Somewhere Normal

Somewhere along the line my personal blog became my work venting blog. I guess that is bound to happen sometimes. With the recent decisions at work to transfer us out from underneath the evil director I’m hoping to return to some semblance of order in the work world. We seem to be moving in that direction, though we have a lot of territory to cover. For several years what I would call the project control mechanism was broken.

Each of the feudal baronies in our kingdom was once again pursuing their own goals and their own systems to attain those goals. We found that in several cases the company is at varying degrees of implementation of duplicate systems. I suspect it will take us a couple of years to get them under control.

The first step, the first challenge facing our new management is going to be to put into place a process to control the creation of technical projects. Once they have control of the faucet they can then control the flow. It’s going to be fun.

I’m getting ready for vacation at work right now. I’m trying to knock off the things that have to be done in the intervening week. I made good progress in that direction today and I expect to make a little more progress tomorrow. I should be in good condition when I come home tomorrow night. Then it’s just a question of easing into the vacation.

I am looking forward to going back to South Dakota, I’m looking forward to visiting family, I’m looking forward to seeing the old country and I’m looking forward to moving outside of the world I’ve been moving in. One of the great things about travel of any sort is that it reminds you that there’s an entire world out there that you are part of. That is a wonderful feeling.

I think I’m going to keep this entry simple tonight. I’m in a good mood, I have lots of work to do, but I’m not feeling that crushing stress that came from the unpredictability of the evil director. I’ve got a lot in front of me but like anything it can be divided and conquered with a little bit of work and a little bit of imagination.

 

I went to bed last night with the intention of reading some more of the serpent of Venice but I only managed to knock off a couple of pages. Tonight I’m hoping to do a little bit more than a couple of pages. I love a good book and I count myself a great Christopher Moore fan.

 

 

When Idiots Attack

Well, my Idiot Director came roaring out of hiding this week and is hurling herself into everything.  Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water.  Basically, tomorrow, I have a meeting with my customers and team members regarding a project I am on.  However, a few minutes ago, after I had left for home at the end of the day, I got a call from my boss telling me I have to pull part of my presentation back tomorrow for fear that it might inflame my director, who is apparently on another passive-aggressive rampage. 

I am confident that everything I did was the right thing to do and that the quality of my work is professional as always, but suddenly a project that looked like it was going to move forward is going to grind to complete halt.  Once again, it is going to cost three times as much and take four times as long if she thrusts herself in the middle of it.  I wonder when the corporation is every going to take notice of her blatant incompetence.  Such is life when idiots attack.

Outside of that, I am in a fairly good mood today.  It was a non-productive work day, but that is typical of Monday's and my plan was to sit at home and work my way through my backlogged email. I may still do that, but I have to now add into it the process of redoing my presentation for tomorrow.  I may take a spot of time tonight to meditate, since that will pull me into a healthier place in regards to work stress.  I feel for my boss, who bears the brunt of my directors idiocy.

Though busy, the last two days have been good, on several levels. Spent some quality time with T.R., was productive-though-frustrated at work, and the nephew has been moved out of critical care to a regular hospital room and I've had the opportunity to talk to him. Speaking of which, I am going to call him shortly and hope to have a nice little conversation.

The project at work is still drastically out of synch with reality, but the laborious and painful process of dragging it back into some semblance of normality in underway.  Many a deadline has been missed and I find myself actually hoping that their are consequences and then hoping that those consequences land on the right people, perhaps heavily. How a director can be so far detached from reality and still retain their position is totally beyond me.

I have a handful of project related things ahead of me this week and I suspect I will actually be able to get them accomplished.  I haven't worked any excessive hours this week - and I am not planning on working any. The price of those long days is very high and unfortunately I think it is being paid by good people. As a leader, that type of thing irritates me.  The fundamental responsibility of management is managing resources and the tragedy is, when management fails, it is often those resources that pay the price.

I was planning on watching some TV today, but in the last couple of minutes I've decided against it.  Instead, I think I will make a couple of phone calls, then settle in with my novel and read my way into the night.  There are a couple of sitcoms that come on around 8:00 tonight, but I'm not sure if I am going to watch them - I will make that decision when the hour approaches.

I have my Christmas tree and some decorations, except the full sweep of lights, up, so there is already a bit of a Christmas feeling spreading over the room, which I am enjoying. We have one more California rain storm stacked up to make a sweep through the bay area, so I think I will wait until after it has finished it's run to put the lights up.

60 Email on the Transsiberian

I spent the evening watching the movie "Transsiberian" with Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer, and Ben Kingsley while I was working my way through my email backlog.  I managed to read, delete, sort and respond to about sixty email this evening, which made for a long, but mostly productive workday.

The movie was pretty good, it's a film noir set on the Transsiberian railway in Russia.  It is dark, intense, and well acted.  I'd recommend it if you haven't seen it. Emily Mortimer is very powerful in the film.

Work was long today, so I won't dwell on that - another day ahead of me.  The project is struggling and people are coming apart at the seams.  Yet another sign of bad management - a well managed team pulls together when it comes under stress, a poorly managed team falls apart.  It's amusing to me that part of our team is pulling together (the part under my direct manager), while the rest of it has started to fall apart.

My main concern is that the whole thing is going to implode and innocent people are going to catch the blame for our incompetent director, whose already casting about for ways to blame the problems on other people.  Dang, it is tough being under bad management.

It's been a stressful fall, that is for sure.  I wanted to go back to South Dakota for Christmas, but I am going to postpone that trip. All that is going to do is ratchet my stress level even higher - trying to travel in that most challenging season.  Running full speed up to Christmas, then stressful travel, then coming back to work and hitting it at full speed. That would definitely take all of the fun out of the vacation.  I think I will sit tight and aim at a more leisurely vacation after the holiday, somewhere in the early spring.  It would be nice to get two weeks or more completely off the work grid.