For RG’s birthday this year I tried to surprise her. Tried I think possibly unsuccessfully. I put aside some of my spending money every week for the summer and was able to get her an iPhone. This was something she wanted even before she moved back from Moscow. However we simply didn’t have the money to get it and she had to use a phone I had bought in UK. It worked ok but it was pretty much just a plain boring phone. So she had been talking about wanting either an iPhone or a new purse from Patinia. A little local chain in Minneapolis, of course the purse would have been a bad idea, how would I pick something like that out… seriously. So an iPhone it was. But I could not buy it before hand because to transfer her number her old service would stop working. This is bad for a couple reasons. 1 – we were traveling to DC and I wanted her to have a phone in case something went wrong, and B – she would know what she was getting.
So I had to find an excuse to get out and about on my own to get her present. So I made up some story… Not a very good one. She was didn’t know exactly what I was getting her but I think she had a strong guess. Anyway I found and ATT store and signed up for new service and bought a phone. While I was in there a friend from college that is now living in DC and working as a Lawyer called up and wanted to get together. So he met up with me at the ATT store (this would help with my plan because she thought I might have hid her present at his condo). Anyway I still had the idea that I could surprise the wife. So I stopped in CVS got a huge gift bag that could conceivably hold a purse and all the paper to stuff it with, along with some pop to weight the bag down.
So we headed upstairs and “surprised” her. At that the last minute she was a little confused because of the bag but it didn’t last. She opened it up and bam there was the iPhone. She was very excited and I think happy. So she started playing with it right away and has not stopped since. It’s insane. She uses it for everything maps, shopping, looking information, facebook, everything. I have to admit is quite useful though. It works with the internet 100% better than my windows mobile. So it is pretty nice. Plus I got RG’s old iPod touch. So that was a nice side affect. But I have to admit using the iPhone really does make other phones look out dated.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Eye Brows
Well I have to say our little pup is so much I had to write about him again. Actually he is fun most the time. At 5am when he needs to go out… not so much but I am sure that can’t last forever. Anyway were still figuring things out. We are taking him to vets, buying toys, trying to wean him off wet food to dry food etc. All that fun stuff. As he is a puppy there are limited ways to play with him to. Run around the house and let him case you or pseudo wrestle with him. Well wrestling is really him against your hand but he likes it. Of course you have to watch out because he loves to chew on you while you’re doing it. We are also trying to take him on walks but only down the block and back. He doesn’t quite understand the leash but he is trying really hard.
I thought it would be fun to name this post “Eye Brows” because that is the literal translation of the pup’s name. Brovi is Russian for eye brows. I came up with this name because of his coloring. As I mentioned last week he has tan spots on his face. Well they are perfect tan spots resembling Groucho Marx’s eye brows. They are really bushy and even kind of stick out a bit from his head, very similar in pattern to a Doberman pincher but a Doberman with a ton of hair, like a shaggy dog. So I thought it would be a good name for the little guy and it does sound like a dog’s name.
One of the funny consequences of this name is my in-laws reaction. They have no idea why anyone would ever name their dog such a thing. It would be like meeting some Russians that call their dog literally in English “Eye Brows” or “Nose” or “Hair”. It doesn’t make any sense. But of course sense I don’t speak Russia (at least not enough to count) and RG loves the name we’re sticking to it. But every once in a while RG’s mom will ask again why would you name a dog such a name. She is completely dumbfounded. I think the sister in law gets the joke and nature of the name so we have a little support. That’s ok I am sure they will understand when they meet him, and if they don’t they probably won’t care anyway because he is pretty adorable – of course there are no guarantees he will stay that way.
I thought it would be fun to name this post “Eye Brows” because that is the literal translation of the pup’s name. Brovi is Russian for eye brows. I came up with this name because of his coloring. As I mentioned last week he has tan spots on his face. Well they are perfect tan spots resembling Groucho Marx’s eye brows. They are really bushy and even kind of stick out a bit from his head, very similar in pattern to a Doberman pincher but a Doberman with a ton of hair, like a shaggy dog. So I thought it would be a good name for the little guy and it does sound like a dog’s name.
One of the funny consequences of this name is my in-laws reaction. They have no idea why anyone would ever name their dog such a thing. It would be like meeting some Russians that call their dog literally in English “Eye Brows” or “Nose” or “Hair”. It doesn’t make any sense. But of course sense I don’t speak Russia (at least not enough to count) and RG loves the name we’re sticking to it. But every once in a while RG’s mom will ask again why would you name a dog such a name. She is completely dumbfounded. I think the sister in law gets the joke and nature of the name so we have a little support. That’s ok I am sure they will understand when they meet him, and if they don’t they probably won’t care anyway because he is pretty adorable – of course there are no guarantees he will stay that way.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Growing Family
Ok so the biggest news in our household is that our family has grown by one member. Though he is not very big less than six pounds at the moment to be honest. So now we have had to go by special food for the little guy, toys, place to sleep, the whole works. It is not cheap that is for sure, but so far it’s been totally worth it. So to all those who don’t know we got a dog! His name is Brovi and he is a miniature Labradoodle. He is mostly dark brown almost black with light brown patches over his eyes, under his nose, on his bottom, and on his lower legs (his legs look like he has socks on really). He is quite the handsome little fella. So far I don’t think he knows what to make of us or his new house. He is by far the calmest dog I have ever seen. Nothing seems to faze him. He just keeps doing his own thing regardless of what is going on around him.
Now I have to admit up front I didn’t want to get a Labradoodle. I thought it was a silly kind of dog, a designer dog. I wanted a bull dog, a mutt, or maybe a sheltie. In fact my plan was to just go to the pound or some rescue society and pic up a dog there. But as with most things in my life the wife had another idea. It is funny how that seems to happen on most decisions. Honestly RG didn’t want to get a dog in the first place as she knew she would be doing most the work. But then she started looking around and fell in love with a Labradoodle in Kentucky. Unfortunately he was just too expensive and we did not get him. But by this time she was sold and when she saw Brovi and his siblings she was sold. So we got a labradoodle.
I think we decided to get Brovi in early August. However we could not pick up until after Labor Day as the kennel was very strict about how long the animals need to stay with them. So for the next 3 or for weeks I think RG checked the website at least 8000 times a day. I would not be surprised if she programmed her browser to bring it up and just display all day actually. As we got closer to the day we got more and more excited. So finally the day came. So on the Friday after Labor Day we drove down to meet the kennel owners at MSP airport (they were shipping other dogs to their new owners) and pick up our little pup. Like I said before he didn’t know what to do. RG was driving so I held him and petted him, finally letting him sleep on the car floor. When we got him home he just kind of explored the first floor. We did get him to play a little but he wasn’t that interested most of the time.
Now the first day or so I think RG was a little worried. She had spent 3 or 4 weeks reading everything she could about dog ownership and had a lot of ideas in her head. One of the big things was she was worried about him eating. Apparently the literature said if they don’t eat in the first 24 hours they could go into some kind of shock. Well he didn’t like the dry dog food. So we got cat food which is more fragrant. He didn’t want to eat that. So there were some worries in the house. Until RG put a little cat food on her finger and put that in his mouth. Then he seemed more than happy to eat the food and all was good! Now of course the hard part comes. House breaking… Oh no.
Now I have to admit up front I didn’t want to get a Labradoodle. I thought it was a silly kind of dog, a designer dog. I wanted a bull dog, a mutt, or maybe a sheltie. In fact my plan was to just go to the pound or some rescue society and pic up a dog there. But as with most things in my life the wife had another idea. It is funny how that seems to happen on most decisions. Honestly RG didn’t want to get a dog in the first place as she knew she would be doing most the work. But then she started looking around and fell in love with a Labradoodle in Kentucky. Unfortunately he was just too expensive and we did not get him. But by this time she was sold and when she saw Brovi and his siblings she was sold. So we got a labradoodle.
I think we decided to get Brovi in early August. However we could not pick up until after Labor Day as the kennel was very strict about how long the animals need to stay with them. So for the next 3 or for weeks I think RG checked the website at least 8000 times a day. I would not be surprised if she programmed her browser to bring it up and just display all day actually. As we got closer to the day we got more and more excited. So finally the day came. So on the Friday after Labor Day we drove down to meet the kennel owners at MSP airport (they were shipping other dogs to their new owners) and pick up our little pup. Like I said before he didn’t know what to do. RG was driving so I held him and petted him, finally letting him sleep on the car floor. When we got him home he just kind of explored the first floor. We did get him to play a little but he wasn’t that interested most of the time.
Now the first day or so I think RG was a little worried. She had spent 3 or 4 weeks reading everything she could about dog ownership and had a lot of ideas in her head. One of the big things was she was worried about him eating. Apparently the literature said if they don’t eat in the first 24 hours they could go into some kind of shock. Well he didn’t like the dry dog food. So we got cat food which is more fragrant. He didn’t want to eat that. So there were some worries in the house. Until RG put a little cat food on her finger and put that in his mouth. Then he seemed more than happy to eat the food and all was good! Now of course the hard part comes. House breaking… Oh no.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Guy’s Weekend
So every year in the fall, at least for the last 3 years, a group of friends and I try to get away for a guys weekend. I pretty much consists of the all the activities you would expect. Some adult beverages, some golf, some boating, some bars, and a bunch of crazy probably some-what inappropriate behavior. This year was no different. I some new attendees were present and some old faces were absent but it was still a good time. This year we tried renting a pontoon boat for the first time and I have to say it was a success. While I think some people thought I didn’t enjoy myself I really did. I was just sick. What can you do eh? Anyway this year was also a little different because we rented a standalone cabin on a lake rather than a cabin that was part of a resort on a golf course.
Pros: No one to bother, lake, boating access, cheaper, and did I say lake. Cons: Smaller, older, smellier, and did I mention smaller. That last part smaller was probably the one big issue of the trip. Too many guys to few places to sleep and spread out. So I think for next year we will have to find another new location. But now we know we want lake and boat access. So that is a bonus. Also I know I need to make sure to keep myself healthy. That said I’m not going to get into many details about the trip as they say “what happens in Vegas…” Vegas.. Now that is an idea. Not sure I could get the ok from RG to head to Vegas for 4 days without her though. At any rate what happens on guys weekend – probably comes out slowly for the rest of the year in stories at parties. But I’m not going to write it down here. All I can say is I am looking forward to next year.
Pros: No one to bother, lake, boating access, cheaper, and did I say lake. Cons: Smaller, older, smellier, and did I mention smaller. That last part smaller was probably the one big issue of the trip. Too many guys to few places to sleep and spread out. So I think for next year we will have to find another new location. But now we know we want lake and boat access. So that is a bonus. Also I know I need to make sure to keep myself healthy. That said I’m not going to get into many details about the trip as they say “what happens in Vegas…” Vegas.. Now that is an idea. Not sure I could get the ok from RG to head to Vegas for 4 days without her though. At any rate what happens on guys weekend – probably comes out slowly for the rest of the year in stories at parties. But I’m not going to write it down here. All I can say is I am looking forward to next year.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
New Car!
Well ok new to us – a nice one at that. In fact we just purchased for RG the nicest car I think I have ever owned. It is a 2007 Honda Accord V6. While I know it isn’t RG’s dream car it is certainly an upgraded for her cruising around in the dent-mobile. The car is practically new with only 24k miles on it. It is a Graphite Silver and has all the options I think you could really need in a car. Power everything, in dash CD changer, cruise, tilt, traction control, and all that. I guess it doesn’t have a sunroof, satellite, leather, or heated seats, but that is all just extra stuff to break really.
I’ve got to say not only is this the nicest car I have ever owned it is one of the nicest to drive. The v6 just moves. In fact when we were test driving cars I got one of these on the freeway and when I went to pass someone I was in the high 90s without trying (so I will have to watch my lead foot). It has a pretty sporty suspension so you do feel the road but it doesn’t rattle you. The steering is perfectly balanced; I can certainly see why people are such fans of Honda. I will have no issue inheriting this car from the wife next time we get something new and retire my pickup.
Speaking of the truck I told RG when we drove it home from the dealer that after 2 weeks she would have no interest in driving the truck again. She told that she “loved” the truck and would still drive it. I just said “yes dear” and nodded. Well I was wrong, but she wasn’t right. It only took one week and she had no more interest in the truck. Though she claims that she will want to drive it when it snows I doubt it. I drove a car with traction control in the snow and it handled just fine. Unless there is 8-10 inches on the ground or more – when realistically you shouldn’t be driving – I can’t imagine a reason to drive the truck for her.
We kind of decided to buy the car quickly. Originally we were going to save for 8-10 months and buy a Murano. But a lot of things colluded to push RG to want a car of her own. Some having to do with not liking going to work in skirts and having to climb in and out of a truck to wanting to drive around her host grandma or some of the kids she used to nanny. The pick is simply not suited for these things and considering I bought 7 years ago when I was single and wanted something I could haul things around with you can’t really fault it for not being everything to everyone. So I looked online and noticed quite a few lease returns for sale.
With the credit crunch and then cash for clunkers a lot of dealers where coming into fall with a lot of extra inventories and decided to slash prices. So we thought why not now. We can’t get a Murano but we can certainly get a much better car for a lot less now. The v6 accords were all three to four thousand dollars under blue book. So we went looking. After driving a couple cars in the cities RG talked me into driving up to St. Cloud. Where there were a couple Accords we found online with very low miles.
I’ve got to say not only is this the nicest car I have ever owned it is one of the nicest to drive. The v6 just moves. In fact when we were test driving cars I got one of these on the freeway and when I went to pass someone I was in the high 90s without trying (so I will have to watch my lead foot). It has a pretty sporty suspension so you do feel the road but it doesn’t rattle you. The steering is perfectly balanced; I can certainly see why people are such fans of Honda. I will have no issue inheriting this car from the wife next time we get something new and retire my pickup.
Speaking of the truck I told RG when we drove it home from the dealer that after 2 weeks she would have no interest in driving the truck again. She told that she “loved” the truck and would still drive it. I just said “yes dear” and nodded. Well I was wrong, but she wasn’t right. It only took one week and she had no more interest in the truck. Though she claims that she will want to drive it when it snows I doubt it. I drove a car with traction control in the snow and it handled just fine. Unless there is 8-10 inches on the ground or more – when realistically you shouldn’t be driving – I can’t imagine a reason to drive the truck for her.
We kind of decided to buy the car quickly. Originally we were going to save for 8-10 months and buy a Murano. But a lot of things colluded to push RG to want a car of her own. Some having to do with not liking going to work in skirts and having to climb in and out of a truck to wanting to drive around her host grandma or some of the kids she used to nanny. The pick is simply not suited for these things and considering I bought 7 years ago when I was single and wanted something I could haul things around with you can’t really fault it for not being everything to everyone. So I looked online and noticed quite a few lease returns for sale.
With the credit crunch and then cash for clunkers a lot of dealers where coming into fall with a lot of extra inventories and decided to slash prices. So we thought why not now. We can’t get a Murano but we can certainly get a much better car for a lot less now. The v6 accords were all three to four thousand dollars under blue book. So we went looking. After driving a couple cars in the cities RG talked me into driving up to St. Cloud. Where there were a couple Accords we found online with very low miles.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
DINKs again
That’s right folks Duel Income No Kids. RG and I are on the up and up again. After sending out what I can only imagine as thousands of resumes and applying on line to hundreds of companies RG started working again! As it seems things always happen she interviewed several times with no bites and then bam – she has two companies going after her - and why not she is super talented. She has some funny stories to go along with here hiring but I won’t tell those as I think she could share them in more detail as it all happened to her. That said we are certainly looking forward to the second pay check again. So now we get to figure out a new budget. Hopefully not as tight as the one we have been living with for the last six months.
So now it is pretty obvious how we could afford to buy a new TV. In fact the first 3 or so of RG’s pay checks went to paying off the credit cards and then to purchasing several things we had been wanting for a while; TV, new pots and pans, some clothes, etc. So now we have to buckle down though and start paying other things down as we still have a few loans out there. Now however we have a little more breathing room and it doesn’t seem like we are always waiting for the next check to come. In fact it is really nice because RG and I are both paid bi-weekly and on alternating weeks. So we get a paycheck every Friday. SWEET.
