Today is my last work day of the year, and appropriately, I’ll spend it on several planes traveling home. Here’s my stats for the year.
Days (working) on the road: 186
Days (Holiday) on the road: 15
Miles Flown: 100,000’ish
Flights: 110’ish
Sick: Twice (both while on the road)
Forgetting name of grandchild: Once
Forgetting own name: Once
Where I’ve been: MN, NY, TX, IL, IH, HI, MO, OR, MA, CA, Japan
Here’s a link for a location I visited from each location that was interesting to me.
MN: http://www.mallofamerica.com/
NY: http://www.sensuousbean.com/ The owners were more interesting than the coffee.
TX: http://www.gruenetexas.com/ Who knew so many shops could sell the exact same product?
IL: I’m drawing a blank here.
HI: http://www.honolulu.gov/parks/facility/hanaumabay/welcome.htm Park opens at 6AM. Suck it up and do it at 6. Take your own flippers if you go early. Rental units no open until 7:30AM.
MO: http://www.gatewayarch.com/Arch/index.aspx# The arch was closed the day I visited. I’m not kidding either. CLOSED.
OR: http://www.ci.garibaldi.or.us/ Can you see me waving?
WA: http://www.fishintimeguides.com/ I broke the curse.
MA: http://www.essexseafood.com/ Good, local dining
CA: http://www.beachboardwalk.com/ (shh…I kept a ring from the carousel
Japan: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/a231600 Who knew that some bars are open until 5AM?
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Revisiting preivous post
This week I’m working on site with the customers I mentioned in my April 7th post. Fade eight months and here we are, the full disservice of the “bulk training” forced upon my customers by their own management now in full blossom.
The customer doesn’t have clue how to use the equipment his company bought from my company. This is not good. The customer’s internal customers are upset that the tool isn’t performing the way they think it should. This is bad. The customer won’t admit that he doesn’t remember anything I taught him. This is very bad. The customer requested that I come here to work with him and now he took a day off. I’m sitting here in a cubicle doing absolutely nothing productive to assist this customer and help dig him out of the hole he’s in. This is very, very bad. I’m drinking coffee, working on reports, and generally being unproductive. The clock is ticking away and the customer is paying serious cash for me to sit here and do nothing.
My other customers are rather annoyed that I’m not working with them at this exact moment, and I’m already booking my travel for January. I can’t believe I’m sitting here…doing nothing....
The customer doesn’t have clue how to use the equipment his company bought from my company. This is not good. The customer’s internal customers are upset that the tool isn’t performing the way they think it should. This is bad. The customer won’t admit that he doesn’t remember anything I taught him. This is very bad. The customer requested that I come here to work with him and now he took a day off. I’m sitting here in a cubicle doing absolutely nothing productive to assist this customer and help dig him out of the hole he’s in. This is very, very bad. I’m drinking coffee, working on reports, and generally being unproductive. The clock is ticking away and the customer is paying serious cash for me to sit here and do nothing.
My other customers are rather annoyed that I’m not working with them at this exact moment, and I’m already booking my travel for January. I can’t believe I’m sitting here…doing nothing....
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Flush
I’m in NYC this weekend with Grace and our friends. It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting all alone in my hotel room trying to take an economics final exam while they’re off in China town have a good time without me.
Am I doing the right thing in going back to school? Sitting in a hotel room on a “holiday” weekend and doing homework each morning and now a final this morning make me wonder what return I’ll actually see on this investment of our time.
I’ve sat here for three hours and I’ve been unable to access my final on-line. An entire morning flushed down the toilet.
Am I doing the right thing in going back to school? Sitting in a hotel room on a “holiday” weekend and doing homework each morning and now a final this morning make me wonder what return I’ll actually see on this investment of our time.
I’ve sat here for three hours and I’ve been unable to access my final on-line. An entire morning flushed down the toilet.
Monday, December 3, 2007
No time to smell the roses
I have a live customer demo this week on a toolset that doesn’t work.
I have a final this week.
I have a trip to NY this week.
I have a boss who wants me to cancel my Christmas vacation this week to compensate for him dumping too much work on me.
I have a final this week.
I have a trip to NY this week.
I have a boss who wants me to cancel my Christmas vacation this week to compensate for him dumping too much work on me.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Stenglish
I have just completed my 165th on the road. I am officially now holding on to the rim of the toilet bowl to avoid being flushed during the home stretch. Vacation is just a few blessed weeks away, I just need to hang on just a little bit more and I can make it into a new year.
I have a new co-worker! If my group was previously dysfunctional, now it’s much more so. I now work with:
1-Japanese
1-Chinese
1-British
1-Vietnamese
1-Amerian
That leaves us trying to communicate with each other while mixing, Jenglish, Chinglish, Vienglish, Benglish and Stenglish.
