Category Archives: Life

Respect…

Posted on by

I may have covered this ground before, but after 230+ posts over the last few years it’s getting a little more difficult to keep track of what’s been in and what’s been out. Even so, it’s something I’ve been considering quite alot lately. Maybe it’s something about the heat being out of hand down here in the summer (and most of the spring and fall), but I’ve come to have a grudging respect for all of you who who manage to work a full day and then spend the evening rushing hither and yon doing any of a million different things. I can’t fathom how you keep up with it. When I hit eject at 3:00, all I’m really interested in is getting home as expeditiously as possible… and once I get to the house, you’ll need an act of Congress or a court order to get me out of the house. But you guys, you’re out there shopping, catching a late dinner, ferrying the kids all over town, or a combination of those things and more. Seriously. Any secrets on how you do that?

By the time I get home, feed the pups, make a little dinner for myself, and do the usual stuff you need to do to keep a house up and running – cleaning, paying bills, fixing whatever odd or end happened to break this week, write up a blog post, answer a few emails, and chase the dogs around the back yard – it’s suddenly after 9:00 and I’m headed to bed so I can do it all again the next day. Once the alarm rings at 4:30, it’s off to the races. I guess I’m just having a real problem fathoming how anyone carves out time to do anything else.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in being a social butterfly – Thirsty Thursdays are a long way in the past – but I’m legitimately curious about how people manage to make it all come together. I mean is there a book out there that I missed? Maybe I’m a little worried that I am missing something and that there’s some way to squeeze a little more productivity out of the day. Then again, maybe it’s just perspective and I’m getting as much done as I should reasonably expect. It doesn’t feel that way though.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go do a sink full of dishes.

Like This!

Three day…

Posted on by

I throw alot of heat at the job around here, but I want to take this opportunity to mention one of the things that definitely doesn’t suck. In the world of the federal civilian, there are few perks more appreciated than the steady flow of paid holidays that loosely mark the coming and going of the seasons. These 10 days constitute the cornerstone of the sought after government employee benefits package. Coupled with the judicious application of accumulated annual leave, these days can be parlayed into a goodly stream of four and five day weekends and still leave two weeks left over to cover the end of December festivities and maybe even a week somewhere warm and tropical.

These extended weekends are even a perk for those who opt to stick around the office in that there is almost no one else around. It’s a great opportunity to actually play catch up on projects that have been lying untended in the corner of the cubicle, because there are almost no interruptions. I’m not extending the 4th of July holiday myself this year, so I’ll be in the office right up till the bitter end on Friday (if you consider 3PM the bitter end). After that, it’s off to enjoy the three day weekend… Which mostly means trying to sleep in until at least 7AM and then doing yard work until it gets too hot to see straight. Not exactly an epic vacation, but for now I’m not looking any gift horses in the mouth.

Like This!

Once upon a time…

Posted on by

Once upon a time, there was a bakery. The bakery was owned by a rich and powerful man who only visited the shop a few days each month. In his absence the shop was run by an expert baker who had many employees working under him. These employees, sales clerks, delivery drivers, pastry chefs, dish washers, and far away regional sales managers were all specialized in their respective work areas and brought unique skill sets to their jobs. Though not everyone loved it, the bakery had kept its doors open and survived past the two year mark when many start-up businesses fold. It had a small, but loyal following and was working hard to make incremental improvements to how things were done.

One day, the owner called the baker and told him that the next day there would be a truck of meat arriving and that they would be running the butcher shop next door to the bakery from now on too. “But sir,” says the baker, “we don’t have the equipment or the skills to operate a butcher shop. Perhaps,” he adds, “we should hire a butcher to run this new shop.” But the owner, clearly knowing best, told the baker, “don’t worry, just go in there and hack away at things until you figure it out. It’s not that hard to cut meat and besides, we’re not really worried about quality.” Shaking is head, the baker opens the shop the next morning. His staff does their best, but none of them have been trained at meat cutting and what could have become fine steaks were chopped beyond redemption and because the entire staff was consumed with opening the butcher shop, none of the bread, or pies, or doughnuts, were baked that day. As the staff focused on learning the skills of a butcher, their skills as bakers, and clerks, and delivery drivers slowly deteriorated and by the time they were even marginal butchers, their bakery had lost its customers to competing businesses that focused on their “bread and butter.”

The moral of our story is that in a world of specialists, it’s important, even critical, to use people where there skills and training are maximized. Where new or different skills are needed, those skill sets need to be developed through training or brought in from the outside. When you ask bakers to be butchers, don’t be surprised when things don’t work out as well as you’d hoped.

Like This!

