Dammit

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Another couple of weeks have passed, and – while I’m still not and never will be a fan of AT&T – this has been one of those periods causing me to really miss that paycheck.

We have had rain every day for about the last 10, although “rain” probably isn’t the best word to describe the amount of water that’s been dropped two or three times daily.  Downpour. Deluge.  Monsoon. Frog strangler.  It had gotten bad enough by a week ago that I finally decided that I needed to get one of my two gasoline-powered lawn mowers running again.  My battery-powered mower does a fantastic job on the lawns if they’re dry and if the grass isn’t too tall.  If both of those conditions aren’t met, I’m lucky to get 30 minutes out of the battery.  I managed to stay ahead of the curve in the front lawn over the wetness, but with the grass growing like crazy and the rain every day, the back of the house has turned into a veritable jungle.  It’s time to fire up the Briggs & Stratton.

In the past, I would’ve just take the mower(s) up to Corley Small Engine in Duluth and gotten a fix for $50-$70, but I decided to save some money and learn a bit about my mowers.  Purchased a carburetor rebuild kit online for $13, brought the newer mower into the garage, and – with the help of a few videos – took the old carb off one night after work while the storm raged outside.  Noticed as I was doing this that some water was leaking through the top of my (internal) garage door.

Great.

Finished disassembling the carb, threw away all of the old gaskets, dropped the parts into a carb wash bucket, and went to bed.  This was on Monday, I believe.  By Tuesday morning, I could barely open the garage door.  The frame had swollen or warped.  Also saw water damage at the corner of the ceiling above the door and in the drywall around it.  Still raining.

Tuesday after work, I climbed up on the garage roof (oh, joy), cleaned out all of the gutters (disgusting) and a pile of leaves and other crap in the corner of the roof above the garage door where it was most likely that the leak was.  Didn’t see any obvious place for the leak, but didn’t spend a lot of time looking, as another storm was on the way.

Received my carb rebuild kit and was ready to put everything back together on Wednesday.  Unfortunately, the kit didn’t contain a float gasket.  Just, you know, the most important gasket in the whole friggin’ thing.  So I put everything back together without the gasket and set it aside.   The garage door remained very sticky, but the leaking seemed to have stopped.

Went to Corey’s yesterday, got the float gasket that I needed – and also picked up the same rebuild kit (for $13) from them so I could fix the other mower at some point.  As expected, it contained ALL of the  gaskets I needed.  Somebody screwed up the online order.

Got home, put the carb back together, put it back into the mower, hooked up the fuel line, and released the grip that had been crimping the fuel.  Gasoline immediately started pouring out the bottom of the carburetor.

Fantastic.

I re-crimped the fuel line, took the carb back off, checked all the gaskets.  One of them, on the nut on the bottom of the carb, looked suspect, so I took that gasket out of the new kit that I’d purchased and replaced it again.  Put everything back together, released the fuel line clamp….gasoline leaking out of the carb.

Crimp back in place.  I’ll take the mower to Corey next week.  The bigger problem now is that gasoline was spilled on the mower, and the mower  was in the garage…so my garage smells like gasoline.  Got up this morning with a plan to move the mower back to the shed in the backyard.  Pulled on the doorknob to open the garage door.

Doorknob broke off in my hand, leaving, as you might expect, a hole in the door.  Gasoline vapors found it very quickly.  Now my entire downstairs smells like gas.

After some trial and error, I managed to get the garage door open without a knob, completely took out all of the knob, covered the hole with some painter’s tape.  Off to Home Depot this morning for a new knob.  Also spoke to a contractor friend of mine about fixing the drywall and the door frame in the next couple of weeks.  Also bought some spray sealant which I’ll put on the garage roof today – more ladder climbing, more time on the roof, more joy.

It has become apparent that, insurance or not, I’m going to have to replace my roof.  Yes, I can afford it by raiding my savings.  I just really didn’t want to do that.  At this time last year, I could absorb the expense and be back on top within a month or two.  These days, I’ll probably end up financing it and locking myself into the stupid job for another three years.

Maybe the gasoline smell will be gone by then.

A Necessary Saturday

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Today’s featured image was taken three years ago.  The boys were just about 4 months old, Boo was still the biggest critter in the camp, my renter was a large and bald ex-bouncer, and I was probably mentally ready to head to Canada for a couple of weeks.  Today, Boo is dwarfed by her little brothers, my renter is a relatively petite customer service manager, and I’m still mentally ready to head out anywhere – although that’s not going to happen for quite some time.

Got kind of a punch in the gut last week when I applied for an Onboarding Specialist position that’s opening up at The X Company.  Informed my new boss of my intention to apply, he said fine – he’s been my boss for all of about two weeks, having just been promoted to the L1 lead position.  Did an interview with our talent scout, who is filtering applicants to send to the hiring manager.  I thought it went fairly well.  He asked all the usual questions, including what my boss would say that I did well and what my boss would say that I didn’t do so well.  I explained that I really didn’t know what my *new* boss would say, as I haven’t talked with him; but said that my previous boss, Joe – based solely on the (three) one-on-one meetings that I’ve had with him, since he and I have barely spoken since I started working – would probably say that I do a good job with my clients, consistently meet my metrics, have good communications skills, and generally know my shit.  As for what I need to work on, I really didn’t know and I said that.  Perhaps more consistency with the metrics, but judging on the daily stats that I get combined with his comments – written and verbal – in those three meetings, I really couldn’t think of anything that I needed to drastically improve.  I know I’m doing a good job, and I told the guy that.  Said, fairly bluntly, that I understand that I’m new, but that this is stuff that I was doing close to 30 years ago, that I’m going to get better and better at it, and that I’m going to be bored to death with it within 6 months.  Also mentioned that I’d taken a 50% pay cut when I accepted the job.  Didn’t pull any punches, but was polite, positive, eager to learn new things and be more involved with customer planning, yada yada yada.