It’s generally more of a game of trying to figure out what someone means than exactly what they’re saying.
I have a new co-worker! If my group was previously dysfunctional, now it’s much more so. I now work with:
1-Japanese
1-Chinese
1-British
1-Vietnamese
1-Amerian
That leaves us trying to communicate with each other while mixing, Jenglish, Chinglish, Vienglish, Benglish and Stenglish.
It’s generally more of a game of trying to figure out what someone means than exactly what they’re saying.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Retrouvaille
Grace and I are involved in Retrouvaille. It’s a group that helps troubled marriages. We attended a few years ago when we were ready to toss in the towel on our marriage. Retrouvaille isn’t a program for happy marriages. It’s a program for marriages that are in crisis. If you seeking a weekend full of light sharing, cappuccino’s and a brow wax, go elsewhere. If your seeking help for a marriage that is about to splinter, go to a Retrouvaille weekend.
Last weekend, after months (years?) of preparation, we attended a weekend as a presenting couple. The bona-fides for weekend presenting couples is that we have a story to share and the willingness to honestly share it. We do have a story and we agreed to present it. To be an effective presenting couple you must be willing to take the scalpel in hand, carve yourself open, and lay your guts out for everyone to see them.
We’ve spent several months writing out our material in preparation for this weekend. All our material was approved after numerous rewrites, and fights, on our part.
I thought preparing our story would be the hard and it was. We dug into the troubled areas of our marriage that we had opted to kick under the rug and not deal with. Grace and I fought like a dog and cat in a gunny sack for the past few months as we wrote our material.
I thought presenting our story would be tough. It was tougher than I dreamed it would be. It was hard to talk about why we first went to Retrouvaille.
What I wasn’t remotely prepared for was the amount of pain the couples attending the weekend would project on us. I wasn’t remotely prepared to cope with the amount of pain in the room overall.
Visit them at: http://www.retrouvaille.org/
Last weekend, after months (years?) of preparation, we attended a weekend as a presenting couple. The bona-fides for weekend presenting couples is that we have a story to share and the willingness to honestly share it. We do have a story and we agreed to present it. To be an effective presenting couple you must be willing to take the scalpel in hand, carve yourself open, and lay your guts out for everyone to see them.
We’ve spent several months writing out our material in preparation for this weekend. All our material was approved after numerous rewrites, and fights, on our part.
I thought preparing our story would be the hard and it was. We dug into the troubled areas of our marriage that we had opted to kick under the rug and not deal with. Grace and I fought like a dog and cat in a gunny sack for the past few months as we wrote our material.
I thought presenting our story would be tough. It was tougher than I dreamed it would be. It was hard to talk about why we first went to Retrouvaille.
What I wasn’t remotely prepared for was the amount of pain the couples attending the weekend would project on us. I wasn’t remotely prepared to cope with the amount of pain in the room overall.
Visit them at: http://www.retrouvaille.org/
Monday, October 8, 2007
Rain rain go away
I can’t believe that fall is here. This year, I find it depressing. There’s been so much rain, so early here in the PNW. I’m mentally conditioned to expect rain from around Halloween on, but not at the beginning of October. Sigh. I find myself wishing for somewhere dry and warm.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Dance to the music
I returned to college last month. It’s funny how quickly I forgot how all consuming night school can be. I already have one degree that I earned at night school and now I’m working on my second. Perhaps I should have picked a business degree the first time around and saved myself a little effort.
I supposed it could be worse, I might have actually completed the communications degree I started working towards twenty some years ago, and today I would then be saying….”Would you like fries with that?”
I’m spending much of my time at work surrounded by customers, many of whom have earned their PhD’s. The more I work with my customers the more I find myself confused about the exact placement of the divining line between the mentally retarded and the intellectually gifted.
I made a technical presentation to a group of ten or twelve PhD’s a few weeks back. knew it was going to be a game of my “dancing” to the music they played and trying not to look too stupid and say “I don’t know” more than thirty times in a 60 second period.
I found a few bobbing and weaving tactices that helped me out:
1) Low whistle, “wow, Bob, good question. What do you guys think of Bob’s question? Is it a good question?”
2) I give a light laugh…”I love teaching PhD classes, the questions are just SOOOO good!”
3) “Never heard that one before, why do you ask?”
4) ”I think we’re going to cover that in our next section. If we don’t cover it to your satisfaction in that section, we can come back and discuss it again. “
5) Saying nothing at all for a period of five to ten seconds. Someone else in the room will answer the question for me.
Mind you, I’m not an intellectual lightweight, but I’ve found that I’m doomed in these kinds of presentations. There are always, always, at least two people who don’t get along with each other, or get along with society as a whole, in these presentations. As soon a Dr. A asks any question, Dr. B must ask a question that’s even more difficult than the question Dr. A asked. When I’m able to answer the questions, someone, either Dr. A or Dr. B, will start adding unknown variables.
