Monthly Archives: May 2011

Taking down the tech…

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After finishing what was left of the packing in the garage, I grudgingly turned my attention this evening to the tech. The cinema screen monitor is safely tucked in its box. The printer is surrounded by packing peanuts. The wires are unstrung and zip-tied. The office is pretty much down to a desk and a laptop – which is the bare bones requirement to make it through the rest of the week. I don’t have it in me to disconnect the cable modem just yet, though. I’ll need the high speed right up to the bitter end. Some things a civilized person just shouldn’t be expected to live without. One more step down on the long road home. Now it’s down to the kitchen, the dog’s room (yes, they have their own room). Pull the sheets off the bed, disconnect the living room TV and it’s showtime.

I’ve got to admit that this whole moving things is harder than I remember it being. Nothing goes as quickly as I think it should. Something I need is always in another room or requires one more trip to pick up more boxes, or tape, or packing paper. Then again, the last time I did it, I was leaving a one bedroom apartment. Is it Monday yet? I’ll feel better when all this gear is on a truck and headed east.

Things I should be doing…

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There are something like a million and a half things I should be doing rather than sitting here tapping out an update. The nice men are coming with a big truck on Monday to cart away everything that I can’t jam in my own truck for the 900 mile drive east. The good news is the checklist is turning green at a nice pace. The bad news, of course, is that the big ticket items are still red or just barely amber. Not time to hit the panic button yet, but definitely time for some moderat spazzing out. I’d probably feel better if there was a little less stuff sitting around waiting to go into boxes. Of course the down side is that it’s the things I’m still using that are sitting around waiting to get put into boxes. I mean I still have to live here for another week, right? How does one resolve the OCD need to have everything nicely packed before noon on Sunday with the need to not spend the next five day sitting quietly with my hands folded waiting for Monday?

I’ve got some good leads on potential places to live, but have decided the better plan at the moment is to obsess needlessly about one thing at a time… and at the moment, that one thing is closing the loop on whatever I need to do to get outta Dodge on time.

Funny (not)…

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Anyone who has worked in a cubicle farm for any length of time knows that the “open” work concept is basically one step removed from hell. You can’t have a private conversation, unless you take you cell phone to the hallway or parking lot. Everything on your desk is considered community property. And worse yet are the people who think you need to talk to them or interact in some way simply because you happen to be in their line of site most of the day. The fact is that no, I don’t want to see the hilarious e-card some random person sent you because a) it’s not going to be actually funny; b) I don’t really care; c) I only tolerate you because I don’t want to get sued for saying something inappropriate.

It’s nothing personal, though. That’s how I feel about most things and people. What I’d really like you to do is bugger off so I can at least make a vain attempt at getting some of my work done. Baring that, I’d at least like to be able to sit quietly and try to identify the exact moment where my career plummeted off the rails.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Stuff…

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I’m not a horder. I’m a neat freak (thanks for passing on that family trait, mom). Knowing that I have a place for everything and everything is generally in its place begs the question, where did the boxes and boxes of stuff now filling every room in the house come from? Seriously. If there’s a flat surface in the house, it’s got boxes stacked on top of it. And the worst is yet to come. I still haven’t attached the kitchen in anything like a meaningful way. My closet and bathroom and still pretty solidly intact. And I haven’t even contemplated bringing down the vast grid that networks my TV to my computer to my phone. The cabling alone will probably needs its own box… with everything zip-tied and neatly labeled, of course, so I can reconstitute the network right out of the box as soon as I actually find a place to live. So yeah, food, bathroom, and network, those are the things I have deemed essential to life and those that will be the last to find their way into the growing mountain of boxes and crates (remember the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Arc?).

The last time I moved, I had enough “stuff” to nominally fill a one bedroom apartment. I think it’s safe to say that I could probably make life livable in several of those now. I know that at some point I’ve had to hand carry all of this stuff into the house, but I can’t for the life of me remember where most of it came from. I suppose knowing where it’s going is really the important part.

Saucer…

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The list of things about Memphis that I’ll miss isn’t all that long, but the Flying Saucer is somewhere near the top of it. I haven’t been in as much after my perennial drinking buddies took off for greener pastures, but walking in even rarely as i do, it’s like I’ve been here every weekend. Same corner booth, same smartass servers, same schoolgirl skirts. Good stuff. It’s as close to a “third place” as I’ve found in Memphis. And to Ashley and the rest of the beer goddesses, all I can say is thanks for the good times and for keeping the suds cold. If you’re ever looking to trade barbecue for steamed crab, look me up.

Getting short…

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There’s something very freeing about working on short time. As I’m reeding the calendar these days, I’ve got a grand total of 5 days when I’m actually going to be in the office out of the 14 that I’ll officially be carried on the roles of the Engineer Regiment. In school it was called senioritis. Here, it’s called short-timer’s syndrome and impacts everyone who is near retirement or who is on the way, but hasn’t completed out-processing. Symptoms are a generalized loosening of the tongue and a Give-a-Shit indicator that’s plummeting towards zero. It’s a few days in the middle of a career when the job you’re leaving doesn’t matter all that much because all you’re really worried about dealing with is the personal minutia that will get you out of town and the pressure of making a good first impression at the new job hasn’t spooled up yet. It’s like the peaceful calm at the eye of a hurricane… and I’d never realized it before, but it’s a hellofa fun place to be.

