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.

Welcome to Summer

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So I’m a month older than I was the last time I sat down to write something here – and a couple of pounds lighter thanks to renewing walking and cutting out as much processed sugar as possible. Don’t get me wrong: I’m still a fat bastard, but I’m a little less so now.

At work, we’re in the doldrums after tax season, and so it’s interview season. I’ve done a bunch in the last month, and they’ve been a pretty good crop, actually. I think offer letters have been sent out to two and we’ve got two others going through background and drug tests. Hoping to have them on board in the next 10 days or so. I’m also promoting my one Junior Consultant to a salaried Level 1 position on or about July 1, which is nice. She’s been a junior for longer than I would’ve liked, but I had a talk with her at the beginning of last month and told her I needed her to step up. She did. Assuming she did okay on the test I gave her yesterday, she’s ready to move up and I won’t have any juniors on the team….until the newbies come in.

Need to mow half of the front lawn today, and I’m hoping I can actually get my edger working so I can edge everything. The stupid thing just sort of died on me a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve got one half of one side of my driveway edged at this point. I’ve tried on three occasions to get it to start and keep running, but so far it’s been good for about 5 minutes before it quits. If I can’t keep it running today, I guess I’ll be making a trip to Home Depot for a new one. It’s amazing how much better my lawn looks when it’s been edged.

The band played a concert at Reinhart College (hope I spelled that right) a week and a half ago. It’s in Cherokee County, well north of Atlanta, and at about 20 minutes before downbeat our solo horn player sent a message that he wasn’t coming. Needless to say, there were some bad words following that. A couple of the pieces on the concert had fairly exposed solo horn parts, so our 1st horn learned those as quickly as possible and I learned the 1st horn part as quickly as possible. Another exposed part had to be transcribed for the flugel player, since all three horn parts were needed. Made it through the performance okay.

A couple of days after that, we had a board meeting, in which it was pretty much unanimously decided that the solo horn player won’t be returning for the 2019-2020 season. The big question is who’ll play that part. The 1st horn player and I have both said we’d like to play it at times, but not exclusively – it’s a painful part to play if you haven’t developed a high-range embouchure. I’m sort of hoping that Andrew (1st horn) will bite the bullet and do it, so that I can move back to 1st horn – which has always been my favorite horn part. Then we can recruit somebody to take my spot on 2nd.

Or if they want to try me on solo, I’ll do that, too. It’ll hurt for a few months, but might be a good learning experience for me, and could force me to deal with the stage fright that I’ve always had when playing solos.

Have plans to do some housework this afternoon – cleaning out my master bedroom, primarily. I’ve had a twin bed in there for the last few months (moved my queen to the guest room before Cy and “T” visited), and at first I was getting great sleep in it because the cats didn’t fit on it and pretty much left me alone. That’s changed in the last couple of weeks. They still don’t fit, so they just jump all over me and make sleeping pretty much impossible. Time to bring the queen back into play.

It is now officially summer in Georgia, and it’s been officially HOT for several weeks. Temps today should be in the mid-90s, which makes the thought of cleaning my room a bit more palatable than the thought of mowing the lawn.

But they’ve both gotta get done, so I guess I’ll go get started.

…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.

Christmas Vacation

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Well, there’s not a lot going on these days, but I thought I should update this thing anyway. I got the 24th-26th off from work (today being the 26th, of course), and I really haven’t done a thing in the last 5 days. Watched a bit of football on Saturday and sat at home watching television from Sunday until today. I did go over to Jenny’s place for dinner with her and her dad last night, which was nice. Some sort of a crabmeat casserole and some scallops, and a bit of catching up with Herb, who’s having more trouble getting out of a chair than he used to – and he’s not as light as he thinks he might be; I can attest to that having helped him up a few times. As he said when I was helping him into the car, “It’s amazing how fast your strength goes, and how much you don’t even realize you used to use it,” to do things like get into a car. Speaking of Herb and cars, Jenny and I are going to try to get his started and sold on Saturday. He’s also been talking to a realtor, so I guess he’s finally letting go of the house in Dunwoody.

Found out from my boss sometime last week that I’ll be getting a $750 bonus in my next paycheck, which is nice. Also getting a 4% raise starting with the January checks. Still nowhere near what I was making a couple of years ago (example: my last bonus at AT&T was just a bit over $9,000), but it’s a nice gesture and I do appreciate it. Got to give almost all of my direct reports raises for next year, too, which was great. The X-company just doesn’t pay their level 1 employees enough – which is probably why we can’t keep the good ones.

The photo for this post, should you be wondering, is of my buddy Brett during a trip we took to Huckleberry Knob in, I think, Tennessee, in July of 2009. I was going through some old hard drives today and found a bunch of old photos. Spent quite a bit of time reminiscing about everything from football games to camping trips to band concerts. It’s hard to believe how much time I spent with a camera in front of my face for the first 15 years of this century. Maybe I’ll pack one of the Canons the next time I go camping.