“So I know that you said that the electrons will do “this and that” when I do” this and that”, but what will the electrons do when I’m drinking a snifter of twenty year old single malt and tap dancing to Bob Dylan’s “the times they are a changing” while I still do “this and that?”
With flop sweat beading on my brow, I say, "When you’re doing “this and that” and the electrons are doing “this and that” and you add in the variables of twenty year aged single malt, Bob Dylan singing “the times they are a changing” and tap dancing you’ll find that the electrons now have pulled out lawn chairs are actively smoking cigars while listening to Bob croon." I’m feeling giddy with the response I was able to pull out, until Dr. B wades into the conversation.
Dr. B will now say, “It’s well documented and very well understood by all classically educated minds that by virtue of Wien’s law of displacement that electrons don’t respond to the single malt whiskey stimulus, they instead respond to a blended whiskey stimuli. Any electron that I’ve observed during my 40 plus years of electron observation experience does not, in fact, like Bob Dylan! My observation is that the Blackbody Radiation effect causes the electrons to appear to respond to Bob Dylan, but the Blackbody Radiation effect shows us that while the electrons may appear to respond to Bob Dylan, they are in fact listening to Tone Loc on little portable MP3 players.”
This is why it’s just easier to say “Good question, I think we’re covering popular music and the Blackbody radiation effect in our next chapter, let’s move on for the moment.”
I supposed it could be worse, I might have actually completed the communications degree I started working towards twenty some years ago, and today I would then be saying….”Would you like fries with that?”
I’m spending much of my time at work surrounded by customers, many of whom have earned their PhD’s. The more I work with my customers the more I find myself confused about the exact placement of the divining line between the mentally retarded and the intellectually gifted.
I made a technical presentation to a group of ten or twelve PhD’s a few weeks back. knew it was going to be a game of my “dancing” to the music they played and trying not to look too stupid and say “I don’t know” more than thirty times in a 60 second period.
I found a few bobbing and weaving tactices that helped me out:
1) Low whistle, “wow, Bob, good question. What do you guys think of Bob’s question? Is it a good question?”
2) I give a light laugh…”I love teaching PhD classes, the questions are just SOOOO good!”
3) “Never heard that one before, why do you ask?”
4) ”I think we’re going to cover that in our next section. If we don’t cover it to your satisfaction in that section, we can come back and discuss it again. “
5) Saying nothing at all for a period of five to ten seconds. Someone else in the room will answer the question for me.
Mind you, I’m not an intellectual lightweight, but I’ve found that I’m doomed in these kinds of presentations. There are always, always, at least two people who don’t get along with each other, or get along with society as a whole, in these presentations. As soon a Dr. A asks any question, Dr. B must ask a question that’s even more difficult than the question Dr. A asked. When I’m able to answer the questions, someone, either Dr. A or Dr. B, will start adding unknown variables.
“So I know that you said that the electrons will do “this and that” when I do” this and that”, but what will the electrons do when I’m drinking a snifter of twenty year old single malt and tap dancing to Bob Dylan’s “the times they are a changing” while I still do “this and that?”
With flop sweat beading on my brow, I say, "When you’re doing “this and that” and the electrons are doing “this and that” and you add in the variables of twenty year aged single malt, Bob Dylan singing “the times they are a changing” and tap dancing you’ll find that the electrons now have pulled out lawn chairs are actively smoking cigars while listening to Bob croon." I’m feeling giddy with the response I was able to pull out, until Dr. B wades into the conversation.
Dr. B will now say, “It’s well documented and very well understood by all classically educated minds that by virtue of Wien’s law of displacement that electrons don’t respond to the single malt whiskey stimulus, they instead respond to a blended whiskey stimuli. Any electron that I’ve observed during my 40 plus years of electron observation experience does not, in fact, like Bob Dylan! My observation is that the Blackbody Radiation effect causes the electrons to appear to respond to Bob Dylan, but the Blackbody Radiation effect shows us that while the electrons may appear to respond to Bob Dylan, they are in fact listening to Tone Loc on little portable MP3 players.”
This is why it’s just easier to say “Good question, I think we’re covering popular music and the Blackbody radiation effect in our next chapter, let’s move on for the moment.”
Thursday, July 5, 2007
What's wrong with a little cat nap?
I’m back from Japan and happy to be back in the land of low humidity. It’s in the 90’s this week at home, but the humidity is low, so I can survive it w/o too much pain.
I didn't take any pictures on this trip, so here's a dinner shot from a previous trip. Yum.
I was just looking at my travel schedule thus far this year and this is the first full week of being at “home” since January. No wonder I’m tired!
