Author Archives: TWD

Fall Happenings

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I’ve almost made it to November! Yay!

Don’t know why I’ve been looking forward to that month, but I have been. I’ve got a lot going on in November, so maybe that’s part of it. It’s also nice that cooler temperatures have finally arrived in Georgia. I set up the kerosene heater on the back porch last weekend, which is pretty great. We’ve had pretty substantial precipitation for the last few days, so sitting on the porch hasn’t been particularly DRY, but it has been fairly warm with the heater – and the breezes have been fantastic.

Next Monday (11/3), we’ve got a chimney sweep coming to clean out the main chimney. Hopefully, they’ll do it the correct way, because I don’t believe that’s been done since Sandie first bought the place. We’ve got a cast-iron stove insert in the fireplace, and when she had the chimney “cleaned” prior to moving in in 2020, that person did not take said insert out – so I can’t really see how he actually cleaned anything. I hired a guy last year to come do it, but he got here, saw the stove, said, “I really didn’t want to start my morning this way,” and left. This time around, I told the folks up front that there is a stove in the fireplace – they said that wasn’t a problem. We’ll see. I’d really like to get everything cleaned correctly. I’d also like to find someone to fix the blower attached to the stove insert, but maybe – if the chimney guy does pull out the stove – I’ll be able to look at it and perhaps fix it myself. It tends to make a lot of noise when it gets going.

On Tuesday (11/4) the brass band starts rehearsing for our Christmas concerts. The director and I have been going back and forth for the last month about what tunes to include, what to leave out, what order to do things, etc., and he finally made a decision this morning. Fortunately, I’d been putting copies of everything we discussed on a shared folder, so it was easy to take out everything that didn’t make the cut, and the band should be able to get their parts without any confusion.

We started rehearsing for next year’s NABBA championships a couple of weeks ago. Made some good progress during an all-day-Saturday rehearsal, and I’m kind of pumped about our potential. We’ve got another all-day rehearsal coming up on the 15th.

Also on the 15th, I’ve got a rehearsal with Morningside Presbyterian – playing tuba in a quintet for their 100th anniversary celebration. Should be fun, although I pulled out the big horn last week and learned to my horror that I’m rustier than ever before on it. Had trouble just getting down to a G below the staff. Have been doing some wood shedding and long tones and will continue to do so up until the gig (on the 16th),

On the 17th, I head to the woods for a week. Going back to Fort Mountain State Park here in Georgia for a change. Normally, I’d head up to Michigan, but I just didn’t want to stay at Wilderness Park again, Cheboygan State Park doesn’t have the walking trails that I want, and Pictured Rocks closes for the season on the 15th of October. So I figured if I’m not going to one of those places, I might as well just save gas and stay in GA. Won’t have the Great Lake or the wind, but I’ll have a nice bunch of trails to walk – and I’ll have a campsite with electricity and running water, so it’s going to be a different kind of camping. Going to bring a coffee maker, electric cooler, an electric space heater, maybe some string lights for inside the tent, etc. I’ll still have propane-powered stuff as backups, but it might be fun to try “glamping” this time.

I’ll be getting back from the park the week of Thanksgiving, and Dad and Dianne are planning to come down and visit us on that day, which is awesome. Dad moved back to SC (from OH) about a month ago and is living with Dianne. Sounds like the two of them are getting along well, and it’s REALLY nice having him closer. Looking forward to showing him the cabin (and my woodshop) in a few weeks.

So that’s what’s on the docket. If I think of it, I’ll try to provide more details as the month progresses.

The Rise of the iPad

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About 6 months ago, my favorite laptop – a Surface Book that I bought in 2015 – finally got to the point where it was unusable. The screen had been heated up and forced out from the frame by an expanding battery to the point that it was just pointless to continue using it for as much as I had been. I bought a replacement battery and screen, but have not yet attempted the repair (it’s a very delicate and tedious process and I’m waiting to be in just the right mood before I get started on it).

I have other machines, so things like databases and email and games and whatnot were not a huge problem. The biggest issue was that I had been using the Surface Book for several years as my de facto sheet music repository. GBB music, gig music, wind symphony music, tuba and horn etudes….all of my sheet music was on the Surface Book and there was no way I was going back to using paper music. So I needed a solution.

At first, I tried using my phone. Bad plan. I’m almost 60 and my eyes have been shot for 25 years. In a pinch, I can read off the phone, but it’s strictly for emergencies at this point. After determining that the phone wasn’t going to work, I tried using a small (6”) Android tablet that Sandie had no further use for. It was a definite improvement, but the screen real estate was so limited that doing markup on the music was difficult and nearly impossible. Also, the software options for music display and markup available for Android is/was pretty limited. There’s basically one program for it, and it just doesn’t work that well. Apple, however, has an excellent piece of software for musicians called forScore, and so I finally took the plunge and bought myself an iPad – something that I’ve been swearing was a pointless thing to do since the iPad was first released.

To a large extent, I still believe that. I use my iPad almost exclusively as a sheet music organizer/editor/displayer; but I’ve started to play around with the little thing more and more trying to figure out just how much I can actually use it for. And, much to my surprise, I’m finding that I do indeed have uses for it.

For years, I kept the GBB library updated and organized using Microsoft Access. I like doing it that way because…well…because I was an Access Developer for many years and I’m comfortable building and customizing programs to do exactly what I want them to do in Access. The biggest problem with that is that if I don’t have the machine with the database on it, I can’t use the data in it. If I want to check to see if the band has a particular chart while I’m at rehearsal, for example, I can’t do it unless I’ve got a computer with Access installed. When I was using my Surface Book, that was not a problem.

With the iPad, however, using Access isn’t an option. And there really isn’t a decent alternative, short of putting everything online in MySQL or something and building a front end that I can use on the iPad. I actually tried this, but the MySQL clients that I could find for iPad absolutely suck and weren’t worth my time.