Got a fairly terse email the following day informing me that the interviewer had spoken with my bosses and they’d informed him that I really needed to improve, that my metrics were below par but getting better, and that the interview process could not proceed because “we’re only looking for people who meet and exceed expectations.”  I was mildly stunned.  Pulled up the daily stats and graphed them.  My metrics are solid.  At the top, in fact.   So I pulled up the records of my three meetings.  Scored 9/10 in my first one, 10/10 in the next two.  Got a bit pissed off, but decided to be cool.  Sent a nice note back to the interviewer and stated that I disagreed with the take on my performance, but that I understand that I’m new and I try not to take anything personally and it was nice talking with him, thanks, etc.

Two hours later, my new boss (Ben) sits down next to me, says, “Will you have a few minutes to talk today?”  I said I could talk right then.  So we go to a conference room and he begins his remarks by saying, “Joe and I never said anything to Neil about your metrics.  You’re doing fine.  Joe thought you might have an attitude problem because you haven’t been particularly friendly.”

I agreed with him on that point, particularly where Joe is concerned, explaining that I haven’t been overly friendly with Joe because I’ve had the feeling – from day one – that Joe actively dislikes me.  Ben said something along the lines of, “That’s understandable, and you’re not the first one to say it.”  I then explained again that it was all good.  I wasn’t going to worry about it.  If there were issues – perceived or real – then I’d just go back to taking care of my clients, which is what I’m paid to do.  Ben said he’d talk to Neil (the interviewer) and straighten things out, and I assumed that I was back in the running.

The next day, I got another email from Neil that said, “I hope that, after talking with Ben, you have a better understanding of what the problem is.”  So I wrote back and said, “Actually, I’m now more mystified than ever, but – again – I’m not going to worry about it.”

Two days pass, and we arrive at yesterday afternoon.  Joe called me into his office.  I’m like, “Oh crap.  Can we just let this thing go?” but I sit and ask what’s up.  He says that he heard back from Neil and that I said I was still not sure about how I’m underperforming; so I laid out the whole timeline for him (did not mention that I still think he dislikes me), and said for about the 15th time, “It’s okay.  I’m new to the job and the company.  I guess I’m trying to move too fast.  I just have seen no indication that I’m not performing as expected.  If I am, please tell me what I need to do to improve.”

And Joe says, “No, your metrics are great.  Your firms have nothing but good things to say about you.  You obviously are incredibly technically qualified.  Your communication is good – wish the other guys out there would document things like you do.  You pay attention to detail.  You’re doing great.  The thing is, we worry about your teamwork.  Some of the guys on the floor thought you came off as sort of condescending when you started here.”

And I’m like (in my head), “THAT’S what this is all about? Seriously?”  So I laid it out for Joe.  I came to work at The X Company after 17 years of being responsible for nearly every bit of infrastructure – phones, computers, televisions, signage, wall hangings, heaters, fuse boxes, coffee makers, you name it.  While I did work in a business casual atmosphere there, it is also a Fortune 50 company and there is certain level of professionalism that is expected.  Prior to working at BellSouth/AT&T, I was a contractor for three years and worked for some of the most respected companies on the planet.  And when I got to The X Company, I was thrown into the middle of a bunch of kids who spent their days playing ping-pong, talking about online gaming, and shooting rubber bands and nerf guns around the room.  The company took a day off to have a picnic and play kickball.  The dress code includes The X Company t-shirts and shorts.  Not to mention that I was doing my best to 1}Learn the applications that I’m supporting, and 2}Provide my clients with top-notch support.  So, yeah.  I probably did, and perhaps still do, come off as aloof and/or condescending at times.  My focus is and will be on my clients, and if the office that I’m sitting in is one step up from kindergarten, then call me the guy without team spirit.  I’m okay with that.  And oh, by the way, those guys are now coming to me for help with their own clients.

Joe got the message.

He and I then talked about upcoming projects (wherein people like me go to new clients and get them set up) and an opening for a project manager (who manages people like me who are going to new clients to get them set up), and he encouraged me to sign up for some of the former and to apply for the latter.

So after the gut punch, maybe there’s a glimmer of light.  We shall see.  At least Joe, and hopefully Ben – and maybe even Neil – now knows where I’m coming from.  I’ll shoot the nerf guns between 5:30 and 6:00, after I’ve shut off my phone and I’m winding down. The rest of the day, I’m focused on my clients.

In other news, I took a short trip up to the Pisgah National Forest (the Shining Rock Wilderness Area) over the Memorial Day weekend and spend a wonderful, restful, couple of days in the middle of nowhere along the Pigeon River.  Only had to hike in about two miles to get away from the day hikers.  I setup my tent and a tarp, drank some apple-crisp whisky and splashed in the river on Saturday; then slept like a dead man while a massive storm raged during Saturday night.  On the way up to the area, I passed the Davidson Creek campground in the national forest, and thought that it might be an alternative to my Lake Superior campground for later this year.

Looked it up online when I got home.  The 2nd and 3rd weeks in October are almost fully booked, and it’s $40/night!  I’m once again leaning towards going back to Pictured Rocks on Superior.  Yes, it’s a longer drive – but I know that I’ll be fairly alone, and I know that it’s a beautiful spot.   Actually, while talking with Joe about upcoming projects, I learned that there is one in Wisconsin and one in Michigan (I believe North Lake, MI, which would be incredible) coming up in late August.  Am considering trying for one of those with the idea of scheduling my vacation at the end of the on-site week, so that I could just leave and head to the lake, saving the company air fare and getting my lake jones taken care of in one fell swoop.