Visiting Japan has a way of just taking the energy out of my sails for a few weeks. I don’t adjust to the sleep schedule very easily in either direction. I tend to spend one week of poor sleep in Japan, but manage to swap my sleep schedule around the last day or two. I then return home and reverse the process, which is more difficult than going over. This leaves me with about two weeks of very, very poor sleep. Color me cranky.
Last night I woke up at 1AM and got up and read a book for an hour. Back to bed around 2:30. I laid there tossing and turning until around 3:30AM. Back up at 7AM for the day. I need to keep busy today or I’ll find a way to “crash” during my lunch and stretch out on the couch for a little nap.
Little naps are a no-no when it comes to switching my sleep schedule.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Sweatin and a swingin
I’m in Japan this week with Boil. Needless to say, the Boil needs lancing. It’s very difficult traveling with anyone on a trip like this, let alone traveling with someone that you don’t get along with. We’re both working hard to play nice. Since we don’t speak that much Japanese, other than the basic “toilet, beer, hotel”, we tend to stick together. It’s not uncommon to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together. Plus work together. Fly together, sit on trains together. Together, together, together…..It’s a huge change up for me since I usually work by myself in the lab or work by myself at customer sites. It’s a lot of “togetherness”.
The work/sleep schedule I keep when in Japan is shifted by about 17 hours from my standard schedule, so I spend much of the first week trying to figure out what planet I’m on. (Mind you, visiting Japan is like visiting another planet.)
Tomorrow I’ll finish up at our manufacturing facility and head for our corporate office in Tokyo.
The corporate office puts me on edge almost instantly. Rows and rows of desks, sans walls. I can deal with that. I can deal with the minimal personal space, like none. While I can feel the entire office staff watching me, yet not watching me, to see what I’m doing, I can shake it off. I love the long hikes to the toilet, they break up the monotony of my day. Long meetings that don’t seem to have a conclusive starting/ending or point are what I live for! (It’s a cultural thing I know, the meetings that is. The Japanese have typically resolved the reason for having a meeting in the first place prior to the start of the meeting. The meeting itself is (generally) a nice show of support and respect and agreement of all parties. I say, cancel the meeting if you’ve already made a decision. While canceling the meeting may not add any actual length to my life, it will certainly feel like it does.)
What I can’t handle is the heat and humidity in the office. Mind you, I work for one of the largest companies in the WORLD. The heat and humidity are, to me, unbearable. I am not productive when I have sweat rolling down my forearms and pooling on my desk. I am even less productive when I have sweat rolling down my chest and collecting at the top of my trousers. What I am though, is really, really annoyed. Really annoyed, really peeved, and really short tempered when I’m in the Tokyo office.
So it’s a given that on Friday I’m going to be really sweaty and angry. I have a meeting scheduled with a new marketing guy, who just started with the company, to review with him the customer list of who he wants to visit in the US on his trip. The new guy neglected to ask if anyone wanted him to visit, or wanted his help. I just went through this exact scenario with the new guys boss last month. It was insane. A manager was coming to the US to visit potential customers. Of which, there’s almost none. My group was supposed to fill up an entire week of meetings for this guy with live customers. It was close to a complete cluster
So now I have another guy, wanting the same thing that his manager wanted.
I’d say that the day has real potential.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Sleep where art thou?
Today is my 68th day on the road (AKA, sleeping in a hotel) this year.
To say that I sleep in hotels is a bit of a misnomer. I cat nap in hotels. I often awaken to listen to my next door neighbors:
a) Ignore their alarm clocks
b) Ignore their telephone alarms
c) Turn their TV’s so loud that the water in my water bottle on my night stand oscillates.
d) Have sex.
e) Use the toilet.
f) Party. (I stay in corporate hotels, why would anyone want to have a party here?)
The only time I sleep through the night is when I'm at home.
To say that I sleep in hotels is a bit of a misnomer. I cat nap in hotels. I often awaken to listen to my next door neighbors:
a) Ignore their alarm clocks
b) Ignore their telephone alarms
c) Turn their TV’s so loud that the water in my water bottle on my night stand oscillates.
d) Have sex.
e) Use the toilet.
f) Party. (I stay in corporate hotels, why would anyone want to have a party here?)
The only time I sleep through the night is when I'm at home.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Numbness where art thou?
I spent nine days relaxing on various beaches in Hawaii! I came home with sand stuck between my toes, both sets of fingers stuck in a hang loose position ….and went right back to work within two hours of landing.
During the holiday I was able to strip off some of the protective insulation that I coat myself with to survive work. Now I’m back at work….and once again questioning how it is that I came to do what I do for a living.
I was right back on the road last week too. It was hard to come home from vacation one day, and turn around and fly out the next day. The hotel room was too quiet, the food wasn’t any good and the bed was lumpy. I was missing Grace something fierce, but unable to communicate to her how much I missed her, and why. I just fell into a poor me/grumpy mode.