Things I Learned from Dad…

Posted on by

1. No matter how prepared you think you are, the project you’re working on is going to require more than one trip to the hardware store.

2. Blue cheese dressing is really, really tasty.

3. I can say anything I want to about my family… but woe be unto the outsider who looks at one of them cross-eyed.

4. It’s important to know how to change your own motor oil.

5. When you’re family, distance doesn’t matter.

6. More often than not, the best thing you can do is stay home.

7. I’d rather spend a day with my animals than most people I know.

8. In the summertime, a whole tomato is a perfectly acceptable lunch option.

9. Sometimes the truth hurts, but hurt fades and truth remains.

10. The things you look back on most fondly are usually the moments that didn’t seem that extraordinary at the time.

Father’s Day is usually the time when we build a laundry list of superlatives about our male parental unit. That’s a temptation I’m going out of my way to resist. The relationship between fathers and sons far too complex to distill into generic terms like “best” or “greatest.” God knows there were some rough patches over the years and we both had some culpability there, but we’ve probably got a better and more healthy relationship now than we ever had when we were living under the same roof. Some sons go through their entire lives with a father who’s little more than a genetic donor. For up and down, good and bad, I’ve had a dad. That’s pretty much a jackpot.

Crossing over…

Posted on by

In most situations there is a magical line; a point to which you can run cursing and screaming, raising six kinds of hell, and still mostly get away with it. That’s particularly true if you manage to do whatever else you do very, very well. Of course there are times when the exact location of that line is a little hard to identify, so you’re left wondering how many more times you can poke at something before getting a swift and overwhelmingly negative response. Because I’ve inherited a mile-wide malcontent streak from my father, maybe I just tend to find myself in this position more often than other people who have learned to keep their heads down and mouths shut. Some people seem born to be rainmakers and princes of the universe. Me, I’m fairly sure I was born to follow those guys around tossing rocks at them and cracking jokes. I’m good with that.

Blogging has been a godsend for me. First, it gives me an outlet for writing, which aside from reading, is probably my first great love. Second, it gives me a fantastic venue to get things off my chest that would be wholly inappropriate in any other venue. The only real problem is that just like in the brick and mortar world, even here there are lines that I dare not cross. Sure, I’m happy to slide right up to them and maybe even nudge a few toes over it, but because it’s open to the public in the truest sense, I have to self moderate. Truth is, for every post that I publish here, there’s easily at least on I got halfway through before I realized there was no way I was going to say that out loud in front of God, a couple of dozen regular readers, and anyone else who happens to stumble on this site.

Most everyone who knows me gets that I’ve been having a love-hate relationship with the job for the better part of the last year. Lord knows there are enough lines here on the topic that it’s pretty obvious. But really, all of that just barely scratches the surface of things I’ve really like to say if given the opportunity. A lot of things don’t make the cut because I’m not willing to drag other people here by name to unbraid them. Other things, some of the best things, really, don’t make the cut for the simple reason that I’m not making my living writing a blog and do make a pretty good living at my actual job. I really wish it was different, because I have some great stories to tell and plenty of people I’d love to publicly call out (actually, that number is probably less than half a dozen who really deserve the works).

The point is, I’m working to find a balance between what to write and when to keep my pen to myself. I’ve made a career of finding that line in the real world (most of the time, anyway), but it doesn’t exactly translate one-to-one into electrons. Maybe it’s for the best that some things don’t get said… But damn won’t it be cathartic when I can cross that line, sit down, and say it all out loud.

– Posted via iPad.

Yearly…

Posted on by

This is usually the post where I’d admit spending the whole day thinking about Alexander and the other 30-somethings who moved the world. This year, I’ve made the realization that I just don’t have that kind of ambition any more. The most stressful thing I really want to deal with is making plans for my next trip and the only followers I’m interested in are Sir Winston and Lady Margaret. Somewhere along the line, I’ve lost the desire to take over the world and mostly now want it to just go bugger itself. I’m mostly ok with that. It only took me 32 years to figure that part out. The next 32 should be a cakewalk.

At your own risk…

Posted on by

It has recently been brought to my attention that some of the posts I make here or via social networking websites may not be appropriate for consumption by children or adults who are overly sensitive to bad language, drinking, or “suggestive” content. If you are offended by these things, let me start by saying that I have no plans to modify nor apologize for the content that I publish. I do work hard to make sure it stays at least passably interesting for those who choose to read along and that it reflects the actual events taking place in my life. That is to say that sometimes I’m going to post about going to bars or doing other things that some people feel are not appropriate to discuss in public. I absolutely respect your right to voice your opinion and I hope that you will consider it “noted.”