Of course this also means RG is going to have to start getting up early in the morning like the rest of us and she won’t be able to volunteer as much, but these are the sacrifices made with having a job. Also it means on Fridays when I work from home she will be jealous of me and want to come home early. Plus she will probably be more tired but it will still be better than what she had to put up with in Moscow! 13 hours a day from when she left her apartment to when she could get home. Hour and ½ subway rides each way plus 10 hour days. Now she has only a 12 minute drive. She can come home for lunch if she wanted.
So while we are excited about being DINKs again we do need to make sure we don’t go crazy and keep spending. In fact this should finally give us a chance to get ahead and put a little a way for a rainy day and help out some more with charity. Of course it does let us get a few nice things too!
So now it is pretty obvious how we could afford to buy a new TV. In fact the first 3 or so of RG’s pay checks went to paying off the credit cards and then to purchasing several things we had been wanting for a while; TV, new pots and pans, some clothes, etc. So now we have to buckle down though and start paying other things down as we still have a few loans out there. Now however we have a little more breathing room and it doesn’t seem like we are always waiting for the next check to come. In fact it is really nice because RG and I are both paid bi-weekly and on alternating weeks. So we get a paycheck every Friday. SWEET.
Of course this also means RG is going to have to start getting up early in the morning like the rest of us and she won’t be able to volunteer as much, but these are the sacrifices made with having a job. Also it means on Fridays when I work from home she will be jealous of me and want to come home early. Plus she will probably be more tired but it will still be better than what she had to put up with in Moscow! 13 hours a day from when she left her apartment to when she could get home. Hour and ½ subway rides each way plus 10 hour days. Now she has only a 12 minute drive. She can come home for lunch if she wanted.
So while we are excited about being DINKs again we do need to make sure we don’t go crazy and keep spending. In fact this should finally give us a chance to get ahead and put a little a way for a rainy day and help out some more with charity. Of course it does let us get a few nice things too!
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The House to Ourselves, Almost
Well even though RG and I have been married for over two years we have never really lived in a home of our own, on our own for much of that time. When we got married her folks were staying with us. Then we had a couple of months and RG had to head over to Russia to fulfill her scholarship requirement. When she finally was able to move home in February we had a renter who I let move in while I was working in the UK so someone would be around to watch the house. We didn’t see any reason to kick him out right away figuring he wouldn’t want to stay forever anyway. So at the beginning of August he moved out and we almost had the house to ourselves again. But my sister needed a place to stay until the house she was going to live in for college was ready so she is staying with us.
But since she didn’t move all her stuff in and is just using the guest bedroom. Also a lot of the time we have one or both of my parents staying as they handle some business on the house also. Not that we mind, but having a house to ourselves is going to be new thing for us really. It will be nice to have a quite house. It will also be nice to have the driveway open for our truck. Not to mention all the stuff that will be gone from the garage and basement. So once September gets here we will be moving into a new phase of our lives. I actually think it might be a little strange as I have never lived by myself. I went from living in my folks house to an apartment with friends to my house with roommates. The short time I spent in Iowa I had roommates, and then I got married. So this will be the closest I guess I will ever get to it.
I can’t wait it will be nice to have those rooms back. Maybe I can even use one as an office, at least for now. I think RG is also excited. Not that she minds the company but I think she likes to have some time to herself to wind down and an empty house helps with that even when the people in the house are family and you like having them around. At any rate it will be nice to have the change.
But since she didn’t move all her stuff in and is just using the guest bedroom. Also a lot of the time we have one or both of my parents staying as they handle some business on the house also. Not that we mind, but having a house to ourselves is going to be new thing for us really. It will be nice to have a quite house. It will also be nice to have the driveway open for our truck. Not to mention all the stuff that will be gone from the garage and basement. So once September gets here we will be moving into a new phase of our lives. I actually think it might be a little strange as I have never lived by myself. I went from living in my folks house to an apartment with friends to my house with roommates. The short time I spent in Iowa I had roommates, and then I got married. So this will be the closest I guess I will ever get to it.
I can’t wait it will be nice to have those rooms back. Maybe I can even use one as an office, at least for now. I think RG is also excited. Not that she minds the company but I think she likes to have some time to herself to wind down and an empty house helps with that even when the people in the house are family and you like having them around. At any rate it will be nice to have the change.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Un-Dent-Mobile Part 1
Back in 2007 my poor ole pickup was backed into. I was at the city transfer station a place you can dump construction material if you are a city resident. And the clown backed into my truck and drove off. Not fun. The cops didn’t care, I filed papers with the state and nothing happened. Since then I have been driving a dent-mobile. The front passenger fender has a nice set of dent and scratches that I just haven’t done anything about. Well actually I tried to get insurance involved but because the damage was $20 or so less than my deductible of a thousand bucks so they couldn’t help. Nice. But that is the risk of having a high deductible I guess.
So anyway my buddy LJ gave sent me a link to this website that allows you to search the inventories of most of the salvage yards in the country. So every once and a while I would search for a fender from a truck that matched mine. I found one four or five months after the collision (not an accident the guy was just stupid) but it had a pin stripe where mine doesn’t bummer. Nothing else has shown up in the last couple years close to home. So I tried changing my tactics and looked close to my client. Sure enough I found one an hour and a half away from my client. So I decided to buy it and drive it home. $75 dollars for a fender with a couple quarter sized dings is a lot better than $500 for a new one that needs $300 of paint. One day after a client service day where we volunteered at some charities I skipped the party afterwards and drove up to Springfield Missouri.
The drive itself was uneventful. The salvage yard is on the edge of the city and defiantly on the other side of the tracks. Nothing in the area was up kept, there were abandoned warehouses, broken down cars along the road, tons of pot holes, and the whole area seemed littered with garbage. When I found the place I pulled in and the rental car was easily the newest in the area. But I have been to salvage yards before and this isn’t too uncommon. Coming out of the building was a guy who I don’t think has worn a shirt in 5 years; all he was wearing were cut off shorts and sandals. His skin was a dark tan color and seriously looked like leather. He was friendly enough greeting me with a “Hi” I answered “How’s it going?” He responded simply “it’s goin.” Of course he mumbled it sounding a little bit like Boomhower from King of the Hill. I figured it was just a local coming to get parts for his car. Nope.
In fact this fellow was an employee. When I walked in there were two more gentlemen wearing the exact same outfits. It must have been the company uniform. No shirt, sandals, and a cut off. A third guy walked in wearing the same ensemble but with an old muscle shirt and a red trucker’s cap. It was a scene. The decorations of the place include a mix of three different kinds of items. Notices to customers about return policies or warnings on buying used electronic items, Christian posters like I have never seen, and very off beat and somewhat dirty jokes! The second category was a new one to me. They had a poster talking about Jesus’ race car (I didn’t follow it), one denouncing evolution, and a couple others with various quotes that didn’t seem to go with the what the poster was actually trying to say. But hey they had the fender I needed and it was a good price so I bought and drove it back to the client site.
Now I had to figure out what to do with it. I put it in my room in the corporate apartment. So for a month a half I had a truck fender sitting in my room. I figured to get it home I would just drive the rental car home instead of flying. There would be no way to ship the fender or put it on the plane so that is what I did. I drove the 9 hours home one Thursday afternoon and back again Sunday night. No the most pleasant thing but when you consider it normally took me 6 hours to get there Mondays and 4 hours to get home it was only 8 extra hours but now the fender is in my garage. Of course my truck is still the dent-mobile until I get the motivation to install the new part.
So anyway my buddy LJ gave sent me a link to this website that allows you to search the inventories of most of the salvage yards in the country. So every once and a while I would search for a fender from a truck that matched mine. I found one four or five months after the collision (not an accident the guy was just stupid) but it had a pin stripe where mine doesn’t bummer. Nothing else has shown up in the last couple years close to home. So I tried changing my tactics and looked close to my client. Sure enough I found one an hour and a half away from my client. So I decided to buy it and drive it home. $75 dollars for a fender with a couple quarter sized dings is a lot better than $500 for a new one that needs $300 of paint. One day after a client service day where we volunteered at some charities I skipped the party afterwards and drove up to Springfield Missouri.
The drive itself was uneventful. The salvage yard is on the edge of the city and defiantly on the other side of the tracks. Nothing in the area was up kept, there were abandoned warehouses, broken down cars along the road, tons of pot holes, and the whole area seemed littered with garbage. When I found the place I pulled in and the rental car was easily the newest in the area. But I have been to salvage yards before and this isn’t too uncommon. Coming out of the building was a guy who I don’t think has worn a shirt in 5 years; all he was wearing were cut off shorts and sandals. His skin was a dark tan color and seriously looked like leather. He was friendly enough greeting me with a “Hi” I answered “How’s it going?” He responded simply “it’s goin.” Of course he mumbled it sounding a little bit like Boomhower from King of the Hill. I figured it was just a local coming to get parts for his car. Nope.
In fact this fellow was an employee. When I walked in there were two more gentlemen wearing the exact same outfits. It must have been the company uniform. No shirt, sandals, and a cut off. A third guy walked in wearing the same ensemble but with an old muscle shirt and a red trucker’s cap. It was a scene. The decorations of the place include a mix of three different kinds of items. Notices to customers about return policies or warnings on buying used electronic items, Christian posters like I have never seen, and very off beat and somewhat dirty jokes! The second category was a new one to me. They had a poster talking about Jesus’ race car (I didn’t follow it), one denouncing evolution, and a couple others with various quotes that didn’t seem to go with the what the poster was actually trying to say. But hey they had the fender I needed and it was a good price so I bought and drove it back to the client site.
Now I had to figure out what to do with it. I put it in my room in the corporate apartment. So for a month a half I had a truck fender sitting in my room. I figured to get it home I would just drive the rental car home instead of flying. There would be no way to ship the fender or put it on the plane so that is what I did. I drove the 9 hours home one Thursday afternoon and back again Sunday night. No the most pleasant thing but when you consider it normally took me 6 hours to get there Mondays and 4 hours to get home it was only 8 extra hours but now the fender is in my garage. Of course my truck is still the dent-mobile until I get the motivation to install the new part.
Monday, July 27, 2009
I guess I should have ordered a bigger TV
I am a very lucky guy. Normally when I get a little grief at home, it is about things most people would love to get grief about. Recently we needed to buy a new TV. The only one we owned is a 12 year old 19 inch mono tube TV that I bought right after high school. Up until now I have always had roommates with much larger nicer TVs so why buy my own? I just used theirs. Well finally the last roommate/renter was moving out and we would be going to the 19 inch with rabbit ears and digital tuner box thanks to the government’s digital TV switch program. We COULD have gotten along fine with this. It is all we used for almost a year at one point.
In fact RG watches very little TV; most of it on the weekends when I am home and then it is mostly movies. In fact the only show she watches religiously is house and I think ½ the time she gets the DVDs or watches it on her computer. In fact I think she watches her computer more than the TV. But still I thought it would be nice to get a nice new modern TV. I mean I am over 30 and have a pretty good job so getting a nice TV is not that huge of a deal. Of course it hadn’t happened for over a decade mostly because I was cheap and as mentioned above there were free options! Heh.
So we talked it over and decided we would get a new TV. RG didn’t have a ton of input she wanted an LG but I wanted a plasma, but LG stopped making Plasma in the sizes we were thinking about so we settled on a Panasonic mid-line model. The reviews were really good so I talked her into that brand. So I started watching the market and found some pretty good deals. Of course the part that really made it possible was that RG got a new job so we felt we had a little money to burn after being on a tight budget for 7 months. So a couple weeks before our renter moved out I found a great deal online. I was at least a hundred bucks cheaper than I had seen before so I talked it over with RG and ordered it.
As I normally do I sent the purchase confirmation and email invoice on to the wife and didn’t think much of it. A few hours later I got a call from her when she saw it asking what the heck I was doing? What—What—What!? What was she talking about we talked about getting this TV for months. How could she be upset. I was thinking. So she asked what the heck are you doing – I thought we were getting a BIGGER TV…. Huh? Really? You Think? I thought. I had always figured the size we ordered was plenty. Our living/family room isn’t that big. So we talked about it and yep she was sure we should go bigger… So while we were on the phone I looked up the bigger models of the same TV on the same website. We could go up 1 size for ~$150. So that sounded good. Then I started to joke that we should go up 2 sizes because the next size was only ~$50 more than 1 size up. I was joking.
She wasn’t she said buy it! Crazy, how many wives would tell their husbands to go out and get a bigger TV, 2 sizes bigger even. Well I wasn’t sure that a TV that big would fit in our family room but I had to call and change the order within 24 hours. SO off I went to Wal-Mart, the only place open at 10 at night to look at the different sizes of TV. I also called up a few friends for their advice. I didn’t get much advice beyond Get the biggest TV you can afford. Huh. Well that is one way to go. I thought about it and even though I thought we should go smaller I got the biggest one we were looking at. It is a good thing we didn’t go bigger yet! This one fits with maybe ¼ inch left on either side. the neighbors can watch our TV from a block away, and we sit close enough to this one to see too much detail on HD feeds. So it was a good choice.
A strange and unexpected side effect of the new TV was more space in our living room. All the previous TVs had been tube or projection TVs and this one is a flat screen. So we actually gained 15 inches of floor space in front of the TV. I’ll tell you what – it is great to have the problem of the wife thinking you ordered too small of a TV, even if the bigger TV doesn’t get used any more than the little one!
In fact RG watches very little TV; most of it on the weekends when I am home and then it is mostly movies. In fact the only show she watches religiously is house and I think ½ the time she gets the DVDs or watches it on her computer. In fact I think she watches her computer more than the TV. But still I thought it would be nice to get a nice new modern TV. I mean I am over 30 and have a pretty good job so getting a nice TV is not that huge of a deal. Of course it hadn’t happened for over a decade mostly because I was cheap and as mentioned above there were free options! Heh.
So we talked it over and decided we would get a new TV. RG didn’t have a ton of input she wanted an LG but I wanted a plasma, but LG stopped making Plasma in the sizes we were thinking about so we settled on a Panasonic mid-line model. The reviews were really good so I talked her into that brand. So I started watching the market and found some pretty good deals. Of course the part that really made it possible was that RG got a new job so we felt we had a little money to burn after being on a tight budget for 7 months. So a couple weeks before our renter moved out I found a great deal online. I was at least a hundred bucks cheaper than I had seen before so I talked it over with RG and ordered it.
As I normally do I sent the purchase confirmation and email invoice on to the wife and didn’t think much of it. A few hours later I got a call from her when she saw it asking what the heck I was doing? What—What—What!? What was she talking about we talked about getting this TV for months. How could she be upset. I was thinking. So she asked what the heck are you doing – I thought we were getting a BIGGER TV…. Huh? Really? You Think? I thought. I had always figured the size we ordered was plenty. Our living/family room isn’t that big. So we talked about it and yep she was sure we should go bigger… So while we were on the phone I looked up the bigger models of the same TV on the same website. We could go up 1 size for ~$150. So that sounded good. Then I started to joke that we should go up 2 sizes because the next size was only ~$50 more than 1 size up. I was joking.
She wasn’t she said buy it! Crazy, how many wives would tell their husbands to go out and get a bigger TV, 2 sizes bigger even. Well I wasn’t sure that a TV that big would fit in our family room but I had to call and change the order within 24 hours. SO off I went to Wal-Mart, the only place open at 10 at night to look at the different sizes of TV. I also called up a few friends for their advice. I didn’t get much advice beyond Get the biggest TV you can afford. Huh. Well that is one way to go. I thought about it and even though I thought we should go smaller I got the biggest one we were looking at. It is a good thing we didn’t go bigger yet! This one fits with maybe ¼ inch left on either side. the neighbors can watch our TV from a block away, and we sit close enough to this one to see too much detail on HD feeds. So it was a good choice.
A strange and unexpected side effect of the new TV was more space in our living room. All the previous TVs had been tube or projection TVs and this one is a flat screen. So we actually gained 15 inches of floor space in front of the TV. I’ll tell you what – it is great to have the problem of the wife thinking you ordered too small of a TV, even if the bigger TV doesn’t get used any more than the little one!