Boil was acting like himself, explaining to Bob why we should do things his way instead of mine on a new project. My stomach acid was already boiling quite nicely already that day so I just said to “We’ll just do what you want, that’s what we’ll end up doing anyway.” Bob was upset with my answer, but I didn’t care.
Bob continues to play the game of ignoring the disconcerting fact that Boil wants to fight. Boil will fight with waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, customers, potential customers, co-workers, anyone. I’m viewed as a trouble maker because I’m willing to fight back once in awhile. How does that work?
I just need a few weeks to once again reach that comfortable state of numbness that defines my work life.
During the holiday I was able to strip off some of the protective insulation that I coat myself with to survive work. Now I’m back at work….and once again questioning how it is that I came to do what I do for a living.
I was right back on the road last week too. It was hard to come home from vacation one day, and turn around and fly out the next day. The hotel room was too quiet, the food wasn’t any good and the bed was lumpy. I was missing Grace something fierce, but unable to communicate to her how much I missed her, and why. I just fell into a poor me/grumpy mode.
Boil was acting like himself, explaining to Bob why we should do things his way instead of mine on a new project. My stomach acid was already boiling quite nicely already that day so I just said to “We’ll just do what you want, that’s what we’ll end up doing anyway.” Bob was upset with my answer, but I didn’t care.
Bob continues to play the game of ignoring the disconcerting fact that Boil wants to fight. Boil will fight with waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, customers, potential customers, co-workers, anyone. I’m viewed as a trouble maker because I’m willing to fight back once in awhile. How does that work?
I just need a few weeks to once again reach that comfortable state of numbness that defines my work life.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Semi-toothless dog
I’m trying to survive this week and make it in one piece to my vacation that starts on Saturday morning. It seems like my life is all about pressure right now. Mind if I make a top 10 List?
10 Reasons I’m stressed out from the pressure.
1- Pressure to perform a technically solid product demonstration on customer products I’ve never seen. If I do well, the customer buys. If I don’t do well…..
2- Pressure to perform a technically solid product demonstration on customer product that I’ve never seen with a brand spanking new GUI that seems to have more bugs than a cheap hotel.
3- Pressure to be at home on time to start my vacation on Saturday morning. The flight leaves at noon. I’ve packed a bag at home in case I don’t make it home on Friday evening.
4- Pressure to finish the demo on Friday. The customer is bringing a bucket load of product. Too much product. I’ve already told him that “That dog don’t hunt” and he’s trying to ignore me.
5- Pressure to go out drinking with the customer on Thursday night, but still stay sober enough to stagger back to the office to complete all the work we started on Thursday….and try to work ahead on Friday’s material…after a night of drinking.
6- Pressure to make a software package work as advertised…except I didn’t receive any English documentation…so it’s trial and error.
7- Pressure to get along with my co-worker, whom we shall call, “Boil”. Boil and I are opposites.
a. I started working young and went to night school for my education. Boil earned a PhD before starting to work and has since picked up a MBA. We would get along better if he was a little more confident in himself. (Me too I suppose)
b. I like to give measured responses to our customers. When I say “yes” it’s because the answer is “yes”. All Boil does is say “yes” no matter the question.
c. I could go on and on, but we’ll stop here, or soon this will be a list of the ten reasons I can’t get along with my Boil.
8- Pressure to remodel my house. I have a wiring job that I’ve not touched in months.
9- Pressure to get the garden going. So far…nada….
10- Pressure to remember everyone’s names. I actually forgot one of the grandkids names a few weeks ago. “So how’s, uh, uh, the youngest boy holding up?”
11- Pressure that my wives dog, the dog who just won’t die, is peeing all over my brand new carpet, right now. The dog belongs to my wife, and my wife had the dog before I came along. The dog is a small, semi-toothless, toy poodle. Need I say more?
10 Reasons I’m stressed out from the pressure.
1- Pressure to perform a technically solid product demonstration on customer products I’ve never seen. If I do well, the customer buys. If I don’t do well…..
2- Pressure to perform a technically solid product demonstration on customer product that I’ve never seen with a brand spanking new GUI that seems to have more bugs than a cheap hotel.
3- Pressure to be at home on time to start my vacation on Saturday morning. The flight leaves at noon. I’ve packed a bag at home in case I don’t make it home on Friday evening.
4- Pressure to finish the demo on Friday. The customer is bringing a bucket load of product. Too much product. I’ve already told him that “That dog don’t hunt” and he’s trying to ignore me.
5- Pressure to go out drinking with the customer on Thursday night, but still stay sober enough to stagger back to the office to complete all the work we started on Thursday….and try to work ahead on Friday’s material…after a night of drinking.