I’m going to enjoy my short timer status for the next few days, wrap up a few loose ends, and say my professional smell ya laters on my own timeline. If I happen to get any work of major import done between now and next Friday, you can be pretty sure that it’s purely a fortunate accident because I’m pretty much focused like a laser on the making as expeditious an exit as possible. For now, everything else is background noise.

Guesswork…

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We’ve had three successive meetings this week about the exact same topic – Which 10-12 people are “essential” to continue operating in an emergency even if that means they must work from a fallback location somewhere outside the commuting area. Also of topic: Are we calling things the correct name? – Crisis Action versus Crisis Management. Continuity of operations versus relocation. Telework versus alternate workplace – but what no one is talking about is how they intend to pay for any of it or where people might reasonably be expected to go. Which is all well and good until someone actually wants to put their plans, and I use that term loosely, into action.

What I’m guessing will happen at that point is 75% of people who you previously decided are essential are going to be launched to the four winds trying to find safe shelter for their families or themselves, trying to keep their home from being overrun by floodwater or looters, or will just plain decided they want to go somewhere else when the excrement intersects with the ventilator. Fact is that you can give people whatever title you want, but you can’t make them do much of anything once they’re outside the four walls. That’s one of the perks of being a civilian instead of a soldier.

Until you can actually start answering some of the hard questions, good luck in trying to nail things down how anything might actually works in a worst case scenario. What you’re doing is not planning, it’s charitably described as guesswork.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Behind the scenes…

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Some time around 10:00 PM CDT yesterday, the total number of views for 2011 climbed past 2479. There’s nothing particularly special about that number other than the fact that it is also the total number of views Get Off My Lawn had in all of 2010. With the fifth month of 2011 barely halfway through, I’m very pleased with what has the potential to be a doubling of views year-over-year. Of course that largely depends on my continuing to write and your continuing to have at least a passing interest in whatever happens to be on my mind when I sit down at the keyboard. I know that little “about” tab at the top of the page says “I’m not writing for an audience,” but if we can level with one another, no one puts something on the internet without at least hoping for an audience. If the metrics are any sign, it seems that I’ve found my niche. Fortunately, snark is a strong suit for me.

In fairness, this is more a post in tribute to you readers who check in every night  or a few times a week who keep those numbers up. Now that we have the worst of this job search fiasco behind us, I hope you’ll be entertained with the growing saga of how to find a house to rent when you have two larget but harmless dogs, the pain and agony of dragging a couple of thousand pounds of personal effects halfway across the country, and starting yet another job for which I have no actual education. It should also be interesting to lean if I still remember how to live on the east coast, fight may way along I-95 twice a day, and kick the pace of life up a couple of dozen notches. Trying to figure out how to pick up life where I left off five years ago should prove hours of entertainment for all of us.

With the move date closing in, I won’t promise to keep up the every night posting schedule, but what does make it to the screen will have a story worth telling.

Be nice or I’ll blog about you…

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Among my many faults is the desire for people in general to act with some semblance of urgency in getting things done. I’m not saying that everything should be a crisis, but if I say I’m going to call you later this afternoon or that I’ll send you some paperwork in a few hours, you can be damned skippy that it’s going to get done before the sun goes down on the day. So far in the housing search I have run into two real estate related professionals who apparently have enough business that they don’t need to call back even after spending a fair amount of initial time talking. I’m not asking for much here, just the the return call even if that’s to say you’re not interested in the work. Otherwise, there’s a fair chance I’m going to make a note of your name and blog about your bad business practices at some point in the future when I figure out what key words are going to drive that post to Google’s #1 landing page when someone goes looking for your business’ name. Consider this fair warning as the search continues.

General alarm…

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For the record, when the building is locked down and employees have been told to “shelter in place,” it’s not a good idea to send people out of the designated safe zones to track down people elsewhere in the building. We have these fancy things called telephones on our desks that are like search parties, but not as apt to end up getting you smashed on the head or eviscerated by flying debris. Also, your senior staff and supervisors all are issued cell phones/blackberries. Texting and email works pretty well on those even when you can’t get a call out. Plus, you’re paying like $10k a month for them so why not given them a workout?

I won’t even go into how we heard nothing from your vaunted security and operations staff. MIA. The whole time we were locked down. I have to admit that telling the director of the organization with which we share the building that we didn’t want to talk to them about what went well and what didn’t was a nice touch… Especially since we’re technically their tenant. I mean we certainly wouldn’t want to consider ways we could do things more effectively in the future. Way to make friends and influence people. The two senior people in the building continuing their urination contest during a period of crisis is sure to fill the workforce with a sense of confidence in their leaders. Nice work, Captain Queeg.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.