Personal | ClayBurt.com

by Clay Burt on January 2, 2015 Leave a Comment

The holidays were kind to Dear Old Dad

As any Dad knows, you can expect nothing for Christmas and most times you won’t be disappointed. JK, I have everything I need so it is just a fun time for me.

This year though I got two wonderful “presents” related to the Dads and Daughters theme I’ve been working on lately.

Giving Back, Getting More

One, I got to go out to a rural church with my youngest daughter and her friend to help with their “Christmas.”

This church partners with a church near us and they get lots of requests for presents for kids up to 15 years old. The churches come together and do a donation drive and then they fill about 150 kids Christmas (lots of clothes and necessities, but some fun toys and stuff as well).

I had a great time meeting the people and some of them were really appreciative of what the churches did, but the best part was watching my daughter and her friend give their time and early Saturday morning to afternoon to help others.

They laughed, worked, and overall made my day. No pictures from this one for obvious reasons.

A Surprise Present I Got To Share

Two, my oldest daughter wanted to forego a traditional Christmas present to get to go to a volleyball camp.

Don’t get me wrong, it was expensive for a Christmas present, but it was to help her out in volleyball this year and going forward.

Plus I got to go to Chicago with her by myself and spend 4 days with her.

We talked a lot, had some overly heavy Chicago pizza (Pizzeria Uno and Lou Malnati’s) and old school Italian in Little Italy (Rosebud).

She worked it all off at the camp each day (I did not) and we got to see some sights which I’ve seen before, but got to see through her eyes again.

Too much fun and we had a great time. I really like Chicago…

This isn’t a New Year’s post or even a real update to the list of things I want to cover with my girls, but it helps to remember that you can find ways to bond, love, and enjoy your time with your daughters in a lot of ways. Just get started and things will take care of themselves.

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Chicago, Christmas giving, Dads and daughters, Lou Malnati's, Pizzeria Uno, Rosebud Italian, Spending time with your Daughters, Volleyball

by Clay Burt on December 17, 2014 1 Comment

Dads and Daughters stuff and update

Yesterday I posted about my new adventure…

Trolling my daughters’ future… Ahh, fun times!

Today I started looking into how to communicate better with my daughters. More, better, etc was the plan.

Best laid plans of mice and dads…

I said I planned to research communicating better, but what I immediately realized when I opened Google is that I first want to clarify WHAT I want them to know.

Ok, Google that. “Stuff Dads should teach their daughters” or “Things I wish my Dad had told me growing up.”

Wow. Lots of dads with the [Read more…]

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Dads and daughters, Daughters, Fathers of daughters, What I want my daughters to know

by Clay Burt on December 16, 2014 1 Comment

Where does the time go? Life Goal Troll :)

I was sitting in a meeting and my mind wandered… always fun, always an adventure…

Generally, I start thinking about pretty consistent things:

My daughter’s sports or school
Where I have to be and who I have to chauffeur today
What I want to eat (often)
What I need to do to fix my diet, workouts, etc
Software or technology – sue me, I’m a geek.

Today was different though. I could only think about one thing – [Read more…]

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Dads, Daughters, Goals, Life plans, New Year Resolutions

by Clay Burt on May 1, 2013 Leave a Comment

Tough times and character

There’s an old saying about a person’s character coming out in tough times that goes something like:

The true test of a person’s character is how they react in times of adversity

I think this applies to people, families, workgroups and even corporations. Especially corporations! I have worked for several over the years and when one loses their identity and character it is an ugly thing.

Character is very important especially for large corporations to keep them from getting too impersonal and forgetting that their customers, employees, and stockholders are all just people and want to be treated that way.

Corporate Culture

As you probably know, I work for a large corporation, Southern Company, which has roughly 26,000 employees. (Note – I work for Southern Company, but this is my blog and everything here is my opinion and does not represent Southern Company in any way). It would be easy for them to lose their identity given [Read more…]

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Corporate Culture, Personal responsibility, Self Improvement, Southern Company

by Clay Burt on April 26, 2013

Please excuse the Daddy moment

Daughters and Dads

For those of you who know me, you know that I am a fairly private person. You know that I love to work out by lifting heavy things and that I really enjoy technology, but you also know that my true passion is my daughters…

Incredigirls

I have two wonderful girls and if you follow me on Facebook you know that [Read more…]

Filed Under: 30 day challenge, Personal Tagged With: Dad, Daughter, Sporty Girl, Swim, Volleyball

by Clay Burt on April 23, 2013

Be yourself! Make changes!

Be Yourself. Make Changes!

I saw a quote today and immediately thought of how I tell my girls to CHOOSE how to respond to people, comments, situations in life… Trust me, it helps keep you sane, or at least it does for me.

Be Yourself, but first Know Yourself

Then I thought about the quote some more and realized it was on a much broader scale and scope than I thought. Here it is:

You are the way you are because that’s the way you want to be.
If you really wanted to be any different, you would be in the process of changing right now.

Stop and think about it for the next few seconds or minutes.

Now, what did it mean to you? Are you happy with your health, weight, job, spouse, children and [Read more…]

Filed Under: 30 day challenge, Fitness, Personal Tagged With: Fitness, Goals, Health, Self Improvement

by Clay Burt on December 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

Red Solo Cup

I hate to admit this, but I really like the Red Solo Cup song by Toby Keith. I know I shouldn’t, but every time it comes on I have to smile and sing along… what more can you ask from a song?

Evidently I’m not the only one as I saw it was in the top songs list… won’t last long, but for the next several parties you attend I bet it is played… a lot…

I attended a Christmas party this last weekend and it came on and at least half the people started singing along – the other half had no clue what the song was so it was pretty entertaining to watch.