6- Pressure to make a software package work as advertised…except I didn’t receive any English documentation…so it’s trial and error.
7- Pressure to get along with my co-worker, whom we shall call, “Boil”. Boil and I are opposites.
a. I started working young and went to night school for my education. Boil earned a PhD before starting to work and has since picked up a MBA. We would get along better if he was a little more confident in himself. (Me too I suppose)
b. I like to give measured responses to our customers. When I say “yes” it’s because the answer is “yes”. All Boil does is say “yes” no matter the question.
c. I could go on and on, but we’ll stop here, or soon this will be a list of the ten reasons I can’t get along with my Boil.
8- Pressure to remodel my house. I have a wiring job that I’ve not touched in months.
9- Pressure to get the garden going. So far…nada….
10- Pressure to remember everyone’s names. I actually forgot one of the grandkids names a few weeks ago. “So how’s, uh, uh, the youngest boy holding up?”
11- Pressure that my wives dog, the dog who just won’t die, is peeing all over my brand new carpet, right now. The dog belongs to my wife, and my wife had the dog before I came along. The dog is a small, semi-toothless, toy poodle. Need I say more?
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Mustard?
I suppose that I should be happy today. The company I work for, in a product line that I work in, has just pulled in about 75 millions dollars worth of business. Yet, I’m not so elated. There’s a big party tonight and everyone is already making their hotel reservations because they know they’ll be too drunk to drive. I’m focused on my one account that may pull in 1.6 million. I was shocked when one of the managers just told us flat out that he was getting drunk tonight and there was no way he was working tomorrow. This company is just weird. I aspire to work where we’re all closet alcoholics instead of public alcoholics. Is that too much to ask?
Yesterday I sat down with my manger (let’s call him Bob), and his manager (Let’s call him Bob’s brother), and reviewed my position w/in the company (lowest of the low) and my pay (lower yet). Normally I would just talk with Bob, but I dragged Bob's brother in because I've had six different managers in the past five years. Bob's brother has been the single constant management entity during my time here.
I was pondering just how I’ve managed to end up at the bottom of the pile when my years in the industry and time served at this company should put me much closer to the top of the dog pile. I was somewhat amused when Bob’s brother was explaining to me how much better it was to be lower paid because that “means you have more promotions and money ahead of you in your career”. I wanted to bonk him on the forehead with the heel of my hand. I wanted to tell him that he selected the response he has memorized for demoralized new college grads instead of the response for burned out, middle aged, dirt in the eye employees.
No one denies that my qualifications are equal and that I’m at least as qualified (if not more) than those in the other department with higher rank/pay. The root issue seems to be that my department is smaller than the other department so “He who has the gold makes the rules”. (Another one of Bob’s brothers gems.) This place has never heard of equal dividing of the promotional pay and pay raise? The people in the other department do exactly the same job I do.
I swear it just makes me want to toss in the towel and sell hot dogs on the street corner. Naturally I don’t want to allow my customers to use any condiment on the dog except mustard. Anything more is simply barbaric.
I’ve been working in what used to be referred to as the “Silicon desert” for a few days this week. The industry used to be broken down as “Silicon Valley, Silicon Forest and the Silicon desert.” I fear the desert is in the process of reclaiming its own. Much that was, is no more. Much that is, will soon be gone.
“Welcome to Wal-Mart, would you like a shopping cart?”
A new career with great benefits beckons us all
Yesterday I sat down with my manger (let’s call him Bob), and his manager (Let’s call him Bob’s brother), and reviewed my position w/in the company (lowest of the low) and my pay (lower yet). Normally I would just talk with Bob, but I dragged Bob's brother in because I've had six different managers in the past five years. Bob's brother has been the single constant management entity during my time here.
I was pondering just how I’ve managed to end up at the bottom of the pile when my years in the industry and time served at this company should put me much closer to the top of the dog pile. I was somewhat amused when Bob’s brother was explaining to me how much better it was to be lower paid because that “means you have more promotions and money ahead of you in your career”. I wanted to bonk him on the forehead with the heel of my hand. I wanted to tell him that he selected the response he has memorized for demoralized new college grads instead of the response for burned out, middle aged, dirt in the eye employees.
No one denies that my qualifications are equal and that I’m at least as qualified (if not more) than those in the other department with higher rank/pay. The root issue seems to be that my department is smaller than the other department so “He who has the gold makes the rules”. (Another one of Bob’s brothers gems.) This place has never heard of equal dividing of the promotional pay and pay raise? The people in the other department do exactly the same job I do.
I swear it just makes me want to toss in the towel and sell hot dogs on the street corner. Naturally I don’t want to allow my customers to use any condiment on the dog except mustard. Anything more is simply barbaric.
