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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.