Dearg O'Bartuin's Home On The Interweb

Today is mothers day, the one day of the year we all celebrate and give thanks to those who gave us life!
I wanted to tell you all a little about my mother “Lynda”.

My mother was born Lynda Jane Barton on 16/06/67, she often jokes her life was doomed from the start based on her date of birth! Today my mother is an inspiration to hundreds of people in her life, spending all of her time helping those in the drug and alcohol rehabilitation system, including AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) & NA (Narcotics Anonymous).
However growing up was no easy path. Addicted to heroin herself from the age of 16 and with a young son (thats me) and pregnant with her second child (My brother Christopher), my mum’s daily routine consisted of little other than getting high and doing anything required in order to raise the funds to buy the drugs.

My mother story is absolutely amazing and very unique. She was lucky to survive her addiction and today is clean many years and helps people who are yet to beat the demon on a daily basis.

People often ask me, why doesn’t my mother write a book? i used to often wonder why myself, last year my Brother Christopher (a radio documentary creator for RTE), told our story in audio form which was aired on national radio and enjoyed by millions.
“8 Years On” has since won lots of awards and received incredible recognition and i invite all those that regularly read my blog to take the time to listen.

You can listen to 8 Years On Here i hope you enjoy and take something positive.

Happy Mothers Day Mum, Thank you for life.

Over the past few days i have been concentrating on researching new applications for the VIT Live product range. The horrid weather outside didn’t put me off taking advantage of working from my quiet office at home, i regularly looked out the window wishing the snow would clear, giving me the opportunity to visit our offices, staff and some customers, but my finger crossing didn’t amount to any good, the snow continued to drop, disqualifying any chance of moving from my position.

No fear, my research has produced some very interesting results. For some time now our regular customer poll results suggested a requirement to reduce long term maintenance costs of on site hardware like servers, PC’s and network devices more than any other item.

While more than 64% of our users are Thin Client active (use Dumb Terminals connected to Terminal Servers), the consensus is we should be doing even more to reduce long term spending on annual service and replacement costs.

In 2010 our management team will be announcing a list of incentives which will mean further developing our products to reduce and in some cases eliminate the requirement of a powerful central server. Already i can hear you getting excited

Of course any changes to our products that removes or reduces the amount of hardware required to run, means plenty of more spare cash going straight back to you, the customer.
So why are we so keen to take money away from our shareholders pockets and back to you?

Well frankly it makes sound business sense! For every server we have at a customer location, a dedicated first line support engineer is also required. Also our licensing overheads increase which in turn increases your over annual agreement.

While it is too early to announce exactly what changes we will make this year, i can assure all customers we are doing everything we can to continue our brand of putting the user needs first. As we go forward in to this unsteady financial environment, now is the time to be using our talented in house technicians to develop ways of changing the way our products work, while maintaining solid familiarity and without any need for training or interface changes.

I can however announce we will be looking first at alternative, energy efficient methods of delivering email. (Teaser)!

I am so excited about 2010, studies suggest our climate is steadily improving and the technology sector held its own even when the chips were down. A toast to 2010! a happy new year to you all.

Dearg O’Bartuin
Founder & Project Director

VIT Live

It’s been a while since my last update for Southport & Woodvale Round Table.

Too much has happened to update everything but the biggest event to note is our very successful Christmas 2009 Santa float.
All proceeds collected go to local charities.

I had a great time playing Santa, although the public may question how much weight he has lost lately (sorry i did try to pad my suit out as much as possible!).

The picture below was taken by local press agency Southport GB, you can read public comments by visiting the news article: http://www.southportforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50417253

Playing santa for charity

Thank you to all those that donated. 75 150 Christmas food hampers have been provided (with thanks to Tesco), we will be distributing these over the holiday period.

Hope your all well,

xx

EDIT:

Below are some additional pictures showing other members packing the food parcels. I couldn’t attend this day but a massive thank you to all members especially George Elland who is the master mind organiser behind this years charity distribution.

Photographs courtesy and copyright www.SouthportGB.gov.uk