Next, I built a Power BI application on my work laptop and pointed it to a OneDrive copy of my GBB database, and it worked great! Power BI is available for iPad and I can fire it up and search the DB easily. Unfortunately, I can’t UPDATE data with Power BI, and I also can’t use it unless I’ve got a corporate license (that’s why I did this on my work machine), and nobody’s got the time or money for that.*

So I started looking into “database” applications built specifically for the iPad and found one that isn’t too terrible called MyStuff2. In spite of the ridiculous name, and in spite of the fact that there’s no way to do any real programming with it, MS2 has done a pretty good job for me in helping to organize and build out the GBB music library, and it allows me to have a to-the-minute reference of the library with me when I’m at rehearsal. I had to do quite a bit of initial setup to get things like I needed them and to export the information from my original Access DB into MS2, but having done that, things are looking good.

As I start building more advanced stuff in the woodshop, I’ve also been able to use the iPad to help with that.

Table saw workstation in construction
Adding a wing to my table saw workstation

One of those tools is called Moblo 3D, which is a kind of limited CAD and allows me to model what I want to build, calculate measurements, and build shopping and cut lists. For example, Sandie wants some very specific shelving units build for the master closet. So I used Moblo to start sketching those out. Works pretty good, although I really haven’t spent enough time with it to understand all that it can (or cannot) do for me. It wasn’t totally free, but I can’t complain about $8 for this thing.

Moblo 3D rendering of a couple of closet organizers. The nicest part of this for me is that I can design what I want and then export a list of the wood that I need and a cut list for it

Another tool that I’ve been using in the shop is the iPad version of X-Tool Creative Space, which connects to my laser engraver and lets me design stuff for it. The engraver is still very much of a toy, but I’ve been able to use it for branding wooden creations (rather than using my physical metal brand), and most recently did some engraving on a baton box for a gift that the band gave to our founder/music director on the occasion of his stepping down after 25 years.

The concert, by the way – the finale of our 25th season – went really well. Joe, the director, pulled out all the stops and included a couple of championship-level test pieces near the end. A severe chops buster, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it, and it was an exhausting but exhilarating set list.

Creation screen of X-Tools Creative Space

I guess the most recent tool I’ve added to the iPad is what I’m typing this on – the WordPress editor. I installed it a few days ago after realizing that – having purchased a mouse and keyboard for the iPad (specifically to use with the GBB library database) – I could probably do a lot more with the iPad than I had been previously. Restarting the blog entries seemed like a logical place to start, so that’s what I’m doing. Since the iPad is so portable, and since it’s so much easier to use as an editor than my phone is, I should be able to do updates from campsites (or anywhere else outside of my office) a lot easier than I’ve been able to previously. I’ll put that to the test in Canada (next month) and Michigan (in November).

For today, however, this has been enough.

*Actually, the GBB may be able to get a full-blown O365 license, including PBI, for a reasonable price by using our non-profit status. That is being investigated.

Another Month Gone!

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Welcome to May! April was, to be honest, a very strange month. It had a little bit of everything, both good and bad. I can’t say that I’ll miss it, but parts of it were pretty nice. I don’t remember exactly when we started working from home, but I’m pretty sure that it was before April – which means that I’ve spent all month at home (with a few trips to the grocery or liquor store).

And I’ve really enjoyed working from home. Being completely honest…I don’t want to go back to the office. It’s nice to be able to take long walks in the morning, get home, have a leisurely cup of coffee on the deck while catching up on the news (maybe even eat breakfast!), then take a shower….and still sit down to work a full thirty minutes earlier than I would have if I’d have gone to the office.

On the other side of the day, it’s nice to put in a full day, then shut down the computer, take another long walk, then have a leisurely drink on the deck, cook dinner, watch some television, and get to bed before 9:00.

I love that kind of a schedule!

To be sure, April also had some downsides. The most glaringly obvious one to me is that I’ve developed some serious anxiety about being around other people. It doesn’t take a trained psychologist to figure out why: I had some chest pains after going out a month ago, I associated them with COVID-19, I couldn’t really call anyone (other than an ambulance) for help, and it freaked me out. Since then, I’ve experienced some degree of chest pain every time I’ve gone out to a store or have had someone come to my house (delivering packages or coming to give me home improvement estimates).

The good part of that is that it’s been so consistent that I know beyond any doubt that it’s psychological – and knowing that has allowed me to block it out and rebound back to normal pretty quickly the last couple of times that I’ve gone out. This is a big plus, because I’m really NOT “that guy.” I don’t get wrapped up in my health. I don’t worry about it. So worrying about it as I have been – to the point of having anxiety attacks about it…well, THAT bothers me more than the actual worry does. When I start stressing over something I really can’t control, that’s when I start to just give up.

On to more pleasant things. I’ve decided to get serious about fixing up this old house (and landscape) over the next however long it takes. Big-ticket items that I’m looking at getting fixed now are the roof, the retaining wall in the back yard, the deck, all of the floors, the half-bath, and – maybe – the kitchen. Lots of work, lots of money, lots of time – but these are things that need to be addressed and I’ve put them off for too long.

The roof has been leaking for a while, and I’ve had the insurance company out again in the hopes of convincing them that it just needs to be replaced. I showed them damage inside the garage – the ceiling and walls – and in the foyer (front wall and floor). At least this time around, the guy they sent out admitted that he saw holes in the roof. The last one wouldn’t admit to any damage at all. What I’m hoping is that the new guy won’t give me $1000 and tell me to patch the holes. The roof is over 30 years old. It needs to be replaced. If I can’t get insurance to cover it, two things are going to happen. First, I’ll be getting a new insurance company. Second, I’ll be refinancing the house and pulling some money out of equity.

It’s obviously important to have a good roof over my head, and it’s made more important by the fact that I simply cannot replace my floors until I can control the leaking coming in to the front hall of the house. When I replaced the front door a couple of months ago, I pulled up most of the hall floor because it was so water damaged it was like walking on wet towels after a storm. Since doing so, I’ve had a literal towel next to my front wall to keep the water from pooling at the foot of the stairs after every rain storm. I’m not spending a penny on new flooring until I know that it will stay dry.

Heading to the back yard, my retaining walls need to be replaced (as pictured in the post entitled “Solutions”). This is somewhat vital because my upper lawn has been slowly washing away as the retaining walls fail. The level of the upper lawn has dropped about 8 inches over the last twenty years. One casualty of this slow slippage has been the deck.

