It all begins...

Ahoy there fellow eCommerce classmates (and whoever else might happen across my blog)!

This is my first "missive" written as an installment of this blog assignment for my 9^th class in the MS-Project Management program through Boston University. Please forgive my late posting as I am currently recovering from a "health scare" that impacted the completion of my previous class as well as the start of this class.

My name is Andrew Olson and I am from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. I am married and am a father to two daughters (ages 4 and 5). I am a Project Manager with a reliability management consulting firm based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Currently, I am assigned to a maintenance efficiency improvement project at a major oil refinery in the Canadian oil sands up in Fort McMurray, Alberta. I travel for work and am on the road 40 weeks a year.

The travel is a mixed blessing as it provides the opportunity for a small town citizen like myself to work for major corporations. It also provides me many nights in a hotel room where I can focus more intently on studies! However, the mixed part is missing my family while I am gone. This is a major portion of why I have mixed feelings about my current job. Then again, the financial rewards may provide long term gains for the short term sacrifice of being gone from home.

I also own and operate “Olson Piano Services” as a piano technician and have a constant supply of pianos to tune or rebuild. I enjoy the combination of music, technology, woodworking, physics, project management, and customer service that are all a part of tuning and servicing pianos. I am a member of the Piano Technician's Guild of America.

For leisure my family and I sail our Pearson 26 on the beautiful waters of Lake Michigan. I also enjoy acting in various theatrical productions (where I met my wife), playing trombone, running, and hiking with our 90 lb chocolate lab. I look forward to completing my Masters so I can turn my attention back to many of these things!

Good luck to all of you as we proceed with our coursework. I’m sure we’ll meet and talk more in discussions!