Delays

Due to the high expectations that have been set for my Thanksgiving summary, that one will have to percolate a little before it's ready for public consumption.  In the mean time, here's a picture from the weekend before with me and my new niece.

Bowling for Thanksgiving

Things are looking up here.  The rest of the work week went OK.  I got my performance review and creating all those mandatory schedules done.  Today finished off nicely.  We had a bowling event in the afternoon for work, which was done by 3:30.  This gave me time to go to the library and to the YMCA for aerobics.  I even had time to call my internet and phone provider and change my service and rates to be mo' betta.  It's amazing all the things you can get done when you're not working during normal business hours.

Let me just say, there are probably few things as nerdy as 100 electrical engineers going bowling (get it?  bowling...turkey...Thanksgiving).  We don't do your garden variety bowling where you try to get the highest score.  No, to make it more interesting and work justified, we add some Six Sigma into the mix.  Instead of shooting for the highest, the goal is to have the smallest variation around your target score.  Before you start bowling, each person has to predict a target score and their range of scores.  Then you bowl three games, and during each game you try to get exactly that score.  Sandbagging is allowed and encouraged.  After the three games, numbers are crunched, and the team with the best Cpk gets the eagle trophy.  Yes, there are trophies and a plaque listing the previous years' winning teams.  There are even individual awards like "Most Predictable" and "Least Predictable".  I know, we're nerds, every one of us.  One of the guys brings his sound system and acts as a DJ/MC too.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!  The Lord and the weather willing, I'll see my parents for T-day.

Crankiness and Thankfulness

It wasn't that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  I got up on the same old side I always do.  I was actually in a good mood as I walked into work today because I had a good weekend, a decent amount of sleep last night, and the temperature was warm outside.  But for some reason after an hour or two at work I started to feel a case of the crankies moving in, and I'm not exactly sure why.  There were a few things to aggravate me at work today, but that's kind of like any day, and most of the time they don't bother me.    I tried not to let it overtake my day but was only partially successful.  I made the mistake of sending an e-mail to my manager while in this peeved state, which is always a bad idea.  Hopefully there isn't too much fallout tomorrow from that.  As a rule, any e-mail you write while in any kind of emotional state should always sit in your "draft" folder overnight before you send it.  Here's my cranky list.

1. Pointless mandates from management three levels above me.  Not only do I have to take a bunch of online lame training courses due by December 3rd, but he's also mandated a maintenance of redundant schedules for five different projects I'm working on with only a week to get them all up to date before he begins "audits".  Grrrrrrrr.
2. Because of the previously mentioned mandates, I will probably now spend another four hours per week updating schedules and getting less "real" work done.  *sigh*
3. Because of traveling for work, my only option to have my annual performance review with my manager is tomorrow morning, which only gives me about an hour to prepare for that tomorrow morning.
4. We lost all three games of volleyball tonight.
5. I missed my golden opportunity for one last 2010 kayak trip yesterday.  Tomorrow the cold winds of winter will have blown in.

That's enough sourness for the day.  Since this is the week of Thanksgiving, I'll try to improve my mood by listing a few things I'm thankful for.

1. Parents, family, and friends that love me.
2. Adults in my life who cared when I was a child and taught me how to read, sing, ice skate, think for myself, etc.
3. Health.
4. Freedom.
5. A good night's sleep with a fresh perspective in the morning.

OK peeps, I'm off to attempt to get the kayak stowed.

Deja Vu

I had a serious case of deja vu this weekend.  It all seemed a little familiar:  the drive, the radio station playing all Christmas music all the time already, hanging out with some other females near my age, and seeing my brother's family.  I went back and checked, and was almost a year to the day since I made a similar trip.  I could almost copy and paste the same bulleted list and be done with it.  A few of the differences were that I have three nieces now instead of two, and my parents were visiting my brother also.  Maybe I'll post a picture tomorrow, although I didn't take very many so it might be slim pickings there.

Raking Randomness

I think this is the first year that I've raked leaves in the pitch dark.  It wasn't totally pitch dark because I was wearing my head lamp, but I raked for at least an hour tonight after nightfall to finish the 2010 raking business.  The raking occurred after I lost three games of racquetball to some white-haired guy with a bum elbow.  The first half of the lawn that I raked on Saturday looks like it could use another raking, but I'm pretty sure it'll keep until spring.  People say I should make the raking more automated by using a mower, bagger, etc.  Even though it is somewhat of an inconvenience, the truth is, in some perverse way I enjoy it.  Usually it only takes 4 or 5 hours total (once a year), and I enjoy the chance to be outdoors and have time to think and mull over stuff and things.