On the good news front, I spent this morning rolling coins and counting the paper money that I’ve been stuffing into a water jug over the last year.  You know the drill – you get home, you empty your pockets, and you save any money that’s in them.

I’ll be making a deposit of just over $2,700 this morning.

It’s going to be a nice vacation if I can ever get it scheduled.

 

Chillin’

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Today’s featured image was taken on this day one year ago, and is of the Little Santeetlah Creek in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest – one of my favorite places in the world for a quick getaway from city life.  My buddy Brett and I had actually planned to go up there a couple of weekends ago, but it was covered in snow, gates were closed, trees were down, and the roads were basically impassible.  We opted instead to hang out at Fires Creek in the Nantahala Wilderness for a one-night campout.  Bing tells me this about the JKMF:

Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is an approximately 3,800-acre tract of publicly owned virgin forest in Graham County, North Carolina, named in memory of poet Joyce Kilmer, best known for his poem “Trees”. One of the largest contiguous tracts of old growth forest in the Eastern United States, the area is administered by the U. S. Forest Service.

Oddly enough, Kilmer himself was born, and lived most of his life, in New Jersey.  He was killed in France in WWI.  Why his name is attached to a forest in NC is somewhat of a mystery, excepting, of course, the reference to his “Trees” poem, of which I’m sure that everyone knows at least the first line.

Work was a bit more hectic than usual last week, largely due to the fact that I got another “primary” firm (meaning that I’m their primary consultant), and they’re brand new to The X Company.  McSoley, McCoy & Company is a small CPA firm in South Burlington, VT, and I’ve got to admit that I like taking care of them simply because of their location.  At this early stage, however, they’re pretty needy.  I’m told that it usually takes about 6 months for a new firm to settle into a cloud-based environment, and I’m hopeful that they get used to things a lot faster than that.  I’m spending a lot of time on the phone with them, and I’ve got 5 other primary firms that I’ve somewhat neglected since MMC on-boarded.  They’ve been fun to work with, however.  Nice people.

I tried to get some sleep yesterday – don’t have much time to do so during the week – but I still have things to do at home.  Managed to get a few loads of laundry done and to straighten up my bedroom.  Still need to mow the lawns, but storms rolled in yesterday afternoon and nixed any idea of working outside.  I should also mention that it was about 90 degrees and humid, so outdoor work would have been incredibly uncomfortable.  Took a 3.6-mile walk this morning in a steady drizzle, and the rain is predicted to continue for much of this week, so my lawns are going to be a major pain to mow by next weekend.  I’d hoped to maybe try the mountains again, but it looks like I’ll be stuck at home to mow and do other home-type things.  Still need to fix the toilet in my half-bath.  Been meaning to do that for about 8 months now….

Learned a couple of weeks ago that I will not be able to take a vacation in July, so Ahmic Lake appears to be out this year.  I’m trying to decide if I want to go back to Lake Superior in October (haven’t asked if I can have that time off yet…perhaps I should) or if I can find something acceptable that’s closer to home.  Basically, I don’t want much in a place, but there are some non-negotiables:

  1. It has to be cool, bordering on cold.
  2. It has to have plenty of tree cover.
  3. I have to be alone, or as close to it as possible.
  4. It has to have water into which I can immerse myself.  A decent-sized stream, a lake, an ocean.  No ponds.
  5. It has to have wind.
  6. It has to be secluded enough to allow me to take long walks in the trees.

Superior, of course, has all of those things and is currently at the top of my list.  The drive is the only problem.  Not that it’s boring (it’s beautiful for much of the way) or that it tires me out: It just cuts into my time in the woods.  Figure 1 or 2 days to make the trip each way, and my vacation takes a serious hit.  At AT&T, it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I mean, I got something like 38 days off every year.  At The X Company, I think I get 10.  I’d rather not lose 3-4 of them driving.

So I’m considering places along the Atlantic…North Carolina, Virginia, perhaps Georgia or SC (although I think it’d be too hot and too crowded in those states, not to mention the fact that the beaches in GA and SC have very little tree cover).  Have been looking into the other great lakes that would be closer – Michigan, Erie, Ontario – but I don’t know if they’ve got the tree cover that I’m looking for, either.

One idea that I’ve been pondering is to head to Vermont, somewhere along the Long Trail, and maybe talk The X Company into letting me have a couple of days “on the clock” visiting with McSoley, McCoy.  Not sure if that’d fly or not, but I’d be willing to float the idea if I can find a perfect camping spot in, say, the Northeast Kingdom.

“Why not just go to Joyce Kilmer,” you ask?  That is a possibility, of course.  The only problem with it is that hunters and rednecks abound in that area in the fall.  The “alone” part of my list is pretty important.

One other idea is Unicoi State Park in Georgia.  I’ve never spent much time there, but it’s in the mountains, it’s got a lake, it’s got trails, it’s got cover, and it’d be chilly in October.  Biggest drawback is that, in October, the leaf-peepers will be coming out of the woodwork.  It’s got some walk-in campsites, however, so I might be able to get away from the crowds.  Going to do some more research on the park.  If I could make it work, it’d be fantastic.  It’s only about 3 hours away, and it really is a beautiful park.

And I think that’s about it for now.  Still plugging away, still dreaming about a retirement life in the woods, still a bit pissed off at AT&T (I doubt that I’ll ever get over that, to be honest), but still trying to keep a positive attitude.  A few more years.  I can last a few more years.

