Monthly Archives: June 2014

Bleed a little longer…

Posted on by

Two days into the week, it looks like it’s going to be another exercise in triage – in trying to figure out which high priority item is going to bleed to death if I don’t tend to it immediately and which I can put off to let bleed a little longer. It’s a hell of a way to try to get things done and nearly impossible if any of what you’re trying to accomplish requires deep thought and analysis. Thank God nothing I deal with ever needs any of that. You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes while I wrote that last bit.

Due in part to to what feels like the never ending variations on a hiring freeze, our preternatural ability to reorganize ourselves every six months, decisions (or lack thereof) made by high management, and people moving on to better opportunities, we’re at least three hands shy of where we should be. That doesn’t sound like a lot except it roughly translates to 1/4 of the total number of people who should be working in my office. Add into that mix the normal and customary sick days, vacation days, and alternative work schedule days off, it means as often as not we’re operating half staffed or less. Some days it’s much, much less.

Whether echelons higher than reality want to accept or admit it, it creates an environment where even if good work were encouraged, it would be nearly impossible to achieve. I won’t speak for anyone other than myself, but just now it feels like any day that doesn’t end in taking water over the transom was a good one. Running flat out just to avoid sliding backwards is a lot of things, but it’s not a recipe for encouraging or enabling anyone to do their best work. It’s a recipe for struggling to stave off disaster just enough to get through the day. When that’s what passes for a win, we’re all in trouble.

For Official Use Only…

Posted on by

131186317From time to time I like to offer up helpful tips about life in the modern American workplace. I consider it kind of a public service. Hopefully it’s just one of the many topics here that people find useful or at least vaguely entertaining.

Tonight’s tip goes out to all those office drones who are walking around with a “For Official Use Only” credit card in their wallet. For most of us, you can count on one hand the number of times in a year (or in a career) when you’ll actually need to use that card. What you might not notice is how much that FOUO BigBank Mastercard looks nearly identical to the personal BigBank Mastercard that you’ve also been carrying around for years.

In fact, until you get an email from your boss wondering why there’s a $500 deposit charged on your official credit card, you probably won’t even notice that you’ve slipped the wrong one in your wallet and used it to book the hotel for your upcoming vacation. In case there’s any confusion, even I can’t manage to spin that one into the “official business” category.

I’m sure I’ll spend a big hunk of the next few days trying to get that straightened out and back onto my own card where I thought it was all along. Just when I think I’ve done every stupid thing a career bureaucrat can do, I run out and set the bar just a little bit higher for myself.

The more you know…

Life with dogs…

Posted on by

Aside from the occasional inconvenience, I like life with dogs. Fiercely loyal, always happy to see you, undemanding, and absolutely non-presumptuous, dogs never pretend to be anything other than what they are. To me that feels like a big part of their charm. Say what you want about dogs, but unlike most of the people you’ll run into, a dog will never disappoint you. Oh they’ll break your heart sure enough, but they’ll never disappoint you.

Now as much as I’m a fan of life with dogs, that doesn’t mean it’s without it’s occasional quirky unpleasantness. Early in their lives, I set the precedent of going out myself whenever they needed to go out. The result, five or six years later, is that even though I no longer need to go outside every hour or two, they’ll sit on the other side of the door and wait for me to come out before heading off the deck. While I’m writing this, they want to be outside but they’re making due by laying in front of the door watching the coming and going of the neighborhood. This, in turn, leads to its own issues.

Winston is mercifully happy just keeping an eye on what passes by. Maggie on the other hand sees it, barks at it, and wants to chase it. It doesn’t matter if its a neighbor, someone riding a bike, a car turning, a bird, a leaf blowing past, the flag catching the breeze, or absolutely nothing at all. She likes her presence to be known even by things that aren’t actually there. It’s well and good. She’s being a dog and I love her for that. Still, it would be nice if we could go more than 45 seconds without her letting out a howl that makes me jump out of my skin.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Using your outdoor voice. There’s a time and a place for the outdoor voice. When you’re sitting at your desk, in an office, with 8 other people in earshot is not the time to decide to communicate with one another by having a 20 minute conversation from one side of the room to the others. Life in cubicle hell is bad enough without trying to block out three simultaneous cross-room conversations. I realize it’s terribly inconvenient, but maybe get up, walk the dozen or so steps, and have your chat face to face instead of favoring us all with every detail at 103 decibels. As a rule, your colleagues shouldn’t be able to hear your conversation when they’ve got their ear buds turned up to ten with Van Halen’s classic guitar riffs beaming directly into their brain.

