Just got back to St. Louis late last night after spending six days in New York City busting my ass working with two of my colleagues. We clocked in over 80 hours to integrate in a newly aquired office. I am beat. The only reason I even came in to work today is because there was a meeting that I wanted (not required) to attend.
The only time I got to see anything in the city was when we left the office a little after 10 or 10:30pm on Saturday and walked to Times Square and ate at Planet Hollywood. I used to think NYC looked crowded but after spending a few years in Hong Kong the busy streets of Times Square seemed barely crowded at all. Not everyone shared my opinion, hehe.
I’m heading home in a few minutes. I miss my family and I need a serious baby fix.
So much happens on a day to day basis to me and everyone else that there is no possible way to for everyone to keep everyone posted on the goings-ons and what-nots of their lives at all times. It’s just not possible. So we share small samplings of our lives on bliggity blogs and our face-spaces and we move on. Years ago we didn’t even do that much.
Kira and Michelle have both been sick for a little over a week now. So far, I have been very lucky to not yet get sick. The wife went through antibiotics and had no result so more than likely she has viral bronchitis just like our poor baby girl. Kira has to breath in medicine in vapor form from a mask hooked to a loud machine. She was basically tolerant of the experience at first but I think her patience is getting thin for that routine. Not sure how much longer she needs that treatment but hopefully not too long. She seems to be a bit better.
Kira continues to amaze me with her progress and ability. Michelle continues to amaze me in taking care of Kira every day and the house and everything else. I know she thinks I don’t appreciate her and the hard work she does every day but I do. I really do. I am very proud of both of them. I really don’t think that Kira would be so well adjusted and amazingly advanced if it weren’t for Michelle being with her every day and working with her and taking care of her.
We have been getting the run-around with Graebel… again. You may remember we had issues with them back in October of last year. Well, to one extent or another we have had continual issues since then as well. Now for the past few months we have been dealing with trying to get our insured items covered and repaired. Some things have worked out and many things haven’t but nothing has gone smoothly. You can read up on the current problems over at the wife’s site. I have given up dealing with them and turned them over to her to deal with. I’m betting they are now wishing that they would have just worked things out with me. If we ever decide to move to a new city again with my current employer I will do everything I can to NOT use Graebel for that or any other move.
I’ve been busy working on a few different projects at work. I’m working on getting some new security software rolled out to all of our computers (actually our Altiris guy is doing all the work) and I’m in the final stages of getting ready for a big office integration in New York City. I do not look forward to being away from the wife and our little girl while working on that project and I’m sure Michelle isn’t looking forward to it either. But I don’t have to travel too often and I’m still employed so I do what I have to do.
We were planning on migrating from Microsoft Exchange 2003 to the new Exchange 2007 and I’ve been working on the testing and planning of that for a few months. However, now that Microsoft is releasing the next version (2010) earlier than expected, and faster than any other major revision cycle in history for that product, we are now on hold. The idea is that we will now skip Exchange 2007 and go directly to 2010. OK cool. We can do that.
I have been working on some new comics for A Little Scary in my “spare” time but I missed my re-launch date of June 1st already. I’m hoping to get a couple done soon. Here’s hoping. I don’t want to start up again without at least a small buffer or I’ll just end up getting discouraged again when a deadline comes and goes with no update.
Bonus points if you can tell me where I got the title of this post.
Tags: family, Graebel, life, sick, web comic, Work
Baby, Business, General, Rant, Work, comics | cybrpunk | 
June 2, 2009 11:45 am | 
Comments (2)
Muse took Kira to get Easter pictures. She was nice enough to let me have a few. Here’s the latest picture of the wall above my desk at work. Taken on my iPhone so the quality is crap.
Yes, I did mean that.
Finally – its Friday! Yesterday I thought it was Friday all day. Imagine my disappointment when I was leaving for the day and people were saying “See you tomorrow!” And I’m thinking to myself “pshaw… I’m not coming in on Saturd… dammit!” And you’d think I’d know what day it was since it was a comic posting day. Sheesh.
