Author: ssegraves

My morning ruined by a phone call

ssegraves

The morning drive to work, though filled with traffic, is a respite from what lies ahead in the day. My radio is usually turned to talk radio and I am able to reflect on the discussion of the day.

This morning, all of that came to a screeching halt. My co-worker, who was told to be at the office early, arrived at 7:30am, just like she was told. My boss was looking for a database on the server that had not been added yet. My co-worker proceeded to provide my boss with my personal cell phone number and he proceeded to call me.

I answered, not knowing who it was, and there went my morning. The question was simple, “Were’ you able to get the database put on the server yesterday?”, my answer was equally simple, “No”. Silence ensued so I continued, telling my boss that I was on the freeway. He inquired as to how long it would take me to get there, “depending on traffic, 20 minutes”.

Now my solitude in the morning was instead interrupted by thoughts of what I would have to do the rest of the day. Then, to ice the cake, the person who we were supposed to be rushing to facilitate showed up at his leisure an hour later. So we rushed, I got my morning shockingly interrupted, and the person it was done for could have cared less.

The lesson from this? Don’t answer your phone in the morning.

Give me a reason to read your resume

ssegraves

When I receive a resume for a potential employee the first thing I do is review it for spelling and grammatical errors. I printed out a resume last week that had me rolling. It was for a position that we have here but this person wants to do it in China. He’s from China and my first thought was that he basically wanted a free ticket home (we’ve had that happen before).

As I read the resume I realized this guy may not actually grasp the English language, even though he’s apparently lived here for 20+ years. There were grammatical errors galore, with one sentence (that was a statement) ending in a question mark. What am I supposed to do? How do these resumes get through the HR people in the first place? It seems as though it is an exercise in futility. I can already imagine how my interview is going to go with this candidate and though I will go through with it, I’m dreading it.

Just last week, actually right before I received this resume, I interviewed a perfect candidate for the position, but have not heard anything more. The whole situation is quite disconcerting.

Just give someone a call

ssegraves

On average, my inbox at work receives around 30-60 new messages each day. The e-mails are pretty well spread out as far as timing is concerned, however, the content lately has just left me dumbfounded.

This morning an e-mail was sent out concerning some questions and problems a client is having. The client in question expressed an interest in a certain technology but is worried about performance, so the e-mail attempted to get this questions answered. Instead, the following was sent (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

Fred,

Thanks for bringing us into the loop. We have been discouraging people from heavy usage of that particular technology because of the activity it can generate which can lead into performance issue.

We can certainly have a meeting and discuss options in greater detail. Please send as much detail as you can prior to that. I am copying Todd, Todd has the most insight into this issue because we have had these type of requests before. Todd is currently down with a flu for the last couple of days. Its very important that we have Todd in the meeting. Let’s target a meeting Thursday afternoon or Friday, Todd should hopefully be back by then.

I also copying Joe Blow because he tends to interface with this client a lot and he may have some insight into suggesting alternatives.

Teddy

Let me just say that the e-mail that preceded the above was extremely detailed and explained the issues very well, yet we have to have a meeting to figure out the best route to go. Why do we need a meeting? Why can’t this person address the issues in an e-mail or better yet a quick phone call? Nope, we have to waste a few hours in a meeting that could possibly accomplish little to nothing.

These types of issues irk me because they are blatant time wasters. Meetings for everything, should be the slogan as that best describes how it feels.

Across the U.S. twice

ssegraves

After a fun trip across the U.S. I am back in Houston and in the “groove” of work and the day to day. My plan is to go through my pictures this week, do a little editing and post them to my flickr account as soon as possible. I will give just a quick recap of the trip but I plan to do a more detailed post about it when I post the pictures, because without them, a lot of the words do not do the experience justice.

I started off at the Houston airport on Friday, flew to Newark, met my cousin there, and we continued on to Philadelphia. After the hour drive, we dropped off my things at his home and walked to a local brewpub a few blocks away for a quick beer and some conversation.

The next day was spent with my cousin Jeff and his wife Marnie exploring the city of Philadelphia. From the Museum of Art to South Philadelphia and cheesesteaks, I saw a good portion of the city and enjoyed every minute.

On Sunday morning I awoke at 6am EST to catch my Amtrak train to Newark. Arriving at Newark fairly early, I stopped in to the President’s Club and had a glass of orange juice and watched the ground crew load my flight. I boarded the 777 and took my seat, 5A. This experience turned out to be a great one and the 5 and a half hour flight was fantastic. We had a great crew, amazing food, and wonderful views as we overflew the Canadian prairies.