TWD

In Praise of Waze

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As a rule, I like software.  Installing a new program – or even reinstalling old programs – has always been sort of a Christmas morning thing for me.  Building out a new computer and then deciding what software to install just gets me pumped up.  Outside of playing my horn, there’s not much I’d rather do than install (and then play with) software.

That being said, I rarely like a program so much that I’m willing to give it unsolicited props.  It’s not often that a computer program, much less an app on a phone, literally changes my life.  Microsoft Access did in the early 90s.  It provided a combination solution for my love of databases and my desire to write code and launched me on a career that, to some extent, continues to this day.  Kindle (or, more generally, any book-reading application) changed the way that I read books.  Sure, I generally have one or two paperbacks in the bathroom, but I’ve been carrying libraries on my PDA/phones since the late 90s, and whenever I have 5 or 10 minutes of down time, I open a book and read a few pages.  Never really did that before eBooks hit the scene.

And now there’s Waze, an app that I installed on my phone just over a week ago, after my commutes to and from work had begun to convince me – seriously – that I would have to quit my job before I had a stroke (or just a nervous breakdown).  I was complaining about my drive to one of the guys who was hired on the same day as I was, and he casually tossed out, “Just get Waze.”

I had to google the thing.  Thought it was spelled “Ways,” which would make sense for a mapping application.  Then I found it.  Read about it.  Installed it on my Windows phone.  And couldn’t get past the initial agreement screen because it was so poorly written.

Turns out the Google had purchased Waze a few years ago and had stopped supporting Windows phone.  But I was so intrigued by the idea of a crowd-sharing mapping program that I took my Android phone, which I had had fixed after it broke last year, but had never put back into service, up to the AT&T store and told them to make it a real phone again.

That’s right.  I abandoned Windows phone just so I could try this app.  And I made the right choice.

The first day that I used Waze to drive to work, it started me out in the “wrong” direction.  Literally had me turning left at the end of my road, away from work, instead of right.  But I thought to myself, “What the hell.  It’s going to take me an hour anyway.  I might as well see something new.”

Would you believe that I got to work in under 30 minutes?  Or that, except for the last 1/2 mile – which is always going to be gridlocked – I wasn’t stuck in traffic at all?  Or that I was regularly exceeding the speed limit, driving on little back roads that I didn’t even know existed?

I thought it was a fluke.  “Wonder what it’ll do to get me home,” I thought.  At 6:00 in the evening, after all, there’s NO WAY to get from Alpharetta to Duluth in under 75 minutes.

Waze got me home in under 40.  I was blown away.  I actually walked through the door of my house with a smile on my face.

So I used Waze for a few days going back and forth to work, and then decided to try it out on last weekend’s GBB tour through Alabama and Tennessee.  It worked okay.  Pretty much gave me the same directions as my Garmin, which is the go-to GPS for my long trips.

That is, it gave me the same directions until my trip home from Chattanooga last Sunday afternoon.  I’m cruising down 75 and Waze suddenly chirps at me “Standstill ahead.  Take exit blah blah and go WAAAAAY the hell out of your way.”

I paraphrase.

Since I didn’t have to be anywhere until Monday morning, I gave Waze the benefit of the doubt, and I took exit blah blah – which is the exit that I used to take when going camping in the middle of nowhere – and let it lead me home.  Which it did, again finding little roads that I never knew about.  I got home at about the time I’d expected to.

As it turned out, there was a major pile-up on 75, about 5 miles south of where I exited.  Had I continued to follow my Garmin, I would’ve been stuck in traffic for about two additional hours.  This little FREE app not only determined that my traffic was about to suck, but also figured out a way around it on the fly.  My Garmin would’ve eventually told me that traffic sucked (probably when it was too late to change course), and then would have waited for me to tell it to find a new route.

Waze also sends me updates about things on the route.  It will tell me, for example, “There’s heavy traffic 9 miles away on Kimball Bridge Road” when I leave my house.  This is a given.  There’s always heavy traffic on KBR.  But it will also tell me, “Be careful.  There’s road kill in your way in a mile.”  Or “Police radar in two miles.”  And it’ll put a little icon on my map telling me where the dead dog or the cop is.  It warns of cars parked on the shoulder, water in the road, school busses stopping…anything that a normal person would notice – because it’s normal people updating the thing.

And so I sincerely offer this blog post in praise of Waze.  It has definitely changed my drive, made me a happier person, and – possibly – lengthened my life.

Thank you, whoever invented this wonderful program.

A Day Off!

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Today’s featured image is of Josh and Chamberlain patiently waiting for their checkups at the vet sometime last year.  They’re currently overdue for this year’s, but I’ve been a bad dad and haven’t bothered to make an appointment for them.  Possibly because I haven’t had a day that I can take them.   Today, for instance, is my first actual day of vacation since I took a week off last October.  I don’t have the faintest idea at this point of how many days I actually get to take off now that I’m with The X Company, but I’m supposedly earning 15 hours off per month or something like that.  Not sure if I can take them before I’ve earned them.

Today, however, I’m getting a comp day because I worked on Good Friday, which apparently is a paid holiday at The X Company.  Since tax season was still going strong last week, most people worked.  I worked because I had no idea it was a holiday – though traffic was remarkably light!

I took today largely because the brass band is launching our “tour” this evening in Jacksonville, AL.  We’ll play at Jax State U. tonight, then in Huntsville, AL, tomorrow, and will close things out in Chattanooga on Sunday.  It will mark, I think, the 4th weekend in a row that I’ve had to do something.  I’d planned on taking a hike in the mountains next weekend, but realized on Tuesday night that I’ve got another concert next Saturday.  So…maybe the weekend after that.  Unless that’s when Riley is getting hitched.  Sigh.  As much as I hate them, there are times when I really miss how good I had things at ATT.

