Tag: work

Four years in Maryland

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Today, August 1, marks my “official” 4 year anniversary living in Maryland. “Official,” because I actually moved out here on July 28, 2002, but I didn’t start up at work until August 1, so I use that date, because it’s a nice round number.

I was reminded of this upcoming anniversary a few days ago when I received in the mail a renewal for my car registration. Has it been four years already?

It also marks a more obscure anniversary: four years of having never driven into the office where I work in Arlington, Virginia. Back when I lived in L.A., I commuted for eight years between Studio City and Santa Monica. It was 20 miles, and I left early enough in the morning (5 AM) to avoid traffic. But that same 20 miles at 5 PM usually meant I’d get home at about 7 PM. When I moved to Maryland, one of the big pluses was access to the Metro. There is a Metro station about 1-1/2 miles from my house. I take the Metro to work every day and it’s a half an hour each way. The Metro stops underneath the building in which I work, which is very convenient in the winters.

It is a matter of pride with me that I have managed to avoid driving into work for four years. I wonder if I can pull it off for another four?

Back in the office

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I started out the day staying home because my cough had kept me up much of the night. But around 10 AM, I realized that I had quite a bit of work to do, so I got dressed, and headed into the office.

So here I am, trying to stay on top of these three projects I am working on. At least I’ve got some good music to listen to.

And I’m hungry now. I’ve got to go get something to eat!

No softball today

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We were scheduled to have a softball game tonight in Anacostia, but because of the dangerously excessive heat, the game was rescheduled until 2 weeks from today. Our last three games of the season are all pretty close together.

Seeing as how I was going to be out late for softball, I decided to stay at work and get some extra stuff done. I’m glad I did because I made some good progress on the “smart” forms I’m developing. I also hung around for a meeting on metrics.

It’s been a long day, however. I was up at 4:30 and I still have to unwind a bit (and eat something!) before I got to bed.

It’s thundering and lightening in the area and some strong storms are nearby. Hopefully these are the storms that are supposed to cool things down into the 80s tomorrow.

Ad-man to the rescue

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How often does this happen:

I was sitting at work, minding my own business, when someone sent a question to one of our aliases, asking if anyone knew about a commerical where a bunch of people are in a boardroom, saying, “We’ve got to be more nimble. How would so-and-so do it?” They knew nothing of the commercial other than that. But one of our clients wanted to use it as an example to illustrate a point in a study.

Well! My brother-in-law is a copywriter. So I called Jason and asked him about it. He didn’t know offhand, but he was able to point me to a resource where I could search and find it. Search I did and after a few failed attempts, I found it.

The commercial is for Visa. The title of the commerical is: Business Inspiration.

So through, luck and circumstance, and thanks in big part to Jason, I was able to provide the answer to the question.

Thanks, Jason!

The Zone

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This morning, I was in “the zone”. I had a very specific set of tasks I wanted to complete, and with some focus, I completed them! These included finishing off design documents for a .NET project I am managing, as well as fixing a problem with the installation of some .NET libraries on my work machine.

I’ve still got a long way to go and some pretty short deadlines, but I was very pleased with what I got accomplished in the first 6 hours of the day.

Everybody’s working on the weekend

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Although I am still relatively stress-free, I’ve felt the stress level climbing at work at bit lately. I have a lot to do, including one project whose deadline is fast approaching at the end of July, and for which I just finished a design review, just discovered that my test team lead will be on vacation for 2 weeks, and just discovered some architectural changes that might need to be made to the design.

So, in order to fray some of the stress, and keep things relatively even, I decided to bring my laptop home with me this weekend, and spend at least part of the weekend doing some work in order to stay ahead, as much as possible.

Hopefully, this won’t become a regular thing. But as it turns out, I have no real plans for this weekend anyway. I mowed the lawn yesterday. I have reading to do. And I just started re-watching episodes of Sex and the City from the very beginning. That leaves plenty of time to squeeze in some work.

