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.

 

 

Just An Evening, Post Nap

Today was a fast day at the office. I went in early for a meeting that started at 6:30 AM. With the exception of lunch I then pretty much spent the entire day in meetings. They were long, but they were productive.

I left work about 3 o'clock, came home, and took a two-hour nap. I'm not sure if I was short sleep from last night or tired from allergies. Either way I definitely needed the nap.

Dinner was a vegetable soup, some hummus and cinnamon toast. After that I watched an episode each of Madmen and The Good Wife.

For the rest of the evening, which only be another hour or so, I'm going to curl up and read some more of Christopher Moore's The Serpent of Venice, after an attempt to call my brother in Arizona.

An Evening With The Serpent of Venice

I've reached the end of a fairly decent Saturday. I slept in, lingering into the dawn listening to the birds singing outside in the cool green morning. It was a very pleasant way to start the day.

When I finally decided to get out of bed, I ran through the shower, and then started that first morning cup of coffee. I might have watched something off the DVR early in the morning, but I forget what it was. At the usual time I headed out to meet Tony and his friend Matt for breakfast at the Hickory Pit. It was an enjoyable breakfast, a little heavy on the woes of the city of San Jose conversation, but enjoyable nonetheless.

After breakfast I stopped at Fry's Electronics and picked up a headset. I bought a Steele Series V2 gaming headset. I've been wanting to get an around the ear gaming headset for quite a while. It is light and it seems to have good quality sound and good-quality pick up on the microphone.

I also bought a pair of noise canceling headphones that were on sale. Unfortunately I'm going to have to take them back tomorrow – the right side is dead. We will see if they're willing to do a simple exchange. If they are all crackerbox staring the store and make sure I get one that works. It is possible but they've got a bad batch.

At home, in the afternoon, I caught up on the latest episode of Elementary, then settled in for a two-hour nap. As typically happens when you want to take a nap as soon as I had settled in and dozed off everybody in the world decided to text me, so it was a fitful afternoon of napping.

But, the rest of the afternoon was exceptionally lazy and enjoyable. It is from there but I slid into the evening, and then having slid into the evening, slid into bed. My plan is to round out the day reading some more of Christopher Moore's novel The Serpent of Venice.