2. Illegal immigration. I’m all for having some kind of sensible immigration reform in this country. However, while Congress flails around with that issue, I’m more interested in seeing if we can stem the flow of people illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the US. Call me crazy, but I think the first step to reforming the immigration process in this country is to make it a hell of a lot harder to just wander across the border and a hell of a lot easier to send people back from whence they came if they do show up here illegally. I have no earthly idea why we’ve collectively decided that enforcing the laws on the books falls into the too hard to do category, but until we figure out a way to actually enforce the laws on the books, I have no idea why we’d bother passing any new ones that are just as likely to be ignored.

3. Iraq. The allies poured out a decade of blood and treasure to liberate, defend, equip, train, and support a government that looks like it will collapse at any moment. I dearly wish I could wake up in the morning to find a Patton or a MacArthur or a LeMay had risen from the dead to take command of CENTCOM. Instead, I fear I’ll wake up in the morning to find the mission failed while we were all busy wringing our hands.

Mexican standoff…

Posted on by

I might not be quite fanatical about lawn care, but it’s a pretty close run thing. In fact, “not fanatical” might just be a matter of degree, but compared to one of my two neighbors, I’m downright lax with my mowing and trimming routine. Normally that’s not much of a problem because the other neighbor lives somewhere on the other end of the mowing spectrum. Over there, they live by the once-a-month-is-good-enough standard. Sure, it’s bothersome, but I’m slowly learning to live with the things I can’t control. That’s not really the point, though.

The point, unfortunately, is that mine is now the neighborhood yard most in need of a good going over. While I’d very much like to take care of that problem, my John Deere is currently rated as out of service and unable to perform its primary mission. Loosely translated, after replacing the fuel filter, spark plug, and checking the fuel lines, I can’t keep the damned thing running for more than 45 seconds and even then it’s working at about 10% power. That means the yard is coming up on two weeks un-mowed and it’s starting to make me twitchy. The fact that it’s rained off and on every other hour for the last three days isn’t helping matters at all.

The fine people from the local Deere dealer are coming out on Friday to give it a diagnosis and attempt a repair on site. If that doesn’t go as planned, they’ll haul it away and bring it back up to operating standard at the shop. Of course if that happens, there’s no way of knowing when I’ll get my green machine back in service. That puts me in an awkward position of either a) accepting that the grass is going to be a foot tall or worse before I can do anything about it or b) ask the neighbor who actually takes meticulous care of his yard if I can borrow his tractor for an afternoon.

They’re both equally unappealing options. The former because it is an open admission of defeat and the latter because I’m completely uncomfortable borrowing a piece of equipment from the guy whose garage and workshop are cleaner than the kitchens in most commercial restaurants. It seems I’m in a Mexican standoff with myself. If things aren’t up and running on Friday, there’s not much chance of it ending well.

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers…

Posted on by

Because I’m perfectly comfortable being lazy and letting blog-worthy ideas come to me instead of chasing them down, I’m opting to respond to a question posted on my Facebook page in response to last night’s blog post. I’ll apologize in advance for the 24 hours delay in getting back to you, Jess, but I hope the fully formed response makes up for its less than timely delivery.

The question: What tools do you use to keep this list and how often do you go to it? And is that just the blog list? What about ideas for books and such? How do you keep track of everything when there is limited time to address any of it? Inquiring minds want to know.

The answer: Starting from the last part of your question, let me go on the record as saying dealing with limited time is the bane of my existence. I’m going to assume for purposes of discussion that I’m not alone in that sentiment. Between a day job, the blog, a couple of longer-term writing projects, and the other mandatory ephemera of life demanding attention, there is always more to do than there is time to do it. I try to keep this in check by an occasional ruthless culling of priorities. Every few months I physically make a list of everything I do as part of my day-to-day routine, rank order them, and then cut away as may at the bottom of the list as I can get away with eliminating.

