, the numbers could wait.

Throughout the years, I have realized that being me carries weight. Even when no one asks me to carry it, I feel like I should.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown tired of carrying that weight. I’ve made peace with that. But I’ve also realized that feeling tired doesn’t mean I’ve become less capable. It simply means I’ve reached a stage where my definition of leadership is changing.

When I was younger, leadership meant being the one in front, taking every hill. As I’ve gotten older, it has become choosing which hills are actually worth climbing, teaching someone else how to climb, or simply creating a life that the people I love want to emulate.

There’s a line from The Lord of the Rings that comes to my mind from time to time. It’s not about kings or battles. It’s much quieter.

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

I’ve always liked it because it doesn’t pretend that strength means never feeling weary.

I can be proud of where I came from, proud of being Kurdish, proud of what I’ve built, and still admit, I’m tired.

Those things don’t contradict each other.

Sometimes, when I feel really old and tired, I wonder if what I’m actually feeling is that I’m done proving myself.

Those aren’t the same.

There’s a difference between losing your fire and deciding you no longer need to burn it for everyone else.

Maybe The Kurd doesn’t need to challenge every newcomer anymore. Maybe he sits by the fire, tells the stories, laughs louder, picks his moments, and when something truly matters, everyone still gets quiet because they know exactly who just stood up.

That’s a different kind of strength.

I don’t believe I’ve reached the point where my strength is fading.

I think I’ve finally reached the point where I’m asking a different question.

Not Can I win this battle?

But Does this battle still deserve me?

I’ve spent most of my career building technology, leading teams, solving problems, and trying to leave every team and organization a little better than I found them.

This is where I’ll think out loud.

Some posts will be about leadership, technology, AI, cybersecurity, and the business of IT. Others will be about books, travel, the occasional rabbit hole, and perhaps most importantly, fatherhood. Being a dad has shaped how I lead, how I make decisions, and how I define success more than any title or promotion ever could.

These are simply notes from my desk, ideas that have challenged me, mistakes I’ve learned from, and observations that I hope are useful to someone else.

If something here makes you think differently, starts a conversation, or helps you solve a problem, then writing it was worth it.

Welcome.