Fourth Day of Vacation

It was awfully hard getting started today, what with the rain and all. Makes me sorta sleepy.

Worked on the mechanical room today, nearly finished the walls. Spent some time with Cheryl packing up odds and ends for the Teen Garage Sale. Watched some Don Knotts movies on YouTube (The Reluctant Astronaut and The Shakiest Gun in the West). Took the odds and ends to the church. Did a little shopping with Cheryl.

All in all, a nice, quiet day at home, cutting wood and making very slow, deliberate process on the basement.

Third Day of Vacation

Whew. I'm tired again.

Didn't get very much accomplished today. Puttered, more or less. Added another circuit to the downstairs outlets. Had to pull out some drywall to get the wiring in, and found that the builder had epoxied the drywall to the studs. Never have seen that before. Sorta stupid, I think. But I've since been informed that it might've been done to cut down on insect infestation. Although how a two-foot long strip of epoxy down the length of the four-foot stud is supposed to keep bugs out, I'll never know.

Did a bit of outside work, too, cleaning gutters (which was gross, but walking on the roof is always fun!) and getting the lawn mower ready for the new season. Had to put oil in it. Woo-Hoo! These technically complicated tasks wear me down.

Still haven't been to the store yet. Gotta get some more junction boxes and light switches and assorted odds'n'ends.

Beats working.

Second Day of Vacation

It started out poorly.

Actually, it started out poorly the night before it started - the second day, I mean. Exhaustion washed over me that first night as though all my energy had just drained away, although there was no fathomable reason for that to occur. Certainly there had been no activity of any strenuous nature during the first day's activities. Regardless, the feeling came on early, and persisted throughout the evening, though I resisted mightily. Bedtime was delayed until very late, owing to the need to clean up after all the random activities. But even that would not normally leave me so unenthusiastic about the morning.

Since the children are not on break this week, they arose at their normal time, as did I. Breakfast ensued, the regular routine of oatmeal and milk and bagels, thereafter the rituals of dressing and cleaning and getting all the books and pens and papers and other scholastic paraphenalia together into the backpacks, followed by a few moments quiet sanity, and then the rush to fly out the door in search of the bus.

As soon as they were gone, I went back to bed. And stayed there until half-past eleven!

I hadn't realized my exhaustion was that developed.

Arising nigh on to lunch-time, I breakfasted a bit, then tried to catch up on some of the basement activities. Wiring the lights to individual circuits was the focus of the morning, and that led off onto some merry little adventures as it was discovered that various circuits seemed to be a bit overloaded. For example, the downstairs lights were all wired on the same circuit as the smoke alarm, the sump pump, and the water heater. It is my understanding that, in general, motor devices are not supposed to be on the same circuit as lights; and certainly not smoke alarms - those should have their own circuit. My main concern was the collective amperage, though; altogether, the 15-amp circuit had the potential for a load approaching 40, which is a bit of a problem.

So a bit of time was spent figure out the proper load for the downstairs circuits. That took until well into the afternoon, at which time the children came home from school, dinner was had, and the evening activities ensued.

Nothing else of any great import was accomplished. And I'm still exhausted.

End of an Era, Start of Vacation

It was back in 1995, as I recall, just a few weeks after the end of my illustrious ten-year career with The Boeing Company, that we first heard about GeoCities. At Microsoft, where I was contracted as a tester for MSN, we were exploring the early Internet and trying out all the free websites. Somebody in the office heard about GeoCities and told everyone else, and soon we all had our own sites. Back in those days, we were doing it as part of our testing; our assignment was to make sure Windows 95 and MSN were able to handle the fancy HTML from as many sites as possible.

It was an intriguing idea, venturing forth into the wild frontier of the Web, putting meaningless drivel out there for others to see, trying to figure out where all the websites were; this was before the major search engines were available. We had a wonderful time playing around, watching the Browser Wars, updating our HTML (or DHTML) as advances occurred.

At one point, after I'd spent a great deal of time working with jscript to make my site a really cool visual experience (akin to a commented slide show), GeoCities thwarted my humble ambitions by forcing all the 'free' sites to incorporate their auto-advertisement wrapper script; this meant that all viewers of the free sites would be inundated with annoying ads. It also broke my jscript.

I had to return to a simple, static format. And the site sorta got boring. In the end, it didn't really matter. I had no time to give it the attention it deserved, and it was only useful to keep the grandparents up-to-date with pictures of the grandkids.

Yahoo! bought GeoCities some time ago. That is never a good thing. Sure, they promise to keep things the same for a period of time, but you know it's bound to change. And it adds a level of annoyance that can be frustrating.

No more. I've put up the last picture. Soon, Yahoo! will close GeoCities, and the site will disappear.

Several of the old 'free' sites are doing something similar. It's no longer economically feasible to give out so much free space, I suppose. And that's fine, since they are in it for the money, not as a charity.

But it's not worth it to me, paying money to put up pictures and words that very few people care about. I haven't had the time to do a good job of it, and I hate putting out stuff that isn't worth reading.

The Flickr site will probably end up in the same boat. They've already started restricting access to the free users, and that's going to be one big hassle from now on out. So I'm not even going to bother with it anymore.

We still have Blogger (here) and Facebook, but it wouldn't surprise me if those go Pay-Per-View in the near future as well, given the economic situation. Just get people addicted enough to think they can't live without it, and then start reeling 'em in, that's the way it's done.