The deck has pulled away from the house by a couple of inches, and has begun to list to one side as the earth underneath it erodes away at different rates. While it’s still standing – and fairly stable – it doesn’t take a genius to see that it’s not going to be either of those things for more than a year or so down the road. I had a contractor out this morning (the second in as many days) taking a look so that I can get estimates on repairing it vs. replacing it vs. a bit of both.

Both contractors are also giving me estimates on repairing/replacing the retaining walls, and I plan to get at least one – probably two – more estimates for both of those projects.

The half-bath project is something that I’ll be doing on my own. At first, I was just going to re-seat the toilet, as it has been leaking (I’ve turned off the water to it), but I’ve decided to go ahead and gut the room and use it as a learning experience. New floor (which will stretch out into the laundry room in front of the half bath) will let me get an idea of how I want to handle flooring for the rest of the house. A new sink will give me an idea of what sort of effort and expense will go into replacing the cabinets in the kitchen. Lighting, painting…it’s just a good project to let me get my hands dirty with home improvement – and if I completely screw it up, it’s in an enclosed area so nobody has to see it, and it’s small enough that it should be fairly inexpensive to get a pro to fix my mistakes should that become necessary.

Through thinking about all of these projects – and I’ve thought a lot about them – I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that I’m not retiring next year as I’d hoped to do. For one thing, it’s going to be expensive and take time. For another, my 401(k) has been CRUSHED this year – I’ve already lost over $100,000, and I don’t have any reason to believe that that’s going to rebound anytime soon. So I’m just going to hunker down, do my job, try to enjoy it, and hope that I live another 10 years so that I can enjoy a funded retirement when I’m 65. By then, I should have the house paid off (or very close), even if I have to refi, it will be worth a lot more than it is now, and I can decide if I still want to move to the woods or if I’ll be happy just living where I am.

Lots of questions, yeah – but I’ve got sort of a plan, and that makes me happy.

It has been a beautiful day today, and this weekend should be more of the same. Looking forward to getting in some good walking to finish out the week (shooting for over 100 miles for the week), and to beginning to tackle that half-bath project. Should be fun!

A Day in the Life

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Since I’m being the responsible, “socially-distanced” individual (working from home), I figured I might as well try to update a post throughout the course of a day at work. I’m a few hours late – started work at about 7:30 this morning – but I’ll gloss over those three hours and keep things updated going forward.

I started the day by kicking Joshua out of my office chair. He’s decided that it’s his. I’ve decided that he can have it when I don’t want it; and, since I’m bigger than he is, I get the last word. He and Boo are currently sharing the cat tree by the front window.

Lazy Morning Kitty Tree

Spent some time BS’ing via Microsoft Teams (chat) with the other leads in Alpharetta – who’s feeling sick, who’s buying ammunition (not kidding!), how are teams are handling the enforced isolation, etc. While doing this, I went through my team’s ticket list trying to identify cases that could be resolved or needed updates. I also started working on the cases that were auto-assigned to me overnight.

At around 9:00, the “Open Office Hours – Coffee Chat” meeting started. This is something that my boss put together on Monday as daily meeting for anybody who wants to join it (webcams, microphones, and chat) just to combat the feeling of isolation that some folks might be having. It’s a good idea and people seem to enjoy it. Early on – from 9:00 to 9:15 or so – pretty much everyone who’s working will be in the meeting, just to shoot the shit about nothing or to ask questions about specific tickets. After that, people just start to drop out and get back to focusing on their work.

One of the tickets that I’ve been working on since 9:30 or so has to do with a user email account that’s having problems. I’ve been unable to attach to it with my own testing account, which is a red flag. Other users have said that they’ve gotten kickback messages when trying to send something to the problem address, but I’ve been unable to replicate that. So I’m waiting on a few more details from the users before opening a case with Microsoft.

Right now, I’m putting together call and ticket statistics from yesterday for my team.

Got the stats out. Now I’m trying to coach one of my people on what sounds like an incredibly simple ticket (a user can’t get connected to a Citrix session), and it’s like pulling teeth to get my person to follow simple troubleshooting steps. We’ve been dealing with a lot of clients having problems getting set up to work from home this week – everything from, “My monitors look funny,” to “How do I print to the office?”

The answer to that last question, should you be wondering, is, “You don’t. And why on earth would you want to?”

At any rate, if a user can’t get connected, there are only about 3 things it could be. I could jump into the call and do this work for my direct report, but I really want her to figure it out on her own. I get amazingly frustrated when my people don’t follow the simple troubleshooting steps that I preach to them every week.

20 minutes later and she still hasn’t figured it out. She also hasn’t answered any of the three troubleshooting questions that I put in front of her. I know that she’s expecting me to jump into her call, jump onto the remote machine, and fix it for her. It’s not going to happen. I have a meeting in 10 minutes – ironically enough, one concerning how to deal with “uncomfortable” discussions with our consultants – and she’s either going to have to figure it out by herself or get some help from the rest of the team.

She did end up getting help from one of my senior consultants. As expected, it was an incredibly simple fix (literally – click “Reset”).

The meeting was a rundown of new procedures for issuing warnings (verbal, documented, written), PIPs (performance improvement plans), and terminations if the warnings and the PIP don’t work. Happy stuff.

Speaking of happy stuff, I’ve learned that a large number of sporting/gun stores in the metro area are running out of guns and ammunition. This bothers me. A week ago, we were in a normal society. Now we’ve got people stockpiling firearms? Believe it or not, I registered at Adventure Outdoors – literally the largest gun store in the world. Perhaps I have to finally pull the trigger (no pun intended) and buy an actual gun, rather than counting on the BB pistol I’ve got to deter people.

We’re now in a possible SysInc (System Incident), although it looks like it might be restricted to a couple of cities in Texas where ISPs are having trouble. Not surprising, since the load on them from people suddenly deciding to work from home is probably pretty intense.

Chamberlain has replaced Joshua and Boo on the Kitty Tree. Joshua has – you guessed it – settled into my office chair. I’m standing. Good thing I brought home the Varidesk when I moved from the office!

Chamberlain loves to sleep near an open window

This afternoon has been fairly slow. We’re still having clients call in regarding disconnects, but it’s become widely known that multiple ISPs are having problems and there’s isn’t really much we can do about it.