I’ve been working in what used to be referred to as the “Silicon desert” for a few days this week. The industry used to be broken down as “Silicon Valley, Silicon Forest and the Silicon desert.” I fear the desert is in the process of reclaiming its own. Much that was, is no more. Much that is, will soon be gone.
“Welcome to Wal-Mart, would you like a shopping cart?”
A new career with great benefits beckons us all
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I remember
Tomorrow is my youngest daughter’s sixteenth birthday. I suppose I could go down memory lane and talk about days past, but perhaps I can just summarize and say, I remember.
Happy birthday my youngest daughter. I miss you.
I remember.
Happy birthday my youngest daughter. I miss you.
I remember.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Monday Monday....
It’s 4:45PM. My medium sized project isn’t finished and I need to present it to the customer tomorrow morning. Guess I’m working tonight, which is ok I suppose since Grace has friends coming over. I can hide in my office and turn on the radio and work to my hearts content. I think I’ll have about three hours in which to wrap up the project.
I was talking with a co-worker today about the future of our industry. Like so many other industries, we’re begun to sell our souls to the devil and out source a lot of our manufacturing overseas. I think historically this has been a huge impact for blue collar employees, not so much of an impact (although my programming buddies would disagree) for white collar. Times are changing. China is just starting to come on-line with semiconductor manufacturing. One look inside any Wal-Mart tells us exactly how much consumers will support products manufactured in the US.
I’m not predicting the death of my industry, just the death of large scale semiconductor manufacturing in the US over the next decade or so. Looking at what’s happened in the industry in the past decade is eye opening. The wafer fabs have shut down at a much faster pace than they start up. There may be 50 or 60% less semiconductor companies in the US today than 10 years ago. Ditto for Europe. What looked like a limitless industry a few years back is now starting to look like a four or five horse industry.
My co-worker is 57 and can ride it out until retirement. I have no such illusion. I have 20 years until retirement (if I play my cards perfectly). In reality, I expect to be outsourced from my own industry within a decade if I don’t return to school and pick up a MBA that will give me a bit of latitude to slide out of the technical and into the business aspect of the industry. Having already spent years going to night school for my first degree, I’m hesitant about doing it again. Years slip by in a haze when going to night school. Sure you can take the summers off and relax, but that just adds more time to the overall timeline of how long you’re giving up your life for. Work/eat/school/repeat.
I’ve sufficiently depressed myself enough to go cook dinner.
I was talking with a co-worker today about the future of our industry. Like so many other industries, we’re begun to sell our souls to the devil and out source a lot of our manufacturing overseas. I think historically this has been a huge impact for blue collar employees, not so much of an impact (although my programming buddies would disagree) for white collar. Times are changing. China is just starting to come on-line with semiconductor manufacturing. One look inside any Wal-Mart tells us exactly how much consumers will support products manufactured in the US.
I’m not predicting the death of my industry, just the death of large scale semiconductor manufacturing in the US over the next decade or so. Looking at what’s happened in the industry in the past decade is eye opening. The wafer fabs have shut down at a much faster pace than they start up. There may be 50 or 60% less semiconductor companies in the US today than 10 years ago. Ditto for Europe. What looked like a limitless industry a few years back is now starting to look like a four or five horse industry.
My co-worker is 57 and can ride it out until retirement. I have no such illusion. I have 20 years until retirement (if I play my cards perfectly). In reality, I expect to be outsourced from my own industry within a decade if I don’t return to school and pick up a MBA that will give me a bit of latitude to slide out of the technical and into the business aspect of the industry. Having already spent years going to night school for my first degree, I’m hesitant about doing it again. Years slip by in a haze when going to night school. Sure you can take the summers off and relax, but that just adds more time to the overall timeline of how long you’re giving up your life for. Work/eat/school/repeat.
I’ve sufficiently depressed myself enough to go cook dinner.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Home-but lost
Last year I was on the road (this defined as not sleeping in my own bed) for 176 nights. (This equates to 72% travel. The year before was 79% travel.)
So now I’m home for a few days. My wife Grace doesn’t shop for food too often, (she can eat rice and beans every day and be very happy.) so I usually find that there isn’t much food in the house when I get home. So as a result we tend to eat out a lot when I’m home. I eat out on the road, I eat out when I’m at home….it’s all the same, but the company is better at home. I’ve developed an allergy to food from Applebee’s and the like. It’s all pretty much the same at most places where the food is under $20 a plate.
So here I sit in my home office, with a medium size project sitting in front of me on one of my laptops. (Yes, that’s plural. I was concerned that my back didn’t bother me nearly enough so now I carry two laptops with high hopes landing myself with a severely twisted spine at some point in the not too distant future.) I need to finish this project by next Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning I’ll present the report to a customer and ask them (in my most subservient tone) to please buy equipment from my company, for the measly sum of 1.6 million. So I have serious work to do…yet…I’m like a moth to the flame looking out my office window. The sun is shining, the weather is great, and I’d rather be doing anything except sitting here working on the report. I think this report will take me about twenty to twenty five hours to put together. Tick tock, tick tock…I don’t have time to waste unless I’m willing to swap time today for weekend time, which would make me very unpopular with Grace.