Me and two of my co-workers travelled into the deepest darkest depths of North Africa for lunch yesterday to get take-out from Crown Candy Kitchen. I’d never been there before so I figured what the hell, why not? Let me tell you… we couldn’t have looked more lost if we had a neon sign flashing above us with the word LOST written in 20 foot tall glowing letters. Imagine this: Three white guys in button down shirts driving down the side streets of North St. Louis in a shiny silver BMW. Me in the passenger sheet holding three pages of Google Maps trying to figure out which way to go when the route we are taking is inexplicably cut off by a street closure. Yeah.
But we found it and made it inside without hearing a single gunshot (although to be fair there was a lot of road construction happening nearby so we might have missed it) and I have to admit its a pretty neat place. A throw-back to the 50’s or 60’s in style, decor, seating… everything. OK not everything. The prices are insane. It cost me almost $12 for a ham & cheese sandwich with some potato chips and a marshmallow malt. What the hell? Up here? Who can afford that in this area? Sadly, the candy prices were even higher. Have they never heard of Wal-Mart? It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think I’ll be taking that particular safari again any time soon.
On the way back to the office my friend was showing off and punched the accelerator on the BMW. We rocketed back and then he slowed down abruptly. I asked him what that was for, thinking maybe he saw a cop. He said we were doing 95 MPH and he didn’t want to take the Broadway exit ramp. I called him a pussy. There’s no other response possible at that point really. If he’d have floored it and got another 20 or 30 MPH on it we could have taken that ramp, hit the apex, and flown right over the parking garage – through the side of our building and into his parking spot in the garage. But no. He slowed down and took another exit. Pussy.
I brought my lunch today….
It’s Wednesday of my second week back in the St. Louis office and things are going fine I suppose. I’m spending about half my day working on issues and projects for Asia Pacific and the second half of my day working on getting up to speed on new projects. Nothing too difficult but very time consuming. A few deadlines are arriving faster than I’d anticipated but I think we can manage. I hope.
We bought a new car on Friday night after work. I’ll post more details about that as well as some pictures later. I don’t have them with me right now.
Well, it is Friday morning and I’ve survived my first work week back here in Saint Louis. The jet lag has been hitting me pretty hard as it usually does when I’ve flown back to the States. But I was doing pretty good yesterday and feel pretty good today. I’ve had a persistantly random cough of the phlegmy nature since the flights which also isn’t too unusual for me travelling long distances. The people in the office are a bit concerned that I brought SARS back with me. I tell them they are just being silly. It’s Bird Flu.
I’m planning on leaving work today and venturing up into the unknown wilderness known as St. Peters to buy a car. I’m sure there are ogres and dragons that far away from civilization but there are also a ton of car dealerships so it’s still rather convenient. I’ve got an orange Mitsubishi Lancer GTS being held for me to buy tonight. It’s pretty damn nice. I’ll get some pics snapped maybe this weekend while it’s still all clean and shiny.
My replacement has been here in Hong Kong for a few days now. The training is going along swimmingly I suppose. There’s a lot to cover. I don’t think I’ve talked this much… well… ever.
Some of the things I tell him he already knows. I think some of the things come as genuine surprises. It’s not an easy job. Usually.
Met with him in Wan Chai for a few beers tonight on my way home. Now it’s late and I have a headache. More to do tomorrow.
Medicine and sleep.
Wow, that title sounds impressive.
To be honest, which I mostly am, I do not write the jokes that get posted on this site. Anyone who bothers to read all the crap e-mail their so-called friends and family will already know that. I cherry pick my favorites from the billions of jokes floating about the internet. Often I find myself editing them for spelling, grammar, formatting and sometimes content because refinement is not always a bad thing. I mean let’s face it – not all jokes are good. However sometimes I’ll run across an absolute crap joke that has a good idea that can be fixed. I still don’t claim the jokes as mine when I do that, but I like to think I bring the quality up a notch or so at least.