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Lawn
Ok Ok I finally got a little embarrassed - about the state of my lawn. After living in the house for 8 and ½ years I finally decided, or rather it may have been decided for me, that it was time to do something about the state of my lawn. Of course my house is now 104 years old and I bought it in a state of somewhat disrepair. So I always have a long list of to-dos on the house. Up until now I have focused mostly on the interior of the house; repairing cracked walls, restoring the wood work, restoring the wood floors, and basically fixing it up one room at a time. The yard was always on my list but pretty far down.
This year though it just looked miserable in the spring. I normally would through some fertilizer out and some fresh seed twice a year. I also mow and line-trim it a few times a month. Last year as I was out of the country I could do these things. Instead I ended up hiring a service just to keep I mowed. Partial to keep my neighbors happy and partial to make it look lived in to keep criminals from thinking it was vacant. Last year must have been pretty dry and I don’t think the service took into consideration the state of the grass, because along one side of my house I have steep hill along the side walk where 60% of the grass had been tore up. I believe this was probably an affect of the large mowers used by the lawn service paired with dry grass and the incline of the hill. At any rate it was an awful mess.
So we decided to see if we could green things up again. Of course I have to give most of the credit to my lovely wife. While I may have come up with the how to fix things she had to do most of the work. All summer long we have been seeding, watering, and fertilizing the grass. We have tried several different seeds and methods. But really the best thing seem to be to use a certain Minnesota grass seed mixture, put an 1/8 inch of dirt over it, and then water it 4-5 times a week (I should say that RG was the one doing all the watering and care taking as I typically am gone all week). In fact we paid easily 2.5 times as much for the water bill as the last few years. But it has been worth it. After about 5-6 weeks our lawn was easily the nicest on the block! Who knew it could happen so fast. Plus we put in a flower bed, two planters, replaced a huge ugly old bush, and replaced some other bushes with more seed. It looks great.
I’m certain glad I didn’t wait until everything in the house was finished to work on the lawn. It really does feel good to come back to a home with such a lush flower filled. Someday I actually hope to put in a retaining wall and I know next year RG is going to demand more flower space and planters. So of course I can feel the continuation of domestic life to impress itself on me someday soon I think I will become a stereo typical family man. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
This year though it just looked miserable in the spring. I normally would through some fertilizer out and some fresh seed twice a year. I also mow and line-trim it a few times a month. Last year as I was out of the country I could do these things. Instead I ended up hiring a service just to keep I mowed. Partial to keep my neighbors happy and partial to make it look lived in to keep criminals from thinking it was vacant. Last year must have been pretty dry and I don’t think the service took into consideration the state of the grass, because along one side of my house I have steep hill along the side walk where 60% of the grass had been tore up. I believe this was probably an affect of the large mowers used by the lawn service paired with dry grass and the incline of the hill. At any rate it was an awful mess.
So we decided to see if we could green things up again. Of course I have to give most of the credit to my lovely wife. While I may have come up with the how to fix things she had to do most of the work. All summer long we have been seeding, watering, and fertilizing the grass. We have tried several different seeds and methods. But really the best thing seem to be to use a certain Minnesota grass seed mixture, put an 1/8 inch of dirt over it, and then water it 4-5 times a week (I should say that RG was the one doing all the watering and care taking as I typically am gone all week). In fact we paid easily 2.5 times as much for the water bill as the last few years. But it has been worth it. After about 5-6 weeks our lawn was easily the nicest on the block! Who knew it could happen so fast. Plus we put in a flower bed, two planters, replaced a huge ugly old bush, and replaced some other bushes with more seed. It looks great.
I’m certain glad I didn’t wait until everything in the house was finished to work on the lawn. It really does feel good to come back to a home with such a lush flower filled. Someday I actually hope to put in a retaining wall and I know next year RG is going to demand more flower space and planters. So of course I can feel the continuation of domestic life to impress itself on me someday soon I think I will become a stereo typical family man. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
When We are Married
Simply put I don’t go out and enjoy all that life has to offer. One thing I could use a little more of is the some exposure to the arts. We are lucky in that Minneapolis has one of the greatest art scenes in the country. Boasting many museums, theaters, music venues, and anything else you could want only New York, Chicago, or maybe LA could compete. Recently one theater the Orpheum built a new 3 stage building along the river. It is a strange blue and yellow building that has a skyway jutting out that goes nowhere and yellow towers the size of chimneys sticking out of the roof. It also sports a large vertical marquee that scrolls the names and dates of upcoming or current shows. Are the theaters is a large park with circular sidewalks and curvy hills that provide a nice place to lay in the grass and see the river. All of this on the edge of down town close to the center of the city.
The building has been open for a couple of seasons and only recently did we get to a show there. A wonderful British show called “When we are Married”. RG received the tickets for being a volunteer for the local ALS society and we went the other night. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The inside of the theater is almost as strange as the out. The main lobby is kind of narrow with white walls the ticket counter is toward the back and it is a little disorientating. Once you go up a two story escalator there are some hallways to roam with leather chairs facing out so you can see the view through yellow tinted windows. Most of the second floor is taken up by a bar and restaurant that is open to everyone whether attending a show or not. On one side of the building one can walk out onto the skyway to nowhere to an observation deck that gives a great view of the river. Though I suspect it is usually windy there.
Once inside one of the theaters the presentation is quite cozy. The seating wraps around 3 sides of the stage and the walls are painted warm reds, yellows, and oranges. It is a very comfortable setting. There is a main floor and a balcony. We were sitting on the left side of the stage midway back on the first floor. At first I thought the view was going to be to the actors backs but this was not the case. They made sure to constantly move around facing all sides of the stage so the entire audience was addressed.
The show itself was great. I didn’t know any of the actors but they did a great job. The story is placed about the turn of last century, around 1900. It is about 3 established society couples. I won’t give too much away but the men are muckie-mucks in the church and want to fire the new organist who is seen out late at night with a woman! When they confront him he delivers a bombshell that the 3 men are not actually married because the priest who married all three of them was not licensed. This does not go over well because it would mean they had spent the last 30 years living in sin. The rest of the show goes on to explore their various lives and relationships through various conversation about what they should do about their situations. Of course the wives find out and the plot takes off from there. It is a great piece of British comedy and I would easily go see it again. My single complaint, having just spent 10 months in Britain, was how bad the actor’s “British” accents were. They sounded more Irish than northern English. Other than that it was a great show and we had a great night out.
The building has been open for a couple of seasons and only recently did we get to a show there. A wonderful British show called “When we are Married”. RG received the tickets for being a volunteer for the local ALS society and we went the other night. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The inside of the theater is almost as strange as the out. The main lobby is kind of narrow with white walls the ticket counter is toward the back and it is a little disorientating. Once you go up a two story escalator there are some hallways to roam with leather chairs facing out so you can see the view through yellow tinted windows. Most of the second floor is taken up by a bar and restaurant that is open to everyone whether attending a show or not. On one side of the building one can walk out onto the skyway to nowhere to an observation deck that gives a great view of the river. Though I suspect it is usually windy there.
Once inside one of the theaters the presentation is quite cozy. The seating wraps around 3 sides of the stage and the walls are painted warm reds, yellows, and oranges. It is a very comfortable setting. There is a main floor and a balcony. We were sitting on the left side of the stage midway back on the first floor. At first I thought the view was going to be to the actors backs but this was not the case. They made sure to constantly move around facing all sides of the stage so the entire audience was addressed.
The show itself was great. I didn’t know any of the actors but they did a great job. The story is placed about the turn of last century, around 1900. It is about 3 established society couples. I won’t give too much away but the men are muckie-mucks in the church and want to fire the new organist who is seen out late at night with a woman! When they confront him he delivers a bombshell that the 3 men are not actually married because the priest who married all three of them was not licensed. This does not go over well because it would mean they had spent the last 30 years living in sin. The rest of the show goes on to explore their various lives and relationships through various conversation about what they should do about their situations. Of course the wives find out and the plot takes off from there. It is a great piece of British comedy and I would easily go see it again. My single complaint, having just spent 10 months in Britain, was how bad the actor’s “British” accents were. They sounded more Irish than northern English. Other than that it was a great show and we had a great night out.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Different Paths
When I was in high school there was a core group of friends that I ran around with. I think this is pretty common for most people. What is not as common I think is that most of us still see each other on a regular basic. But there are a few people I lose track of from time to time. One of my friends, RJ, signed up for the army right after high school. We kept in ok contact with him seeing him a few times a year, when he finished his tour he went to school out in Madison WI and we saw him a little more often. During college he was in the National Guard and before he graduated he was activated. At that point we kind of lost track of him. Seeing him for briefly when we found out he was married and he had a reception back home, again a couple years later at my wedding, and then again a few days ago. It was great to catch up with him but what really struck me is how different not just RJ’s but everyone’s paths through life have been over the last 12 years or so.
RJ is the most striking. He spent years in the military, first in the infantry (airborne) and then learning Arabic and join counter-intelligence. He has been in all those places we see in the news and I am sure done things that most people would only see in movies. He now lives on the beach – ala Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon just on the opposite coast – and works for a military contractor training forces around the globe in counter intelligence. He has a bull dog and wants to be a teacher in a few years when he gets out of his current business. Many of the things that he told us about his life certainly raised our eyebrows and had quite a time finding out about his adventures.
Thinking about it we were all in the same place at one time or another. But each of us has made a range of decisions that have taken into drastically different direction. Some are now business owners, some have moved out of the state, many have college degrees or a couple degrees, some didn’t finish college and have found other paths, some have families while some don’t. It didn’t seem like time moved that fast. It didn’t seem like anyone was changing that much at any given time. In fact it is only in the aggregate that people’s lives strike me as having gone through such amazingly different paths. I don’t know why I never saw this happening at the time. I guess it feels normal not to talk to someone for a couple months, then a year, then maybe two. But so much can happen in those years; marriages, divorces, kids, jobs, adventures, illness, creation of business, schooling, or any other of the events or endeavors that humans participate in.
I am glad though that my friends are strong enough to bridge time and that I seem to be able to pick up with most people at the same place we left off. It make my life that more interesting to hear and join in on their adventures as well. Hopefully our path’s continue to cross.
RJ is the most striking. He spent years in the military, first in the infantry (airborne) and then learning Arabic and join counter-intelligence. He has been in all those places we see in the news and I am sure done things that most people would only see in movies. He now lives on the beach – ala Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon just on the opposite coast – and works for a military contractor training forces around the globe in counter intelligence. He has a bull dog and wants to be a teacher in a few years when he gets out of his current business. Many of the things that he told us about his life certainly raised our eyebrows and had quite a time finding out about his adventures.
Thinking about it we were all in the same place at one time or another. But each of us has made a range of decisions that have taken into drastically different direction. Some are now business owners, some have moved out of the state, many have college degrees or a couple degrees, some didn’t finish college and have found other paths, some have families while some don’t. It didn’t seem like time moved that fast. It didn’t seem like anyone was changing that much at any given time. In fact it is only in the aggregate that people’s lives strike me as having gone through such amazingly different paths. I don’t know why I never saw this happening at the time. I guess it feels normal not to talk to someone for a couple months, then a year, then maybe two. But so much can happen in those years; marriages, divorces, kids, jobs, adventures, illness, creation of business, schooling, or any other of the events or endeavors that humans participate in.
I am glad though that my friends are strong enough to bridge time and that I seem to be able to pick up with most people at the same place we left off. It make my life that more interesting to hear and join in on their adventures as well. Hopefully our path’s continue to cross.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Long Drive
So as noted in the last post R and I drove from Arkansas to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Now to be honest this was done completely because I am a cheap skate and didn’t want to use up our miles to fly R to VA and then spend money to rent a car on top of that. I had a perfectly good company car and while it would mean 250% more travel time it would save us hundreds of dollars. So that was the plan. Well I wasn’t sure how long the trip would take, Google maps gave me one time and Mapquest another. They basically said 16.5-17.5 hours. But I figured if I could keep my speed up and we didn’t stop unless we needed gas we could easily break those numbers.
To continue my cheapskateness (new word) I purchased a cold bag from Wally-word and a bunch of groceries. The week before I stored ice from the ice maker in my corporate apartment in a bag (to say $2 on store bought Ice) and saved some of my groceries from my meal allowance for the trip. So just prior to 5am in the morning, after going to bed just short of mid-night, we got up and packed the company car with our wedding best, luggage, food, soda, and snacks then headed out. R was good keeping me company for about 5 min then she went straight back to sleep. So I started to clock the miles as best I could.
In all honesty the trip went surprisingly smoothly. We were in Memphis in just over 5 hours (should have taken 5.5-6 per Google) and so we got in to see Graceland early. Of course I took longer at Graceland than I planned but it worked out because we arrived early. After lunch I took the first shift driving and after a few hours right before twilight R took over for a while. At which point it was my turn to sleep which was a good thing. R and I have very different styles of driving. I tend to be more aggressive and a bit heavier on the pedal and she like to stay in the same lane as long as possible. So the few times I did wake up I decided while she drove it was better if I slept to avoid the aggravation. She is better at putting up with my driving than I am with hers.
All in all it took from 5am to 11pm to get to my Grandmother’s house in VA. Of course we did stop for 2.5 hours at Graceland and again for a Blizzard in the evening. I figure if you remove the stops that is less than 15 hours of driving. So we did beat the internet times.
The drive on the way back seemed much longer because we didn’t take a break to see anything. We started out mid-morning and drove straight through. There are really only 3 things to mention here. 1.) The KFC we stopped at just outside of Little Rock is the most disgusting place I have been in recent memory. We will not be stopping at a KFC again. I’d rather go hungry. 2.) At twilight in Arkansas you will crush no lest then 10 gazillion bugs in ½ hour. I have never seen so many bugs over the road – the next day the car looked like it was covered in fur. 3.) We made it in 14.5 hour further beating both our previous time and crushing the internet times. W00T! But it was a long drive and honestly I think we spent as much time in the car as out of it that weekend.
But that was ok with me cuz I had my wonder wife next to me the whole time and that made the trip interesting. Well that and the mountains, Graceland, and some other sights and sounds. I get a greater appreciation for this country every time I take a road trip.
To continue my cheapskateness (new word) I purchased a cold bag from Wally-word and a bunch of groceries. The week before I stored ice from the ice maker in my corporate apartment in a bag (to say $2 on store bought Ice) and saved some of my groceries from my meal allowance for the trip. So just prior to 5am in the morning, after going to bed just short of mid-night, we got up and packed the company car with our wedding best, luggage, food, soda, and snacks then headed out. R was good keeping me company for about 5 min then she went straight back to sleep. So I started to clock the miles as best I could.
In all honesty the trip went surprisingly smoothly. We were in Memphis in just over 5 hours (should have taken 5.5-6 per Google) and so we got in to see Graceland early. Of course I took longer at Graceland than I planned but it worked out because we arrived early. After lunch I took the first shift driving and after a few hours right before twilight R took over for a while. At which point it was my turn to sleep which was a good thing. R and I have very different styles of driving. I tend to be more aggressive and a bit heavier on the pedal and she like to stay in the same lane as long as possible. So the few times I did wake up I decided while she drove it was better if I slept to avoid the aggravation. She is better at putting up with my driving than I am with hers.
All in all it took from 5am to 11pm to get to my Grandmother’s house in VA. Of course we did stop for 2.5 hours at Graceland and again for a Blizzard in the evening. I figure if you remove the stops that is less than 15 hours of driving. So we did beat the internet times.
The drive on the way back seemed much longer because we didn’t take a break to see anything. We started out mid-morning and drove straight through. There are really only 3 things to mention here. 1.) The KFC we stopped at just outside of Little Rock is the most disgusting place I have been in recent memory. We will not be stopping at a KFC again. I’d rather go hungry. 2.) At twilight in Arkansas you will crush no lest then 10 gazillion bugs in ½ hour. I have never seen so many bugs over the road – the next day the car looked like it was covered in fur. 3.) We made it in 14.5 hour further beating both our previous time and crushing the internet times. W00T! But it was a long drive and honestly I think we spent as much time in the car as out of it that weekend.