My team has chugged away and we’ve gotten back down under 30 tickets, though how long that will last I don’t know. A couple of my guys will be working tomorrow, so that will help. Call volume will be low and I hope they can snipe some of the low-hanging fruit on our ticket board.

At 3:00, we had “Beer Cart Friday – Virtual Style,” which was interesting. Normally on Fridays, we push a literal beer cart around the office and everyone grabs a beer. Today, we all just took pictures of ourselves holding up beers (or a shot of bourbon in my case) and shared them in our internal bulletin board.

I’m just wrapping things up now – helping some younger consultants with tickets that they’re working for my clients, finding documents for them, etc. Most of my team has gone offline for the day, and I’m not far from joining them. So I’ll wrap this up here. Happy Friday!

Virtual Beer Cart Friday

Pandemic!

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Been quite a while since I did anything with this, and I’ve been keenly aware of that fact. Oddly enough, a bunch of stuff has happened since I left wrote an entry, and I wasn’t completely sure how I wanted to approach writing about it. So let’s just jump into everything.

While driving into work on Tuesday, January 27th, I slowly began to realize that I couldn’t see. Fortunately, I was almost at work by the time I figured out what was happening. It wasn’t that I was going blind – my eyes basically just stopped working together. My right pupil was larger than my left, it was basically impossible to focus on anything that wasn’t directly in front of me, and if I moved my head (hence having to focus on something ELSE right in front of me), it’d take probably 5 seconds to get that new focus.

As I said, I didn’t really figure out that this was happening until quite a bit later. I just knew that it was getting more and more difficult to really see anything. That may help explain how it is that I got myself to work, told my boss something was going on, looked up directions to the hospital, and drove myself there. I told the woman at the front desk that I thought I might be having a stroke, and she lost no time in getting me through the doors and sitting me in front of a doctor.

And another doctor. And some nurses. And some other people. They squeezed and shone lights on me and gave me a couple of CT scans and plugged about 500 wires into me and asked a bunch of inane questions (true story – I told them I was having double vision and they asked, “In which eye?”), and about three hours later told me that I had high blood pressure but no signs of a stroke. The also said that they wanted to admit me and give me an MRI, but I’d already promised Jenny (she was in the Galapagos at the time) that I’d take care of her cats – and I didn’t know what this was costing me – so I declined and somehow drove myself home.

It was during the drive home (white-knuckled) and while sitting there the rest of the afternoon that I actually figured out what my eyes were doing (as described above). Needless to say, I was kind of freaking out for most of the day, but I managed to let my boss and co-workers know that I wasn’t dead and went to bed pretty early.

Wednesday morning, my eyes were back to normal. I took the day off and picked up a couple of prescriptions that the hospital had given me for hypertension and made an appointment with a GP for a follow-up.

Do you remember when I said, near the end of my last post, that I really needed to cut down on my smoking? Yeah – I went ahead and quit that. Coming up on two months now. I’m also walking (rather quickly) a bit over 5 miles every morning and taking drugs for hypertension and cholesterol. I’m also not eating anything that tastes remotely good (no sugar, no salt, no cholesterol, no fat, no carbs, blah, blah, blah).

The GP wants me to go see a cardiologist about carotid stenosis (blockage in my carotids), but I’m not ready for that yet. The worst part of things now is that one of the BP meds occasionally gives me vertigo – and every time it happens, I start to wonder if the whole thing is starting up again.

That can’t be good for my blood pressure.

In other news…THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE! Yes. Coronavirus. COVID-19. The big one. Or not. Who knows? All I know is that everything in Atlanta (and much of the world) has been canceled, and we went from talking about maybe working from home a bit to EVERYBODY WORK AT HOME ALL THE TIME – over the course of 3 days. So that’s what we’re doing. I straightened out my office, brought home a standing desk and my laptop, and made sure that all of my people brought home whatever they needed to be efficient from home. Just like that, all of us are remote for the foreseeable future.

My work-from-home setup, featuring a stand-up desk

The remote working isn’t really a big deal – I’ve been doing it a couple of days per week anyway – but the fact that I’m at home all the time now is going to get really boring really fast. I’ve got a project, which I’m calling “Campmachine 3.0,” to keep me occupied for a while. Not sure how long it will last. I’m basically building a bed and some cabinets in the back of my car in anticipation of going car camping sometime after tax season. At this point, what I’ve built is perfectly functional (helps a great deal when I’m bringing home groceries!), but it doesn’t look “finished,” so I might just consider what I’ve got to be a prototype and built the whole thing again better. That’s assuming that the Home Depot stays open long enough for me to get the material that I need.

I bought a Dremel tool a few weeks ago. Now THAT’S a good time! I’m still very green with it. Not sure of all the cool things that it can do, but I know it can do more than cut the ends off of screws that go all the way through a piece of wood (which is all I’ve used it for). I have a feeling that I’ll be doing more with it as I get more bored.

I’ve also been watching a couple of woodworking channels on YouTube, and I’m definitely going to build a Joiner’s table to replace the aging worktable that I put in my garage 15 or so years ago. I’ve got the plans and everything. I’m really looking forward to building that. I probably should do that before I do any other projects, to be honest.

One last bit of news is that this blog may be moving yet again. Or it may not. I’m definitely doing something with it, but haven’t decided exactly what. I’ve started a new domain called TomsBrain.com, both because I don’t want my personal blog so closely associated with the football site and also because I wanted a non-gmail address that was more “me” than my hotmail address, but not all-the-way “professional” like my Outlook address is. For those of you who didn’t know I had multiple addresses, you haven’t been paying attention – and I have others that are basically “stealth” addresses that you’ll probably never know about.

Anyway, I liked the idea of “tom@tomsbrain.com,” so I got that setup. The new domain is indeed built on a WordPress structure; in theory, I could just move this whole thing there and call it good. I thought about that. And then I thought, “What if I use the TomsBrain.com address to apply for a job? Do I want complete strangers who might be looking to hire me to see a personal blog?”

And I’m not sure that I do. But I might want them to see a less personal blog. Not necessarily professional, but maybe more structured, with more formal writing. Maybe articles about brass banding or thoughts on various technical issues or even just day-to-day nonsense, but written for a larger, general, audience (as this is most certainly not). That’s a decent idea…but what do I do with the last 15 years’ worth of stuff that’s already here?

