When the cat’s away…

Posted on March 22, 2012 by jdtharp

When the cat’s away, your office will inevitably be overseen by a overly officious colleague intoxicated by their temporary power. They’re going to do things like try to change procedures that have been in place in your office for as long as you’ve been there and tell you to do things that are patently incorrect. To fill the white space in their day, this individual will flit to whatever meetings they can find and generally try to make a nuisance of themselves on what should be a nice quiet day for getting caught up on those things you never seem to get to when the boss is around. It’s like turning over the office to that annoying kid you remember from elementary school that always had their hand up, always knew the answer, and always volunteered to make copies or keep the list of “bad” students when the teacher had to step out of the room. Since it only lasts for a day or two, you’re basically in Purgatory… assuming that Purgatory is run by a mentally deficient thirteen year old, since that’s basically the level of leadership you’ll be getting.

My advice in this situation? Smile and nod whenever possible. Avoid eye contact and if necessary feign digestive distress to minimize the amount of time you must spend in conversation with your tormenter. Absolutely nothing good with come from your engaging this pseudo-leader. At best, you’ll end up having to explain to your actual boss why you called this individual as useless as tits on a bull in front of several of your other colleagues. At worst, your boss may realize the error of his ways and leave you in charge next time he’s going to be away, which makes the cure far worse than the actual disease.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

The rites of spring…

Posted on March 21, 2012 by jdtharp

It’s the time of year again. The neighborhood is full of whirring lawnmowers (except the house behind mine of course), the plants are blooming, and everyone seems more or less ready to get on with the warm weather. Being completely anal retentive, I’ve been planning for this moment for the last two months. The lawn equipment has had its oil changed, blades sharpened, and a supply of premium fuel laid on. Spring isn’t so much about enjoying nature as bringing it to heel after it’s months long free for all during the cold season.

Since it’s been nice enough to live with the windows open in the evening, I haven’t started fiddling with bringing the air conditioners back to life… that was until I started to “un-winterize” the a/c unit the cools the entire downstairs. When I wrapped things up for the winter, I was pretty confident that I had killed off the mold that had been growing inside the unit. Sadly, I was wrong. This wasn’t a new fight, of course. I had waged holy war on this mold almost since the day I moved in, kicked on the air, and wondered “what’s that God-awful smell?” But I thought I had finally struck on the right combination of vinegar, bleach, and random HVAC cleaning supplies from Home Depot to set things right. As I mentioned before, yeah, I was most definitely wrong.

To help set the stage, you need to know that this is the single biggest window-mounted air conditioner that I have every personally seen. It’s so large that it’s actually permanently bolted and caulked into the window. Sure, technically it’s a window unit, but it’s basically like having a central air condenser bolted directly to the window. Seriously. It’s big. If I had to bet, I’d guess it’s 300 pounds easy. And that’s really where the problem starts.

You see, every website on earth tells you that to properly clean mold out of a window air conditioner, the first thing to do is take the unit out of the window and remove the metal housing so you can access the interior spaces where the nastiness is building up. Since this beast is bolted to the house, something tells me these particular directions are not going to apply. Even if I could do any of that without demolishing the window itself, there’s not a chance that I could pull it off as a one man job, which brings us to my point… It’s time for yet another awkward conversation with the landlord about appliances and the need for regular preventative maintenance.

I foresee our talk going something like this:

Me: The air conditioner in the living room is full of mold.

Landlord: Did you clean it?

Me: *rolls eyes* Of course. The mold is inside the housing. It needs to be disassembled and cleaned properly.

Landlord: You can’t do that?

Me: No.

Landlord: That’s going to be expensive.

Me: Probably, but less expensive than me buying a new air conditioner for the living room and deducting it from next month’s rent.

Landlord: %$#*

Me: *smirk*

That conversation should be taking place any time now. It happens less and less often these days, but it’s one of those friendly reminders that living in someone else’s house still sucks.

Back in the day…

Posted on March 19, 2012 by jdtharp

The days are getting longer. The air is warming up. Another lifetime ago when I was a teacher, this was the time of year when I could start to smell summer vacation coming on. Sure, it was still two months off, but in my head those glorious two months of having absolutely nothing to do were right around the corner. My itch to get on with vacation was every bit as strong as any student’s might be. Even now, after I’ve spent three times longer being not a teacher than I spent in the classroom, I still feel the almost gravitational draw of summer vacation. When June rolls around and I’m still sitting in the office, it still comes as something of a shock to the system.

All things considered, summer is pretty much the only thing I miss about the teaching profession. Sure, a couple of the students turned out to be real people who I legitimately enjoy staing in touch with (Yes, you know who you are). But seriously, talk about a career path that someone was completely ill-suited for. Sheesh. What was I thinking? Still, summer vacation is a pretty big draw. The price you have to pay to get those two months off was just do damned high for me.

Looking out the window at a sun filled spring morning, makes me wish just for a minute that things were different… but then I remember the parents, administrators, standardized tests, certifications, low pay, general lack discipline, requirements to leave no child behind, and the unbridled hell that was “service learning” and I’m reasonably happy to be sitting here in my cube.