I toyed with the idea of going in to the office today to play around with a script that I’m trying to write for our infrastructure team, but that idea lost its luster over the last couple of hours, and now I’m thinking more about getting my hair cut and going to play trivia in a bar and watch whatever sports are on today. I just don’t feel like coding – or sitting in the office – before tomorrow.

And now I’ll dig into one of those old hard drives a bit more and see what other interesting things I can find. Sounds like a good way to waste a morning.

End-of-the-year Crunch

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Yes, indeed.  The year is coming to a close and I’m in the middle of my “must get everything done before January” month.  There are many reasons that I like the fact that I was born when I was, but the December crunch is not one of them.

I got my driver’s license renewed last weekend.  Also received the letter to renew my tags, which I put off dealing with until today.  Other fun things included paying my auto insurance, renewing a couple of domains, doing year-end reviews for all of my direct reports (save one, who’ll get to go through that on Monday), and I don’t know what else.

As I said, I pulled out the registration letter today and logged on to pay for my 2019 registration, only to realize that I’ve forgotten to get my emissions checked (must do that before registering).  So I guess that’s on the docket for later this morning.

The X-company Christmas party was last Monday.  I did not attend.  Not a fan of 1}hanging out with the people from work, 2}hanging out with the people from work when there’s an open bar.  Not to worry, though.  The X-company gives out really nice Christmas presents to everyone – even those of us who don’t go to parties – and I scored a drone yesterday.  This is cool, because I’d been thinking about buying one anyway to take camping.  From what I can tell, the company saved me about $700.  I’ve been there for nearly two years and I’m not a huge fan of the job, but there are perks.

The GBB has a Christmas concert next Tuesday night, which should be fun.  After that, we’ll take a couple of weeks off and then start getting serious about NABBA rehearsals (we’re going in the Championship Section this year) and about the inaugural Southeastern Brass Band Festival, which was the idea of our board last summer and which – surprisingly – is shaping up to be a pretty good event.  I believe we’ve got 6 bands signed up for it and a great hall in which they can all perform.  That takes place in, I think, May.

It has been rainy and quite cool for the last month, and I must sing praises to my Nest Learning Thermostat.  Picked it up in late summer and have nothing but good things to say about it.  Since switching over from cooling to heating, it’s done a really good job of keeping the house comfortable and – from what I can see – saving me quite a bit of the green stuff.

Forgot to mention that I had my own annual review at work last week.  The first one I’ve had since I’ve been there, and I got “exceptional” marks all the way down the board.  First time that’s happened in about 30 years.  Granted, I think it’s the first time the X-Company has even done reviews, I’m in the first class of Team Leads they’ve ever had, my boss is the first-ever Director of Service in the company’s history, and I don’t think anyone really knows what they’re doing…but still – I got perfect scores and a raise and I’ll take it.  Also had a talk with my boss about restructuring going forward and there’s a decent possibility that I’ll get a bump up to some sort of capo di tuti capi role (floor lead/lead of leads) in the next year.  It will take my one level further away from technology and one step closer to full-time people administration, which is not an idea that I relish; but it is sort of what I had in mind when I took the job and told the hiring manager that I guess I’d start a completely new career with the X-Company.  

I’m getting more comfortable with my current role as lead – kind of shocks me at times to realize that I’m basically doing the job that my bosses used to do, but I also have the ability to take a step back if I need to clear my head and just work on technical problems.  I have two seniors on my team, one of whom I’m grooming to be a lead himself, so when I want to work on computer problems, I just tell my team to go to Matt with their questions for a while.  It’s working pretty well.

And I guess that’s about all I’ve got to say for right now.  The featured image for this post is of my kitchen in the Cheboygan Cabin last month.  I’d meant to use it for one of the posts that I wrote while in the cabin, but my phone apparently never uploaded the shot.  See how rustic I am!

a terrible horrible very bad day

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Note: I found this in my “drafts” folder today.  I’m assuming that it’s from somewhere in 2015, when I was dating Amy from Waukegan.

Monday was driving day.  The return to Atlanta from Waukegan.  It began at about 4:30 AM – and I should’ve just stayed in bed.

Remember when truck drivers were among the best drivers on the road?  Yeah, well, they’re not anymore.  I started to notice this probably 10 years ago, and it just seems to be getting worse with time. With that in mind, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that I came to a less-than-screeching halt 90 minutes after I set out on my trip Monday morning.  Feeling good about things after making it through downtown Chicago without any significant slowdowns, I found myself basically sitting still on I-94, in the rain, for the better part of two hours – caught in the backup created by three trucks that had somehow managed to tangle with each other on I-80, some 5 miles down the road from me.

After finally getting past the scene of the accident, I spent the next 13 hours in basically non-stop rain, fog,  and the mist kicked up by trucks whose drivers insisted upon driving next to other trucks, blocking both lanes and throwing up walls of water behind them.  I got a bit of a break just south of Nashville, when the rain stopped and, briefly, the sun came out.  By the time I approached the mountains north of Chattanooga, however, Mother Nature had thrown down the gauntlet.  The rain increased steadily for the remainder of the trip, which ended at around 8:00 Monday night.  By then, my neck and shoulders were in agony from the hunched-forward attitude that I’d been holding in the car for the majority of the day.  It’s now two days later, and I could still use a massage.

