Cats and the Beach

Finally. I have a cat free living space. It is wonderful. I can leave doors and windows open with out worrying about the dumb animals getting out. Now all I need to do is clean all of the cat hair off all the furniture, out of all the nooks and crannies, and anywhere else it lurks. This will probably take a few weeks. For now though I am in a good mood about them being gone. I don’t think I will ever live with an indoor cat again. I have decided pretty defiantly that at the least I don’t like cats at the most I hate them. Oh yeah and there owner also moved out with them so now for the next week or so I am the only one in my house. It’s kinda quite.

Now I need to get the house ready for KS to move in. If it stops raining I’ll go up on the roof and put in a vent for a fan in the bathroom. I’ve only been putting off for five years. I also need to clean that room up and maybe touch paint up. No biggie the paint held up pretty well over the last couple of years. Now that the cats are gone I finally poly some of the woodwork I finished restoring a few weeks ago with out worrying about them stepping or climbing in it. That will be nice I need to finish the rework on the stairs before winter so I can seal the windows. I read today natural gas is going to be through the roof today so I’m going to need to find everyway possible to save energy.

Work is very different this week. They use two different terms for what my fellow new hires and I doing in the office right now. The first term they use to describe our status is being on the bench this term implies that we are anxiously awaiting our turn to get out there and get some billable hours in. The second term used for the same status – this term is used more often – is that we are on the beach this term implies that we are just relaxing in the sun with out many worries. Interestingly enough both of these terms explain the situation quite nicely when looking at the situation. I finished training last week in Chicago and flew home. I came into the office around 8:30a on Monday – though no one set this time it just seemed right – and have been just doing very light administrative work and online trainings all week. There is no one to report to and no one is checking up on us. So we are taking it pretty easy, however everyone is really anxious and some are attempting to get work. If this goes on much longer I think I will ask for some proposal work so I have something more productive to do! Ahh what a crazy job.

More Vendor Training, Crazy Hours, and Wonderfully Lousy Service

After a brief weekend at home I’m back in Chicago. The second week of vendor training is pretty similar to the first. The only real difference so far is that everyone is running low on energy. Next week I think people will really be dragging. Having all these people in one place is a mixed blessing; you meet so many people but you spend so much time socializing no one gets any sleep. I think everyone is going to be glad to actually get into a project. That being said last night we took an architectural boat tour of Chicago. We rushed downtown right after class and met up with people from the other two training centers. The first half of the tour was really interesting…. the second half is a little hazy due to the open bar! So I guess you could say that the work week went well.

After the boat ride most of the SAP crew went to dinner at a place on the Chicago River. Unlike most bars where the rule is polite and helpful service Dick’s Last Resort has built its reputation on the opposite. You have to get your own drinks, the waiters insult you, yell at you, and they make fun of you so that everyone else in the bar is supposed to point and laugh. As intimidating as this sounds – it is actually a lot of fun. The wait staff also creates these tall white hats out of paper with obscene slogans written on them. As you probably guessed these hats are put onto the patrons at random intervals, and everyone again points and laughs (though not to hard because yours is coming too). I would try to remember a few of the quotes here but they are not at all family friendly! The service was so lousy it wonderful. The restraint is basically a crab house with an attitude. So the food was pretty good to. They also had live music but it was too loud to talk to anyone and too early in the night for that kind of scene so most of the fun came when the band was on break.

Last weekend was a little weird though. One of my roommates moved out. That wasn’t the weird part though; it was the hours that she moved. I had been woken up at around 7:30 in the morning having heard her and a friend moving stuff out of the house. I thought she was just starting so I went back to sleep. Apparently she was finishing up though because when I got out of bed a few hours later all of her gear was gone. I’ve never heard of moving at such an odd hour before, but I guess I have packed up friends late at night and then driven across several states overnight so it’s not the odd. Soon I will be roommateless. This is only going to last ½ week and then I get a new roommate. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to look for a second roommate yet. I guess that will all be decided once I’ve tried to make the bills for a few months.

Vendor Training in Chicago

After a very brief weekend at home I am now in vendor training in Chicago, learning how to configure SAP. SAP is a large enterprise wide software application that can run an entire Fortune 500 company from sales to accounting to manufacturing control to enterprise planning. I am personally being trained on the Financial and Controlling modules. These modules tie into every aspect of the system as they record and control the money flow in the system.