Don’t know. I might move it (truth be told, I already HAVE copied it) to the new site, but set it up in a more protected way, allowing access only to a select few. Or I might just archive it, allowing access to nobody other than me – no one wants to go back and read my old stuff anyway, right?

Anyway, it’s all still up in the air. I’m working on the design for TomsBrain.com now, and I’ll decide what it’s going to be – and where this blog will fit in – after I’ve got that taken care of. For now, this is still the only place to see all this literary nonsense.

Merry Christmas

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It seems as if every time I sit down to write something here, two things are true: My dad’s reminded me that I’m a complete slacker about updating my stuff, and at least two months have gone by since I last did so.

So, in response to an email that I got from Dad last night, I shall now update this tome…after a four-month hiatus this time.

I did not make it to Michigan for my fall sojourn this year. Throughout September and October, I kept wavering on whether or not to do it, given that I’d booked my time off for the week before and of Thanksgiving, which would be the latest I’ve headed to the uncivilized part of the north (Vermont is not uncivilized). I was concerned not about the cold, but with the possibility that I’d get my car to the cabin and not be able to get it back out to a road – the cabins at Cheboygan are 1-2 miles from the parking lot, reachable on dirt tracks that are navigable in the Subaru as long as there aren’t two feet of snow on the ground, and that was a distinct possibility in late November.

So I opted for a staycation – improved the setup of the tarp on my deck and spent a week and a half doing basically nothing. Sat on the deck, drank beer and bourbon, listened to podcasts…hung out inside with the cats, did some laundry, etc.

I think it turned out to be a fairly wise decision. The weather in northern Michigan was crappy, to put it mildly. Looks like they had at least rain every day, some snow, some bitterly-cold days – and wind-driven flooding along the Mackinaw Straits, which almost certainly would’ve made 10 days in the cabin (100 feet from the water in normal conditions) pretty miserable. It would have been relaxing, however; I’ve got to admit that I didn’t feel nearly as chill after 10 days at home as I did after 7 days in Michigan each of the last couple of years.

I saved some money, though. That’s a good thing.

I made an appearance at the company Christmas party this year. It was a couple of weeks ago, and it marked the first time in my entire career that I’ve gone to an office party. I did so at the request/command of my boss, who has decided that I need to, I guess, be more approachable as a normal person to the other departments at work. I’m not describing that very well, but I sort of get what he’s pushing. I tend to focus on my direct reports, along with one or two key contacts in other departments, and I don’t socialize with many other people in the office. Although I’ve achieved (and encouraged) a reputation as a go-to technical guy, I’m still learning the hands-off, administrative, style of management; and making small talk with the big bosses from New Hampshire and heads of other departments is part of that, I suppose. I didn’t stay long. I had a couple of drinks, ate dinner, talked with a few folks, and left. I didn’t hang around for the post-dinner festivities (a game of musical chairs that has become somewhat legendary in the company over the last 15 years), and I missed seeing, apparently, half of my team get shit-faced. That’s probably a good thing – and is also one of the reasons that I don’t do office parties. I’ve been known to, um, inebriate myself on occasion.

This past week, I led a project in Statesville, NC. This is not the project that I mentioned in my previous post (August), which was in Winston-Salem, NC, but a small setup for a 23-person office that I handled along with one of the newer kids on my team. I was curious to see how she’d do on her first project, and was pleased to see that she performed very well, as I’d believed she would. She was a hire that I had mild reservations about making earlier this year, but her ability to work with people – and good critical-thinking skills in spite of a lack of technical background – is serving her well on my team. She’s not ready to step into a leadership position yet, but she will be once she gets over her insecurity and figures out that she knows as much or more than most of her peers.

The project, for the most part, went well. Started out very poorly – equipment that was sent via FedEx from Montana 10 days earlier had not arrived, and we also had some problems with an anti-virus software that had been installed by the client’s previous IT company – but by the middle of the third day I was breathing easier, and by the end of the fifth I was able to sit down with the firm administrator and others central to the project and determine that everybody was pretty happy and we looked good going forward. That’s a bonus because I also learned that my team will be the primary technical support for this particular client. That doesn’t happen a lot – normally, I have to run clean-up for 2 months for firms that other teams have on-boarded, and it’s a real pain.

I don’t have any big plans for Christmas, the title of this post notwithstanding. I’m guessing that Jenny will probably invite me over for dinner at some point – if so, I’ll go. Other than that, I plan to sleep for a couple of days. Beginning in January, I’m going to try to start walking in the mornings again. I’ve completely gotten out of that habit. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I need to get back into it. I’m getting basically no exercise these days. I might try to stop smoking again at the same time. I’d quit for probably 6 months before Mom died, then started up again immediately after (stupid, I know). Kept it pretty much under control until I got my notice from AT&T, at which point I turned into a heavy smoker. I know I need to cut it out, but it’s a habit like a vice grip at this point. I know it’s a mental thing, however…just need to decide I want to quit again and do it. I know a couple of kitties who’ll probably be happy when I do.

That’s pretty much all the stuff that I can remember for now, so I’ll end this here. I hope everyone has a happy Christmas, festive New Year, and fewer fireworks than I’m sure my neighbors will have.

Getting Slack Again

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I got a note from Dad the other day, in which he mentioned that he’d just read my post from July. That made me realize that I hadn’t updated this thing in over a month. Again. I’m not sure how that happens so often. Actually, yes I am. My life isn’t that interesting. Not much to write about when the same things happen every day for a month. So, I have to store up all of the amazing happenings over time and then dump them all out at once.

Unfortunately, I’ve generally forgotten what happened by the time I get around to that dump. But, hey….I’ll give it a shot again. A few weeks ago, I attacked my back yard with a vengeance – and with a Ka-Bar knife that I purchased with Discover card kickbacks. I’ve been meaning to upgrade my camping knife situation for a couple of years, and finally just pulled the plug and bought a great knife – so I naturally had to see if I could hack my way through the jungle that is my south 40.