But that was ok with me cuz I had my wonder wife next to me the whole time and that made the trip interesting. Well that and the mountains, Graceland, and some other sights and sounds. I get a greater appreciation for this country every time I take a road trip.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Graceland
This summer my aunt that lives in Virginia got remarried to her long time boy friend it a small and simple ceremony. RG and I were more than happy to attend. However after all our expenses of the last year getting RG back home and dealing with immigration we didn’t have a lot of funds to fly out there, rent a car, and so on. However I found I could fly RG down to Arkansas and we could use the company car to drive to VA. While this only saves about 3 hours driving from MN it did help in that we had a much more fuel efficient car. So that is what we did. Between my project site and the wedding was Memphis. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to spend a day or two there I figured a nice break would be to go to Elvis’s house – Graceland. It’s just one of those things I wanted to see because so many are so fanatical about the place.
So we went. And it was defiantly worth the stop. To start Graceland is no longer just the house that Elvis lived in, it is an entire attraction. The main attraction of course is the house, but beyond that there were the grounds, an Elvis car museum, an Elvis in the movies museum, Elvis’s two private jets, and several other museums. It was actually quite impressive. Nearly three quarters of a million people a year visit Graceland and tours run every half hour from eight in morning all day. Though it is funny that at the end of every exhibit is another gift shop – in fact there were more gift shops than museums on the grounds. The all pretty much had the same stuff in them.
So we paid for our tickets and went straight to the main attraction. What is crazy is that the house itself is not really that large. Plenty of people I know have houses that are similar in size or even bigger. It certainly isn’t a mansion by any means. But it is an estate. Besides the house there is quite a bit of land, a pool house, a Racquetball facility, a stable, a small office in an out building, and tranquility garden, and of course it walled, fenced, and gated. The main house is also straight out of the 60s and 70s. There are gold laced mirrors everywhere, shag carpet, great brass chandeliers, and crazy furniture. Also Elvis has either his initials or his symbol (the lightning bolt with TCB – Taking Care of Business) on everything. You are only allowed on the first floor for 2 reasons. 1.) Elvis never let anyone but family upstairs and 2.) It wouldn’t pass code without major structural changes ruining the house.
So there are three rooms that stand out. First the kitchen because of its state of the 1970s art that in their day were really fancy and expensive harvest gold appliances. It was also staffed 24 hours in case anyone in the house was hungry and doubled as a security station as all the surveillance cameras have their monitors here. Next the TV room in the basement. Here he had a bar and a lot furniture all situated around 3 TVs. One for each channel! He had heard that this is what the president had and he wanted it too. Finally he has created a jungle room. This was the last room that had been renovated a few years before he died and he recorded some of his last work there. The room had shag carpet everywhere including the ceiling. It has a water fall on one wall and huge chairs carved out of wood that resemble African animals. It was something else.
I won’t go through everything there is to see but I will say the other 2 places I found most interesting were the 2 private jets and the car museum. Though I have to say a lot of Elvis’s cars from the 70s were ugly even if they were worth so much money. The planes were something else. One is a normal executive jet and the other is an actual full size airliner that has been heavily modified. They were just as crazy as the house itself inside. All done up in Elvis’s favorite colors and made to be homes in the sky I guess. Overall we spent about 3 hours at Graceland. I think this was just enough. There was more to read, more to see, and probably an exhibit or two that we missed. But I have to say we were Elvised out. But I certainly say it was worth the stop if you were in the area. I even think RG liked it though she is not a fan of the man.
So we went. And it was defiantly worth the stop. To start Graceland is no longer just the house that Elvis lived in, it is an entire attraction. The main attraction of course is the house, but beyond that there were the grounds, an Elvis car museum, an Elvis in the movies museum, Elvis’s two private jets, and several other museums. It was actually quite impressive. Nearly three quarters of a million people a year visit Graceland and tours run every half hour from eight in morning all day. Though it is funny that at the end of every exhibit is another gift shop – in fact there were more gift shops than museums on the grounds. The all pretty much had the same stuff in them.
So we paid for our tickets and went straight to the main attraction. What is crazy is that the house itself is not really that large. Plenty of people I know have houses that are similar in size or even bigger. It certainly isn’t a mansion by any means. But it is an estate. Besides the house there is quite a bit of land, a pool house, a Racquetball facility, a stable, a small office in an out building, and tranquility garden, and of course it walled, fenced, and gated. The main house is also straight out of the 60s and 70s. There are gold laced mirrors everywhere, shag carpet, great brass chandeliers, and crazy furniture. Also Elvis has either his initials or his symbol (the lightning bolt with TCB – Taking Care of Business) on everything. You are only allowed on the first floor for 2 reasons. 1.) Elvis never let anyone but family upstairs and 2.) It wouldn’t pass code without major structural changes ruining the house.
So there are three rooms that stand out. First the kitchen because of its state of the 1970s art that in their day were really fancy and expensive harvest gold appliances. It was also staffed 24 hours in case anyone in the house was hungry and doubled as a security station as all the surveillance cameras have their monitors here. Next the TV room in the basement. Here he had a bar and a lot furniture all situated around 3 TVs. One for each channel! He had heard that this is what the president had and he wanted it too. Finally he has created a jungle room. This was the last room that had been renovated a few years before he died and he recorded some of his last work there. The room had shag carpet everywhere including the ceiling. It has a water fall on one wall and huge chairs carved out of wood that resemble African animals. It was something else.
I won’t go through everything there is to see but I will say the other 2 places I found most interesting were the 2 private jets and the car museum. Though I have to say a lot of Elvis’s cars from the 70s were ugly even if they were worth so much money. The planes were something else. One is a normal executive jet and the other is an actual full size airliner that has been heavily modified. They were just as crazy as the house itself inside. All done up in Elvis’s favorite colors and made to be homes in the sky I guess. Overall we spent about 3 hours at Graceland. I think this was just enough. There was more to read, more to see, and probably an exhibit or two that we missed. But I have to say we were Elvised out. But I certainly say it was worth the stop if you were in the area. I even think RG liked it though she is not a fan of the man.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Minor League Ball is the Best – Even if it rains
Recently I created a survey for people to take to see how much they knew about me. I know kinda lame but it was a good waste of time anyway. One of the questions I guess was a little tricky. It was “What sport do you like watching most on Television”. The Television part is what makes it tricky. I like watching football most on television. But most people answered baseball. This was a good guess. While I find football more fun to watch on TV, baseball is by far the sport I like best and I love going to baseball games. Personally I feel like the funnest games to go to are minor league games. While the pro games have a higher level of play they seem a little more sterile. All you really get is the game. The minor league games put more emphasis on the fun rather than the sport and this makes the games a lot more fun.
I have been able to see many different teams in many different stadiums across the country. The Saint Paul Saints, the Mud Dogs in Lincoln, the ICubs in Des Moines, the Dayton Dragons, and most recently the Arkansas Naturals. Who I thought were named after the lead character form The Natural a baseball movie from the eights but are actually named after the state’s nick name of The Natural State. The Naturals play in a stadium that is quite literally in the middle of farm land. It is 10 minutes or so out site of Fayetteville. The stadium itself is quite nice and modern. It is the only minor league stadium I have been to with executive boxes. My guess this money came from Tyson, Daisy, and Wal-Mart. However I think that most people would be surprised to about the number of large companies that exist in Northwest Arkansas.
Of course the Natural’s lost to some Oklahoma team but the game was fun. Between innings we were treated to a bunch of ridiculous entertainment. Including a guy that dressed up like Michael Jackson and using some long poles attached four Michael Jackson mannequins so that when he moves they make identical moves. Every couple of innings he would come out and do a different MJ song and dance routine, it was hilarious. Other entertainment included a tricycle race, kids dressing up like Sponge Bob, and other creative contests. I got to chow down on the usual ball park food of hot dogs and beer. However there was also the addition of great garlic fries that had the side affect of some killer breath that lasted a couple of days.
The game was ok. Not a ton of action. The other team pretty much just walked all over the Naturals. There was high hope in the 7th when a rally start to take shape but it was quickly squashed. The weather wasn’t the greatest either. Initially just windy and cool we ended up sitting several innings in a misty rain. I thought it funny because it was certainly not the worst weather but certainly not the best and while most of the client resources that went to the games stayed for most of the game I was the only consultant that stayed as long. The rest of my team left after maybe only 5 innings. Oh well it was their loss because most the excitement was in those later innings. Plus the rain didn’t of set the fun of the game. I will certain try to get there again before I am off this project.
I have been able to see many different teams in many different stadiums across the country. The Saint Paul Saints, the Mud Dogs in Lincoln, the ICubs in Des Moines, the Dayton Dragons, and most recently the Arkansas Naturals. Who I thought were named after the lead character form The Natural a baseball movie from the eights but are actually named after the state’s nick name of The Natural State. The Naturals play in a stadium that is quite literally in the middle of farm land. It is 10 minutes or so out site of Fayetteville. The stadium itself is quite nice and modern. It is the only minor league stadium I have been to with executive boxes. My guess this money came from Tyson, Daisy, and Wal-Mart. However I think that most people would be surprised to about the number of large companies that exist in Northwest Arkansas.
Of course the Natural’s lost to some Oklahoma team but the game was fun. Between innings we were treated to a bunch of ridiculous entertainment. Including a guy that dressed up like Michael Jackson and using some long poles attached four Michael Jackson mannequins so that when he moves they make identical moves. Every couple of innings he would come out and do a different MJ song and dance routine, it was hilarious. Other entertainment included a tricycle race, kids dressing up like Sponge Bob, and other creative contests. I got to chow down on the usual ball park food of hot dogs and beer. However there was also the addition of great garlic fries that had the side affect of some killer breath that lasted a couple of days.
The game was ok. Not a ton of action. The other team pretty much just walked all over the Naturals. There was high hope in the 7th when a rally start to take shape but it was quickly squashed. The weather wasn’t the greatest either. Initially just windy and cool we ended up sitting several innings in a misty rain. I thought it funny because it was certainly not the worst weather but certainly not the best and while most of the client resources that went to the games stayed for most of the game I was the only consultant that stayed as long. The rest of my team left after maybe only 5 innings. Oh well it was their loss because most the excitement was in those later innings. Plus the rain didn’t of set the fun of the game. I will certain try to get there again before I am off this project.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Great Wedding
It always amazes me how much people’s personalities can come out in their weddings. Though a lot of wedding can also be a kind of cookie cutter affairs with personality; Ceremony in a church, reception in a hotel, with the biggest being decision having been made over which DJ to hire. Though depending on how much money the couple has to spend you can replace the hotel with the American Legion, Private Club Room, country club, or other venue. But some people do things differently. Or add their own twists allowing their personalities to show through and transform the whole event.
I hope our wedding was one that stands out as we had the whole thing in an old mansion with a late night after bar at our home that included some great home brew. But I have been to a few others that stand out. One had the reception at the Zoo that was pretty interesting. Another was on shores of Lake Isanti in the summer and even though I was in a long sleeve, shirt, tie, and long black pant -- with the weather being in 90s and the sun beating down on us – it was unique and interesting. Most recently we went to a wedding in Pittsburg that was an absolute riot. Both the wedding and reception were on a Paddle boat that travels the three rivers surrounding the city. The ceremony was on the top deck of the boat shortly before sunset and the weather was perfect. I have to admit this was the third wedding I have attended on a river boat. I think they are a great venue for sure, especially when the weather cooperates.
This wedding was a little more different thought. It was between a friend I had met on my first project with my firm and his long term girl friend. We were both analysts and in the similar boat not having a clue what we were doing. Stranded in the middle of Ohio we found ways to get in trouble and have good time anyway including staying the weekend and heading to West VA for some cave exploring and white water rafting. RG got to meet him when we took an alternate travel trip to Cedar Rapids, and again when he came out to our wedding. One thing I can say about MS is that he has quite the sense of humor. It is a little out there. What surprised even more is that his wife’s sense of humor is very similar and they really do have their own style – even it is a little eccentric.
The wedding between these friends was incredibly fun. Their personalities really drove the atmosphere. Of course being in Pittsburg we got regular updates on the penguins games before and after the ceremony, in fact we new the score at regular intervals until the game was over. The team colors were also being worn by ½ the guests. Working in technology MS has some interest that border on the nerdy side and his wife seems to share these. Many of the music choices, dances, and toasts were really reflected by these things. In fact the cake cutting was done to song Eat It by Weird Al and the first dance was to the song Grow Old With You from the movie and play “The Wedding Singer” it was quite funny. Of course we danced to the YMCA, Electric Slide, plenty of 70s music and other eclectic music it was very fun. This wedding was unique because of how much personality was put into and we really enjoyed being a part of it.
I hope our wedding was one that stands out as we had the whole thing in an old mansion with a late night after bar at our home that included some great home brew. But I have been to a few others that stand out. One had the reception at the Zoo that was pretty interesting. Another was on shores of Lake Isanti in the summer and even though I was in a long sleeve, shirt, tie, and long black pant -- with the weather being in 90s and the sun beating down on us – it was unique and interesting. Most recently we went to a wedding in Pittsburg that was an absolute riot. Both the wedding and reception were on a Paddle boat that travels the three rivers surrounding the city. The ceremony was on the top deck of the boat shortly before sunset and the weather was perfect. I have to admit this was the third wedding I have attended on a river boat. I think they are a great venue for sure, especially when the weather cooperates.
This wedding was a little more different thought. It was between a friend I had met on my first project with my firm and his long term girl friend. We were both analysts and in the similar boat not having a clue what we were doing. Stranded in the middle of Ohio we found ways to get in trouble and have good time anyway including staying the weekend and heading to West VA for some cave exploring and white water rafting. RG got to meet him when we took an alternate travel trip to Cedar Rapids, and again when he came out to our wedding. One thing I can say about MS is that he has quite the sense of humor. It is a little out there. What surprised even more is that his wife’s sense of humor is very similar and they really do have their own style – even it is a little eccentric.
The wedding between these friends was incredibly fun. Their personalities really drove the atmosphere. Of course being in Pittsburg we got regular updates on the penguins games before and after the ceremony, in fact we new the score at regular intervals until the game was over. The team colors were also being worn by ½ the guests. Working in technology MS has some interest that border on the nerdy side and his wife seems to share these. Many of the music choices, dances, and toasts were really reflected by these things. In fact the cake cutting was done to song Eat It by Weird Al and the first dance was to the song Grow Old With You from the movie and play “The Wedding Singer” it was quite funny. Of course we danced to the YMCA, Electric Slide, plenty of 70s music and other eclectic music it was very fun. This wedding was unique because of how much personality was put into and we really enjoyed being a part of it.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Interesting visit from the police
Well I have only had maybe 3 visits from the police in my life at my home. Once when I was 19 for a party that was a little loud when I lived in an apartment in Bloomington (no citations were given we were just requested to keep it down), once when they drove by a party at my house (again no citations was just asked to keep the noise down and people inside if possible as it was getting late no complaint had been called in), and then a couple of weeks ago when we called them. The first two I think is pretty normal stuff; the last one was a little strange. I was out in the yard one Saturday with RG and I noticed what at first glance looked like a small duffel bag next to our air conditioner. I asked RG about it and she said it wasn’t there a couple of days earlier when she was working in the yard. So I picked it up, laid the tail gate to my truck down to use as a table, and preceded to see what was in the bag.
The bag actually turned out to be a green camera bag with a ton of small pockets and compartments. I looked through the external ones and found some latex gloves and wet wipes. Interesting. So I opened the main compartment. The first thing I saw was a small neoprene hard case that looked like it would be used to house a small thin digital camera. But this is not what I found in the neoprene case. Instead I found a handful of high powered rifle shells, probably for a 30-06. So at that point I figured it was better if I didn’t dig any further and took everything into the front porch.
After calling my renter to verify it was not his bag. Why he would have a small camera bag with ammunition in it in our flower garden I could not say. We decided to call the Minneapolis police and ask them to come and pick the bag up. After a 90 min or so a squad car came by and did just that. Before they left though the pulled out the rest of the contents of the bag which included some shot gun shells, some gun cleaning supplies, and a duck caller. So my guess, and that is all it is, is that some kids saw a camera bag sitting in a car or truck and took it thinking they were getting something they could easily sell. When the opened it and found what I found they decided it wasn’t worth it and dumped in my yard. People constantly walk by our house as it is on the corner so it is pretty high traffic area so I figure this is the most likely possibility.