Hot sweaty death by PowerPoint…

Posted on March 19, 2012 by jdtharp

I’ve never really understood the need of management to convey information by jamming as many people as possible into a room and then throwing PowerPoint charts at them until they want to gouge out their own eyes. These events are even more near and dear to my heart when the information could have been just as easily sent to me by email so I could read it at a convenient time rather than rejiggering my calendar to free up three hours in the middle of the week – a task I accomplished by cancelling my one actual productive meeting this week.

As a rule, 120 slides constitute just a few too many in any presentation. That’s doubly true when 31 of those slides fall into the “org chart/wire diagram” category. 1) Nobody in the room can read the eight point font used to squeeze that graphic onto the slide and 2) After ten or twelve wire diagrams, they all look exactly the same. That’s just an observation from a guy sitting in the back rows, so take it for what it’s worth.

When I’m proclaimed King of the Bureaucrats, my first edict from on high will be a proclamation that no briefing will use more than five slides. Ever. If you can’t distill the essence of what you’re trying to convey into five or fewer slides or (gasp) talk about your idea without the visual aids, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll think you don’t know what you’re talking about and will be sorely tempted to send you to sleep with the fishes. Since I’m somewhere just above the janitorial staff on one of those 31 org charts we saw, I suppose everyone is safe for the time being.

But you’ve all been warned. Oh yes, you’ve all been warned.

Stock out…

Posted on March 17, 2012 by jdtharp

I’ve been reading alot of articles in the last 12 hours about how strange it is that the new iPad hasn’t appeared to sell out on launch day like the previous two models have. If the lines I saw yesterday were any indication, I don’t think it says anything at all about demand for the new device. I suspect, and it’s purely my conjecture without any actual supporting evidence, that it has less to do with demand and more to do with who’s at the helm of Apple, Inc.

Steve Jobs, hallowed be his name, was a master showman. He excelled at sales and building drama surrounding every new product. Constrained supply at launch was every bit as much a marketing tool as print and television ads. Tim Cook, by contrast, is a master logistician. His specialty is filling the supply chain so that the products get to the right place, in the right quantities, at the right time. He’s spent his career doing his best to avoid stock outs, as they tend to show a point of failure in the supply chain. I’m not saying that one approach is better or worse, because either way Apple, Inc is walking away with a giant bag of cash.

As a half-assed one time logistician myself, I can certainly understand and appreciate Cook’s approach. In the long run, I suspect having the product on shelves and available to customers on demand is a superior approach to sales than cranking up the hype machine to full tilt. You’re selling an iPad, a device that almost sells itself. You might have needed the hype for v1, but now that you’re miles ahead of the competition and gaining ground, it’s all about meeting demand.

Forgive me my blasphemy, Saint Steve.

First impressions…

Posted on March 16, 2012 by jdtharp

First impressions count for alot and I can say that right out of the box, the new iPad has made a good one. The new display is absolutely remarkable. Hands down the highest resolution screen I have in the house at the moment. It makes everything else look bad in comparison. It is slightly heavier and thicker than the iPad 2, but not so much that you’d notice unless you were holding them side by side. Changing apps is snappy and the processor seems to have more than enough horsepower for anything I’ve thrown at it yet. I’ll save you the laborious description of speed tests and just say that yes, it’s fast. Unfortunately, I still have to go to Baltimore before I can try it out using a LTE/4G signal (thanks, AT&T). From what I’ve seen so far, the place where the new iPad is really going to excel is in the screen. I mean it really is something to see.

As I’m restoring from my old iPad, one thing I do notice is that the 16GB size may not be sufficient if you’re someone with a ridiculously large music library or if you want to travel with more than one or two movies on your divice. With 1500 songs and 40 apps loaded, I’m down to just a touch over 6GB of memory left. If you’re going to stream video rather than store it on your iPad, 16BG appears to be sufficient, though. If you’re worried about memory, I’d say the extra $100 to bump to a 32GB unit is probably money well spent. For me, 16 should be more than enough as I’m making a concerted effort to do more and more OTA syncing with the cloud and storing fewer and fewer things myself.

As usual, build quality is solid and it feels natural in your hands. I don’t think anyone would expect anything less. Needless to say, I’m still playing. I think Apple has delivered a good solid upgrade to the iPad family. Is it a game changer? No. No it’s not. Is it still a damned impressive piece of electronic wizardry? Yes. Yes it is.

Recommendation: It’s probably not a “must have” upgrade from iPad 2, but the retina screen makes it a damned attractive machine for movies and reading. I heard one guy describing it as a “glowing piece of paper” and I guess that’s just about right. Even at close range, there is no pixillation. Nice job, Apple. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more, uh, research to do.

Just another launch day live blog

Posted on March 16, 2012 by jdtharp

4:37a – Well folks, here we go. Up and moving, getting caffeinated, and prepping to head over to Delaware for my tax free shopping fix. Starting to see some reports from the earlier time zones coming out and it sounds like it’s another winner. I’ll be uploading pics, general impressions, and plenty of snarky comments from the beautiful Christiana Mall Apple Store this morning. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy bringing it to you.