Still, I feel like I shouldn’t have to bring it home with me; that I could someone plan better at work, or make better use of my time. In any event, for this weekend only (I hope), I’ll be like everyone else these days: working on the weekend.

Back at work

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Well, I’m back at work today after a long weekend in New York City. Lots to do here and it’s one of those days where it was tough even figuring out where to get started. Lots of rain again today, too. But beginning tomorrow, it’s supposed to be sunny and rain free

I’m just about 200 pages into Our Oriental Heritage, and well into the history of the early Egyptian civilization. I really love the writing style in these books, and also the insights into what life was like for the average person some 5,000 years ago. I’m looking forward to reading some more.

In New York City

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Requirements meetings are complete and I was able to get to Pittburgh airport earlier than I thought. In fact, instead of having to wait until the 8:30 PM flight on which I was originally scheduled, I was able to get on the 3:55 PM flight into La Guardia, and I made it to jen_ashlock and Jason’s by 6 PM. Their place is almost entirely packed up for the move on Sunday.

Jason made an excellent steak and potatoes dinner, which was preceeded by and followed by shots of tequila or jaeger, depending on one’s preference. It was the first time I attempted a tequila shot without the “training wheels” (salt and lime).

I got us tickets to the 10:15 PM showing of Superman Returns. It will be my second time seeing the movie, but Jen and Jason’s first time. I also confirmed with Kevin that we’re all going to see the Brooklyn Cyclones play on Monday evening.

Incidentally, in all of the time I’ve ever traveled into our out of the New York area, today was the first time I ever flew into La Guardia airport.

Busy season

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It has gotten busy here at work. I have finished up one project, and am in the middle of managing a second. Tomorrow, I head to Pittsburgh for two days of requirements meetings on a third project that I will be managing. And in the meantime, there is a fourth project on which I am developer, but not a project manager.

The last couple of months have been very low stress for me. The trick now is to maintain the low stress levels, but actually somehow manage to make all of this projects work within the limited 40 hour week that I put in. (Going over 40 hours is the first thing to raise the stress levels.) I don’t know if it’s possible.

I’ll be in Pittsburgh Thursday and Friday, as I mentioned, and that will mark my first time to Pittsburgh. Friday night, I’m flying to New York and spending the long weekend there, helping jen_ashlock and Jason move from Astoria to Manhattan. I plan on seeing Superman Returns again while I’m in the city.

I’m about 100 pages through Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage and I’m really enjoying it. He has a great writing style and the stuff is really fascinating. I’ve already culled one new story idea from what I’ve read. One of the most interesting things is the social context in which that book was written. It was published in 1935, well after World War I and a few years before World War II, but the spectre of war permeates the pages, as in this passage on Cro-Mangnon and Neanderthals:

The distribution of their fossils suggests that [the Cro-Magnon] fought for many decades, perhaps centuries, a war with the Neanderthals for the possession of Europe; so old is the conflict between Germany and France.

It makes me think that it’s a good thing that France is playing Brasil and not Germany in the World Cup. Could you imagine if France and Germany had to face each other again?

Performance review

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I got my performance review at work this afternoon and it was my best review in 3 years. I was pleased. My boss is like one of those teachers who never gives A’s and even pleasing him a little often requires a great deal of work. But he seemed genuinely happy with my work this year and that pleased me.

What pleased me even more was that it was a good review, despite my philosophy of limiting my work hours to a 40 hour week (with very rare exceptions). In some sense, it means that I have managed somewhat successfully to learn how to do well in my job without my job becoming my life.

I got a decent raise along with the review, but that means that least to me. I never see it. It all gets added to my retirement so I don’t have to pay taxes on it. My net pay will stay the same.

Stupid coding errors

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I’ve been doing a lot of C# programming lately and for the life of me, I keep making the same dump coding error. Instead of doing this:

  if (objFoo.IsNew)

I have been doing this:

  if (objFoo.IsNew = true)

The thing is, I know that the second way is wrong and will lead to all kinds of bad results and yet I keep making the damn mistake!

It’s all of those years doing VB programming that’s got me screwed up.