Tomorrow Jess and I leave for Austin. Originally, I was all set to go to SXSW but due to some unknowns at work the trip was put on hold.

Between that time and now, Jess and I became engaged, and the trip is now a SXSW/wedding planning endeavor. I will still have time to meet folks and share a meal. If you’re going to be in town, e-mail me at ssegr&#97ves@gmail.com.

See you there!

Stuff; I keep it. For no reason at all, I have a habit of hanging on to things that are no longer needed, take up space, and look cluttered. How long have I been doing this? For as long as I can remember. The kicker is that it has trickled into my computer habits and now I find myself not deleting PDFs and having data spread out all over my harddrive.

This is bad practice, I know. I can admit it is a form of being a packrat, though I am not sure my room or computer desktop look like those pictures. My reasons for keeping things is purely the possibility needing something later in time, even though, in the back of my mind I doubt the need will materialize. I keep information brochures on things that will probably never be used, text documents containing flight information from three years ago and coupons for pizza that expired years ago.

So, after years of this type of behavior, I am working on just getting rid of stuff. During a recent flight I went through my computer harddrive and just started deleting things that were spread out everywhere. If I did not know what the file was by looking at the name and its location, it went in the trash. In my room, I’ve emptied a basket of papers that I no longer need and filed the ones I do. There is progress but it is sometimes difficult for me to part with something I think I may need or use in the future. I’ll keep trying.

Your normal trip to a public restroom involves a routine. You walk in, head to the urinal, unzip, do your business, wash your hands, and you’re back to what you were doing before.

That experience was completely different today. I walked in, headed to the urinal, saw a guy who was talking to someone while using the restroom, flushing, and washing his hands. Me, I don’t have the audacity to do such things, nor the skill level.

Most banking/debit cards have their transactions show up almost instantaneously online, but credit cards are different. When I make a purchase, the most instant feedback I get is the available balance showing a decrease but I can never see the actual transaction. This is disconcerting because I would like to be able to see where my money goes in an instant instead of waiting 3-4 days for the credit card processing to occur.

I can kind of understand why it takes place, and the reason is for the good of the customer. The credit card company during transaction can check for fraud and stop things in their tracks if it is detected. While this is great, it keeps me from doing my own balancing and checking.

Being a user of a credit card instead of a debit card, it would be nice if they worked the same. Well, maybe some day.

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.

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.

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.