This week seems like it's taking forever to pass by, but it also feels like it just started.  Now I must go to bed so I can get up early for work in order to make sure I have all my documentation completed for the project review that will happen on two or three of my projects tomorrow.  Take care now, buh bye then.

P.S.  I have a new niece this week.  I'm sure she's very sweet, and I hope to verify that in person soon.

Accomplishments

It only took ten weeks, but I finally won one racquetball game in the B+ league at the Y.  My opponent did have one of those heavy duty knee braces, but he's only in his 40's or 50's, so it does feel like somewhat of an accomplishment.

Plus, lodging and lift tickets for an upcoming snowboarding/ski trip are booked.  Woohoo!  I need to book transportation, and then I'm good to go.  Well, almost.  I need to go to the store and buy my 2010-2011 top-of-the-line snow bunny outfit and then I'll be totally ready to go.  Maybe I need to get my board waxed too.

Volleyball tonight.....that was some kind of an accomplishment, but not necessarily a good one.  Latron gatrons.

Home Made

Do I have a great sister or what?  Last week she sent me home made granola bars, and this week she sent fresh venison jerkey.  This reminds me that I never sent my home made gifts as promised.  Can I push that deadline out from a one-year deadline to a two-year one?

So.....hopefully the weather is good enough to rake leaves so I can check that task off the list.  Thoughts of snow have set in, so snowboarding scoping has begun.  And I really must get on the ball about getting that new phone.  If only I knew what I want.

Milestones

Today is a big day.  Not only is it Veterans Day (thanks to all the veterans for their sacrifices), but it is also the 99th anniversary of the company I work for being in business.  That's another way of saying it's the start of our 100th year in business.  To commemorate it, our CEO rang the closing bell at the NYSE while employees watched the live feed of it over the internet as they ate cookies and drank sparkling grape juice.  It was kind of cheesy, but when you think about it, it's also a very significant accomplishment.  That means the 100th year anniversary will be 11/11/11.  Cool, huh?

A while back I read an article on Yahoo! about how to tell if you're being too picky when dating.  I thought of it again today, so I dug it up.  I found it to be kind of interesting with the most relevant excerpt given below.  Overall, it seems to be a fairly good philosophy even though I've never really tried to implement it, so I can't speak from experience.

So if you’re in need of some too-picky therapy, think of it this way: you’re not lowering your standards; you’re expanding them. Here’s how:

1. Edit your checklist. You are allowed only three essential requirements and none of them can be physical attributes. For example: “Kind to others, intellectually curious, likes animals” — or if you’re not into pets, “wants children” (as far as you can tell on date #1).
2. Go on a second date. Anyone who passes your three-point checklist gets to date #2. Anyone.
3. Broaden your “type” but trust your gut. If after two dates you honestly can’t see it — e.g., you struggle for conversation, you clash on a moral principle — you may let it go without guilt. After all, you’ve got to make time for all the new possibilities you’ve now opened up for yourself.

Changin'

New things when I arrived at work yesterday:
1.  Some of the hallways have a new mint green color on the walls.  I like mint green, but it feels a little too much like a hospital or something.  Supposedly that color is supposed to be soothing.  A long, narrow hallway with 10 or 12 foot walls painted mint green all the way up with the door jambs still a medium blueish-gray color makes be kinda dizzy/sick when I walk down it.
2.  3 cube mates:  2 down, 1 to go.  As I mentioned a few months ago, one of my peers became my project leader.  When he got that job, he moved from our cube quad to the next quad over.  That left 3 of us.  Last week while I was gone one of my other cube mates was walked out the door when he took a job with a competitor.  I knew he was a bit disgruntled and was looking at different jobs internal to the company, but he was also a big talker sometimes, so I wasn't sure if he would ever do anything.  Apparently he did.  It sounded like he was going on to bigger and better things, so that's good for him.  Without him, the cube is really quiet and is starting to feel deserted.  Now we're down two engineers in our group with no reduction in the work load, so that's not so good.

Something still the same:
1.  The occasional strong tar smell that came in while they worked on the roof yesterday.

That's all I have for today.  Later.

Hodge Podge

This is going to be a bit mumbo-jumboed today.  First, I'll wrap up a few things from Florida that I missed.  See the picture below of the TV in the mirror?  We had those in our hotel rooms.  I'm not kidding when I tell you my fellow nerds were more impressed and excited about that than the 52" flat screen that was in their hotel room.  One lady said she enjoyed "The Price is Right" while getting ready for the day.

