Author Archives: jdtharp

Did you hear that?

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I really appreciated your call while I was sitting down to dinner. Yes I actually knew the tornado sirens were going off. I heard them too. It’s a county-wide alert system and we all live in the same county. Plus, you know, that storm system stretched most of the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, so we sort of saw it coming. Since I’m your supervisor and not your mother, it really isn’t necessary for me to know that you and junior are safely tucked in your bathtub under your mattress.

Chalk that up to one of the million and a half things I’m not going to miss about being a supervisor.

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.

Mentor…

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I had lunch this afternoon with the guy who I consider my first professional mentor. While there was plenty of talk about what circumstances brought me back to Maryland, but what I really noticed more than anything is how much retirement seems to be agreeing with him. He actually looked rested and not at rumpled in the way that you do when your clothes have spent too much time flying around in the belly of a regional jet. I’ve got to confess that I sort of had him pegged as one of the ones that would come right back as a contractor. Though he always talked about all the things he wanted to do when he hit eject for the last time, I didn’t think he’d actually go that route. Apparently I was mistaken.

With yet another government shutdown/default starting to gin up on the horizon seeing him in actual retirement mode really got me thinking about what, if anything, retirement might look like in Spring 2035. Looking off into that distance from Summer 2011, let’s just go with things don’t look particularly promising. With that sightly depressing thought in mind, I can still safely say that damn it was good to at least see someone from the old gang.

Bon temps…

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Not long ago, I was thoroughly impressed with myself because I thought I was actually going to get the go ahead to execute a contract with an estimated value of $1M. Today, I spent a good part of the morning discussing a couple of projects that had several single budget lines of in excess of $100B. Thinking in terms of numbers that large takes a different kind of skill set. It’s definitely not balancing your average checkbook.

As fun as it is to play master of the universe with this kind of money, it occurred to me that this is exactly the kind of spending that managed to get us into a $14T national debt. Sure, it’s going for neat stuff, but I think in the back of everyone’s mind they question when the high times are going to stop. Sooner or later we all know that music is going to stop and everyone’s going to be looking for a chair when it does. In the meantime, let the good times roll.

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.

Hiatus…

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After a long stretch of blogging five or six nights a week, I’m starting to understand why television shows go on hiatus between seasons. No matter how crack a writing staff you’ve got, getting anywhere in the vicinity of a consistently good product is tough. It’s tough for a staff of writers and it’s tough when all you’re looking for is a couple of hundred words a day. The only reason I haven’t declared a summer hiatus here is that I’m notoriously bad at getting back to things once I walk away from them. Once I stop doing this on a regular basis, I’ll find something else that needs ridiculous amounts of attention and then go hellbent for leather on it until something new and shiny comes along to be interested in. It’s not exactly that I suffer from a short attention span as much as it is I suffer from a long attention span punctuated by periods of extreme indifference and then substantive redirection of attention.

Maybe I’ll scale it back for a bit and see if an easier schedule is more to my liking. Then again, it’s possible that the ego hit of seeing the daily hit count drop off might drive me right back to daily posting. It’s a battle royal between summer laziness and shameless self promotion. Should be an interesting match.

Eyes…

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I’ve been wearing glasses since 7th grade. It’s been so long that I don’t even think of them as equipment so much as they are just another appendage like arms and legs. They’re like eyes on the outside of your head. On second thought, scratch that last part. The imagery there is a little off-putting.

Up until Friday, I thought my corrected vision was just fine. I legitimately hadn’t noticed anything change and have even commented that I didn’t think I needed anything aside from a new set of frames. Then of course there’s the moment of truth when the doc gave me the side by side comparison of the glasses I’m wearing now to my new prescription. Ouch. That would be a definite fail for the Mk 1 Eyeball, even with its upgraded external hardware kit.

Admittedly, it’s been two years since my last exam, so I shouldn’t be surprised that things had changed a bit. I just hate how they sneak up on you like that. It’s a bit like being the frog who just noticed his pot of water is getting uncomfortably warm. I’ve got a bad feeling it’s like the lady said… getting old ain’t for sissies.