The bag actually turned out to be a green camera bag with a ton of small pockets and compartments. I looked through the external ones and found some latex gloves and wet wipes. Interesting. So I opened the main compartment. The first thing I saw was a small neoprene hard case that looked like it would be used to house a small thin digital camera. But this is not what I found in the neoprene case. Instead I found a handful of high powered rifle shells, probably for a 30-06. So at that point I figured it was better if I didn’t dig any further and took everything into the front porch.
After calling my renter to verify it was not his bag. Why he would have a small camera bag with ammunition in it in our flower garden I could not say. We decided to call the Minneapolis police and ask them to come and pick the bag up. After a 90 min or so a squad car came by and did just that. Before they left though the pulled out the rest of the contents of the bag which included some shot gun shells, some gun cleaning supplies, and a duck caller. So my guess, and that is all it is, is that some kids saw a camera bag sitting in a car or truck and took it thinking they were getting something they could easily sell. When the opened it and found what I found they decided it wasn’t worth it and dumped in my yard. People constantly walk by our house as it is on the corner so it is pretty high traffic area so I figure this is the most likely possibility.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
The Only Town that is Painted in Team Colors
When I found out a friend of mine was getting married in Pittsburgh I figured we would try and go. So we planned a trip, having never been to Pittsburgh before I didn’t know what to expect. In fact the only thing I knew about Pittsburgh besides the fact that it is in Pennsylvania was what the skyline looked liked from the opening of the movie “Ground Hog’s day” and it was the home town for US Steel. So I asked my friend what there was to do in Pittsburgh, as he was born and raised there I thought he might have some good ideas. Well he didn’t, besides a few museums the only thing to do in town is watch sports. Pittsburgh is crazy for the Penguins, Pirates, and Steelers. Not necessarily in that order. My buddy did suggest taking a cable car ride up one of the mountains surrounding Pittsburgh for the view but that was about it.
So I did what I always do when I am going to a new city. I hit the internet checking Frommer’s online and wikitravel. Sure enough all they said to do was go up the Mountain, look in Museums, and go to the local sports - for the most part. We did find a few other things to see which I will talk about in a few minutes. What is interesting about the city is that all of the sports teams wear the same colors. Yellow and Black. As far as I know this is the only city that can say this. What is more amazing is it seems the town is also painted in these colors. Many of the buildings are dark in color and most of the steel in town is painted yellow. The most obvious of which are the eight million bridges. OK this is an exaggeration but it seems like there are eight million bridges as the city is at a point where three rivers meet. At any rate they are all yellow. So are the fire hydrants.
What really starts to build this illusion is the fact that so many buildings are decorated with local sports gear and so many stores and sidewalk vendors are selling team gear. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. It was quite interesting. At one point I told RG she should buy a body art kit and apply the Penguins mascot on her arm for the wedding. She would have fit in great. Every guy was wearing a black suit with a yellow tie and the made periodic updates on the honey game several times during the wedding. So Pittsburgh can easily be described as a sports town.
Now we did find some things to do besides the sports. The first day we found a really neat market street called The Strip District that reminds me a little of Pike’s Market in Seattle. Lots of little shops and a large fresh sea food shop. It was just a short walk from our hotel, Then we walked around the down town. It is a nice downtown though it is pretty empty on the weekend and it can go from a nicely kept street to a pretty run down street and back in a matter of a few blocks. The downtown ends at a pretty nice park, Point State Park, with a huge fountain at the intersection of the rivers that border the city. This park of course overlooks the sports stadiums. The day after the wedding we drove a ways out of town to see a famous Frank Lloyd Wright house called Falling Water that was once featured on the cover of Time magazine. It was pretty cool and defiantly worth the drive.
On the final day before flying out we did go up Mount Washington on the cable car. The cable car was at one time the main form of transportation for the steel workers that lived on the mountain but worked at the mills along the river. Only two or three of them are left. The Duquesne Incline is pretty much right across the river from Point State Park I mentioned before. It was a fun ride up the system is well over a hundred years old. So that can be a little nerve rattling but it seems safe. At the top there is of course a look out, a gift shop, and a museum about the cable cars. It was pretty fun and I think the whole round trip only cost 8 bucks for the two of us. So we had a good time in Pittsburgh for sure. The wedding was on a river boat so we also got a nice cruise up and down the rivers to see the area surrounding the city. There was also an entertainment area at the end of the commuter rail line called Station Square but we didn’t stop in. It looked like a bunch of shops along with a few chain restaurants. So really I think now we have basically seen everything in Pittsburgh.
So I did what I always do when I am going to a new city. I hit the internet checking Frommer’s online and wikitravel. Sure enough all they said to do was go up the Mountain, look in Museums, and go to the local sports - for the most part. We did find a few other things to see which I will talk about in a few minutes. What is interesting about the city is that all of the sports teams wear the same colors. Yellow and Black. As far as I know this is the only city that can say this. What is more amazing is it seems the town is also painted in these colors. Many of the buildings are dark in color and most of the steel in town is painted yellow. The most obvious of which are the eight million bridges. OK this is an exaggeration but it seems like there are eight million bridges as the city is at a point where three rivers meet. At any rate they are all yellow. So are the fire hydrants.
What really starts to build this illusion is the fact that so many buildings are decorated with local sports gear and so many stores and sidewalk vendors are selling team gear. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. It was quite interesting. At one point I told RG she should buy a body art kit and apply the Penguins mascot on her arm for the wedding. She would have fit in great. Every guy was wearing a black suit with a yellow tie and the made periodic updates on the honey game several times during the wedding. So Pittsburgh can easily be described as a sports town.
Now we did find some things to do besides the sports. The first day we found a really neat market street called The Strip District that reminds me a little of Pike’s Market in Seattle. Lots of little shops and a large fresh sea food shop. It was just a short walk from our hotel, Then we walked around the down town. It is a nice downtown though it is pretty empty on the weekend and it can go from a nicely kept street to a pretty run down street and back in a matter of a few blocks. The downtown ends at a pretty nice park, Point State Park, with a huge fountain at the intersection of the rivers that border the city. This park of course overlooks the sports stadiums. The day after the wedding we drove a ways out of town to see a famous Frank Lloyd Wright house called Falling Water that was once featured on the cover of Time magazine. It was pretty cool and defiantly worth the drive.
On the final day before flying out we did go up Mount Washington on the cable car. The cable car was at one time the main form of transportation for the steel workers that lived on the mountain but worked at the mills along the river. Only two or three of them are left. The Duquesne Incline is pretty much right across the river from Point State Park I mentioned before. It was a fun ride up the system is well over a hundred years old. So that can be a little nerve rattling but it seems safe. At the top there is of course a look out, a gift shop, and a museum about the cable cars. It was pretty fun and I think the whole round trip only cost 8 bucks for the two of us. So we had a good time in Pittsburgh for sure. The wedding was on a river boat so we also got a nice cruise up and down the rivers to see the area surrounding the city. There was also an entertainment area at the end of the commuter rail line called Station Square but we didn’t stop in. It looked like a bunch of shops along with a few chain restaurants. So really I think now we have basically seen everything in Pittsburgh.
Friday, May 15, 2009
2 Years!
RG and I have been married for 2 years as of a little while ago. I honestly don’t know where the time went. It seems like we were just dating a few weeks ago. My dad likes to point out, because he thinks it is notable, is that this is our first anniversary together. Well that isn’t really true; we were together in Paris for our first anniversary. Though at the time we could only spend weekends together thanks to RG’s fun immigration situation. So yes this is the first year we have celebrated our anniversary while living together in the US. And it was a great anniversary. We didn’t travel anywhere, we didn’t go out on the town, and in fact we really didn’t leave home. But for us, that is a pretty unique experience. Where for most of our married lives we have had to juggle so much in our lives to be together the mere fact that we are now in a stable situation was the best present of all.
I find it amazing that our relationship held so strong and true through the last year and a half. I know of many other couples that have had long distance relationships before and after they are married, but I would think that most people would agree that ours was still on the extreme side. I personally never had any doubt it could be done and I never let my commitment falter. I feel blessed that my work situation rather than making it more difficult was able to help us out. I also think that it allowed us to have one of the more adventurous first two years of marriage you can have. We visited eight different Counties and a principality (Wales). We saw some of the world’s wonders and the creations of countless societies, countries, and people. We met many characters and they got to meet us. It was a wild and exciting ride. Some days I miss others I am glad it is over. Now at least we can try to see the world in more manageable bursts.
Of course the best part of it was that I got to see it with one of the most amazing people I have met. Someone who at a minimum matches me mentally, someone who surprises me almost every day with her observations and thoughts, someone with no small amount of passion, someone who is always up beat and has a spirit that seem irrepressible, and really someone that can put up with my insanity day in and day out. While I may tease her about being loud and demanding, for what she puts up with I think it is an even deal on both sides of the equation. I certainly could not ask for a better partner in crime. I can only hope that I do as much for her as she does for me. Happy Anniversary Baby (I know you are reading this as there are really only 5-6 people that do!) it has been an amazing 2 years!
I find it amazing that our relationship held so strong and true through the last year and a half. I know of many other couples that have had long distance relationships before and after they are married, but I would think that most people would agree that ours was still on the extreme side. I personally never had any doubt it could be done and I never let my commitment falter. I feel blessed that my work situation rather than making it more difficult was able to help us out. I also think that it allowed us to have one of the more adventurous first two years of marriage you can have. We visited eight different Counties and a principality (Wales). We saw some of the world’s wonders and the creations of countless societies, countries, and people. We met many characters and they got to meet us. It was a wild and exciting ride. Some days I miss others I am glad it is over. Now at least we can try to see the world in more manageable bursts.
Of course the best part of it was that I got to see it with one of the most amazing people I have met. Someone who at a minimum matches me mentally, someone who surprises me almost every day with her observations and thoughts, someone with no small amount of passion, someone who is always up beat and has a spirit that seem irrepressible, and really someone that can put up with my insanity day in and day out. While I may tease her about being loud and demanding, for what she puts up with I think it is an even deal on both sides of the equation. I certainly could not ask for a better partner in crime. I can only hope that I do as much for her as she does for me. Happy Anniversary Baby (I know you are reading this as there are really only 5-6 people that do!) it has been an amazing 2 years!
Friday, May 8, 2009
Same Mistakes, Different Client
One of the phrases I am becoming more and more familiar with is “You can lead a horse to water… but you can’t make it drink”. This is probably one of the truest statements that can be made about corporate America. I have now worked on large expensive technology projects for five very large and well know companies and they all seem to make the same mistakes. Each corporation just seems to make these mistakes with different levels of severity. What is even more amazing is that when I did a little consulting college for some small companies I ran into similar problems.
This is actually the second time I have tried to write this post. The first time I stopped after writing what would have been a couple page introduction to an academic paper or the first chapter of a project management book. Neither of which I am inclined to actually write at this moment. The reason for this is I started getting into some details that would bore most people. So instead I am going to move up to the 50,000 foot level an give a high overview.
The main mistakes most corporations seem to make on large technology problems are:
1.) Under estimating the scope of what is really needed by the business – executives always want out of the box solutions while the resources that are down in the weeds want something that more closely follows their business model. The end result major scope crepe on almost every project I have been on.
2.) Poor tool selection – many companies simply pick the wrong tool, whether they make their decision on price, existing relationship with a vendor, kick backs, who knows picking the wrong tool adds significant development time. More time should be spent up front of vendor selection.
3.) Under Staffing. - When we as a consulting firm bid a project we always go in and say we need to staff the project 60-70% with client resources to keep the cost down and have enough decision makers to actually get things done. What happens most of the time is we get 30-40% and have to staff more consultants. The problem is while consultants may know a client’s industry and the technology involved they don’t know the clients business as well as client resources and the end decisions always have to be made by the client. So the less client resources the longer it takes to get work accomplished. The right mix is critical but always seems to be off do to the lack of client resources committed to a project.
4.) Overlapping waves – When rolling out a multi-site project you either do all the sites at once, or get a single stable solution up and running and then start more sites. You should not start site 2 in the middle of working on site one, and you certainly should not schedule several over lapping roll outs. It causes confusion, overloads shared resources (making mistake 3 worse), and almost always ends up with a worse overall design and solution.
5.) Consider the largest user base in the initial design – It is a fine idea to start with a small pilot before deploying to larger sites. But the design should be around the larger sites. Otherwise you build and stabilize a solution that does not fit your business and you need to start design over in the subsequent roll outs. If the largest user group is focused on from the beginning subsequent waves will need fewer changes and become simple. Lowering overall costs and possibly speeding up time lines. The opposite seems to happen however.
6.) Have strong controls – Before the project even starts project phases, milestones, time lines, deliverables, and process should be set. Also a single repository for data with version control should be set up. Nothing leads to more issues than having a lot of people following different processes, creating the wrong documents, working to the wrong dates, and creating multi versions of deliverables that don’t meet any of the requirements.
7.) Lack of executive commitment – This the most egregious error that can be made. Executive management needs to show up and let the legacy/IT/Systems people know that they want the new system and are willing to fire or remove people that are not committed. A lot of projects get derailed because executives fund a project and then forget about it. Many companies have an institutional aversion to change and people will under support and actively try to disrupt projects. They will also try to make the new system work like existing systems negating many of the benefits of doing a project.
I think the first 6 mistakes are common because companies want to get the most bang for their buck so they try to go as cheap as possible as fast as possible; when a longer time line with a more expensive initial price tag has more chance of success. In the end when the project gets in trouble and mistakes have to be corrected a cheaper solution can cost twice as much as the alternative. Corporations seem very bad at looking at things holistically and finding out what the total cost of ownership actually is on competing projects.
The last mistake just comes from many executives lack of experience dealing with such large solutions and there propensity to believe their company won’t make the mistakes other companies do. Because of this and their busy schedules they simply don’t make enough time to deal with projects. On the flip side it also seems that companies and many mid level executive simply don’t want to deal with problems when it could rock the moral boat. Removing people that cannot perform or are unwilling to make things happen is not a fun thing to do but sometimes it needs to be done and isn’t.
What is funny is that I have seen these same conditions exist in small business, at universities, in government shops (actually probably the worst offenders), government contractors, as well as the large fortune 500 companies. It really is amazing that the same themes repeat themselves so often and I have seen my firm give all the advice necessary to avoid these problems and yet time and time again we are ignored, even when they are paying such a premium for the price. Oh well I guess that is why I have a job.
This is actually the second time I have tried to write this post. The first time I stopped after writing what would have been a couple page introduction to an academic paper or the first chapter of a project management book. Neither of which I am inclined to actually write at this moment. The reason for this is I started getting into some details that would bore most people. So instead I am going to move up to the 50,000 foot level an give a high overview.
The main mistakes most corporations seem to make on large technology problems are:
1.) Under estimating the scope of what is really needed by the business – executives always want out of the box solutions while the resources that are down in the weeds want something that more closely follows their business model. The end result major scope crepe on almost every project I have been on.
2.) Poor tool selection – many companies simply pick the wrong tool, whether they make their decision on price, existing relationship with a vendor, kick backs, who knows picking the wrong tool adds significant development time. More time should be spent up front of vendor selection.
3.) Under Staffing. - When we as a consulting firm bid a project we always go in and say we need to staff the project 60-70% with client resources to keep the cost down and have enough decision makers to actually get things done. What happens most of the time is we get 30-40% and have to staff more consultants. The problem is while consultants may know a client’s industry and the technology involved they don’t know the clients business as well as client resources and the end decisions always have to be made by the client. So the less client resources the longer it takes to get work accomplished. The right mix is critical but always seems to be off do to the lack of client resources committed to a project.
4.) Overlapping waves – When rolling out a multi-site project you either do all the sites at once, or get a single stable solution up and running and then start more sites. You should not start site 2 in the middle of working on site one, and you certainly should not schedule several over lapping roll outs. It causes confusion, overloads shared resources (making mistake 3 worse), and almost always ends up with a worse overall design and solution.
5.) Consider the largest user base in the initial design – It is a fine idea to start with a small pilot before deploying to larger sites. But the design should be around the larger sites. Otherwise you build and stabilize a solution that does not fit your business and you need to start design over in the subsequent roll outs. If the largest user group is focused on from the beginning subsequent waves will need fewer changes and become simple. Lowering overall costs and possibly speeding up time lines. The opposite seems to happen however.