Speaking of “them,” I’m coming closer to firing ATT.  I got an email last week informing me that I’d paid my DirecTV bill, which – with my employee discount – had remained at $11.  I knew that the discount would end eventually, and I knew that the price would probably shoot up to $50-$60.

I was not at all prepared for it to shoot to $211, and I cancelled the service that night.

To replace it, I invested in an HD antenna and a Tablo 4-stream DVR device.  Using those, plus a 3-TB external hard drive and the Roku boxes that Mary and I already had, I’m able to get and record about 30 local channels, plus 42 other Roku “channels,” such as Netflix and Amazon Prime (for which I pay a whopping $150 a year or so – for both) and other free channels that may or may not include commercials – though not nearly as many as regular TV included when I had it.

It is, to put it mildly, fantastic.  News, sports, movies, soap operas, sitcoms….you name it, I get it.  For (basically) free.

I looked into changing my phone service from ATT to Verizon, but the Verizon dude ticked me off – and I’m not sure that they can support my phone – so I’m still with the big T for that.  My internet service, though….shopping around for that one.  I’ve got a pretty good deal with ATT still, but I’m not sure if/when that’s going to get jacked up (I’m sure that they’re discounting it because I had DTV and phone).  When it goes up – or even if it doesn’t – I’ll find somebody like Comcast, who can give me higher speeds even if it costs more.  Basically, I’m still really pissed off at ATT (as is most of the rapidly-growing pool of ex-Digital Life employees), and I don’t want to give them a dime if I can avoid it.

Work has gotten incredibly boring since the end of tax season, and “meeting the metrics” (8 hours on the phone, 7 hours of billable time, 10 tickets closed) each day is nearly impossible.  I’ve been having some text conversations with the area manager of the call center that I supported – his last day is today, I believe – and we’re trying to put together some sort of business plan to be our own bosses and work together.  Top of the list right now are starting a courier company or a home inspection company.  I’m also still trying to learn a bit more about the inner workings of WordPress (which this blog runs on), as part of a vague idea about creating/maintaining websites for people.  A friend of mine from Canada has been doing this for years, and I think it’s something I’d really enjoy (and, hopefully, be pretty good at).

Must get packed for this tour, so I’ll stop here.

Messing Around

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ContextGeneration

So I’m sitting at work with very little to do. During the last couple weeks of tax season, accountants are more focused on actually doing taxes than on complaining about their software, so they don’t call in or open tickets unless they’re really stuck.

Figured I’d play around with a desktop blog editor (called BlogDesk) to see what kind of a job it does. There are some things that seem to be missing….I can’t set a featured photo for the top of an entry, but I can live with that if that’s the only drawback. The image that (hopefully) appears inline in this entry is just one that I had sitting on my work laptop. It’s part of one of the event logs that I was looking at a few days ago on a machine that was having one of those “really stuck” times. I don’t remember how I fixed it. Probably just reinstalled the Citrix receiver, which seems to fix about 90% of the problems that arise with cloud-based software.

Supposedly, we had nasty/dangerous storms in the Atlanta area yesterday. I did not notice them. It was breezy (as it is today), but the rain, thunder, lightning, etc., was not all that apparent to me. I’m told that it really uncorked itself overnight, but I slept very well last night. That in itself is kind of amazing, as I generally do not sleep well. Got nearly 4 hours of “good” sleep last night, according to my fancy-dancy sleep-tracking watch. Normally, I’m good for about 2 hours of deep sleep and 5-6 of light (or being awake).

Vodka. It does a body good.

The latest work-related affront to my dignity is scheduled to take place on (I think) Wednesday, April 19. Dubbed “The Annual Kickoff,” this apparently is something that this company does each year at the close of tax season and the beginning of a sales push to get new clients before the next tax season starts. It is a time of fellowship and relaxation – which, for a bunch of 20-somethings, means a picnic in the park featuring a kickball game.

Okay.

I’m 51 years old and haven’t played kickball since I was in 3rd grade. I don’t like to run. I wear five-finger shoes. Ain’t no way I’m getting involved in a kickball game with these people. I will eat a lot of hot dogs and drink whatever beer is provided. I’m told that an ice cream truck was also made available last year, so I’ll eat ice cream.

The office recently had a shuffleboard table installed in the break room. No kidding. I guess it’s for the people who are bored with ping pong, video games, and miniature billiards (I can’t make this stuff up). Someone has proposed (on our in-company Facebook-type website) that we have a shuffleboard tournament. Greg, the only person in this office anywhere near my age (he’ll be 52 in September), immediately came over to my desk and determined that he and I will enter this tournament as a team called “The Old Farts.”

That, I will do. Shuffleboard tokens, after all, are simply darts that are not affected by gravity.

I am still totally jonesing for some time in the woods. Thought I might be able to get out this weekend, but Jenny took a spontaneous trip to Greece, so I need to stay in town and take care of her cats. Next weekend is Easter (got a gig – not complaining about that), and the weekend after that is the GBB’s mini-tour through Alabama and Tennessee. Maybe I’ll be able to get out on the weekend of the 29th. I’ve decided that the worst part about losing the gig at AT&T is the fact that I’m starting over on the vacation scale. I’ve always been someone who works more for time off than for money, and I got very comfortable having 38 days a year off. Going back to 10 or 15 (and not having access to even THAT for another month) is making me a bit stir crazy.