It did very well. Much better than I did, as a matter of fact, because I’m allergic some something back there. Didn’t notice until the next day, but my arms were covered with a rash (a very itchy rash), which still hasn’t completely subsided. Before you ask, no – it’s not poison ivy. No idea what it was, but I can say with some surety that it’s gone now. I hacked the crap out of that yard. Cut it down enough that I could even get my gasoline mower out and cut everything down to nubs after letting it all grow for about three years. I still have to clean up near the back fence (if only because I need to repair the fence and I can’t get close to it), but the majority of the “lawn” is now available and I can start thinking about what I want to plant back there, be it grass or trees or some kind. Have been thinking about putting in either Crepe Myrtle or Black Maple, but it would probably be easier just to kill everything off and put some sod in. I really don’t know. The most important thing is that my knife is awesome.

I also cleared off my deck. The cat house that had been there for many years is now underneath the deck, and I’ve reclaimed the entire area for, well, people. Or person, since I don’t have guests. I still need to repair the trellises on one end, but for now I’ve settled with stringing up a fly over a couple of plastic chairs at the far end of the deck, under which I can sit and drink and smoke and generally be a white trash redneck kinda guy. I noticed that, the day after I put up the fly, my neighbor (fondly known as “Martha Stewart”) installed a brand-new, huge, patio umbrella. I see it as her polite way of telling me that a bright blue tarp is not appropriate; but it’s in my back yard, it’s invisible from the street, it does the job I need for it to do, and she can get over herself. I looked at those big umbrellas, and those sumbeaches are expensive! My fly will do just fine. It also funnels the rain into a water dish for the cats who still like to lie on the deck even though their house is now beneath them.

Next week is Adam’s wedding, and it is now official that I won’t be able to make it, as I have to go on a project in North Carolina. This was not my idea – I actively campaigned against going – but it’s a huge project, with consultants onsite in 6 locations in four different states, and when the client comes on board, it’s going to be my team’s client; so in the end I relented and agreed to take one of the offices just so I could get a better idea of how things are set up – and also because my team has been extremely short-handed for the last 6 weeks and I figured that I was the “consultant” who could leave for a week and cause the least disruption to my other clients. I still handle the big problems, but I really don’t do much of the day-to-day client support anymore, so I’m expendable from that standpoint.

So, Adam – if you or your family is reading this – I wish nothing but good things for you and your bride, and once you’ve gotten settled into married life and have a stable household, I’ve got an awesome wedding present for you.

I’m supposed to be setting up about 30 workstations for a firm in Florida today, and I got started on that project at about 6:00 this morning. Literally 4 minutes after I started, my primary scripting engine – which I use for doing everything from joining the machines to the domain to adding shortcuts to the desktop – went down. Along with a number of other servers at work (including those that run the portals that all of our clients use). It’s now coming up on 3.5 hours since everything went balls up, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to have to waste all day doing something that I could have done in about 30 minutes with my scripts. Hope not, because I really kinda wanted to go bowling today.

I may join a bowling league in a couple of weeks, but I want to be sure that I still know how to roll a big ball down a lane towards pins.

Band started back up this week, after a summer break of about 6 weeks. Lots of new faces, including a new solo horn player – who showed up 5 minutes late. I think that’s just a requirement of playing solo horn. He sounded okay, I guess. Still think Andrew and I should’ve double-teamed the part and we should have brought in a newbie to play 2nd horn. Instead, I’ll be doing that for at least another year. Nothing wrong with the part – it just gets boring. Sort of like 2nd baritone. Occasional flourishes of music, surrounded by lots and lots of long tones and off-beats. Yawn.

On the home front, I’ve embarked on an experiment in minimalism. I’m trying to get rid of stuff that I don’t need and to limit myself to as few redundancies as possible. Example: 1 plate, 1 coffee cup, 1 fork, 1 knife, 1 cooking pot, etc. Yes, I have about 70 coffee cups, enough plates and flatware settings for a dinner with 8 guests, and more than enough pans to use a different one every day for two weeks before washing any of them. But c’mon. What’s the point? If I can just wash the dishes as I use them, I don’t need multiples. We’ll see how it goes. Am also finally throwing stuff away that I brought with me from my office when AT&T canned me – notebooks, textbooks, desk knickknacks, cables, charges, etc. No need to have all that stuff cluttering up my living room. Ideally, I want to get down to having, basically, an empty house. When it’s time to pick up and move on, it won’t take any time.

Ah! I almost forgot that I also bought a gimbal for my phone a few weeks ago. I haven’t done more than play with it for about 20 minutes, but it’s going to be a lot of fun particularly when I’m out in the woods. From what I’ve seen with my experiment, it does a great job of tracking an object, stabilizing a moving camera, and allowing for easy camera manipulation (panning, zooming, etc.), and it’s cool to watch it do its thing: it’s like having a little robot in your hand who’s doing all of your photography for you. Looking forward to taking it out camping soon.

And that’s about all the news that’s fit to type for now. I’ll go see if I can do any more work on my workstation setups, and, if not, I’ll figure out what I’m going to do today while waiting to be able to work.

TWD

Happy National Birthdays

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It’s made it to July in Atlanta, and in most other places, too, I would imagine. Canada Day (7/1) nearly got past me, but I remembered it at around noon. There was no way to forget the 4th, seeing as how my neighbors began their annual bombardment sometime in late June. That has, fortunately, nearly ceased – although there were a couple of explosions last night. Thankfully, it rained yesterday (hard!), and I’m hoping that will put a damper on the fireworks.

One of my favorite clients, in Burlington, told me the other day that it was nearly 80 degrees and she was ready to enjoy the warmth. Suck it, Vermont. It’s been pushing 100 down here for the last couple of weeks, and I’m ready to hit the road for winter in Michigan. That’s still three or four months away, unfortunately. I’m hoping to spend Thanksgiving week in Cheboygan, since we get both Thursday and Friday off on that week. I’m also hoping that there isn’t as much snow up there as there was last November, since I’ll be going a week later and I don’t want to find out how my Subaru does in a foot of snow on an unplowed track through the woods to my cabin. If I have to find out, however, I’ll find out. I’ve been dreaming of being at that cabin for the last couple of months.