New Year’s Eve will probably be the culmination of the Red Solo Cup trend with 99 percent of the world singing along to it right before and after “Auld Lang Syne”, you know, the song everyone hears and sings to at midnight… “Should old acquaintance be forgot…”

Well, anyway – hope you have a great holiday season, a wonderful Christmas and a full red solo cup on New Year’s Eve!

Filed Under: Personal

by Clay Burt on October 6, 2011 Leave a Comment

Steve Jobs and his legacy

With the news of Steve Jobs passing away it reminded me of an exercise I’ve done in different forms over the years…

Write your own legacy/eulogy/what people would say about you when you died.

Do you think Steve resigned as CEO knowing he was close to passing and realized he needed to do other things with the remainder of his life? I would like to think the answer is no.

Steve Jobs Legacy

There are very few people I know who could honestly say that there isn’t much else they would have done or done differently with their lives, but Steve Jobs has got to be one of those people.

He fundamentally changed four of the largest markets of our time. Personal computing, music players(anyone remember a walkman anymore?) and music, smart phones and tablets.

Before you go thinking I’ve drank the apple koolaid please know that I don’t have an iphone, mac, ipad, etc. I have an old ipod I inherited from my daughter, but that is all. I like their products, but don’t see the cost benefit although my wife and kids have their products so I can see the benefits, just not the cost benefits in relation to other products.

What I think is the most interesting thing is that he was basically an entrepreneur and visionary who never lost the spirit even when apple became the larget company in tech/world/life. He was able to inspire an entire corporate entity to follow him and make followers out of customers. He was the epitome of a leader.

I guess you can add a fifth, sixth and seventh industry that he fundamentally changed… Design/UI, Marketing, and sales as well because all of those industries/markets were handed their butts by a tech company that redefined cool.

RIP Steve! Your legacy will live on…

Filed Under: Featured, Personal, Tech

by Clay Burt on September 2, 2011 Leave a Comment

Pro football game… meh. College football is finally here!

One of my workout buddies went to the Falcons vs Ravens football game last night in the ATL. The only reason I even bothered to flip on the game was the off chance of seeing him and his son on the big screen. He sent me this picture of his tickets to rub it in, but the only thing I saw on them was the price… wow, I haven’t been to a pro game in a while and from those prices I don’t think I’ll go anytime soon. Then again, he probably didn’t buy the cheap seats

That and because a former Bama player, Julio Jones, is ready to bust out on the pro scene… just wish he would have come back to the Tide one more season, but I would have done the same thing.

I don’t really care about pro ball, but really enjoy college football and it is finally here and I am really looking forward to watching a few games tomorrow.

Planning on going to the Alabama game so I’ll end up catching the late games on TV. Weird to say there are some critical games tomorrow for national championship game implications, but with LSU vs Oregon and Georgia vs Boise St there really are. If Oregon or Boise State win they will have a rebuttal for their weaker schedule even though I don’t expect Georgia to be any good with a 4th string running back and no depth so it won’t help them as much as a win by Oregon for their own chances.

Anyone out on the quad tomorrow send me a text if you want to catch up.

Roll Tide!

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: Football

by Clay Burt on August 10, 2011 Leave a Comment

School starts back tomorrow and lessons are everywhere

Keep learning for a lifelong adventure

With school starting back in the morning the kids will be in full on lesson mode. Learning new things every day. It keeps them excited and their brains are making incredible connections that will serve them the rest of their lives.

Does learning end when we leave school?

Of course not. As we get older and leave school we have a tendency to stop thinking about learning in the same way. It is no longer formalized, dedicated times with specific goals of what to learn.

Some people never read another book, set another learning goal, learn a new language, write another story or do much of anything more than learning how to use FaceBook and Fantasy Football sites.

What can I learn today?

Audio Books

Since I am in technology I have to pretty much learn new stuff all the time or get left in the bit dust. But I really like to learn new things so this year I’ve been using my wonderful commute time to listen to audio books.

Here are a few of the books I’ve “read” recently:

First, break all the rules : what the world’s greatest managers do differently
Flip : how to turn everything you know on its head–and succeed beyond your wildest imaginings.
Tribes : we need you to lead us.
How to win friends and influence people
It’s not just who you know : transform your life (and your organization) by turning colleagues and contacts into lasting, genuine relationships.
I can read you like a book : how to spot the messages and emotions people are really sending with their body language.

I’ll do a post soon on some of these books I really liked.

Blogs

I read several blogs in Google Reader and visit the stuff that really interests me.

It is so easy to find good content this way that I’m surprised when people don’t know what I’m talking about. RSS readers are available in Outlook, Google, many mail programs and of course stand alone sites like Google Reader.

Podcasts

I listen to podcasts in the car, sitting at my kids practices, late at night and basically everywhere.

You get some decent information even if most podcasters are trying to sell you something or convince you to use their services. Some are better than others and some give more free info than most.

I plan on giving out my list of subscriptions soon, but go to iTunes and look for anything that interests you – there is probably a podcast to match your interest.

Magazines

Magazines have made a minor comeback for me recently as they seem to be either focusing on shorter, fast hitting topics or really good in depth reporting. I like both styles and read many different niche magazines. Finance, Tech, Fitness, etc. Love em all!

Take some time today to learn a lesson. The internet and related technologies have made it easier than ever. Take advantage of the opportunities!

Filed Under: Books and Articles, Featured, Personal Tagged With: Audio Books, Blogs, Google Reader, Learning, Magazines, Opportunity, Podcasts, RSS Readers, School, Technology