I guess I’ve written enough now to test out how this BlogDesk things actually works when it comes to publishing entries. Here goes nothing….

Changes

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Today’s featured image is one of my desk at Digital Life one year ago today.  Ah, the innocence of rubber duckies, lightly-salted almonds, and not having a clue what was in store for me….

Or for Digital Life, for that matter.  I don’t think that, at least after the first year of my employment there, I ever made much of a secret of the fact that I thought upper management was taking a great idea at Digital Life and ruining it.  When I left Global Network Operations for the DL gig, I did so in large part because I thought I was getting in on the ground floor of a project that would actually make life better for a lot of people.  The buzzwords back then (2012?) were “Living In Place,” and I honestly believed that DL could change the way people live.

See, the big idea was home automation that could be monitored.  Monitored by oneself or by someone else.  So that, for instance, elderly parents could continue to live in their own home and their children or other designates could help to keep them safe.  Your 89-year-old mom leaves the iron turned on for 6 hours?  No problem – you can shut it off with your phone.  Fires, water leaks, gas leaks…all of those things that you want to know about would be detectable and actionable from anywhere in the world.  DL was literally almost called “Living in Place,” with the idea that you didn’t have to be at your home to run it.  You didn’t have to put the folks into assisted living.  You didn’t have to worry about your cats.  Nearly everything could be automated, and our platform was going to offer that automation and continually improve upon it.

Then the bigwigs got involved.  They saw that there was a very large portion of the American populace without home security systems.  They saw that ADT was making a truckload of money by playing to people’s fear.  And they decided that Digital Life was going offer some home automation, sure – but first and foremost, DL was going to be a home security system.  And not just ANY home security system, but one that was hopelessly understaffed, wildly overpriced, and pathetically devoid of anything approaching high quality or creativity.  Living in Place was secondary, as evidenced by the fact that new automation devices were not investigated or added to the list of supported devices.  Decent cameras.  Learning thermostats.  Third-party door locks.  Voice recognition modules.

You know….the kinds of things that Google is currently dominating the market with.

It was all about police, fire, and rescue.  Riding on the back of an antiquated system that was developed before digital switches.  Literally – software had to be developed to mimic physical switches so that cellular technology – which had damned near completely replaced landlines – would work.  And AT&T didn’t even take ownership of the software.  They farmed it out to a company that no one has ever heard of.

And for all of this mediocrity, they charged the customer significantly more than, say, ADT.

So I was among the first wave of DL employees to get the boot.  Got a text yesterday from the area manager of the call center that I supported.  He’s in the third wave.  Looking for a job now.  The call center will close on 4/28.  National sales will cease early this summer.  Digital Life, with all the promise it had, is or will be on the auction block.

And the sad part is that I doubt anyone will buy it.  That ship has sailed.  While AT&T dawdled and screwed around with home security, Google and a few others got serious about home automation and living in place.  And the little people – the middle managers and the front-line people who tried to make Digital Life a great thing, are now seen by other AT&T affiliates as (I quote the area manager) “bad meat.”  I experienced a bit of this myself, but thought maybe it was just me.  It wasn’t.  Those who are being laid off have virtually no chance of being picked up by other departments within AT&T.  A lot of long careers, like mine, are just going to end.

You can bet that the upper management people will not find themselves in that situation.

But back to my own life.  Just as I’d gotten used to getting up early, hitting the road, and beating the traffic in both directions, my hours got changed.  Rather than working from 7-3 with no lunch, I got put on a 9-6 shift.  Sure, I could make it 9-5 without a lunch; but honestly, what’s the point?  Beating the 6 o’clock traffic by leaving during the 5 o’clock traffic?  No difference.  My commute now – in both directions – sucks.

I’m also on the phone about 8 hours a day now.  The headset doesn’t come off.  I’m the secondary contact for one company and, as of yesterday, the primary for another.  I’m on the clock – and documenting it – just about every minute that I’m in the office.  There is no room for creativity and very little for curiosity.  A ticket is opened and my job is to close it as quickly and quietly as possible.

Yawn.  I’m still looking for/thinking about other things to do.

Had a crown fall out during the drive to work last week.  Naturally, right?  After my AT&T dental insurance is over and before my The X Company dental insurance kicks in.  And it was on Thursday morning, which meant that my dentist – who doesn’t work on Fridays – couldn’t see me until yesterday.  So I took an extra hour at lunch yesterday, went to said dentist, got the crown reattached, and paid $71 for the privilege.

Got back to the office and was handed my insurance card two hours later.  Figures, huh?

On the plus side, my dentist may call to have me fish some wiring in his house this weekend.  He recently got a new cable box, with HDMI only, and his house isn’t wired for it.   Guess what, Doc?  I make $150/hour for systems installation.

One good thing about the new hours, by the way, is that I can get decent walks in each morning.  Except for today, that is.  It’s raining pretty hard, and I’m just sitting in bed typing.  Or I was.  It’s 7:00 now, and I’ve got to hit the road pretty soon if I’m going to make it the 10 miles to the office by 9:00.

Laters, y’all!

Marching Forth

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So it’s been a month since I posted anything here.  Had to go back and read a few posts to see what’s happened.  In spite of the huge number of faithful followers, that’s really the reason I type into these things: so I can remind *myself* of what happens in my life.

The featured image for today, if I can ever get it edited enough to upload, is of the boys (Chamberlain and Joshua) being boys – a week after their first birthday.  I’d given them a couple of plastic tubes filled with catnip (or maybe Jenny gave them those), and they were having a blast with them.  I still stumble upon those toys occasionally, so I guess they still enjoy them today – a week past their third birthday.  It’s really hard to believe that it’s only been about two and a half years since they came home.  Seems like a lifetime ago.  I guess that, in many ways, it has been.