I power-washed my driveway last weekend, which was quite a bit of fun and also quite a bit of work. My whole body ached on Sunday. Hard to believe it was so much work, but the driveway (and my front stoop) looks amazing. I also “fixed” my old trimmer/edger/weed-whacker….by throwing it away and buying a new one. I can’t complain too much, as I did get 4-5 years of use out of the old thing, but I’m still not sure what actually killed it. It’d been acting temperamental for several months and last week it just died and seized up when I tried to restart it. Futzed around with it for 30 minutes or so and then just tossed it. The new one is doing an admirable job and all of the accessories from the old one fit it just fine.

We’ve got 7 new people starting at work on Monday. There were supposed to have been 8, but one of them who’d reluctantly accepted our offer on Wednesday decided to reverse himself on Thursday. I can’t say that I’m heartbroken over that, as my comments regarding his interview began with “Rubbed me the wrong way at first – throughout the interview, actually. Struck me as arrogant, thinks he knows more than he does, kind of entitled.” So how’d he make it to the point of getting an offer? Well, I finished off my comments by saying that I was probably the same way on my first interview out of college, and that he probably had the raw skills to do an okay job if he could watch his attitude when dealing with clients. I said I’d approve him if the other two interviewers did, and they did. They started to rethink things when his acceptance of our offer began with, “I guess I’ll go ahead and accept your offer…”

As I said, he changed his mind the next day. I’d already indicated that I didn’t want him on my team, so I’ll still get two newbies and we’ll begin interviewing for another junior consultant later next week. I’m getting pretty good at spotting the ones who won’t work out, I must say.

Got the oil changed in the Subaru this morning. Only about 1000 miles after I should have, and almost forgot to do it anyway. I looked at my watch at 6:30 and remembered that I meant to do something. 10 minutes later, it dawned on my that I’d made a 7:00 appointment with Tires Plus for the oil. No harm, no foul – I wasn’t even late.

My no-sugar diet (or as close to none as I can get) is actually working out pretty well. I’ve dropped 10 pounds in the last month or so (Chamberlain, who also likes to weigh himself, has held steady at 16.2 pounds over the same period), and don’t feel nearly as crappy as I did for the last year. Have even started walking most mornings again. Not going for speed (much), but my calves have stopped aching and I guess I’m averaging around 16-17 minutes per mile, which is fine.

Got a pot roast and some veggies lined up for the slo-cooker this afternoon, which should be pretty good. Had salmon and potatoes the last couple of days. Interesting fact: Chamberlain’s favorite cat food is salmon-flavored stuff, but he turned his nose up at the real thing. More for me. The other two kitties, should you be wondering, were both upstairs when I made the offer to Chamberlain. I don’t know if Joshua would’ve gone for it or not (although he’ll generally try anything that I put in front of him at least once), but I suspect that Boo would’ve sucked it down pretty fast.

I do need to mow half of the front lawn today. I did the other half on the 4th, but it was so hot I didn’t want to spend more than 15 minutes outside. The weekend before, I put in a few hours in the back yard and the south 40, which I hadn’t even looked at in about a year. Lots of bushwhacking with a machete and urging my ancient gasoline mower through 4-foot-tall shrubbery. In restrospect, it was probably that (not the pressure washing) that put me in my sore state.

I guess that that’s about enough writing for today. I actually sat down at the computer just to update my bills spreadsheet with the oil change and some grocery shopping that I did this morning, but thought it’d be nice to do some typing, too.

Now that I’ve done so, it’s time to tackle the lawn.

…And Two More Months Have Passed

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This whole work/life balance thing is out of whack, I guess. I come home from work, eat some dinner, watch a video or two on YouTube, and hit the sack. Get up, feed the cats, take a shower, and go to work. On Saturdays and Sundays, I sleep in as much as possible, watch a couple videos, maybe mow the lawn (caveat: sometimes I mow the lawn after work), go play trivia at a pub, do some grocery shopping, eat dinner, go to bed.

This has to stop. I’m getting out of shape, I’m bored, and I’m accomplishing nothing.

So, yesterday and today, I started walking again. Hiked up to Jenny’s house (4-mile round trip) to feed her cats. And I’m going to force myself to start walking in the mornings again. To that end, I’ve rolled my wake-up routine back a half an hour (to 5:25). Did that on Friday, because I had to go to work early, and the cats have already adjusted by walking all over me at 5:30 yesterday and 5:20 this morning.

My wake-up routine, you ask? It’s not really an alarm, as I prefer to be woken up by kitties, but it gives them clues when to do it. At 5:20, the kitchen light comes on. At 5:25, my bedside lamp comes on. At 5:26, the theme from Silverado plays on my Alexa speaker. Rarely do I make it to the music, as the cats take their cue from the kitchen light and pounce on me in search of breakfast.

Call me crazy, but it’s a much nicer way to be awoken than using some sort of alarm clock.

Anyway…

Last weekend saw the first of what we in the Georgia Brass Band hope is an annual Southeast Brass Band Festival. Our board started kicking the idea around last year, and – miracle of miracles – it came together pretty well. We had bands from Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama in attendance (6 total, including us), hired a long-time friend of the band (Dr. Ronald Holtz, who is huge in the brass band movement) to give comments on each band’s performance and award caption prizes (best soloist, most entertaining performance, best hymn, best march), and coordinated with a local high school with a phenomenal band program to use their facilities and let them sell concessions for their band program. It was actually a pretty rousing success, and (another miracle) the GBB came out in the black financially. As treasurer, I’d been thinking that we were going to take a bath on the thing, but we managed to make somewhere between $600 and $1000 for the day through t-shirt and CD sales and band registrations (we’re still waiting for one band to pay up, which is why I can’t say exactly how much we took in).

Our band was not eligible to win any of the awards, but we did get some excellent comments from Dr. Holtz and he confided to our director that, had we actually been competing, we would’ve blown the other 5 bands off of the stage – which we had kind of figured, hence we removed ourselves from consideration.

Originally, we’d ruminated on having the festival move around with different bands hosting each year, but now we’re leaning towards keeping it in Atlanta at least for a few years. Not to be immodest, but it’s hard to believe that any of the other bands in attendance could have better facilities, plus we’ve now got some insight on how to put on this type of event, and we think we can improve going forward.

All in all, it was a good day. I’m glad we did it and I’m looking forward to trying again next year.