6.) Have strong controls – Before the project even starts project phases, milestones, time lines, deliverables, and process should be set. Also a single repository for data with version control should be set up. Nothing leads to more issues than having a lot of people following different processes, creating the wrong documents, working to the wrong dates, and creating multi versions of deliverables that don’t meet any of the requirements.
7.) Lack of executive commitment – This the most egregious error that can be made. Executive management needs to show up and let the legacy/IT/Systems people know that they want the new system and are willing to fire or remove people that are not committed. A lot of projects get derailed because executives fund a project and then forget about it. Many companies have an institutional aversion to change and people will under support and actively try to disrupt projects. They will also try to make the new system work like existing systems negating many of the benefits of doing a project.
I think the first 6 mistakes are common because companies want to get the most bang for their buck so they try to go as cheap as possible as fast as possible; when a longer time line with a more expensive initial price tag has more chance of success. In the end when the project gets in trouble and mistakes have to be corrected a cheaper solution can cost twice as much as the alternative. Corporations seem very bad at looking at things holistically and finding out what the total cost of ownership actually is on competing projects.
The last mistake just comes from many executives lack of experience dealing with such large solutions and there propensity to believe their company won’t make the mistakes other companies do. Because of this and their busy schedules they simply don’t make enough time to deal with projects. On the flip side it also seems that companies and many mid level executive simply don’t want to deal with problems when it could rock the moral boat. Removing people that cannot perform or are unwilling to make things happen is not a fun thing to do but sometimes it needs to be done and isn’t.
What is funny is that I have seen these same conditions exist in small business, at universities, in government shops (actually probably the worst offenders), government contractors, as well as the large fortune 500 companies. It really is amazing that the same themes repeat themselves so often and I have seen my firm give all the advice necessary to avoid these problems and yet time and time again we are ignored, even when they are paying such a premium for the price. Oh well I guess that is why I have a job.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Showing Appreciation
Well I have to admit that I probably use this blog to complain more than I write about positive things - mostly because it seems more entertaining. Well this post is going to be a little different. I think it is pretty positive. As I fly just about every week and get to deal with going through the airport a lot I have developed a pretty thin skin to the way most people act when they fly. I have my pet peeves but they seem to be getting less and less as I travel more and more. Most things seem not worth getting worked up over. Anyway there are always people taking up more space in the overhead than they should, or reclining fully on a regional jet so that they are in your lap or whatever. Don’t worry the positive part is coming. But what I saw on one flight from Orlando and again a flight from Memphis was truly remarkable.
Basically someone in first class gave up their seat to let a member of one of the armed services ride in more comfort out of a sense of gratitude. The first time I saw this I thought it was pretty cool and was certainly surprised but I figure it was a one of type thing. The second time I saw it happening when I was boarding thought wow people really are appreciative of what these people are doing, whether or not they agree with the decisions that put his country into the 2 wars we are fighting or not. I think it is a great thing to do. In fact I probably should have thought of it myself. Beyond this I have also been on Delta flight were the lead flight attendant publicly welcomed and thanked a serviceman in uniform that was on a flight. This is great, I think the men and women in the services deserver a lot of praise and gratitude and it is nice to see people make a point to show it.
That said I did have to laugh, one of the times this happened while the woman giving up her seat and the service man were switching in the back of the plane a man who was a standby pass came on and sat down in the first class seat the woman was giving up to the service man. Apparently the gate agent told him to take whatever open seat he could find. So he saw one in first class. No big deal, but when the man in the next seat to him what was going on he did not get up to move. I don’t know what he was thinking; he just kept hanging out in first class. I took the flight attendants asking him not once, not twice, but three times to get a move on. What a putz. But in the end he moved to an open seat in back and the service man got the seat up front. But it was an interesting scene to watch. I thought that guy that tried to take the seat was going to get lynched.
Basically someone in first class gave up their seat to let a member of one of the armed services ride in more comfort out of a sense of gratitude. The first time I saw this I thought it was pretty cool and was certainly surprised but I figure it was a one of type thing. The second time I saw it happening when I was boarding thought wow people really are appreciative of what these people are doing, whether or not they agree with the decisions that put his country into the 2 wars we are fighting or not. I think it is a great thing to do. In fact I probably should have thought of it myself. Beyond this I have also been on Delta flight were the lead flight attendant publicly welcomed and thanked a serviceman in uniform that was on a flight. This is great, I think the men and women in the services deserver a lot of praise and gratitude and it is nice to see people make a point to show it.
That said I did have to laugh, one of the times this happened while the woman giving up her seat and the service man were switching in the back of the plane a man who was a standby pass came on and sat down in the first class seat the woman was giving up to the service man. Apparently the gate agent told him to take whatever open seat he could find. So he saw one in first class. No big deal, but when the man in the next seat to him what was going on he did not get up to move. I don’t know what he was thinking; he just kept hanging out in first class. I took the flight attendants asking him not once, not twice, but three times to get a move on. What a putz. But in the end he moved to an open seat in back and the service man got the seat up front. But it was an interesting scene to watch. I thought that guy that tried to take the seat was going to get lynched.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Glass Block Window
I always seem to have a long list of projects to do around the house. This may have something to do with the fact that the house is over 100 years old. My goal right now is to re-do the bathroom by the end of the summer. That may or may not happen as funds are somewhat limited and we are coming into wedding season – so they will get more limited. But I can do it piece by piece and that is the plan. The first piece was to replace the window. We basically had 2 options a vinyl clad double hung replacement set or glass block. Since the window is along the tub and I want to install a shower I figured we probably would never open the double hung window and it would still allow the wood frame to possible rot from the water. So glass block it is.
I have never done glass block before, but hey that has never stopped me before why should it now?! So I started to look at Home Depot, Menards, Lowes, and other stores for supplies and to estimate the cost. While I was doing this I also researched the how to online on how the process even worked. In doing this I found another supplier that also custom made glass block windows to size you could just pop in. So I dragged the poor wife out and went to visit the glass block people. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited she was about that.
Well the glass block people had by far the best prices on the block by far. It was ½ what it was at the stores. However the price for a pre-made window was a little more that I was willing to pay. If I bought the supplies myself and spent 5-6 hours of time (2 of which I had to do with the pre-fab anyway) the cost was $250 more than just buying the supplies. I figured for $63/hour I would do it myself. So we went ahead and bought all of the supplies. I had previously used Visio to figure out the perfect arrangement of blocks to build the window in to fit the opening (glass block comes in many sizes so you can fit it to odd sizes/shapes) so I knew exactly what to buy. Again I can’t tell you how thrilled the wife was when I showed her draft after draft of the various ways to lay out the window. But hey leave it to a consultant to be thorough on such a minor detail.
Any one Saturday I got to it. The hard part was getting started. While pulling out the old window was easy, my sixth window replacement, window sills are not level, they slope outward. So I used some nails to create a something to prop the blocks up level. It seemed to work great and with the mortar surrounding the nails and now holding the blocks in place the solution worked well. Then I used spacers to set up each row. Two thirds of the way up I put in a plastic vent. It was simple matter of installing the spacers on the previous row, using a trowel to place some mortar and then placing the block in position and moving to the next. When I finished a row I pointed more mortar to make sure the bonds were good. Once the mortar dries you just break the outside parts of the spacers off and re-mortar the holes left behind.
Now this was my first time and I did make a few mistakes. I should have used more spacers. I used remnants of some spacers in place of new ones and ended up not being able to break off the parts the way I would have wanted. Second I pointed too much mortar in the seams so it isn’t evenly distributed. But This is fixable with a wire brush on a dermal, a drill bit, a bit of replacement mortar. So all in all I am pretty happy with how it came out and kinda can’t wait to do the ones in the basement and downstairs bathroom. I must be nutz to consider making glass block windows fun.
I have never done glass block before, but hey that has never stopped me before why should it now?! So I started to look at Home Depot, Menards, Lowes, and other stores for supplies and to estimate the cost. While I was doing this I also researched the how to online on how the process even worked. In doing this I found another supplier that also custom made glass block windows to size you could just pop in. So I dragged the poor wife out and went to visit the glass block people. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited she was about that.
Well the glass block people had by far the best prices on the block by far. It was ½ what it was at the stores. However the price for a pre-made window was a little more that I was willing to pay. If I bought the supplies myself and spent 5-6 hours of time (2 of which I had to do with the pre-fab anyway) the cost was $250 more than just buying the supplies. I figured for $63/hour I would do it myself. So we went ahead and bought all of the supplies. I had previously used Visio to figure out the perfect arrangement of blocks to build the window in to fit the opening (glass block comes in many sizes so you can fit it to odd sizes/shapes) so I knew exactly what to buy. Again I can’t tell you how thrilled the wife was when I showed her draft after draft of the various ways to lay out the window. But hey leave it to a consultant to be thorough on such a minor detail.
Any one Saturday I got to it. The hard part was getting started. While pulling out the old window was easy, my sixth window replacement, window sills are not level, they slope outward. So I used some nails to create a something to prop the blocks up level. It seemed to work great and with the mortar surrounding the nails and now holding the blocks in place the solution worked well. Then I used spacers to set up each row. Two thirds of the way up I put in a plastic vent. It was simple matter of installing the spacers on the previous row, using a trowel to place some mortar and then placing the block in position and moving to the next. When I finished a row I pointed more mortar to make sure the bonds were good. Once the mortar dries you just break the outside parts of the spacers off and re-mortar the holes left behind.
Now this was my first time and I did make a few mistakes. I should have used more spacers. I used remnants of some spacers in place of new ones and ended up not being able to break off the parts the way I would have wanted. Second I pointed too much mortar in the seams so it isn’t evenly distributed. But This is fixable with a wire brush on a dermal, a drill bit, a bit of replacement mortar. So all in all I am pretty happy with how it came out and kinda can’t wait to do the ones in the basement and downstairs bathroom. I must be nutz to consider making glass block windows fun.
Friday, April 17, 2009
On the road again
Well after a couple of different projects it seems I am back to what I would consider normal for my job. Obviously the international travel was an exception and probably a onetime thing and the following project was 80% remote so I worked from home, but my current staffing is back to what I consider normal. I leave on Monday morning and return home Thursday night. Of course there will be times I need to stay 5 days a week and I am sure toward go-live there will be weekend work, but for the most part we will stick to a 3-4-5 schedule. That is 3 nights away from home, 4 days working at the client site, and 5 days of work (the final day is from the home office).
But it will take a little getting used to again. My corporate apartment in the UK was almost like home, more so the 3 months RG was able to live there. And home from November through March was obviously like home too! So now after a couple years of disruption I have to learn to operate on little sleep, compressed schedules, eating out of vending machines and restaurants, and dealing with hotel staff, the airlines, and rental car company. But the good news is that our lives are starting to feel the same as they did before RG left for her home stay requirement. Though I have to admit I was getting used to seeing her everyday rather that 3-4 days a week.
One perk of the job though is that our bills go down slightly when I am out of town. We only need the one car because I am not home needing to get around and the transportation at the customer site is covered so we spend less gas money, the food costs are reduced as I am taken care of on the road. Also because each day away from home is so packed with activity by the time I start to feel like I am away it is time to head home. A joke between myself and a counter part is that consultants don’t have Monday-Sunday lives. We have Got here today day, got here yesterday day, go home tomorrow day, and go home today day. Then we have in the office or work from home day and the weekend.
At any rate after some strange circumstances and a lot of different working environments I am happy to be back onto the normal weekly schedule. Though I must admit I probably wouldn’t mind being sent to Japan, somewhere in South America, or Australia for a project either!
But it will take a little getting used to again. My corporate apartment in the UK was almost like home, more so the 3 months RG was able to live there. And home from November through March was obviously like home too! So now after a couple years of disruption I have to learn to operate on little sleep, compressed schedules, eating out of vending machines and restaurants, and dealing with hotel staff, the airlines, and rental car company. But the good news is that our lives are starting to feel the same as they did before RG left for her home stay requirement. Though I have to admit I was getting used to seeing her everyday rather that 3-4 days a week.
One perk of the job though is that our bills go down slightly when I am out of town. We only need the one car because I am not home needing to get around and the transportation at the customer site is covered so we spend less gas money, the food costs are reduced as I am taken care of on the road. Also because each day away from home is so packed with activity by the time I start to feel like I am away it is time to head home. A joke between myself and a counter part is that consultants don’t have Monday-Sunday lives. We have Got here today day, got here yesterday day, go home tomorrow day, and go home today day. Then we have in the office or work from home day and the weekend.
At any rate after some strange circumstances and a lot of different working environments I am happy to be back onto the normal weekly schedule. Though I must admit I probably wouldn’t mind being sent to Japan, somewhere in South America, or Australia for a project either!
Friday, April 10, 2009
What would we do without the Internet?
This post isn’t really about the internet but I was struck the other day on how much easier it is to get at information because of the internet, particularly when RG and I were at the bank doing some paperwork to refinance our house. During the process we needed to provide documentation on income, financial statements, tax documents, and other similar documentation. This is the third time I have applied for a mortgage so what they were asking for seemed pretty normal. What was different this time than the last two is that none of it came from a paper file. All of the documentation for the bank was electronic. On top of that I needed to produce further documentation and I was able to do it right then and there using the computer.
A few days later we had some more documents to fill out and sign arrive in the mail (which now I am wondering why we couldn’t fill them out on line) with a note requesting a few additional bank statements. Again I turned to the internet and downloaded some documents, scanned a couple others, and then emailed the package to our processer. What I find most amazing about the whole thing is that I expect to be able to do these things now as effortlessly as possible. Nine years ago when I applied for my first mortgage it was quite a different story.
Back then I remember getting the list of documents from the loan officer at the my real-estate agent’s office. Of course I had to travel home to begin the process. It took me most of the weekend to pull all the paper work together from my files. Then I had to get them all physically copied to give to her. Once that was done I physically took them back to the office and was given a follow up list of documents to get. This cycle went on for a couple of weeks and took up a good portion of my time. It was a huge hassle. Fast forward a few years and as I mentioned above all that has changed. I think the total effort I put in this time around in collecting the required documents was 1/10 or less of the old process.
I am sure these efficiencies were not even an idea when the World Wide Web was designed let alone when internet was originally conceived. But it is amazing how it has now crept into almost all processes in our lives.
A few days later we had some more documents to fill out and sign arrive in the mail (which now I am wondering why we couldn’t fill them out on line) with a note requesting a few additional bank statements. Again I turned to the internet and downloaded some documents, scanned a couple others, and then emailed the package to our processer. What I find most amazing about the whole thing is that I expect to be able to do these things now as effortlessly as possible. Nine years ago when I applied for my first mortgage it was quite a different story.
Back then I remember getting the list of documents from the loan officer at the my real-estate agent’s office. Of course I had to travel home to begin the process. It took me most of the weekend to pull all the paper work together from my files. Then I had to get them all physically copied to give to her. Once that was done I physically took them back to the office and was given a follow up list of documents to get. This cycle went on for a couple of weeks and took up a good portion of my time. It was a huge hassle. Fast forward a few years and as I mentioned above all that has changed. I think the total effort I put in this time around in collecting the required documents was 1/10 or less of the old process.
I am sure these efficiencies were not even an idea when the World Wide Web was designed let alone when internet was originally conceived. But it is amazing how it has now crept into almost all processes in our lives.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Staffed, Staffed, and Staffed again
Well I have posted about this many times before, but the strangest part of my job is how we are staffed on projects. There is really no true way to make sense of it. Officially we have resource managers that are supposed to staff us. But most people end up getting staffed on their own by networking internally or working on sales projects. But either way it can take a while and there are many ups and downs to the process. Since I have been back from the UK I have been working to get a good longer term project. I have interviewed with project managers, clients, and teams for a variety of roles. Most of which I have been turned down for or the role was canceled due to project funding.
So it has been a bit of a roller coaster. Plus my current skill sets don’t match up with my positioning in the firm so it is hard to go after the roles I am supposed to go after and tend to get pulled into unrelated roles. The latest development is continues this trend. Though I think it is funny because it again shows the feast or famine nature of consulting. I has a nine week project that I knew was short term from Jan 19 to a couple weeks ago. So I never stopped trying to find a good project since I started the quest in December. Up until this week I wasn’t having much luck; too many people fighting over the same roles. But then what seems to always happens, occurred again. I went from having one project to three.