The job, while still failing to make me leap out of bed in eager anticipation, is becoming more of something that I do without actually despising it.  I’m closing 6-8 tickets a day, have actually started using the phone (instead of trying to do everything via email, which is incredibly difficult), and have settled into a quasi routine of getting up earlier (5:15), taking a short walk, forgoing any “rest time” in the morning, and hitting the road by 6:30.  That gets me to work at around 7:00 – traffic is just starting to ramp up at that time.  I’ve discovered that, for every 5 minutes that I dawdle, my commute time increases by 5 minutes.  So if I leave at 7:00, it takes an hour.

My 30-minute commute normally includes a stop at McD’s, where I get two biscuits and a cup of coffee.  One biscuit is eaten during the drive.  The other serves as my late-morning snack.  Lunch no longer occurs, though I’ll sometimes eat a pack of crackers at my desk in the afternoon.  By skipping lunch, I can leave the office between 3:00 and 3:30, making my drive home take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes – much much much faster than I’d be able to do it if I were to leave at 4:00 or 5:00.

There are still things that bug me about the gig.  Oddly, the work itself is not one of them.  I’ve gotten along pretty well with the clients that I’ve helped, and I’m learning some of the quirks and tricks of working in a cloud-first environment.  The kids working there, though….it’s jarring at times.  True story: nearly everyone has their own Nerf gun, which shoots little Nerf darts; and at any given time, there are darts whizzing around the office.  This activity includes not only the level 1 consultants like myself, but also the managers, level 2’s, project people, engineers…I think the only three people who DON’T indulge in this behavior are the CEO, the receptionist, and myself – though I’ve been known to get ticked off and simply throw an errant dart back at a shooter by hand.

Turns out, I’m still a pretty good dart thrower.

For people who are out of Nerf bullets, there is also a huge ball of blue rubber bands.  I don’t know where this came from, but it’s literally bigger than a soccer ball, bounces like a super ball, and weighs about 30 pounds.  I’ve dribbled it a few times, and it’s like playing basketball with a medicine ball.

Lots of “balls” in that paragraph.  Please keep your tittering to a minimum.

At any rate, the children in the office regularly take rubber bands from the ball and shoot THEM around the office when they’re out of Nerfies.  At the end of each day, I dutifully collect the 8 or 9 bands that have managed to collect on and around my desk and return them to a central location.  To their credit, the other people in the office appear to pick up those toys on a daily basis and put them back on the mother ball.  It has not shrunk since the day I started.

Regarding the desk (and the phone): THAT’S another problem that I’m working through.  Not since the mid-90’s have I been stuck at a desk all day.  Starting with my consulting gig at Compaid, I’ve always been able to combine working at my computer with other activities, from crawling under desks (or floors) to climbing ladders to running cable to walking around doing physical inventories.  Sitting for so long at my advanced age has led to a few, shall we say, delicate annoyances.  To be a tad more indelicate….hemorrhoids and testicular zits.

Oh sure.  You have your laughs.  Just discount my suffering.

While I can’t completely get away from sitting at my workstation, I did buy a new set of wireless headphones yesterday that will at least allow me to stand up when I’m on the phone.  The headset that the company provided has about a three-foot cord that doesn’t allow much movement.  Most of the people in the office have opted, as have I, to purchase their own gaming headsets and gain some mobility.  I do not in any way fault the company for this.  Good headsets aren’t cheap, and The X Company provides a lot of perks that, frankly, I am not used to seeing.  Free drinks.  Free snacks.  And, as I pointed out earlier,   a pretty loose working schedule.  Seriously, though, I’ve got probably 20 years on the next-oldest person in the office, and my body can’t deal with sitting down for 8-9 hours at a stretch every damned day.  I do take a couple of 10-minute walks around the outside of the building each day, but that doesn’t really undo the damage that’s being done to my lower anatomy.

I did indeed receive my severance check from AT&T in mid-February, which was nice.  As expected, I got raped in taxes, but it came in in time for me to pay my mortgage and car payment, which I couldn’t have done with my first paycheck from The X Company.  Now having received my second, I should be back on track to be able to pay all of the bills going forward – having also reworked my budget.

Not eating lunches is helping.

Also helping is the fact that Mary (and Princess) completed their move in on Saturday (Feb 25th), and I’ve received her first month’s rent.  The first few days were a bit hectic.  Mary is a weepy thing and there were scheduling problems with her movers, so she was not a joy to be around.  Adding to the stress was the fact that, due to our schedules, we really couldn’t let the cats run around freely.  Princess was ensconced in the second guestroom for a couple of days while Mary moved things in and out.  I locked my guys in my room on Tuesday, with a bit of shelving covering the cat hole in my door, so that Princess could run around the house and, if she chose to, sniff noses with my kids while Mary and I were both at work.

Got a text from Mary in mid-afternoon Tuesday asking me if I’d been home, because all of the cats were running around the house.  Turns out that my three had managed to work together long enough to break from their shackles and escape.  No bloodshed that we could find.  Josh and Chamberlain have been getting along fine with Princess (who is TINY.  6 pounds soaking wet), but Boo still has reservations, as I assumed she would.  Princess herself appears to be the instigator of most of the stress.  I know it’s all new for her, but she’s a weird little thing.  She’ll let me pet her and purr and be a happy cat for about 30 seconds.  Then she’ll start hissing and taking swipes at me.  She appears to do the same thing with the boys – though they could care less.  Boo just avoids her.  Truth be told, I think Princess is grandstanding a bit.  When she thinks that no human is looking, she’s perfectly fine hanging out with J or C; but as soon as she catches one of us in the corner of her eye, she hisses and runs away from whichever cat has been hanging out with her.

