Successful work leads to more work

80% of our white papers from last submission cycle were selected for full proposals.

This is ridiculous

I'm working entirely too many hours. 😠

Sunday: 8
Monday: "only" 9, but then very early Tuesday morning
Tuesday: 14
Wednesday: 5 so far, and at least 5 more to go 

And there were a bunch extra last week, too, including a 16-hour day/night.

This is not healthy.

Updated lunch time Wednesday.

Loooonnnngggg day

That first word has one letter for every full hour of work yesterday. But I think I'm going to make my deadline of noon today, and will leave early.

Needing a bib

Apparently I dropped a chocolate chip into my lap without noticing, where it melted dark brown spots all over the crotch of my khakis. Was able to wash some of it out in the restroom, and the sport coat covers some what's left, so it isn't so obvious (he lies to himself).

It's a different world . . .

. . . than where you come from . . .

I've never been so rushed to put together a training basically from scratch.

Note to self:

(as if, given my known readership, this entire blog wasn't just a note to myself . . . )

Being stretched is a good thing.

Today's pageview zip code

Gary, IN  46403, 46409 - I've definitely driven through these on my way to and from Chicago. I went through the second one on my first trip, on my way around to Oakbrook Terrace, and through the first one when my bride and I made our Chicago trip the following year. We had a great weekend in which we took in a play (Cabaret, with Teri Hatcher) and a baseball game (Orioles at White Sox), and I introduced her to both Maggiano's and Giordano's, as well as had my first Chicago style hot dog.

I just remembered that there was a third trip, too, to set up for a trade show in 1997. In fact, now that I think about the details, I'm pretty sure the trip I mentioned in last week's post actually followed that one, and that this trade show trip was when I visited both Maggiano's and Giordano's for the first time.

Today's pageview zip code

Hammond, IN 46324  I drove through here on my first trip to Chicago, a business visit to train field engineers to use our new knowledge base. I stayed in Oakbrook Terrace and road the El into the city for my first visit. I had dinner at Maggiano's with our department head, and had my first Giordano's pizza. Before I left our local service manager took a few of us to a very foggy dessert at the top of the Hancock building, after making us momentarily fear for our lives by turning the wrong way on a partially closed street.  I'd later return with Teri for a weekend date, but we didn't pass through this zip code together because we stayed in the city proper.

It's also pretty cool . . .

. . . when a former coworker for whom you served as a reference gets the job!

Dear boss,

I'll be in just a little later than usual this morning. I had to stay up late last night to watch Buck Showalter lose his mind. It hasn't happen often since he took over.

Also, please keep asking me about this training project when you've kept me fully occupied on other things.

That *one*

I always have that one coworker with a gift for expressing every written thought in the most convoluted way possible . . .

Another woman

I shouldn't be distracted by thoughts of another woman when I'm trying to sleep next to my wife. First of all, our lives provide me with few enough chances to fall asleep next to her.

So when I do get one, as I did on Monday night, I don't want my thoughts to be consumed by the day's frustration with my boss! In truth, though, her gender is immaterial to the issue.

Remind me . . .

Never to tell my bosses that I "might have some bandwidth available next week."  Geez.

Thanks for nothing

Seriously, you wait until my final freaking draft to give me the feedback that completely changes the structure of the document and makes me recapture and reannotate every. freaking. screenshot? Where was this feedback two weeks ago?

Hard work pays off

I was nearly fired last night in my dreams. A company president whom I've never seen (because he doesn't exist) was the one to outbrief me, and I insisted that he overcome his reluctance to tell me why I was being let go, because I needed to know so that I could avoid similar mistakes in my future employment. He explained that it was ultimately because I was too loud, which had especially disturbed him when he was on a phone call with a customer. I became even more insistent at that point that this was unjust. I pointed out that I'd mentioned my hearing loss as a disability on my hiring application (true in real life) and discussed it with my coworkers at the outset and when new people came on, as well (also true). I told him that I was pretty certain that it was illegal to fire me over this (though I'm not sure how this would actually play out in an at-will employment state, I'm pretty sure that handicap status is a protected category). We were approaching the CEO/owner at this point, who smiled with relief that I'd found the leverage she needed to keep me on as she apparently wanted (in reality, this entire scenario of my firing is completely unrealistic; the CEO and CTO, a married couple, run the place), and agreed with me afterward that I would have won quite a sum of money in court over the issue.

The timing of this dream is rather odd, as I haven't been loud at work - although I also can't hear low conversations very well - and especially as we just won a contract as a direct result of many long hours I put in preparing a proposal and our responses throughout the subsequent discussion period. It was very rewarding news, given the potentially life-saving implications of the device we're going to help make!

The end of perfectionism?

It appears that this job may make me more humble by disabusing me of the notion that mistakes from inattentiveness to detail are things that other people make.

As often in four months as in 21 years

I remember using the VLSI design lab while working on my degree at WSU. The easiest access times for the computer were in the middle of the night, so I spent my share of early morning hours designing VLSI layouts, after which I would often see those color-coded squares in my dreams.

In my twenty-one years at Kodak, there were only two situations in which I can recall dreaming my work. One was when I was preparing weekly reports for the Prosper Press beta sites, analyzing controller log files and other resources to define and produce system metrics. The other was much earlier, during a site visit to Leeds in which we had to reconfigure a 3600 Printing System to work the way it would actually function rather than the way someone thought it would. (Setting the thing up to cue from downstream and compute the actual starting spot for print would only really work if the page size was consistent between jobs, and that wasn't true of the customer's production.)

Dreaming my work has happened twice already in my new job. I love this work, but to be dreaming evaluation notice responses three days after we finished with them is a little disconcerting; this follows the production in December of the proposal to which these responses pertain.

I hope we win this contract, but I also hope I don't have more dream material because of it!

Runnin' on . . .

Lookin' out at the road rushin' under my wheels - Jackson Browne, Running on Empty

Between craziness at work and extra busyness at home, I am definitely just maintaining, at this point.  I'm resenting the former, and embracing the latter, and sleeping every minute I'm in bed.

So *that* was his problem

Dad must have been part croc . . .

Actually, dad was pretty smart.  Just broken.

Apparently instead of inheriting his alcoholism I only got his resumé writing skills.

If it weren't for the people I love . . .

. . . I was ready to quit three different ways today.  Lunch time was really rough, coming out of this morning's meeting, and I could have used some company to help with my perspective.  Instead my bride was out working, a one-morning child care gig, and I made due with considering how soon I'll be visiting our sweet ones, finding in that thought the strength to press on.