At work, I had one of my direct reports leave a couple of weeks ago. He found another job that pays more (I’ve been saying that we need to improve our L1 salaries for over two years), and I was happy to see him moving on – not because he didn’t do a reasonable job for me, but because I’m always genuinely happy to see my directs move up. To that end, I also traded away two of my other directs, last week, to another team. One of them was one of my senior consultants, and I thought he’d come out of his shell a bit more with a younger team which has just been formed. The other is a kid who I think can be a senior in time, but he also needs to be put in an environment where he can step up as a leader, and he wasn’t going to get that opportunity on my team, which is generally composed of consultants who’ve been there longer than he has.

In return, I got one rising consultant from the other team, so I’m actually down to 7 directs and, with project season – when we onboard new clients – ramping up, I’m a bit concerned about how we’re going to handle the increased number of clients with a smaller team; but I’m confident that we’ll figure it out.

My boss has implemented an aptitude test for all of the people who apply for an L1 job, and he had all of the team leads take it to get an idea of how well it does. Turns out that I’m a “medium” fit for a helpdesk job – and the test pretty much nailed my personality, concluding in effect that I just like to get shit done, don’t always follow the standard procedures, and really don’t care what anybody thinks about how I do things. It said a lot of other things that were also spot-on, and I think it’s going to help bring in a higher caliber of candidate for upcoming interviews…..if we can work on that crappy salary thing…

I may try to go camping next week if Jenny is home (she’s in Santorini or someplace exotic like that, and I can’t remember when she’s coming home. If I do go out, it’ll be a solo trip. My buddy Brett and I had a pretty bad trip a month or two ago – actually came to a physical altercation, which I would never have imagined between the two of us – and we’re basically done with each other at this point. I haven’t been out by myself (other than Michigan trips) in several years, but the woods are calling me. Can’t say that the news about a moron killing somebody on the Appalachian Trail last weekend hasn’t been in my thoughts a bit as I contemplate going up to one of my favorite sites in NC that is fairly close to the trail, but I still believe that there’s a much higher chance of getting attacked in my house than there is in getting attacked in the woods.

Cy and “T” cruised through for a visit a few weeks back. It was good to see them, though I was a bit embarrassed at the state of my abode – still need to get down new flooring, put in a new fence, things like that. We had dinner (Jenny came along) and idle chit-chat. I don’t actually remember where we ate, but it was great to see them.

Jenny and I also flew (yes, I flew) to Cleveland a couple of weekends ago to see Dad and Diane – and Kara and her husband Tom on a Saturday evening. Got to meet the new puppy that Dad and Diane have (do not remember its name…I think I’m getting Alzheimer’s), hang around with the important folks for a few hours, and had a nice dinner with everyone at Bonefish Grill. Always great to see you and find out how you’re doing, Dad. Heard you had to visit your physician friends again this week, and I’m sending lots of good thoughts your way.

And now, it being Sunday, I think I’ll take a shower and go play some trivia.

Gotta think bout that work/life balance, ya know.

Updated by Popular Demand

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So I got a short email from Dad the other day, letting me know that I haven’t posted here since last Christmas. That seemed crazy to me when I read it, so I checked – and he is, of course, correct. That being the case, I shall now attempt to compose some sort of update on what’s been going on since then.

Not a lot, as it turns out.

Work has been a beast through this tax season (corporate deadline was last Saturday, and the personal one is April 15, as you probably know). We’ve had some issues with our physical file system, causing extreme delays and disconnections for a number of our clients. Naturally, they don’t understand or care that the level 1 people who are generally the first to respond to their complaints can do absolutely nothing about this – they just want to get pissed off with whomever is trying to help them. As a lead, I’m generally the guy who gets to be the backstop for my 9 direct reports, so I’m getting yelled at pretty much every day.

Making things more annoying is the fact that our systems admin team spent a long time refusing to admit that maybe it was their fault that the systems were failing, and sometime in late December or early January they decided that it must be scripts that other people had written that were causing the problems. A decree was issued that scripts were henceforth forbidden unless they were written by the systems admin team. Naturally, my own scripts – which were being used by most of the level 1 teams – were instantly assessed to be existential threats that had to be killed.

So the SA people wrote their own script to seek out and delete any copies of my scripts anywhere they resided, be it on the network or on local workstations. This plan was not announced, of course, but I had an idea that they might try something like that. Not wanting to lose 6 months worth of work, I deleted all of my scripts, keeping copies both in my recycle bin and on my iPod. These days, I feed bits and pieces of my scripts to the development team, who insist that their web-based portal can be used to do anything that I was doing with PowerShell – though that team tends to take about a month to even consider coding something that I’d regularly throw together in about 45 minutes when the need arose.

With one exception, by the way, none of my scripts do anything other than read data. They tell me, for example, who is logged on to a given server, what a user’s unique ID is (for registry searches), when a server was last rebooted, things like that. The exception to that is a script that deletes unnecessary files that are filling up space on client servers and causing them to fail. What I’m saying here is that 1}These are scripts that are needed to keep things running smoothly, and 2}There is no way they were causing any performance issues for the clients. After a few weeks of those scripts not running and performance continuing to decline, the SA team finally looked inward and discovered the file systems problems (not to mention problems with their own procedures – like running backups without checking first to see if the backup volumes had enough space to hold the incoming backups). A great hue and cry was raised (not to mention wailing and gnashing of teeth) about how this was the hardware vendors’ fault, how it couldn’t have been foreseen, and how they’d fix it after tax season; oddly, no mention was made of restoring my scripts, which were incredibly helpful in efficiently handling the volume of tickets being submitted due to the infrastructure problems. So they remain mothballed, and I – and one of the L2 guys who helped me – remain completely pissed off with the company as a whole and are at this point simply going through the motions at work. He (the L2) is actively looking for another job where he isn’t treated as a scapegoat who knows nothing, and may have gotten one last Thursday. We should know by next week. I’ve been sorely tempted to apply for either an apps management job or a level 2 job (both are currently open positions, and I’m fairly certain that I’d get either of them if I applied), but I’m sticking with management for now. If I have to keep working for longer than I’d like to, that’s where I’m most likely to find another gig.

Have to go help Jenny move some stuff for her dad. I’ll post this now, let my own Dad know, and continue with the drama of the last three months later on.