She’ll get over it eventually, I’m sure.

On the music scene: I’ve got a concert with the Gwinnett Symphony Wind Orchestra this afternoon.  Not quite as ambitious as the four we had last year – I think Dr. Wubbenhorst is beginning to realize that he’s not directing a bunch of A-listers at this point – but some pretty nice stuff.  While not incredibly musically satisfying for me, it does give me a chance to dust of the tuba chops, which is nice.  Next weekend, the GBB will be performing at Kennesaw State’s Brass Blast for the third or fourth time.  That’s going to be a concert comprised of movie themes, and it should be pretty good.  The GBB is also finalizing plans for a mini-tour in May, during which we’ll be presenting concerts at Jacksonville State (Alabama), Huntsville, AL, and Chattanooga; and then we’ll return to Roswell, GA, for a ticketed event that, I think, closes out the season.  The board is considering taking the band to the Gettysburg Brass Festival in 2018, which would be a blast.

Always assuming that I can get time off from work, of course.

I’d hoped to go to the woods with Brett this weekend or next, having completely forgotten about the concerts.  Maybe we can do it in two weeks instead.  I really need some woods time.

Having received the severance check, and in anticipation of getting my final bonus check from AT&T sometime this month, I’ve re-opened my negotiations with my landscaper buddy, and he and his crew have started mauling the growth in the lower forty.  He came out last week and decimated a row of privet that has been the bane of my existence since buying the house, and within the next few weeks they’re also going to take down all but two trees back there, clear out all the brush, take down the two trees by my chimney (and the hideous little bush that I’ve always hated…I can’t remember what it’s called), and, later in the year, help me get grass growing in the lower forty again.  It should transform the place and I’m looking forward to getting it done.  At some point, after the initial tree harvesting is done, I’ll also get Chamblee Fence back there to replace the existing, decrepit, fence.  Not going to be cheap, but it’s got to be done and should more than pay for itself in increased property value should I ever get nerve enough to put the house on the market and hit the road.

Oh!  I also got a thing from AT&T last week about a pension fund that I didn’t know I had.  So there’s an extra $100K available to me at some point.  Herb thinks I should roll it, and my 401, into a Roth.  I’m like, “Do you really think I’m going to live long enough to take advantage of that?”

I guess I’ve probably bored everyone enough for one morning, and I think I covered pretty much everything of substance for the last month, so I’ll wrap things up here with a shout-out to the one who gave me life.  Yesterday marked 7 years since Mom moved on, and it was the first March 4th since 2010 that I actually didn’t think about it until I saw Facebook posts from Dianne and Dad.  It’s not that I don’t miss her – I do think about her fairly often, particularly when I’m feeling lonely or frustrated and just want somebody to cry to – but I’m sure she’d be happy that I’m far enough along to – nearly – pass that anniversary without thinking about it.

One thing I’ll always wonder, though: What would she have thought about Trump?  You and I might have to discuss that at some point, Dad.

February

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That title just looks weird.  That’s really the way to spell February?  Who came up with that?

I just talked to my big sister on the phone for about 20 minutes and doing so made me very happy.  That’s a good thing, because the rest of my life isn’t doing so.  My commute SUCKS –  about an hour each way (10 miles) and I think I might gain 50 pounds before too long because I’m stopping at McDonald’s nearly every day for breakfast.  Don’t have time to eat anything at home if I’m going to continue to take my morning walks.  Lunch?  That’s at Chik-fil-A.  Yeah.  Daddy needs his sugar.

The job is still amazingly stupid, although I did take my first ticket today.  I had to ask about 4 people if it was okay for me to do so, but I finally got an OK from the boss – provided that I included another level 1, who’s been there a while, as an alternate.  Having seen this alternate work tickets for the last 10 days, I’m not entirely sure that including him in MY work is a good thing, but whatever.  I will say again: this ain’t my dream job.

Mary – and Princess – are set to move in in about three weeks. After I expressed some concern about Princess’s health a couple of days ago, Mary informed me that she’s taking the little one to the vet tomorrow, which is nice.  I really don’t want to deal with feline AIDS or anything after they come here.  I will admit that I’m looking forward to both of them coming in – for the money and because I like them.  It’ll be nice to have a woman’s touch around the place, though I think Mary has this idea that I have limitless funds for home improvements.  She’ll learn.

Have been listening to yet another book about somebody who through-hiked the Appalachian Trail, and I’m getting really antsy about doing that. If the job pushes me too far, don’t be surprised if I decide to do it.  Five or six months in the woods could change my life much more than a so-so paycheck….although I still haven’t gotten the severance check from AT&T that would make it possible.

Another friend of mine recently bought a few acres near Pickens, SC, and she’s planning to build a tiny cottage there and live out her life, basically, off the grid.  I must admit that I’m incredibly jealous – but she’s got 10 years on me and she can, apparently, afford to do it.  She keeps telling me that I can, too.  If only I didn’t lose half of my 401 just by asking for it.

So, for now, I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing.  Working at a boring job for a peanuts pay check and figuring out what to do next.  And hopefully going to Canada in late June.  One day at a time and all that.

 

Come on…

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No picture today….mainly because I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t stupid, given my mood.

I’ve started the new job.  It’s still not my dream.  Lots of things that suck about it.

And in politics…come on.  He’s an idiot.  I didn’t know the definition of kakistocracy before today, but it fits.

I’ve been patriotic for my entire life, but now I’m looking into moving to Canada.  This is just dumb.