Being at home for the first few days during the work week is pretty weird. I have no routines at home for weekdays. I have a company official “office” about thirty miles from my house but I try not to go there. My productivity stinks when I go there. It’s rare for me to go there, so I end up socializing instead of working. I can be four or five times more productive at home, after acclimating for a few days. It’s these first few days that are hard. I usually end up cleaning up my desk and straightening up my home office for a day. (Mind you, it’s unusual for me to be home, so my desk gets kind of back logged with all the junk that I’ve brought home from all the trips between the last time I was “home” and “now”. Receipts that I need to file away, receipts I need to destroy, foreign currency, local currency. (I try to keep work money separate from home money.) Random reports, magazines, airline tickets….
I’m sitting here writing this blog instead of working on my report. I may as well just toss in the towel and go to the real office and flush the rest of my day and get it over with and hope that tomorrow is more productive.
So now I’m home for a few days. My wife Grace doesn’t shop for food too often, (she can eat rice and beans every day and be very happy.) so I usually find that there isn’t much food in the house when I get home. So as a result we tend to eat out a lot when I’m home. I eat out on the road, I eat out when I’m at home….it’s all the same, but the company is better at home. I’ve developed an allergy to food from Applebee’s and the like. It’s all pretty much the same at most places where the food is under $20 a plate.
So here I sit in my home office, with a medium size project sitting in front of me on one of my laptops. (Yes, that’s plural. I was concerned that my back didn’t bother me nearly enough so now I carry two laptops with high hopes landing myself with a severely twisted spine at some point in the not too distant future.) I need to finish this project by next Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning I’ll present the report to a customer and ask them (in my most subservient tone) to please buy equipment from my company, for the measly sum of 1.6 million. So I have serious work to do…yet…I’m like a moth to the flame looking out my office window. The sun is shining, the weather is great, and I’d rather be doing anything except sitting here working on the report. I think this report will take me about twenty to twenty five hours to put together. Tick tock, tick tock…I don’t have time to waste unless I’m willing to swap time today for weekend time, which would make me very unpopular with Grace.
Being at home for the first few days during the work week is pretty weird. I have no routines at home for weekdays. I have a company official “office” about thirty miles from my house but I try not to go there. My productivity stinks when I go there. It’s rare for me to go there, so I end up socializing instead of working. I can be four or five times more productive at home, after acclimating for a few days. It’s these first few days that are hard. I usually end up cleaning up my desk and straightening up my home office for a day. (Mind you, it’s unusual for me to be home, so my desk gets kind of back logged with all the junk that I’ve brought home from all the trips between the last time I was “home” and “now”. Receipts that I need to file away, receipts I need to destroy, foreign currency, local currency. (I try to keep work money separate from home money.) Random reports, magazines, airline tickets….
I’m sitting here writing this blog instead of working on my report. I may as well just toss in the towel and go to the real office and flush the rest of my day and get it over with and hope that tomorrow is more productive.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Training escapades
Days on the Road YTD: 41
I’ve just spent a week working with two brand new customers at my companies training facility. Typically I’ve meet and established a solid working relationship with our customers before they show up for training. In this case, I had not.
The customers were fresh out of college. Fresh as in “zero” industry experience. Now there’s a place for fresh engineers, but that place just isn’t in my training course. These customers have been on a tour-de-world training mission; my course was their fifth or sixth in a row. What a waste of my time. Five or six training classes back to back simply equates to the customers having long since passed their mental super saturation status.
While my company racked in about $10,000 from this little training escapade, I found myself just depressed to be teaching a class to students who were just too green to understand very much of what I spoke of and unable to put the information into the correct technical context. The customers own management handed them a severe disservice and they were just too young to understand the scope of the disservice yet.
Sigh.
I’ve just spent a week working with two brand new customers at my companies training facility. Typically I’ve meet and established a solid working relationship with our customers before they show up for training. In this case, I had not.
The customers were fresh out of college. Fresh as in “zero” industry experience. Now there’s a place for fresh engineers, but that place just isn’t in my training course. These customers have been on a tour-de-world training mission; my course was their fifth or sixth in a row. What a waste of my time. Five or six training classes back to back simply equates to the customers having long since passed their mental super saturation status.
While my company racked in about $10,000 from this little training escapade, I found myself just depressed to be teaching a class to students who were just too green to understand very much of what I spoke of and unable to put the information into the correct technical context. The customers own management handed them a severe disservice and they were just too young to understand the scope of the disservice yet.
Sigh.
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