Jim Sutton’s Weblog

The uninteresting stuff: I have a B.S. from MIT (or S.B. as MIT calls them), and I went straight on to receive a Masters from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.  I attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business where I went through my orals and successfully defended by dissertation, but never quite got my Ph.D.  I’ve worked for IBM’s Research Division, Hewlett-Packard (for 12 years-starting as a software engineer and eventually becoming an Operation General Manager), and a variety of mid-size and start-up technology companies (usually as VP Engineering).  I did a stint as CEO of a start-up in the Digital Rights Managment arena.

For the last few years, I’ve been concentrating on my own small businesses, doing some high tech, C-Level consulting and temporary gigs.  Lately, I’ve been getting involved in purchasing and running website businesses which primarily derive income from advertsing–although we have one online retail business.

The more interesting stuff: On the personal side, I’ve done a bunch of things until I got pretty good at them. 

Shortly after grad school, I did a lot of formal training in photography and spent some years doing professional photography as an avocation (mostly nature photos).

Shortly thereafter, I got into ceramics, starting with throwing pots and going through firing them.  I got quite interested in the effects of different glazes and firing techniques (ever the techie, I suppose).  Raku ended up being my favorite.

We started skiing seriously many years ago, and both my wife and I qualified for National Ski Patrol (volunteer patrolling).  I did that for 23 years, and my wife was in NSPS nearly as long.  We really enjoyed the “customer service” and other service aspects of that role–although being out on some days from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM with the wind blowing 50 MPH and horizontal sleet makes one re-think one’s commitment.  In any case, both my wife and I were deeply involved in training new ski patrol members and improving the skills of existing patrol members.

Along about 25 years ago, we started serious sailing–not racing, but cruising in very nice, warm places (Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Caribbean, etc.) on bare-boat charters (i.e., we rent a sail boat in 38-55 ft range without crew).  If you haven’t tried it, this is about the best vaction ever.  We started sailing with more qualified friends.  Eventually, we both took sailing courses, and I eventually took all the courses required to charter a boat and several more courses beyond that.  One thing led to another, and we eventually purchased a 38 foot sailing catamaran that we kept in the British Virgin Islands, chartering it out when we weren’t using it.

The charter management company was not particularly ethical, so we eventually exited that agreement.

The good news is that we now have our two adult daughters and their husbands hooked on bareboat cruising, so I’m sure we will have many more opportunities.

I’ve always been sort of a car-nut; I’ve mostly had Corvettes (usually red convertibles).

I enjoy building and remodeling, so I got my General Contractor’s license and my Real Estate Broker’s license along the way

In any case, our two daughters are wonderful adults (as they were wonderful kids), and we now have 3 wonderful grand-babies and 2 great sons-in-law.  The daughters and their husbands are all involved in healthcare in some way; one daughter and on son-in-law are physicians, the other daughter works for a pharma company, and the other son-in-law is with a high-tech startup doing web-based health-care software.

Life is good.