RSS FeedBusy week in review
This past week was pretty busy. I started the week by flying to San Francisco for a trade show. The thing about trade shows, they are basically all the same. Maybe not the content, but everything else about them is identical. I’ll show you what I mean. Here was my trade show:
Day 1: Fly in the night before the show, eat dinner too late, go out for drinks and get to sleep way to late.
Day 2: Get up early, have a crappy breakfast, spend most of your day on your feet, go out to dinner too late, go to an industry party with an open bar, get to sleep way to late.
Day 3: Get up a little later, have a crappy breakfast, have very few meetings at the show because everybody else went out too late last night, too, eat dinner way to late, skip the industry party, go to sleep way to late.
Day 4: Get up and rush to the airport to fly home.
The show was good. I had some great meetings and made some decent deals. But still I arrived home totally bushed. On Thursday I planned on going to sleep around 10 PM so I could get a good night’s sleep. Instead I fell asleep at 8:15 and slept all night.
While I was in San Francisco, I did take a few photos that I’m pretty happy with. One of them was a 30 second exposure I took from my hotel room of the street below. I love catching the streaking lights of the cars on the road. I’m thrilled with how it came out. You can check them out over here.
Friday night we went back to Sam’s Town to play the 11 PM tourney. We started with 4 tables and it didn’t take that long to get down to the final table. We lost a couple players and when we got down to the final 5, I was the overwhelming chip leader. I then got unlucky in a couple hands and I was quickly the short stack. A few minutes later, I was out of the tournament in 5th place. That, as they say, is poker.
On Saturday I slept in. It was lovely. I woke up and watched some hockey. We then went to lunch and headed over to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Have I mentioned lately that I’m addicted to this place? My current list of favorite games are “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “Star Trek”, and “Austin Powers”. I have had a few good games on Creature, but I feel like I’m about ready to break through and have a HUGE game. I currently have my name on the high score boards for 2 games (Star Trek & Funhouse) and I feel Creature is next on my list. Soon.
Saturday evening we ordered the UFC fight on pay-per-view and had a few friends over to watch. I have to say that watching UFC is way more fun with a group of people. I watch a fair bit of it on my own, but it’s just not the same.
Sunday is going to be low key. I need to rest up and get another good night’s sleep. I have a LOT of work to do this week. I would like to get out and take some more photos, but we’ll have to see how that shapes up.
Moving day at work
It’s been about a year and a half since I had an office at work. When I was first moved out of my office I truthfully said that it didn’t bother me. Working in a cube (or the crazy shaped desks we have at the office) hasn’t really bothered my at all.They are a little small and if you are working on a project that requires you to have a few sheets of papers out at the same time, these desks are pretty constricting. Other than that, I haven’t been bothered by the lack of an office. That all changed two days after I got a promotion last month.
In my new roll at the office, I am constantly working on projects that require a notebook, 2 or 3 different printouts, a spreadsheet on one screen and a web browser on the other. I just flat out need more room. Our plans to move in to the new offices have been pushed back time and time and time again. However, tomorrow is officially moving day. At noon we get to peel the wrapping paper of the new building and dive on in. For me, this means I’m back to having my own office.
There are a few things I will not miss about the current office. The crazy shaped desks are only a part of it. There is almost always a crazy odor in our building. A lot of times it comes from people cooking things in the microwave that shouldn’t be cooked in a work type setting. The kitchen in our new building has doors that automatically close off the rest off the office, and another set of doors that opens out to our new patio. Also, at the current building there is a crazy temperature change that happens every day around noon. It goes from being cool/comfortable to warm/unbearable in a matter of minutes. It’s almost to the point of needing to bring a change of clothes. I’m hopeful that the new office will not have the shifting climate syndrome. My final gripe about the current office is the fact that I sneeze there more than anywhere else on the planet. That may be due to the odd smell, it may be due to the temperature change or it may just be something in the air. Whatever it is, I’ll be happy to be rid of it.
So tomorrow is going to be a busy one. I better go get some sleep.
Brain Overload, Time to Chill
My new position at the office has kept me really busy these past two weeks. On top of the many new projects I have on my plate, I’ve also been added to several new weekly meetings. This has made it fairly challenging to keep up. This morning I got to work just before 7:00 AM. Between 7:00 and 12:00 I had spent a grand total of 6 minutes at my desk. The rest of the time was spent in meetings. Ouch.
Don’t get me wrong, these meetings have all been useful. Knowledge transfer is one of the things I need most right now. I need to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. But, when you spend 5 hours in meetings, you usually come back to your desk to find 2 or 3 voice mails and a slew of emails that need attention. Get caught up with those and now you have about 2 hours to get 8 hours worth of work done. Sweet!