Arriving in Seattle, I quickly made my way to the PC once again for a quick rest and the possibility of hopping on the earlier flight to Houston. There was no such luck and I took the original flight home, arriving in Houston at 9:30pm CST.

So, I flew 5,400 miles and crossed the U.S. twice in approximately 40 hours. What a trip!

The mileage run journey begins

ssegraves

This afternoon marks the beginning of my first mileage run. My routing at this point stands as IAH–EWR–SEA–IAH.

I am hoping for a smooth run with minimal delays or sitting on the ground. Seeing my cousin in Philadelphia will be a nice way to start out the trip and will make it worth it.

I’ll try to do some writing while sitting in the airport if I can.

Rent books with BookSwim

ssegraves

Being that both Jess and I are more the book reader type than the movie watching type, the new site BookSwim tickled my fancy. At it’s core it is Netflix but for books. Now I know I can go to the library and get books for free but a lot of the time the books there are not new releases or in great condition. Since I only like to keep books that I really, really enjoy then this service makes perfect sense.

As soon as the server problems they are having (instant popularity) die down I am going to sign-up and try it out.

Cut me once, shame on me

ssegraves

Standing in line at fast food or semi-fast food restaurants is never any fun. However, there are etiquette rules that should be adhered to by everyone. We all have to stand there, why not make it as stress free as possible?

So, there I was, waiting to order. There were four people in front of me and the line seemed to be moving quickly. There was some convergence of the multiple lines and a tad bit of confusion set in. A woman walks up behind me, then beside me, and says, “excuse me”. Me, being someone with occasional manners, lets her pass, thinking that she is trying to make her way to the exit. Nope, not today.

The woman proceeds to join her friends one line over, and a few people forward, right where there is some confusion. All of the sudden, I realize she cut in-front of two people in the line where I am standing! I resisted saying anything and finally ordered and left, but the feeling of being ‘duped’ never receded. It is that feeling of irritation that just gets under your skin.

I think the reason so many people are so concerned about themselves now is because of people like this woman. Why would someone want to be polite if they knew the person was just going to cut them? The rude people are ruining it for everyone. So how do we handle this, do we call people out in public or do we become rude ourselves. John Stuart Mill would say that we need to call these people out and move them to the back of the line. He would say that we need to do what is best for the greater good, in effect, “cutting” in front of those who “cut” us.

Me, I’m just going to do my best to be polite, even when others are rude and cheat the system.

My parents, the Mac-heads

ssegraves

Yesterday evening, my parents became the proud owners of a new Apple MacBook. Up until now they have been doing all of their e-mail, web browsing, photos, and document editing on a Windows desktop. The move will take some adjusting but I doubt they will have any problems. My mother is already awestruck by the simple features of the dock and Dashboard.

One thing that struck me as odd was the fact that iLife ’08 was not pre-installed on the machine. Instead, a DVD with it was included in the box that contains system CDs, along with a copy of iWork ’08. Granted, it is a small thing but I did expect a little more from Apple.

It’s been just over a day and…

ssegraves

Already, the tragic events that occurred in Minneapolis have caused the Democrats to turn their sights to Bush as the center of blame.

Harry Reid has the gall to, less than two days after the event, blame Bush for the problems with our nations infrastructure. He claims that after 9/11 we’ve “taken our eyes off the ball”, going on to state that Bush spends too much time worrying about the war in Iraq to care about our nations bridges. There are others who have jumped on this bandwagon without even thinking about the human factor. This is a tragedy and yet these folks cannot wait till all of the bodies have been recovered to start placing blame. I find it appalling that this is the case, but I guess I have come to expect it.

To clear a few issues up, the bridge has failed inspection off and on since 1990, which I believe was more than seven years ago, if my math is correct and if my history is correct, George W. Bush wasn’t President. Also, the Federal Government only supplies money to the states for road repair and maintenance, they do not oversee the work, that is the responsibility of those states. Anyone thinking Katrina? How those states spend the money is up to them, if they want to buy party hats for everyone, so be it. Lastly, bridges are found structurally deficient pretty often, but that does not make them candidates for immediate failure. In fact, the Brooklyn Bridge was recently found to be in this condition, yet people still drive on it. The problem lies squarely with the states. Bush should not be worrying about the structural integrity of every bridge and road in every state. Yes, there should be some concern for our infrastructure but the states should also be making the proper decisions on where to spend the money. I guess in the end Bush hates black people, people on bridges, and kids in school buses.

Come on people, wake-up. This is a tragedy. Show some compassion and stop trying to throw blame around before the dust even settles. Realize that the Federal Government is not to blame for every little thing in your lives and accept it. Life will be a great deal easier and you will feel better too.