On the other hand, the jokes at A Little Scary are mostly my own. There have been two instances where I took a funny conversation from the now defunct inpassing.org site and adapted them into a format and relevance to fit the comic. And as long as that old overheard conversation website stays down, I can claim those jokes as mine still. But it also sucks because it was the original overheard conversation site on the web and it was a great source of motivation. I mean seriously… people are really stupid sometimes. I’m living proof.
One upcoming comic is actually an old e-mail joke adapted to fit the comic strip format of A Little Scary. The punch line is the same, but everything else was created new for the strip. I’d like to think that I can claim that as my own because 95.8% of the content is created by me if you count the “artwork” as well.
So if you’re still reading this post, you’re probably starting to fidget and wondering what my point is. Well, I have to be honest: I really don’t know. I guess the point is that you should always give credit where credit is due. This is true in general as well as at work and in dealing with everything and anything. If you feel you can only get ahead by taking credit for other people’s work then you really need to admit that to yourself and take a step back and decide if that’s really who you want to be. Nobody likes a fake. Not even other fakes. And no matter how good you are at faking it, there’s no substitute for making something yourself, something you can be proud of and honestly feel good about with no regrets. Nothing can top that.
In case you’re wondering, no I’m not writing this because someone has wronged me in some way. I’m just sharing a small part of what makes me tick, so to speak. I think it’s an important life lesson that most people have been on one side of or the other but it seems to get overlooked. People often miss the big picture because they are either too busy trying to keep up the illusion or too busy being depressed or mad that someone took credit for their work.
No of course the zen thing for me to tell you at this point is to be the better person when you find yourself being taken advantage of in a situation like this. That would be the proper way to handle things. But to hell with that. If someone takes credit for my work I get pissed. And I start looking for ways to let everyone know it. Of course you have to know when to pick your battles, but seriously, I don’t like that and I will let you know about it. However, the one thing I can do add a little zen back to that is to promise I will not take credit for other people’s work. My career is not that important nor anything else. You know, unless like the person who should get credit is already dead… and there’s no way for it to come back to me. I never said I was stupid or naive. Just honest. Mostly.
Yeah I didn’t get a chance to post anything yesterday. I had no idea that I would be working a 14 hour day. I was asked to come by an internal event happening at a hotel here in Hong Kong at 8:00am to help with the setup. I got there at ten till eight and no one else showed up till about ten after. Oh well.
I realized I was going to late for another meeting back at my office and ran out in a hurry in the afternoon. I was ten minutes late for that. The universe does not like me to be early. I was ten minutes early in the morning so I was made to be ten minutes late in the afternoon. Considering I usually just average in at ‘late’, I can deal with that kind of balance.
I took four taxis throughout the day yesterday which is very unusual for me to take any taxis at all. Luckily they are pretty cheap here and much cheaper than back in the States. Then again Hong Kong is a really small place so it may just be relative to that.
I had dinner and drinks with the people from the even after work and then went back and helped re-arrange, re-cable, re-organize and test (and re-test) presentations and videos for today. By the time I finally made it home I called Muse and then crashed.
For as long as I’ve been with this company they have been using only Dell computers and servers. Recently though our parent company has decided that all companies under it’s umbrella must start purchasing and using HP computers and servers. I don’t mind HP at all but this shift in hardware was not thought out other than to make this mandate and then leave people wondering: How?
We have no corporate or global agreement with HP like we do with Dell. We have no standardized pricing and discounts like we currently enjoy. And so far, it looks like the first HP notebook I’ve ordered is going to take at least three weeks to arrive. Unlike Dell which takes, at most, a week. Someone should have thought about this just a little more.
Now add to this that we also have to deal with Lenovo on some projects so we have to be able to buy Lenovo notebooks as well. I just received a brand new Thinkpad X61s this morning (which was ordered one week after the HP) and have started removing the bloatware. Thinkpads have always been notorious for putting tons of extra crap into their computer builds that no one will ever use. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.
I just ordered six PCs from Dell last week. They are all here already. I think I’ll just worry about HP later.