This method has the unfortunate side effect of having sliced away most of what you might consider hobbies, unfortunately. It’s also led to a greater than reasonable volume of dog hair residing under furniture and in the photocarpets than I’m entirely comfortable with. Having, as I do, a fairly wide OCD streak, learning to accept that dust is unsightly but probably isn’t going to kill you has been a particularly difficult lesson to digest. I’m sure there are very good writers who find some other way of managing their time and getting it all done, but this is a method that works for me. Mostly. If you’re out there with kids or husbands or wives demanding attention, yeah, I’m not sure how you’ll make all that fit. Mercifully the only living creatures I’m responsible for are basically satisfied sleeping under the kitchen table while I do my thing.

Now when it comes to the meat of keeping track of ideas I try to keep it as simple as possible. I know there are a metric crapload of apps specifically designed for list making, but I tend to rely on something simple and understated – the Notes app that came installed on my phone. I chunk out the big ideas into either blog ideas or book ideas with one extra category left over specifically for issues I want to feature on Thursdays as part of What Annoys Jeff this Week. Since I usually have one or two other works in progress on hand at any given time, those generally have their own “note” as well so I can keep them segregated and avoid having a list so long as to make it functionally useless.

I refer to my lists fairly often, though some see more action than others. I try to add ideas as they come to me during the day or especially at night if I wake up with something that feels particularly important. As an aside, no matter what idea comes to you in the middle of the night, write it down so you can give it another look in the light of day. 3AM is a terrible time to make decisions about the virtue of half formed thoughts. Likewise, whipping out your phone in the middle of a deadly dull meeting to jot down the most unintentionally funny thought of the day is frowned upon. When I find myself in those circumstances, painfully separated from the electronic world, there’s no substitute for ye olde pen and paper (provided you transcribe the important parts over to your electronic filing system before your great ideas are lost to the shredder). I’ve lost more “good ideas” than I can imagine by simply assuring myself that I’m sure I’ll remember it later. The hard truth is there isn’t one chance in a hundred that you’re going to remember anything more than the fact that you had an idea that you neglected to write down.

The best and only advice I can give on any of this is to find a system that works for you and apply it mercilessly all day, every day. If you’re going to write five, six, seven times a week, it’s the only way I’ve come up with to even attempt to keep the pipeline full of new and semi-interesting ideas.

Topics, ideas, and factoids…

Posted on by

I keep a running list of topics, random ideas, and factoids I think might be useful when faced with a moment of indecision over what to blog about on any given night. Looking at the list it’s a pretty well rounded selection of stuff from work, news items, and the just plain ridiculous things you see on a day-to-day basis when you’re paying attention to your surroundings. After looking at this list tonight, all I can tell you is there was nothing there that moved me to type. After 15 minutes of looking at the list, that’s precisely all I accomplished.

So what’s coming to you tonight is once again, just a blog about how damned hard it is to blog on a regular basis. Most of the time if you sit down and go at it, the words will flow eventually. Occasionally, though, all you end up doing is sitting there wondering where the words are that should theoretically be on the page already. It happens. I’ve been blogging for six years and writing for a lot longer than that in one form or another, but I’m just starting to come to terms with the idea that sometimes the words just aren’t going to be there when you summon them. It’s apparently an occupational hazard.

The worst part, of course, is that it’s an occupational hazard I then get to inflict on you by way of rambling 248 word posts that don’t really say anything at all. You’re Welcome.

Sore loser?

Posted on by

The talking heads are making quite a deal about California Chrome’s co-owner this morning. I’m not entirely sure dismissing Steve Coburn as a sore loser tells the whole story, though. Taken on the merits, the guy does seem to make a pretty valid argument. Having fresh horses ready to step in at Belmont to act as spoilers isn’t something new for Triple Crown contenders. It explains a lot about why there hasn’t been a winner in 36 years.

Is it time for a rule change to limit the field at Pimlico and Belmont to only those horses who started at Churchill Downs? Maybe, maybe not. But sticking a camera in a guy’s face three minutes after the most likely contender for the crown in a decade misses the mark and then being surprised when he has an emotional response feels a little like a manufacture story.