* *

I was supposed to start my vacation last Friday - gotta use up five days in April or lose 'em -- but there was simply too much to do at work, so I ended up working it anyway.

Started the real vacation today, working on the basement. Got some more insulation up, did a bit of re-organizing, can't figure out how I'm going to get all these jobs done by the end of the week, but we'll give it the ol' college try.

Today's effort doesn't look like much. It took a lot longer than I'd planned. I've been feeling pretty tired all day long, even after a good night's sleep.

Before	After

Oh, well. It's a start.

Spring Break

It is Spring Break.

I'm taking a few days off. We have Good Friday as a holiday anyway, so a few days before and a few days after are enough to get a little momentum on some things around here that need fixing. Like the basement. Like my little Toyota (320,000 miles and still running!). Like me and the family running around the town, making memories.

My eyes were burning all day long. I went to work for four hours and then called it a day, went home and put a warm, wet rag on across my eyes and took a nap. Felt much better afterward. Then got up and worked a few more hours from home, going through email, writing documents, until my eyes were burning too much again.

After dinner, we went out shopping at the hardware store; time to replace the furnace air filters. We were also looking for a piece for her sewing basket which broke off when silly Mary tried standing on top of it. (When will they ever learn?) The air was too cold and windy to be outside very long, but it was nice to get out into the fresh air, if only in-between car stops.

When we got home, Cheryl made brownies while the kids and I started a game of Heroscape. We had been planning on watching The Two Towers after the game, but the game went long and we never got around to the movie. Just as well. We had fun.

I'm tired, tired of working and tired of being tired of working. My eyes are tired, my body is aching, my brain is fried, and I want to spend some time on the things I haven't had time for, like my computers and my house and my car. And, above all, my family.

So much to do, so little time...

Another Emotional Afternoon

When you get a note from the boss that he needs to "talk" for a few minutes, it usually means one of two things: (1) He's not happy with your work, and wants you to do more; or (2) he's not happy with your work, and wants you to leave.

Today, it was choice number 1. I'm not sure if that's good or not

Admittedly, I'm not happy with my work, either, but knowing that and being told that, are two different things. I am a perfectionist. I'm never happy with my work. There's never enough time to do a good job, and "good enough" is not a term in my dictionary.

He opened the discussion with a question. "What do you do all day?" This is not a good way to begin a conversation, at least not from the boss. It implies that you aren't doing enough of the things that he thinks you should be doing. In fact, I'm doing all the peripheral things that need to be done in order for my team to do their work, but those are not things that show up on my task list. There's a lot of impromptu data gathering, conversations over the wall, document-writing on the spur of the moment, metrics put together to support last-minute meetings - and then there are meetings, lots and lots of meetings.

Including the one I'm sitting in.

I didn't try to justify my existence with the boss. I just listened. And when it came my turn to talk, I explained the way things are. The team is tired, overworked, frustrated by the constantly changing schedules and milestones. They are timid about approaching management because management believes in Progress Through Yelling. I told him that I don't believe in yelling at employees because it is unprofessional and counter-productive.

And then he told me the most amazing thing, a thing that nearly knocked me out of my chair with astonishment. He said that Managers Have To Yell. In fact, he believes that it is necessary in order to motivate people. And he claims that it works.

I was aghast. It's no wonder the situation has deterioriated so much, if that's the methodology they espouse.

So then he tells me, It's OK. Sometimes the managers get a little emotional, so they yell at people. Don't take it personally.

Then I told him that if he or any of the other managers ever raised their voice at me in a meeting again, I would be walking out. There is absolutely no excuse for treating anyone like that.

Several hours later, sitting comfortably at home, I'm still angry about it.

An Emotional Afternoon

It isn't easy to relax after such a tumultuous afternoon.

Sometimes it is difficult working with friends, especially if there are disagreements concerning the method in which specific work is to be done. Especially if the friend is supposed to be working for me.

I am very stubborn about the way things are done when I'm the person responsible for making sure it is done right. When I'm in charge, it will be done my way. No exceptions.

When someone disagrees with the way I've decided it should be done, they are allowed to present their arguments in order to sway that decision. If those arguments are not persuasive, in my opinion (based on twenty-five years of testing experience), then my decision is final. I have been known to change my mind and my method if someone presents a solid, logical argument.

This did not happen in this case. The argument was not persuasive; in fact, it was a rehash of an old argument which was presented a year ago and vehemently dismissed by me, and has gained no validity in the intervening period. Unfortunately, I have been unable to convince this person of the weakness of their viewpoint, mainly due to my lack of time to devote to this single issue. As a manager, I don't have time to get down into the details of every little decision; I rely on my experience and knowledge, and that of those who work for me; I also rely on the engineer's ability to explain clearly to me the reasons they disagree with me, and make their case for the alternative.

Emotional outbursts, which have always been the result of my inquiries into the subject, are not helpful in the least.

Another emotional outburst occurred today. It wouldn't have bothered me at all if the venting had been directed only at myself, but it was not. It was directed at two other people who were doing exactly what I had asked them to do. And it was they who came to me, seeking some kind of action on my part to alleviate the situation.

I don't have much choice here. I had told the engineer in question exactly what I wanted, on numerous occasions. My directions have been disregarded.

As a manager, it is now my obligation to remove this person from any responsibility concerning this area.

As a friend of this person, I agonize over what to say, and how to say it in such a way that the friendship can be preserved.

But in the end, I have to do what is right for the project.