Now over the weekend I really didn’t get much of a break I got in around 9:30ish and just hung out at home and watched movies with R. The following day I had a work BBQ, it was a lot of fun but after doing some online training Sunday I have done something for work for the past 13 days!! Oh well I guess that’s the way it’s going to be. Hehe. So besides work I also had time to visit with my folks for dinner, I went to a fun house warming party, went to Santana’s after midnight Saturday, and went to see The Wedding Crashers.

The Wedding Crashers BTW was a great movie. I certainly due suggest it. Thought it still doesn't top Old School but it certainly is worth going to see.

I never did really get much of a rest though.

I hope the in the next few weeks I have time to work on the house. I’ve got all the drywall finished and most of the wood work; now I have to refinish all of the stairs. It would be nice to get the windows back in before it starts to snow. It’s going to look great if I can get that and the roof refinished next spring I will have made huge progress. I think this is going to be a draw back to my job because I will have so little time to work on the house. We shall see.

So as I have absolutely no sense of organization tonight I thought it might also be interesting to recap the last week of training minus the training. The first night I went out to Champs with just my class there were like 7 of us but they are really fun people. Tuesday night we had a whole fiasco because we got 20 of the 30 people at SAP training out to P F Chang's for dinner. It was really funny to watch the waiters try to keep everything straight and then split the bill 20 different ways. Wednesday night we went to the Navy pier in downtown Chicago and hung out with some people in the Oracle training from the firm. There was a band, a lot of crazy people, and fireworks (though I have seen a lot of them this year I still love to watch)! Finally on Thursday we went out on Rush Street in Downtown. I’ve been there before but it is a lot more fun when it is warm out! People from all 3 Chicago training sites came down and we were 2/3 the clientele at the club we ended up at. It was a blast – though Friday was really hard to stay focused!

This weekend looks to be a lot more relaxed so hopefully I will finally get a rest! I’ll let you know.

National Training so far

I have been working now for 8 straight days but surprisingly I’m not tired. It has been a lot of fun. Last week was long but the people I have met so far are very interesting and fun to be around. Saturday I flew down to Orlando and though the seat on the plane wasn’t the best I’ve been in (the row in the plane in front of the galley) the traveling was pretty uneventful. It was funny to see the nine new recruits from the office all with our new laptop bags, overhead ready rolling suitcases and wearing collared shirts with dress slacks and shoes running around in a good sized group. We have been sticking together for the most part and having a good time.

So far the training has been similar to last week. The first day we had presentations by partners about the company, a lecture on group dynamics, and a motivational speaker. The motivational speaker talked about our personal brand. That is what we project to others and how important that is as our firms product is not some manufactured but simply our work. He was a lot of fun and entertaining. At one point in the lecture to make a point he best one of the new SAs that he would be unable to pick out his favorite Vodka while wearing a blind fold. After the workshop they went to the bar and the speaker lost a Hunn-ski! Other highlights so far include:

The quotes –

Those who can do. Those who can’t teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym. Those who can’t teach gym – Consult!

And

I have had many worries in my life and half them actually happened. –Woody Allen

Hanging out at the bar on the 27^th floor of the building.

Meeting and interacting with people from all over the country.

Meeting influential partners.

Tonight is karaoke night and tomorrow we will be continuing the group work we started today. The work isn’t as much fun but I think it is why we are down here. There is also a special event on Thursday they are keeping a surprise so it will be fun to find out what that is.

FYI here is a link to the website of the motivational speaker.. Funny guy.

http://www.mikelipkin.com/

New Job

I started my new job on Monday. I have had to get up early, take the bus downtown, and spend 8 hours in the office. So far all I have done is orientation we have some real training starting tomorrow. In the next couple of days we will be learning a variety of general tasks; mostly twists on professional writing and presenting to firm clients. The office is great, everyone is incredibly friendly and helpful, the support staff (people that help us develop deliverables and other items for clients and the IT staff) seems to be very professional and capable, and there are many resources for us to do our best job.

The presentation by the technical staff was actually quite amusing. It wasn’t amusing because of anything they did. It was amusing because it was so similar to the presentations we gave at the CSOM help desk to the MBA students. It seems that IT departments have the same problems with users everywhere. One point they made that was a big deal for our department as well was to always be honest. IT departments don’t care what you did to your machine – they aren’t going to think poorly of you. They just need to know what the problem is and how it happened so they can fix it. People being scared or embarrassed about having problems with their machines was actually a big problem for use. Another problem is when users get advise from their friends this usually caused more problems, we always would rather they had just asked us. This was also the case at work, the IT department specifically gave
examples where this caused problems.