All things considered, he probably handled it better than I would have – not that I’d dare to hold myself up as a exemplar of great sportsmanship. Waking up this morning, Coburn might or might not be a sore loser, but I suspect the sting of loss will be tempered somewhat by the millions in stud fees that will surely follow. If you can’t have the nice shiny trophy, a stack of cold, hard cash isn’t a bad consolation prize.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. History. Throw the date June 6th out there and ask the average man in the street what the significance is, I’m willing to bet the dollar in my pocket that maybe one in ten could tell you that it’s the anniversary of the day America and Great Britain launched the liberation of continental Europe. I won’t even give you odds on them knowing that much of Italy had already been liberated by the time the Normandy landings took place. I’m a history guy, so the nitnoid facts and trivia have always been important to me, but I weep that for so many the pinnacle of American achievement is Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the vastness of our shopping malls.

2. Vaccinations. I’m not a parent. Baring some kind of catastrophic misfire on the range, I never will be. I intellectually understand that when it comes to issues of the health and welfare of their child, a parent is very nearly sovereign. However, in a world where polio, measles, and a host of other diseases that we collectively obliterated in the last century start popping up again, I’m forced to draw at least a tentative connection between those illnesses reemerging and the small but vocal group of parents who have decided that vaccines are bad. It just strikes me that as bad as the adverse reaction to a vaccine can be, getting the actual disease it prevents is quite probably worse. We take our lives in our hands every morning when we get out of bed… I just wish more people would realize that a risk assessment needs to account for both the probably of something happening as well as the severity of the negative impact if that thing does happen. Then again that assumes people operate from a place of reason. Fat chance of that happening any time soon.

3. Bergdahl. What he did or did not do while in captivity is a matter of open dispute. That’s fine. However, I tend to agree with General McChrystal, who stated it most clearly: “We don’t leave Americans behind. That’s unequivocal.” SGT Bergdahl is an American soldier. He was held by a foreign power and now he’s not. If there is legitimate evidence he violated his oath or otherwise broke the law, then by all means, drag him before a court martial and try the case. We don’t leave Americans behind. Period. That should be a sacred trust between the government and the people both in and out of uniform. There’s plenty of room for honest and frank discussion, but I have a hard time arguing that getting an American citizen back is ever the wrong thing to do. If he’s guilty, lock him away and lose the key, but if he’s innocent, thank the young man for his service and let him get on with his life.

So you just graduated?

Posted on by

The whole world is open before you. Congratulations! I won’t mention that you’ve just been booted into the real world into the teeth of one of the worst job markets in living memory, or the fact that your degree doesn’t actual qualify you to work in your field, or that you’re about to enter a soul crushing, mind numbing grind that will rob you of your youth and keep up its blistering until you’ve dropped dead or saved enough money for retirement – whichever comes first. I won’t bring any of that up because your graduation is a time of celebration. It’s a chance to recognize a milestone achievement before you go off to make your way in the world.

Life after graduation doesn’t have to be doom, gloom, and the choice between living in your parent’s basement or your own studio apartment with an endless parade of ramen for dinner. Sure, you’re going to want you weekends to stretch from Wednesday afternoons until early Monday morning, but a few rounds of sitting through some mindless 8AM staff meeting will most likely break you of that desire. It’s just one of the machine’s many ways of breaking you down so it can building build you back up into a useful and productive cog.

Hope isn’t lost, though. The good news is that countless generations have preceded you. A few of their number were even thoughtful enough to write down a the tips and tricks that will help you navigate the professional world you’re about to enter. Now I could let you in on all these secrets for free, but that really defeats the lesson I’m trying to teach here – that sometimes free advice isn’t worth the electrons it was written with. Sometimes if you want the inside scoop, you’ve got to be willing to pay.

Let’s face it, at the low, low price of $2.99 for the ebook, knowing what you’re in for before it happens would be deal at twice the price. So, my newly graduated friend, I invite you to head on over to iTunes, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon to pull back the curtain and take your first steps into a broader world forewarned and forearmed. Nobody Told Me: The Cynic’s Guide for New Employees is the graduation present to yourself that you didn’t even know you needed.