This of course doesn’t work out because I can only be in one place at a time. So the situation was kind of a mess, just as a similar situation had been a few years ago. You have three managers all trying to bring you on to their project. What made this time more amusing is that it was three possible roles on the same project but for different managers. My poor staffing manager didn’t know what was going on. But it was nice for me to have several people fighting for me. There are an awful lot of people that are on the bench not earning utilization and I am sure another round of layoffs is coming this summer and probably one after the holidays next year. So it is good to be working. I just wish the process made more sense, put people where they should be, and maybe had a little more equity.
However that said this role will be at least 6 months form me and it will probably go on for well over a year. So hopefully I won’t be facing the chopping block and this will get me through the recession. That would be nice. Even if I do have to take a connection each way to get to the client.
So it has been a bit of a roller coaster. Plus my current skill sets don’t match up with my positioning in the firm so it is hard to go after the roles I am supposed to go after and tend to get pulled into unrelated roles. The latest development is continues this trend. Though I think it is funny because it again shows the feast or famine nature of consulting. I has a nine week project that I knew was short term from Jan 19 to a couple weeks ago. So I never stopped trying to find a good project since I started the quest in December. Up until this week I wasn’t having much luck; too many people fighting over the same roles. But then what seems to always happens, occurred again. I went from having one project to three.
This of course doesn’t work out because I can only be in one place at a time. So the situation was kind of a mess, just as a similar situation had been a few years ago. You have three managers all trying to bring you on to their project. What made this time more amusing is that it was three possible roles on the same project but for different managers. My poor staffing manager didn’t know what was going on. But it was nice for me to have several people fighting for me. There are an awful lot of people that are on the bench not earning utilization and I am sure another round of layoffs is coming this summer and probably one after the holidays next year. So it is good to be working. I just wish the process made more sense, put people where they should be, and maybe had a little more equity.
However that said this role will be at least 6 months form me and it will probably go on for well over a year. So hopefully I won’t be facing the chopping block and this will get me through the recession. That would be nice. Even if I do have to take a connection each way to get to the client.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Doubling the bill
I have been in my house since late September of 2000. In that time I have put a lot of work into restoring it. In fact I have probably put more work in than most people would be willing to do. A fact a good friend of mine just reminded me of. He routinely buys houses with his brother as projects to make money on. When they flip, or re-hab a house they do it on the cheap. Not that they do poor work or use low quality materials, no they just don’t spend a lot of time and energy making it look really nice. They make it decent and sellable. I on the other hand spend 200 hours stripping and reconditioning the woodwork in a single room where I could have sanded and painted it in about 30. I patch the plaster in most cases, I try to build things that fit with my houses overall character, and I have to do it all while I continue to live there.
But it is also something I take some pride in and it is my home so I want it to be to my standard. I would rather wait and do it right than just do something to make it acceptable. That said for the longest time I have pretty much made all of the decisions and really been the only person involved. People have helped me with projects here and there but really I always decided how to do it. Well that is all changing now as I am now married. For the most part RG is hard to get involved in house projects. She has no real interest in working on the house, hates going to places like the home depot, and generally (and surprisingly for her) hasn’t had strong opinions in the area. I am trying to get her more involved though, because this is our house and she should be happy with and feel like she helped create it.
So the next project is our one and only bathroom. So I have many constraints here. First I can’t take it out of service for very long. So it will have to be done in stages. Second it is incredibly small. And third we have a tight budget. My original plan was to create a very simple bathroom that would be similar to something from the 1920s. White tile, pedestal sink, built in cabinet, maybe even a claw foot tub. I dropped the claw foot tub a long time ago in favor of a modern tube with a tiled shower. But I still figured I could do it cheaply because the tile would be standard 4 inch tile, the toilet was purchased, and the sink would be cheap. But then I got my wife involved. While I am happy she is taking an interest in the bathroom, her tastes are more expensive than mine. After an initial trip to some stores her version of the bathroom would cost double what mine would.
She also tends to like more modern styles even though the house was built in 1905 and I have been bring back as much of the original character as I can, so this is a bit of a clash. But do to the size of the bathroom we cannot use many of the elements she wants to. For instance there is simply no premade vanity that will fit. So now we have worked back and forth and I think we have a design we can both be a happy with. Some nicer tiles than I was going to use, I am going to make a vanity that fits incorporating some of her design likes but that retains the character of the house, and the hardware will be a mix of old and new styles. Both of us agree on a modern bath/shower though. So in the long run we will get a bathroom that is far from my vision, but something that is a little of both of use, and while it is more expensive it won’t be 3 times the cost…. Just double.
But it is also something I take some pride in and it is my home so I want it to be to my standard. I would rather wait and do it right than just do something to make it acceptable. That said for the longest time I have pretty much made all of the decisions and really been the only person involved. People have helped me with projects here and there but really I always decided how to do it. Well that is all changing now as I am now married. For the most part RG is hard to get involved in house projects. She has no real interest in working on the house, hates going to places like the home depot, and generally (and surprisingly for her) hasn’t had strong opinions in the area. I am trying to get her more involved though, because this is our house and she should be happy with and feel like she helped create it.
So the next project is our one and only bathroom. So I have many constraints here. First I can’t take it out of service for very long. So it will have to be done in stages. Second it is incredibly small. And third we have a tight budget. My original plan was to create a very simple bathroom that would be similar to something from the 1920s. White tile, pedestal sink, built in cabinet, maybe even a claw foot tub. I dropped the claw foot tub a long time ago in favor of a modern tube with a tiled shower. But I still figured I could do it cheaply because the tile would be standard 4 inch tile, the toilet was purchased, and the sink would be cheap. But then I got my wife involved. While I am happy she is taking an interest in the bathroom, her tastes are more expensive than mine. After an initial trip to some stores her version of the bathroom would cost double what mine would.
She also tends to like more modern styles even though the house was built in 1905 and I have been bring back as much of the original character as I can, so this is a bit of a clash. But do to the size of the bathroom we cannot use many of the elements she wants to. For instance there is simply no premade vanity that will fit. So now we have worked back and forth and I think we have a design we can both be a happy with. Some nicer tiles than I was going to use, I am going to make a vanity that fits incorporating some of her design likes but that retains the character of the house, and the hardware will be a mix of old and new styles. Both of us agree on a modern bath/shower though. So in the long run we will get a bathroom that is far from my vision, but something that is a little of both of use, and while it is more expensive it won’t be 3 times the cost…. Just double.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Heads Down
So I have been a little slow getting my blogs posted lately. I had ½ of them written but I was just too busy at work to actually get them posted on line. Most I had written while on flights. The only time I have had lately to get a break. For the past 2 months I have been a project that is in some trouble. They are 150% behind their time line, and I think that is only going to get worse. Luckily the project was not run by my company we are only responsible for a small portion of the project. But now as they are getting close to go-live and are still having some serious troubles we were asked to help and somehow I got roped into it.
So I was asked to build some reports that married SAP data and Legacy data to validate the client’s conversion processes. Normally we train the client functional experts to do this so they can create whatever they need on the fly. Then they build reports of ½ dozen fields at a time. This client however only wanted a set of excel sheets with magic buttons that gave them a yes the data is good or no it is not response without much work. And they wanted it fast, for several very complex data objects. What we should have said is that it simply wasn’t practical, or at the very least we should use a more robust platform than excel. What we said, or rather a manager who is not me said, is sure. So project management promises and I am tasked with delivering.
So for the last 9 weeks I have had my head down and my fingers smoking on the keyboard trying to build these tools/reports for the client. It took nearly twice as long and the client will have no way to fix them if they break or update them for future waves, but I am almost finished with the assignment and able to breathe a little more again. I have done 55-70 hour weeks before, even for a few weeks straight, but 9 weeks straight was a little much. Suffice to say, that manage is now on my “Do not work with again” list. Funniest part about it, they threw him off the project and kept me! Oi… Hopefully it is on to better things.
So I was asked to build some reports that married SAP data and Legacy data to validate the client’s conversion processes. Normally we train the client functional experts to do this so they can create whatever they need on the fly. Then they build reports of ½ dozen fields at a time. This client however only wanted a set of excel sheets with magic buttons that gave them a yes the data is good or no it is not response without much work. And they wanted it fast, for several very complex data objects. What we should have said is that it simply wasn’t practical, or at the very least we should use a more robust platform than excel. What we said, or rather a manager who is not me said, is sure. So project management promises and I am tasked with delivering.
So for the last 9 weeks I have had my head down and my fingers smoking on the keyboard trying to build these tools/reports for the client. It took nearly twice as long and the client will have no way to fix them if they break or update them for future waves, but I am almost finished with the assignment and able to breathe a little more again. I have done 55-70 hour weeks before, even for a few weeks straight, but 9 weeks straight was a little much. Suffice to say, that manage is now on my “Do not work with again” list. Funniest part about it, they threw him off the project and kept me! Oi… Hopefully it is on to better things.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Bull Dog
At some point in the not so far off future I would like to get a dog. I’m really not sure what kind of dog. But I was thinking Bull Dog. Everything I have read about them is positive when it comes to training, disposition, and general characteristics. They are ugly. I know this. But I think they are so ugly they are pretty cool looking actually. So I thought it would be fun to get one. The wife though seems opposed to a bull dog. I don’t know why. Her sister also seems to have something against these lovable scamps. So I guess it is back to the drawing board.
My favorite dog growing up was a sheltie. But ours was a bit of a freak he was nearly 30% larger than they are supposed to grow and ran like a grey hound. No joke. When we had him at my grandma’s farm he would run alongside of cars down the 1 mile drive way. We clocked him one time around 30 mph! Amazing. The only problem with shelties is that they need a lot of grooming and they sometimes can bark a lot. So that may be a pain.
Another option I thought of was a Jack Russell Terrier. A good friend had one when I was in high school and it was a cool dog. But I think it was an exception. The reading I have done lately says they can be a bit high strung. I want a pretty laid back, medium sized dog. I certainly don’t want something that looks like a rat or is only 4 inches tall. I still circle back to Bull Dog. Of course I don’t want to pay for a pure bread so chances are we will just go to a shelter or last chance and adopt a mutt. Who knows maybe we will get lucky.
My favorite dog growing up was a sheltie. But ours was a bit of a freak he was nearly 30% larger than they are supposed to grow and ran like a grey hound. No joke. When we had him at my grandma’s farm he would run alongside of cars down the 1 mile drive way. We clocked him one time around 30 mph! Amazing. The only problem with shelties is that they need a lot of grooming and they sometimes can bark a lot. So that may be a pain.
Another option I thought of was a Jack Russell Terrier. A good friend had one when I was in high school and it was a cool dog. But I think it was an exception. The reading I have done lately says they can be a bit high strung. I want a pretty laid back, medium sized dog. I certainly don’t want something that looks like a rat or is only 4 inches tall. I still circle back to Bull Dog. Of course I don’t want to pay for a pure bread so chances are we will just go to a shelter or last chance and adopt a mutt. Who knows maybe we will get lucky.
Friday, February 27, 2009
I’m too social to work remotely
I have come to a conclusion - I could not - and probably would not - work from home if given the choice. I’m too social for remote work. Have a pile of work to do all day and no one to deal with accept via email, conference call, and live meeting drives me crazy. For the last few weeks I have been working from my dining room table. I have been putting in 10-14 hour days and only leave the house to go grocery shopping or to the gym for an hour and ½. I like my house, I like spending time there, I don’t like spending all my time there. And when I have work to do it is hard to get out for a little bit. I don’t know if this is the case with most people, or maybe if I had a home office that would help. But I think being home all the time is only ½ the problem.
While it is nice to see my wife all day long, I miss seeing the people I work with. I miss the banter that comes from sharing and office. I miss lunch breaks, coffee breaks, and so on. If fact I feel like I take less breaks and work more remotely. The truly sad thing is you would think these longer hours and lack of breaks would translate into productivity. But they don’t.
My normal MOD is when I need something from someone I simply find them and hassle them until they give it to me. I don’t like sending a lot of emails and escalating issues through the chain of command. I will if I have to but I find it much more satisfying to walk over to the persons desk, sit down, chit chat for 2 min, then politely let them know I am going to hang out until they do what I am asking them to do, or at least until they schedule some dedicated time to get it done. I can’t do this remotely. People screen their calls, avoid answering emails, turn IM off, and so on. And I don’t think every little hold I run into should be a subject for all managers on a project to discuss. I know people are busy if I can talk to them face to face many times I can get an answer in less time than it takes to compose and email.
That said I also find I am missing the travel. I don’t mind being on the road. I don’t know why. I am always pleased to get home on Thursday nights when traveling, but I kinda like being able to concentrate on work during the week. I do call the wife every day and we do email, but for some reason it seems easier to concentrate away from home. Plus I like exploring new places so to go somewhere new every few months or at least every year is a nice perk. Even if it is the middle of nowhere Ohio! At any rate I am going to avoid remote work from this point on, at least for any duration that is more than a week or two.
Of course the one up side is all the time I get to spend with my wife and getting to sleep next to her on a regular basis. But I could probably get that working locally at a normal job, I just don't like working from home.
While it is nice to see my wife all day long, I miss seeing the people I work with. I miss the banter that comes from sharing and office. I miss lunch breaks, coffee breaks, and so on. If fact I feel like I take less breaks and work more remotely. The truly sad thing is you would think these longer hours and lack of breaks would translate into productivity. But they don’t.
My normal MOD is when I need something from someone I simply find them and hassle them until they give it to me. I don’t like sending a lot of emails and escalating issues through the chain of command. I will if I have to but I find it much more satisfying to walk over to the persons desk, sit down, chit chat for 2 min, then politely let them know I am going to hang out until they do what I am asking them to do, or at least until they schedule some dedicated time to get it done. I can’t do this remotely. People screen their calls, avoid answering emails, turn IM off, and so on. And I don’t think every little hold I run into should be a subject for all managers on a project to discuss. I know people are busy if I can talk to them face to face many times I can get an answer in less time than it takes to compose and email.
That said I also find I am missing the travel. I don’t mind being on the road. I don’t know why. I am always pleased to get home on Thursday nights when traveling, but I kinda like being able to concentrate on work during the week. I do call the wife every day and we do email, but for some reason it seems easier to concentrate away from home. Plus I like exploring new places so to go somewhere new every few months or at least every year is a nice perk. Even if it is the middle of nowhere Ohio! At any rate I am going to avoid remote work from this point on, at least for any duration that is more than a week or two.
Of course the one up side is all the time I get to spend with my wife and getting to sleep next to her on a regular basis. But I could probably get that working locally at a normal job, I just don't like working from home.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Cash Flow
Well now that the wife is home and the European adventure is over it is time to settle in for the time and start to try and improve our financial situation. I didn’t realize just how different a single income household would be until it finally happened. When I was in the UK my food, gas, most of my entertainment, and other major expenses were covered. In fact my per diem left me with a small balance of spending cash too. But working remotely from home and having the wife back in the US has changed that. We recently sat down, as I think many people in the states are doing, and took a serious look at our debts, assets, and budget. After going over all of this I had to laugh and tell RG that we have some slight “cash flow issues”. Like many business we have a strong balance sheet but week inflow/outflow cash situation.
After a couple days of trying to figure out how to participate in TARP I decided we just had to live a little less extravagantly (though the wife will ask when we were extravagantly at all). The new budget uses an old system. Basically we determined how much we need to spend on food and gas, plus a little extra for fun. That money is it and that is all we can spend in those areas. Once it is gone, well we eat left over or don’t drive for a couple days. The bills are all paid on line, and now we almost never use the card. We still get to contribute to the 401k and savings but now we go out a lot less; probably 80% less. But that is ok. We get to entertain a lot more and RG is proving to be a great cook.
It also allows RG to look for a job she can be passionate about rather than one that just provides us with the means to buy stuff. It is very important to me that she finds something she likes rather than just something that pays. While I hope she finds something soon it is not for financial reasons. What really makes me wonder though is this, if I make a good salary, more than some families, how can they get by even with both people working? We aren’t living pay check to pay check but we don’t have much wiggle room, how do people that make less do it? Anyway I guess our budget was a long time coming, hopefully we will get a little more wiggle room in the future, but it isn’t that bad either.