This morning was also amusing because we took a whirlwind tour of the office, I still don’t really have a clue where to go, got our badges and watched 15 year old videos. The videos were funny because the situations seemed dated. The subject matter was serious and obviously of real concern so everyone took them seriously for that reason. But even the trainers had to laugh at some of the scenes. It has been overall exciting though and all the new hires are having a great time (myself included). It is also nice that they’ve taken us to really nice lunches the last two days, and we had a welcome dinner last night attended by some managers, consultants, and partners. I do get the impression that we will have a lot of work to do very soon.

Live 8, G8, and Africa

This is the second time I've attempted to write this entry, this software times out and I keep losing my entries so it is much more brief than the orginal. Next time I will write in a word processor so I don't lose it!

After taking African Politics this spring I pay a little more attention to the news about Africa, especially news about AID and debt relief. So I found last weekend and the last few days exciting and encouraging. First last weekend – besides being a holiday weekend and the Forth of July – many stars and performers participated in ‘Live 8’. This was a group of concerts on four continents to raise awareness to the problems in Africa. Of course Africa is a large and diverse continent with around 50 different countries, but these countries share many problems and issues that have their roots in the colonial project and western action. This isn’t a liberal cop-out it is a simple fact that Africa was exploited by European powers. These concerts may not end African problems but hopefully they can get normally people to care about the issue. Another similar campaign that is helping raise awareness is The ONE (http://www.one.org).

Another event also occurred this week the G8 conference in Scotland. This was a conference of the worlds most industrialized nations were many issues are discussed. This was the first year since 9/11 that the top subjects on the agenda were not terrorism. Unfortunately Al-Qaeda bombed London and changed some of the focus of this conference. This a heinous act that everyone is shocked at, even the predominate Muslim news sources are outraged about the bombings. In a stark contrast the G8 conference agreed to double aid to Africa to 50 Billion Dollars a year (though the US made no new commitment and I did not hear anything about debt relief) and a 3 billion dollar a year commitment to a new Palestinian government. Thought this will not stamp out the problems in Africa or the Middle East I am encouraged that the world’s biggest Economic powers may take steps that really promote the best in democratic ideals. We can hope.

Fireworks, Fireworks, Fireworks...

According to a radio commercial that I heard in recent days John Adams predicted that Americans would be celebrating independence with fireworks across the nation. I don’t know if that is true or not but I know that my weekend was filled with fireworks, and best show was the one we put on our selves. A few choice beverages and snacks, a bunch of friends, and a few hundred explosives certainly was a great way to celebrate our nation’s birth.

I saw fireworks shows for four strait nights. The first two shows were at the Taste of Minnesota in St. Paul. It used to be held in front of the State Capitol for years, but they moved to Harriet Island three years ago. I’m Glad they did because it used to be too crowded. You couldn’t walk around, enjoy any of the events, or even get to the food booths. Now they even have enough room to have fair style rides, more booths, a second stage, and even more food booths. They have so much room that the attendance has gone up but it is much more open and easy to get around then it ever was at the State Capitol mall. In fact the Taste of Minnesota is really just a free mini-fair. In fact all the crazy people come out for both events and were out in force both nights at the taste!

The fireworks shows were ok. On Thursday night we watched from a bridge that overlooked the show, on Friday I watched from Harriet Island itself. Watching from the Island was better. I don’t think fireworks look as cool when you are looking down on them as they normally do. The show may have been bigger on Friday then Thursday as well. I did decide while I was watching these shows that I would rather have an intense show even if it is shorter than a long show with less going on at any given time. All in all I had fun both nights at the Taste of Minnesota even if it did cost Six bucks for cheese curds. LOL

A much better show was the one we put on ourselves. Saturday Joe, Colin, and I took Colin’s sweet new truck over to Wisconsin to get the good stuff. Unfortunately in Minnesota anything that leaves the ground is illegal. Crazy. So we went to Wisconsin an bought 48 major effects – the ones that launch 40-50ft and look like the big shows – one pound bottle rockets, several packs of medium sized bottle rocks, a ton of little bottle rockets, m-80s, strobe effects, crazy flying things, ground effects (like really big roman candles that have a base) and a few dozen roman candles. All in all there were several hundred explosions over the course of an hour and a half. By the end of the night the entire neighborhood was covered in a haze from our festivities! Quite fun. Next year we plan on even more (this year was twice as big as last).

The final show I went to was the city of Minneapolis at the Stone-Arch Bridge. We got there a little late as parking was hard to come by. It was much more crowed then the last couple of years so it was hard to get a decent spot to watch at. That being said the half of the show that was not behind a tree wasn’t all that spectacular. Oh-well maybe next year.