After a couple weeks of that and I was in need of a night off. It was time to turn the brain off and just chill the fuck out! So last night, that’s exactly what I did. I got home from work, plopped down on the couch with some dinner and then watched a couple movies with the wife.
The first movie we watched was The Man From Earth. This was on the recommendation of both Rob and Todd. One word: Fantastic!
The movie is about a Professor who attempts to convince a group of his colleagues that his 14,000 years old. They spend the better part of an afternoon and evening trying prove or disprove his claim. Each of his colleagues goes through a roller coaster ride of thoughts and emotions as they go from thinking he’s lost his mind to thinking that he’s telling the truth and back again. The bulk of the movie takes place in a single room with nothing more going on than some conversation. The movie was like no other movie I’ve seen before. I can not recommend it highly enough.
Our second movie required a lot less thinking. Waiting…, staring Ryan Reynolds and Justin Long is about a group of friends who all work at a restaurant together. The guys all spend their time playing a game where they try to get the other guys to look at their junk. Succeed and you get to kick them in the ass. There’s all the typical relationship issues (waiter who’s too smart to not being doing something bigger, waiter lusting after the hostess, manager trying to hang with the group of “cool kids”, bitter waitress who puts on the fake smile all day until she’s in the kitchen where she rants and raves like a lunatic). There are several funny parts strewn through the story, but overall, the movie didn’t really do it for me, though I can’t exactly pinpoint why.
Next on my Netflix list are 3:10 to Yuma and Shoot ‘Em Up. But tonight LOST returns. WOO HOO!
The end of week one
This has been quite a week. Prior to this week it had probably been more than a year since I had needed to stay late at work. So far this week I’m 5 for 5 on staying late. Don’t get me wrong, this is by no means a complaint. To be quite honest, even though I have been crazy-busy, I can also say that I haven’t had this much fun at work in over a year, either.
Much of the reason I’m so busy at work is because the new position I’ve taken on is dealing with aspects of the business that I haven’t been involved with in a couple years. I’m spending a lot of time researching things I once new like the back of my hand, but have since forgotten after not having them be part of my day-to-day life in quite some time. It also doesn’t help that in the time that I was away our company has been on a meteoric growth rate. I expect about a month at this pace before I’ve really got my hands around all I need to know.
Or, at least most of it.
A New Challenge
Last week I received a promotion at work and am now the Director of Online Marketing. Sounds pretty fancy, huh?
So, what does it mean? For starters it means that I have probably just given up my nights and weekends for the next 4-8 weeks while I dive in and get my hands around everything I have to manage. Even though I have been with the company for 10 years, for the past 2 years I haven’t been deeply involved with one side of the business that is now a key portion of my responsibility. I’m going to spend the next week familiarizing myself with all the elements that I will be managing and then I’ll start dicing it up in to manageable chunks.
I’m quite excited to take on this new position and the challenges that come with it. We’ll see how excited I am about it after a month of sorting through revenue reports.
Secret Santa day plus company gifts
Today at the office, a group of us all swapped Secret Santa gifts. I have to say that the gift I was given is absolutely perfect for me and I will DEFINITELY put it to use. It’s a desktop charging station. You put a power strip inside it and then there are 3 spots on top, plus a tray in the front where you can set items like cameras and cell phones when they need to be charged. The charging cords are all out of the way and kept neat and tidy. I currently don’t know who my Secret Santa was, but I thank you very much (whoever you are).
I was happy to see the reaction from the person for whom I played Secret Santa. We picked up a gift set from Bath and Bodyworks. It came with a purse plus 3 full-size bottles of lotion, bath gel and one other item. I got an awesome deal on it, so she was convinced that we went way over our $20 limit. Not so. I’m just that good of a shopper. OK, fine. I got lucky.
Today was also the day that our company handed out some other gifts. Each employee was given a list of 9 gift packages that we could choose from. I decided on the iPod Nano 3rd Gen. Yes, I already have a Nano, but not one of the new ones that plays videos. My Son has already asked if he can have my old one. We’ll see how it goes.
Speaking of the family, tonight was pretty cool. I got to play Rock Band with both of my kids. I played drums, my Son played guitar and my Daughter sang. We performed Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. It was so much fun playing with both of them. We then switched it up to let my Daughter play drums. That didn’t go so well and we ended up quitting. I tried to get her to go back on vocals, but she didn’t know any of the other songs on the list and didn’t want to play anymore. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Hopefully we can talk her in to playing again.