4:42a – I think it’s cute that Apple sent me an email letting me know that “The new iPad is here”. Wow. Thanks for the heads up on that. Maybe I’ll trundle on over to the Apple Store and check it out. You’d think by now they’d know me well enough not to have to send the marketing.

5:17a – It’s go time. Hope the real die hards kept me a place in line.

5:59a – DE State Police are running crowd control. Big, big crowd.

6:16a – DSP is randomly pulling people out of the crowd and putting them in line. No apparent organization or plan from Apple to manage people. Not good.

6:27a – 3-400 people in the main line.

6:30a – What the line looks like if you pre-ordered for personal pick up.

That’s right, who’s 4th in line. This guy right here.

7:30a – 12 people in the personal pick up line. All very civilized. The other line, not so much. Lots of Apple employees and troopers yelling at people. Good times.

7:37 – sadly, I just turned down an offer to be interviewed by the Wilmington local news station. Sorry to disappoint.

7:49a – This crowd is stooooopid. Lines completely out of sight now. Lucky to be in line with some fun guys. Making this enjoyable.

7:59a – in my hand and out the door.

8:02a – Here are a few shots on the way out. Stay tuned for the review.

What annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on March 15, 2012 by jdtharp

Honestly? Not much. The Tundra is back in the driveway, I was in and out of the MVA in about five minutes to order replacement tags (the front plate folded like an accordion in the recent unpleasantness), and I’m ticking off the minutes until it’s time to crawl out of bed and line up for a tasty new piece of electronic kit. The long weekend is underway.

Getting back in the truck is honestly more satisfying than I thought it was going to be. It feels like a good solid step back in the direction of normal. Getting use to the sheer mass of that vehicle again is going to take a bit of time. That’s what you call a good problem. I’m so happy not to be looking up at everything else on the road I can hardly stand myself.

So yeah, what annoys Jeff this week? Not much at all. It’s one of those rare moments when I’m reminded just how lucky I am. Don’t get use to it.

Time keeps on slippin’…

Posted on March 15, 2012 by jdtharp

I got to spend an entire day this week in class. You can imagine my unrestrained joy at being given this “opportunity.” Still, there’s an old saying that goes something like “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.” Of course sometimes life happens and even the most obsessive of us can arrive a few minutes late to our destination. On any given day when how long it takes you to get back from lunch doesn’t really matter to anyone, extending your meal a bit doesn’t hurt at all. Since this was one of those moments that we were all in it together and nothing was going to happen until all the butts were back in all the seats, what possessed one car full of you to decide it was a good day to take a two hour lunch? I mean, I don’t like this class any better than you do, but somehow I managed to wander back it at something approximating on time, even if that was mostly driven by the desire to get things over with as soon as possible. You tools, on the other hand, seemed dead set on dragging a long day out even further.

I thought the lip smacking and crinkling of paper wrappers when you got back was an exceptionally well planned touch, by the way. I mean how on earth could you have spent two hours out wandering around and not managed to spend at least some of that time jamming half a sandwich into the filthy stinking sewer that you call a mouth? Your incompetence, lack of interest in anything other than yourself, and dare I say apathy, has reset the bar for the rest of us. Look, I may be an apathetic fuck, but I somehow manage not to let my own proclivities bleed over and cause problems for other people. All I’d ask is for the same courtesy of not screwing the rest of us because you’re having a bad day or can’t be bothered to do two things simultaneously.

The crowning irony of our little drama today was that we were all part of a new mandatory-for-the-universe class on improving professional conduct in the workplace. Maybe this was part of the class – A living example of how not to do things.

Bright points in an otherwise craptastic week…

Posted on March 14, 2012 by jdtharp

This week has sucked. There’s no nicer way to say it. I can think of plenty of more colorful ways to put it, but I won’t since you know we run a nice family establishment here. Right. The thing about craptastic weeks is that the smallest bit of good news can pretty much make your day. I mean when they bar is basically set at ground level, you even the most trivial of things can bring a momentary smile to your face. Personally, I’ll take all the small mercies that come my way.

I heard a rumor that the Tundra should actually be ready to come home tomorrow. That’s bit of good news #1. After three “should be finished” dates have come and gone, though, you won’t find this guy holding his breath. Strange as it sounds, getting back in the truck feels like at least something of a step back towards normal. I like normal. Bit of good news #2, showed up in my inbox just a few minutes ago. As you can see from the picture I conveniently attached, it’s the “Your iPad is ready to be picked up on Friday” message that I’ve been eagerly awaiting.

If anyone is interest, curious, or just plain bored on Friday morning, I’ll be doing the usual launch day live blogging posts. Doors open at 8AM, so I’m looking at a 6:00 line up time unless I start getting indications that lines are going to be longer than the usual Apple launch day lines. Unless something ridiculous happens, which almost seems guaranteed at this point, I should have my shiny new Precious by around 10:00. I haven’t done a launch day event at this location before, so it should be an adventure for everyone. If you find yourself in Delaware and wandering around aimlessly on Friday morning, feel free to stop by Christiana Mall with coffee, danish, or a board game.

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Monthly Archives: March 2012