Data call…

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When I ask for some information and mention that it’s for the boss, the appropriate response is not to then get up, walk down the hall, get water for your plants, talk to your best girl friend on the phone for 20 minutes, eat a granola bar and then get around to sending me the info an hour later. Look, I know I’m new in town, but I didn’t get here on the turnip truck. Mkay? Thanks.

I seriously wonder sometimes if it’s my standards that are unrealistically high or if the rest of the world really is just that stupid, ignorant, or just gold fashioned oblivious to everything going on around them.

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

Air…

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You can imagine my surprise when I walked upstairs a few minutes ago and found the temperature hovering somewhere in the low 80s. The A/C was on after all and even though it’s a smallish window unit, it usually doesn’t have any problem cooling the bedroom and office to something approaching a livable temperature. That is, of course, when the condenser coil isn’t frozen solid. Before I rush to judgement and start raising three kinds of hell about it, I’m going to let the thing thaw out and then run some tests to see if it was just me letting it run too long in high humidity we’ve had this week or if it’s something wrong with the unit itself like a freon leak.

Given the upstairs issue, I thought it would be a good time to check the main wall unit in the living room. I almost wish I could have avoided that experience. After dropping the front cover, I have suspicions that this was probably the first time the cover has ever been off the unit. And there’s not one chance in a 1000 that the filter has ever been so much as brushed off, let alone actually cleaned. Any guesses how I spent the last hour of my Sunday night?

I don’t know why something like that would surprise me about this place any more. If they can’t figure out the big maintenance issues, I don’t suppose there’s a prayer of them paying attention to the details. Admittedly, most of my experience with renting has been in apartment communities, but I just don’t remember those having such problematic upkeep and management issues. I hate the thought of moving all tis crap again, but unless there are some radical changes in the way things are done around here, I’ll be looking for new digs in about 10 months.

On the up side, I just sent the owner a $225 bill for having the Expedition towed. That at least gave me a warm fuzzy.

Customer service?

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So, let me get this straight. I call on Monday to set up a vehicle inspection on Saturday. You make the appointment. No problems, see you
Saturday morning. Fantastic. One step closer to closing the chapter in my book called “moving fiasco”. It’s not until Friday afternoon that you decide “um… Well, uh, we don’t actually do inspections on the weekend because those guys have seniority and, uh, want the weekends off.” seriously? WTF? even if that is the actual reason, what on earth would possess you to say that to a paying customer who was going to come in and spend $200-300? Thanks for the call and whatnot. I’m still going to spend the money, but you can be damned sure I’ll be spending it somewhere else.

Nothing…

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I’ve been in place now for just about a month. It’s fair to say that in that time, I’ve done nothing. In fairness, it took two weeks for the IT guys to get me set up on the network and then figure out that I needed access to a laundry list of systems. But after that, it’s been pretty much nothing. A few rounds of “hey check these numbers” or “go sit with so-and-so while he does something,” but as far as getting a sense of what I’m actually supposed to be doing in this new job? Yeah. Not so much. I know that sooner or later that’s going to change and they’ll want me to be at least marginally productive, but until then, have you ever tried to fill eight hours a day and 40 hours a week with nothing productive? Let’s just say that I’m reading a lot more news these days. If I can’t be productive, I should at least be well informed.

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.

Tweaked…

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On the surface the range of issues I deal with in this new job is deceptively similar to the position I ejected from in Tennessee. To be sure, there’s plenty of org chart shuffling, PowerPoints to update, and a metric ton of reports of one stripe or another that need to be completed. The difference, though, is that even when it’s minute, you can still see progressing being made on these projects. There’s plenty of infighting and office politics, but on the whole, projects are handed off between offices more or less seamlessly. There’s even collaboration between different departments… and it’s actually encouraged. It’s like someone has taken reality and tweaked it just a bit. Or maybe more like they’ve smacked it in the side of the head with a 2×4.

My perception is obviously shaded a bit by the recent past, but I can legitimately say that this has been the first time in a long stretch when I didn’t wake up in the morning looking for a reason to take a sick day. That long stretch of early morning parking lot pep talks is, for now, a thing of the past. Does that mean things couldn’t turn into a poop sandwich tomorrow? Not so much. For now, I’ll just appreciate it for what it is.