The internet is a big place and there is plenty of far more “offensive” content out there for the Googling. There is also much more “family friendly” content available as well if that’s more to your liking. In the future, it may be advantageous to use the “back” button to navigate away from content that you find disagreeable or use the “block” or “hide” function to block automatic updates from appearing. If my random thoughts are the most offensive things you happen across here on the interwebs, you should consider yourself fortunate. Happy surfing!

Fails, Epic and Otherwise…

Posted on by

This weekend has mostly been about failures. Originally I had planned a simple shot over the bow at Apple and AT&T for their seeming inability to figure out how to enable 3G connectivity for customers whose primary billing address is a post office box. While not catastrophic in scope, it just seems like the address I use for… ummm… everything else, including paying my AT&T Mobility bill every month, should be acceptable for other billing purposes for the same company. After 48 hours, a few convolutions, and eventually finding a workaround buried in an iPad forum, the issue was resolved without needing to change my billing address. If anyone else is having the same issue, ask me how it worked out and I’ll be happy to pass along the info. It mostly involves telling AT&T a little white lie. No one has any problems with that, right?

The next fail, is more the epic of the weekend. It involved a levee “failure” that ended up flooding the naval base where I work. I use failure in quotations because that’s a cop-out term that means you don’t know what happened to it (i.e. breach, overtop, etc). However, I digress. The result was a reported 4-5 feet of water inside the wire that effectively swamped the entire base and conflicting reports of how much, if any, water actually made it inside the building. Not to make light of the situation, of course, but I do wonder if anyone else has been struck by the irony of a landlocked naval base taking on enough water to basically put it out of commission. I’ve also noticed, without the irony, that the single best source of information about the situation there has been the base’s Facebook page, that has had regular official updates as well as innumerable unofficial observations contributed over the last day and a half, where other official and unofficial sources of information have been almost silent on the situation. I’m suddenly seeing more value added to Facebook than as a wonderfully engineered time waster and advertising venue. That it’s doing a better job of keeping the communication flowing says something less than good about our in-house infrastructure.

And finally, Winston came home from the kennel with a “hot spot” on his neck. Think weeping open sore (and accompanying nasty stench) and you’ll sort of get it. He’s on prescription antibiotics and a cortisone spray, but his neck looks especially nasty. Thankfully he doesn’t seem to be scratching it, so hopefully the meds will do their thing and he’ll be healed up in due course. Just one more of the many joys of pet ownership I suppose.

Back at it…

Posted on by

You may have noticed the distinct lack of anything going on here for the last week or so. That’s mainly because every waking minutes has been dedicated to making sure 150 odd people managed to get through a conference in Fort Worth with as little stupid happening as possible. It was mostly a success, but I do have a laundry list of things I would do differently if there is ever (God forbid) a next time. Now it’s a matter of tying up the loose ends, reviewing the end-of-event surveys, and making sure everyone is paid on time for their travel expenses. I’m glad the event is over, but will be even happier when the last details are safely put to bed.

While closing out the details is sometimes as bad as the event itself, my annoyance is somewhat moderated because the conference was the last major piece of work standing between me and five days of sitting on the beach. That definitely makes the pesky details seem a little easier to handle. Seven working days left and my biggest goal from here on out is to avoid all major problems and defer as much as possible until later in the month. I assure you, that sounds easier than it will prove to be in practice… but that’s certainly not going to stop me from trying. I can’t quite put things on autopilot, but I’m going to get as close as possible to it. In the meantime, it’s a serious rededication to relaxing at the house, playing with the pups, and catching up on a week’s worth of DVR’ed television.

Hardest part…

Posted on by

Sitting here at the tire place with nothing but time on my hands reminds me how much I despise sitting around just waiting for things to happen. Aside from the unhappy series of events that led me here this morning, the last 36 hours have mostly been about waiting; waiting for people to do things they said they would do a week ago; waiting for hundreds of pages of handouts to churn out of the printer; and for the other shoe to inevitably drop.

Now that I have plenty of things that need done, I’m waiting again this morning and my schedule is purely in the hands of other people once again. Of course sitting here watching the torrential rain gives me a chance to think about the 20 cases of paper products sitting in the back of the truck and wonder just how well the “watertight” bedcover will actually perform. Any results less good than “wow its really dry back here” will tend to ruin my next six days.

I’ve still got a laundry list of things I need to get done today and the clock is running. The later in the morning it gets, the faster it seems to run. I suppose I’ll feel a bit better when I get the dogs to the kennel this afternoon. In the meantime I need to get serious about making everything else ready to be on the road for a while. In order to even get to that point, though, they need to get these damned tires on the truck and get me back up and moving. Sitting here while time’s wasting is making me crazy.