I did make it home, however – managed to take just over 5600 pictures during the trip (the GoPro was set to snap one every 10 seconds) – and yesterday was back to the grind.  It’s amazing how I can miss two days of work (three if you count the few people who go in to waste time on Saturdays) and end up with over 400 emails to go through upon my return.  I spent a couple of hours trying to pay attention to them yesterday before figuratively throwing up my hands and deleting the whole lot of them.  Probably not the most prudent thing to do, but I just wasn’t in the mood to deal with it anymore.  If there was anything in there that was actually worth reading, I’m sure it will be resent about 40 more times before I need to actually pay attention.

Spent the rest of the day dealing with obstinate workstations and working on some new code ideas.

After work, I went to a brass band rehearsal – which was nice.

There were no truck drivers there.

TWD

Back to the Grind

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So I did make it back from Michigan at just about midnight on November 16th.  It was a white-knuckle drive for the first few hours, as snow had been falling for most of Thursday night and plows had not been sent out by the time I left the cabin.  75 south comprised a couple of tire tracks that everyone more or less stayed in, with the exception of the random idiot who jumped into the left lane to try to pass everyone – without the benefit of any road markings at all.  I saw a number of cars that had spun off of the road and laughed a bit at all of them.

By the time I got back down to Toledo, the snow was pretty much gone, but it was bitterly cold whenever I had to stop for gasoline.  The Subaru did a great job overall.

Had a Thanksgiving dinner with Jenny, her neighbor, and Herb at Herb’s assisted living place on Saturday.  The food was good and the company was pleasant and I think everyone had a good time.  I also scored one of Herb’s old office chairs – we’d taken it to him, but because it has wheels, it’s not a good idea for him to try to use it – and I’m sitting in it as I type this.  I’ve never had a decent office chair at home, which is the main reason that I don’t take advantage of the fact that I could work at home a couple of days each week if I choose to.  I may choose to in 2019.

The next week, which contained Thanksgiving, was a short one at work.  We got Thursday and Friday off and I spent those two days recovering from the drive back – sleeping a lot, doing laundry, cleaning out the car, watching football.  Jenny and I had tentative plans to sell Herb’s car last Saturday, but they fell through so I spent the weekend watching more football, getting more sleep, doing more laundry.  Then it was back to work for a full week, which was not pleasant.

We had system outages on Monday and Tuesday – raised everyone’s blood pressures – and my problem employee was AWOL on Wednesday.  I sent him a number of texts and tried to call – no response until very early Thursday morning, when he sent a text to me to tell me that he had to take his kid to the hospital, that he’d tried to email me and my boss, but the email was stuck in the outbox, and that he didn’t have his phone with him.  Since he was supposed to be working at home all week – the result of a dead car, which he was to replace on Friday – I stewed a bit on Thursday before letting him know that I got his text and he really needs to confirm that his messages are received when he sends them to me.  On Friday, he sent me an instant message that he had to clock out at 1:00 in order to get a new car, which he had to do on Friday or it wouldn’t be done until Monday.

That kinda tore it.  On Monday, he and I and my boss and and HR rep will be meeting first thing in the morning, and he’ll be getting official written notice from me that he is not to miss any more days or he’s looking at getting fired.  I didn’t want to go there.  I’m a laid-back boss.  I’m also not a good guy to screw with on a regular basis.

So I’ve got that to look forward to tomorrow….

Was good to get back to the band last Tuesday night.  We’re rehearsing for a Christmas concert on the 18th (I think), and playing some good stuff.  My chops were a bit rusty after having three weeks off, but I acquitted myself well, I think.  Looking forward to the concert.

Yesterday, I found 14 forms of identification and drove over to the DMV (in the pouring rain) to get my license renewed.  I was worried that I might have to take an eye test (probably would’ve failed without my reading glasses), but everything went smoothly and I managed to get everything taken care of in under two hours.  Got my temporary replacement and should have the new license in a month or so.  So that’s out of the way.  I also paid my car insurance this week – no more of that until June.  Last thing I need to do with the car before 1/1 is get the registration renewed, but I can do that online.

I might make it through this year after all – two years at the X company.  Hard to believe.  I’ve pretty much settled into the salary.  Still miss the old one, but I can afford everything on what I make now and even splurge every now and then.  I’m kind of resigned to the fact that I hit my peak in 2016 and I’ll probably never make it back there, salary-wise, but I’m moving on and just trying to learn how to be an effective manager of people.  Got a nice boost from my boss on LinkedIn last week – he sent me a recommendation for my profile, which was completely unexpected and very much appreciated, and made me feel like I might just be making a good impression in my new position.  Small victories.

And so we’re all caught up.  Should you be wondering, the photo at the top of this entry was taken on the Thursday afternoon before I left Cheboygan.  The sun was on its way down, the wind had picked up, and a storm was just starting to make an appearance over the lake.  It was incredibly cold and gorgeous and I just kept running out into it to experience it, then running back to the cabin to get warm.  All in all, a great way to spend an afternoon.