After a couple days of trying to figure out how to participate in TARP I decided we just had to live a little less extravagantly (though the wife will ask when we were extravagantly at all). The new budget uses an old system. Basically we determined how much we need to spend on food and gas, plus a little extra for fun. That money is it and that is all we can spend in those areas. Once it is gone, well we eat left over or don’t drive for a couple days. The bills are all paid on line, and now we almost never use the card. We still get to contribute to the 401k and savings but now we go out a lot less; probably 80% less. But that is ok. We get to entertain a lot more and RG is proving to be a great cook.
It also allows RG to look for a job she can be passionate about rather than one that just provides us with the means to buy stuff. It is very important to me that she finds something she likes rather than just something that pays. While I hope she finds something soon it is not for financial reasons. What really makes me wonder though is this, if I make a good salary, more than some families, how can they get by even with both people working? We aren’t living pay check to pay check but we don’t have much wiggle room, how do people that make less do it? Anyway I guess our budget was a long time coming, hopefully we will get a little more wiggle room in the future, but it isn’t that bad either.
Friday, February 13, 2009
FORMS
I hate dealing with the Government, the wife hates dealing with the Government, I think most people hate dealing with the Government. We however get the triple wammy as we get to deal with so many different organizations due to the whole immigration dance we are forced to endure. The biggest pain is simply the number of forms we are required to fill out to do normal things. For example if we want her sister or parents to visit they require visas, this means paperwork. If we decide to travel outside the US RG needs a visa, again this requires paperwork. Or worse if I wanted to visit her for the weekend in Moscow I had to have a visa, and to come and go as I please I needed to obtain a multi entry business visa that of course requires a lot more documentation. And the big daddy of all the processes of course is the immigration paperwork. As you get to deal with 3 government agencies there is a lot of paperwork.
In fact to date I have a running list of all the forms, letters, and documents we have had to submit since before we were married. The current grand total is 49 give or take. This of course is not including all of the documentation that many of the visas require; such as proof of hotel accommodations, travel arrangement, financial security, insurance, etc. In fact the number of pages would be thick enough to be a Harry Potter novel! We have gotten so proficient at Visa applications that we can prepare a 20 page package in a matter of hours. It is pretty sad too that we are able to give other people advice that is more accurate than some of that given by the embassies. Now that isn’t to say we get everything we apply for. Many times we only get single entry visas when we would have preferred multi entries causing us to skip a couple weekend trips, and RGs name on her passport and green card are spelled differently than the marriage certificate due to a strange process called transliteration causing some confusion from time to time. But all in all we have managed. Even if most of my raise from last year went to fees associated with these forms, processes, and documents!
I have actually joked that if I get sick of consulting (which is more likely lately) that I might have a decent career as an immigration lawyer. Heck we have been through a good percentage of the processes and without any legal assistance. But then I have to wonder if I want to spend that much of my life chasing government forms and creating documentation. Maybe I will wait and see if we can get through the Citizenship process. Then at least ½ the requirements will cease as RG will get a US passport. One thing I can defiantly say to anyone is this, if you have a US passport, be very thankful, it opens more doors around the world than you can even guess!
In fact to date I have a running list of all the forms, letters, and documents we have had to submit since before we were married. The current grand total is 49 give or take. This of course is not including all of the documentation that many of the visas require; such as proof of hotel accommodations, travel arrangement, financial security, insurance, etc. In fact the number of pages would be thick enough to be a Harry Potter novel! We have gotten so proficient at Visa applications that we can prepare a 20 page package in a matter of hours. It is pretty sad too that we are able to give other people advice that is more accurate than some of that given by the embassies. Now that isn’t to say we get everything we apply for. Many times we only get single entry visas when we would have preferred multi entries causing us to skip a couple weekend trips, and RGs name on her passport and green card are spelled differently than the marriage certificate due to a strange process called transliteration causing some confusion from time to time. But all in all we have managed. Even if most of my raise from last year went to fees associated with these forms, processes, and documents!
I have actually joked that if I get sick of consulting (which is more likely lately) that I might have a decent career as an immigration lawyer. Heck we have been through a good percentage of the processes and without any legal assistance. But then I have to wonder if I want to spend that much of my life chasing government forms and creating documentation. Maybe I will wait and see if we can get through the Citizenship process. Then at least ½ the requirements will cease as RG will get a US passport. One thing I can defiantly say to anyone is this, if you have a US passport, be very thankful, it opens more doors around the world than you can even guess!
Friday, February 6, 2009
Don’t mess with that!
One of the first things I did when I got back to the states was to take the truck to a Valvoline Instant Oil Change and get my oil changed. You know the little building you pull into, driving over an oil pit, and they have guys work on your car from above and below to get you in and out in 15-20 min. The funny thing is they are always trying to find new ways of attaching additional sales onto the deal. They have always done air cleaners, windshield wipers, tranny flushes, coolant servicing, “better” synthetic oil, and the like, but they have never performed any sort of automotive shop test on my car. These all seem to make sense – why not have them do other fluid related activities. So I wasn’t really surprised when they pulled out a cheap looking battery tester and started messing around with that.
Of course testing a battery is not rocket science. Anyone who can read instructions can do it. Turn car off, check, clip red cable to positive terminal, check, clip black cable to negative terminal, check, press test button. However there is a little thing that is not in the instructions. Running a test through the battery cables and not clipped onto the terminals will always make the battery look weaker than it is. But apparently no one told these guys. Because that is exactly what they did, connecting the tester to the brackets of the battery cable and not the battery. So of course the battery read weak. So this prompted them to come up and warm me about being stranded in the middle of nowhere when my battery died when it was cold.
I don’t know why but this always pisses me off. I know it is their job, I know that they are doing what they should be doing, but dang it, I do know a couple of things and I don’t want to be treated like a moron just because most people are ignorant about their cars. I only use the rapid oil places in the winter because it is too cold to do it in the driveway. Otherwise I take care of this stuff myself for the most part. So NO I DON’T WANT A NEW BATTERY and stop messing with that. Ok well just felt like ranting a bit. FYI I would suggest not letting the oil monkeys mess with your battery. Oh and I always buy a battery that could start the truck ½ dead so even if it were as bad as they said I would not be worried as the battery would only be down to the recommended strength once it had only ½ its capacity. I do live in a state where temps get well below zero….
Of course testing a battery is not rocket science. Anyone who can read instructions can do it. Turn car off, check, clip red cable to positive terminal, check, clip black cable to negative terminal, check, press test button. However there is a little thing that is not in the instructions. Running a test through the battery cables and not clipped onto the terminals will always make the battery look weaker than it is. But apparently no one told these guys. Because that is exactly what they did, connecting the tester to the brackets of the battery cable and not the battery. So of course the battery read weak. So this prompted them to come up and warm me about being stranded in the middle of nowhere when my battery died when it was cold.
I don’t know why but this always pisses me off. I know it is their job, I know that they are doing what they should be doing, but dang it, I do know a couple of things and I don’t want to be treated like a moron just because most people are ignorant about their cars. I only use the rapid oil places in the winter because it is too cold to do it in the driveway. Otherwise I take care of this stuff myself for the most part. So NO I DON’T WANT A NEW BATTERY and stop messing with that. Ok well just felt like ranting a bit. FYI I would suggest not letting the oil monkeys mess with your battery. Oh and I always buy a battery that could start the truck ½ dead so even if it were as bad as they said I would not be worried as the battery would only be down to the recommended strength once it had only ½ its capacity. I do live in a state where temps get well below zero….
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Best News Ever
Well after 16 months, hundreds of thousands of miles of travel, thousands of dollars, many sleepless nights, planning and re-planning, dealing with a dozen government agencies (US and Foreign), and so many forms it hurts, my lovely wife is finally coming back to the States for good!
The tickets are purchased, the plan is set, the documents are received. Next Thursday I fly out to Germany meet her, her parent, and her aunt, we then drive 2.5 hours to a hotel. The next day is the sister-in-law’s wedding. Then we have a day to rest visit and relax. Then of Feb 9th we drive 2.5 hours back to the airport board 3 separate flights, and her family goes back to Russia, I fly home via ATL, and RG flies home via AMS. We land within 20 minutes of each other, though she is going through customs so I will end up waiting a while for her. Then it will all be done.
We will be a more normal married couple. Living in the same house and everything. We have been here before but this time there will be no “living abroad” scholarship requirement hanging over our heads. We can get on with it! So I am ecstatic. Though there is still a week to go it looks like all the hurdles have been cleared. I don’t think we will do much right away in the manner of throwing parties or anything, but I am sure for months we will be busy making the rounds and seeing everyone.
So there it is. We actually know when it is going to happen. We found out only yesterday.
The tickets are purchased, the plan is set, the documents are received. Next Thursday I fly out to Germany meet her, her parent, and her aunt, we then drive 2.5 hours to a hotel. The next day is the sister-in-law’s wedding. Then we have a day to rest visit and relax. Then of Feb 9th we drive 2.5 hours back to the airport board 3 separate flights, and her family goes back to Russia, I fly home via ATL, and RG flies home via AMS. We land within 20 minutes of each other, though she is going through customs so I will end up waiting a while for her. Then it will all be done.
We will be a more normal married couple. Living in the same house and everything. We have been here before but this time there will be no “living abroad” scholarship requirement hanging over our heads. We can get on with it! So I am ecstatic. Though there is still a week to go it looks like all the hurdles have been cleared. I don’t think we will do much right away in the manner of throwing parties or anything, but I am sure for months we will be busy making the rounds and seeing everyone.
So there it is. We actually know when it is going to happen. We found out only yesterday.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Staffing
My job is not normal. There is no way around this. In fact it is quite strange. When people ask who you work for that is easy. When they ask what you do that is hard. Generally I just say I help large companies install software. At the Macro level this is true. As a company we help other companies transform their entire business. This may involve or may not involve technology. When a client decides it does center on a technology solution and that solution is SAP then that is when I may get called. The specifics of my day to day activities change from week to week. First I really only got to sit around taking notes and doing simple project manager activities. Later I was allowed to document what we were doing. Then I was allowed to coordinate testing activities. Then I led testing activities. Then I designed simple data migrations. And on my last project I led one of three sites on their data migration activities. Each project needs people to do different things. So I never know what is going to come up.
This makes things very interesting. I have been on literally hundreds of people, for 5 clients, on 6 projects, in at least a dozen different roles in the last 4 years. However the way you are staffed drives me crazy. Unlike many of our competitors that just assign people to projects our company is much less informal. We have a staffing manager who proposes us to a project. Then we have to interview with the manager and possibly again with the client. Then maybe you are on the project or maybe you aren’t. The other way of getting staffed is if a manager requests you. So when you not staffed you job is to get on the phone and start calling any project manager you know and to reach out to those you don’t that have new projects starting. Now while I still get paid fully during this time it is like looking for a new job. It can be very stressful. And you never know what is going on.
So it is by far the least favorite part of my job. The current economic climate has also really exacerbated the situation as well. One of the criteria’s they use for who to keep and who to trim is staffing level. So if you are not billing you are in a bad spot. So stress just doubles, so that has been what I have been dealing with since the end of November. But I am finally staffed again, though it is currently only for 5 weeks. So I suppose the same cycle will start over again in March. But I should have enough billable hours at the end of the year to still get promoted and not trimmed as it were, but who know it is a lot time until summer.
This makes things very interesting. I have been on literally hundreds of people, for 5 clients, on 6 projects, in at least a dozen different roles in the last 4 years. However the way you are staffed drives me crazy. Unlike many of our competitors that just assign people to projects our company is much less informal. We have a staffing manager who proposes us to a project. Then we have to interview with the manager and possibly again with the client. Then maybe you are on the project or maybe you aren’t. The other way of getting staffed is if a manager requests you. So when you not staffed you job is to get on the phone and start calling any project manager you know and to reach out to those you don’t that have new projects starting. Now while I still get paid fully during this time it is like looking for a new job. It can be very stressful. And you never know what is going on.
So it is by far the least favorite part of my job. The current economic climate has also really exacerbated the situation as well. One of the criteria’s they use for who to keep and who to trim is staffing level. So if you are not billing you are in a bad spot. So stress just doubles, so that has been what I have been dealing with since the end of November. But I am finally staffed again, though it is currently only for 5 weeks. So I suppose the same cycle will start over again in March. But I should have enough billable hours at the end of the year to still get promoted and not trimmed as it were, but who know it is a lot time until summer.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Registered Trademark
One of my favorite sites to read, I even have an RSS feed link to it, is www.techdirt.com a site that deals with current technology related issues that pop up at any given time. Their most consistent topics concern Copyright and Trademark issues and the goofy going concerns of the various entertainment industries. Of course they also write about new things coming out, things being hyped, and a wide range of topics, but you will not go a day without multiple posts on the above topics. So it was quite amusing to me that last month I felt like I had a reason to write into them about a strange occurrence that happen to me.
Before I can get into though I have to briefly mention that when I write my blogs I try not to mention people’s names, the company I work for, clients of mine directly, or 3rd parties my company deals with. Basically I am just applying a simple CYA algorithm to my writing.
So I had planned on breaking my above rule in a recent post of mine. I was rather impressed with a third party I had dealt with. They made our work a ton easier. I even learned their toolset and methodologies and was quite impressed. So originally my plan was to write about them and use one of their marketing tag lines as the title of the post. While writing the post turned out not to mention them by name, I just couldn’t break the habit, and I did not even write anything specific about what kind of project I worked on or any of that. But not really thinking or caring I left the title the same.
Not two days after posting the article I got an email that someone had posted a comment. Normally comments come from my wife, siblings, or parents so I went to read it. Instead it was posted by this unnamed third party I had worked with. By the CEO of that company no less. Essentially the email was a cease and desist notice to not use their trademarked phrase. I found this rather humorous for a number of reasons. One it was the CEO, who I had met at one point, taking the time to do this. Two the phrase is just a few common words strung together and was not being used to promote any product (making it technically not a trademark violation from my limited understanding). And Finally the speed at which I was requested to no longer use the phrase. I assume they use an automated search to find its use and my blog is indexed and therefore searchable.
Now even though I don’t think I was in violation of trademark, I had not really written about the company, at least buy name. So I changed the title of the post just to avoid any further animosity. I may work with this company again and I don’t need to have them upset at me. And of course I understand them going after this aggressively, trademark law requires that you actively defend your marks or you forfeit them. So I think no Harm no Foul. But still it was funny. Now I wonder if Techdirt will even notice that I linked to them. I am pretty sure they won’t care; they seem to encourage such behavior.
And no I won't say what the trademark was and deleted the comment on the previous post.
Before I can get into though I have to briefly mention that when I write my blogs I try not to mention people’s names, the company I work for, clients of mine directly, or 3rd parties my company deals with. Basically I am just applying a simple CYA algorithm to my writing.
So I had planned on breaking my above rule in a recent post of mine. I was rather impressed with a third party I had dealt with. They made our work a ton easier. I even learned their toolset and methodologies and was quite impressed. So originally my plan was to write about them and use one of their marketing tag lines as the title of the post. While writing the post turned out not to mention them by name, I just couldn’t break the habit, and I did not even write anything specific about what kind of project I worked on or any of that. But not really thinking or caring I left the title the same.
Not two days after posting the article I got an email that someone had posted a comment. Normally comments come from my wife, siblings, or parents so I went to read it. Instead it was posted by this unnamed third party I had worked with. By the CEO of that company no less. Essentially the email was a cease and desist notice to not use their trademarked phrase. I found this rather humorous for a number of reasons. One it was the CEO, who I had met at one point, taking the time to do this. Two the phrase is just a few common words strung together and was not being used to promote any product (making it technically not a trademark violation from my limited understanding). And Finally the speed at which I was requested to no longer use the phrase. I assume they use an automated search to find its use and my blog is indexed and therefore searchable.
Now even though I don’t think I was in violation of trademark, I had not really written about the company, at least buy name. So I changed the title of the post just to avoid any further animosity. I may work with this company again and I don’t need to have them upset at me. And of course I understand them going after this aggressively, trademark law requires that you actively defend your marks or you forfeit them. So I think no Harm no Foul. But still it was funny. Now I wonder if Techdirt will even notice that I linked to them. I am pretty sure they won’t care; they seem to encourage such behavior.
And no I won't say what the trademark was and deleted the comment on the previous post.
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