See below for a picture of some women engineers.

Whoops - I guess they are men.  They helped us out at the career fair booth.  There is a symbiotic relationship between NSBE and SWE.

Can you see our auras in the picture below?

Just to be clear, the career fair was inside a convention center, so I was able to keep my sun exposure to the bare minimum while I was there.  They had snow at my house while I was gone, but it melted before I returned home, so there is still hope of raking leaves this fall.

Also, to summarize the previous weekend:  my cousin Mowla and her husband Juff and family came to visit me.  We had lots of fun playing hand and foot, foosball, Twister, etc.  I didn't take many pictures, but here are a couple I could scrape up.  The exercise ball was a huge hit with the kids.  I am not complaining about company coming, but I was reminded again how five people can eat in one day what it would take me about a week to consume.  With six of us in the family growing up, I have no idea how mom used to be able to go 4 or 6 weeks without going to the big city to buy groceries.  And we only bought two heaping carts' worth when we went!

It was special to see a husband and wife make their choices at GM today.  They were so ready that they stood up at the beginning of the first verse of the hymn instead of waiting for the 4th verse like Matt had said to do.  They've been coming to GM for about a year and have had some rough lives in the past, so it was very encouraging to see them make a fresh start.

Operation: Mickey Mouse

I returned from the sunshine state today.  I was in Orlando for the annual SWE conference, primarily to help at the career fair booth with screening resumes.  It really felt like a whirlwind trip that I wasn't fully prepared to go on.  I booked my ticket right before I went on vacation to Scotland, so I was kind of in a hurry and not thinking clearly.  I had booked my ticket to arrive Wednesday evening and leave Saturday morning with full days of working activities on Thursday and Friday.  If I had put my thinking cap on, I would have stayed the rest of the weekend and gone to visit some friends who live in Florida.  Alas, my opportunity was lost.  Another reason I felt under-prepared was because of how busy my weeks and weekends have been for the last couple of weeks, and most of that busy-ness did not involve preparing for the SWE conference.

As I was mentioning, I was screening resumes.  I don't feel like a total expert yet, but I do feel like my level of proficiency at that task did increase this year.  There are some of the engineers from my company at the booth who seem to have a much warmer approach to resume screening than I do.  I'm still working on my polish because I feel like I might be a bit abrupt and make some of the candidates feel uncomfortable or portray a bad image of the company.  Some of the people I screened I felt kind of sorry for because when I gave them a couple simple technical electrical circuit questions, they barely had a clue on where to start, which is not very good.  It makes the grade on  your resume drop several notches.  You also see some resumes that need a lot of coaching that you wish you could give to them, but unfortunately you don't have the time because there are other people waiting in line to talk to you.  Anybody who has kids, please be sure you teach your kids the importance of having a good resume - and the knowledge and skills to back up what is listed on that resume.

I also gave a brief ten minute talk at the career fair booth about what I do at my company as an electrical engineer.  I got to highlight the project I worked on for the last two years, so that was kind of fun even though it was nerve-wracking.  Four out of five people in the audience were absolutely riveted!  The fifth lady was just using the chair as a convenient place to eat her lunch.

One interesting topic of conversation that came up one night at supper was how women engineers have an "aura".  True story - some of the other women engineers said they could identify at the airport and on their airline flight which women were on their way to the conference.  Maybe that's why I'm so unique - it's because of the two different auras I have.  At least I sure hope I have one other aura/spirit that's stronger than my woman engineer aura.

A couple other more light-hearted highlights:

• I stayed at the Peabody hotel - did you know they have a special ceremony twice a day for the ducks they put in the central fountain out front?  More on the Peabody later, maybe in a separate post.
• In one way the SWE conference is a bit like 'vention - you see many of the same professional people there every year, and it's good so see them fighting the good woman engineer fight still.
• I saw a fellow UNDer graduate there that I had several classes with.
• Some of the best cheesecake I've ever tasted at Maggiano's.
• Actually, all of the food at Maggiano's was awesome.  Beef tortellini, gnocchi, etc.  Ummmm......
• Filet Mignon and ribs one other night - who can complain about that?  The lunch and breakfast was sometimes a bit sparse though.
• Free stuff!  Pens, pencils, T-shirts, blankets, safety whistles, mugs, water bottles, lunch box, etc.  I barely fit it all in my suitcase.

That's all for now.....don't forget to set your clock back!

Fresh Bullets

I haven't done a bulleted list in a while, so maybe I'll try that.

• Today was one of two days in the year when my cube turns from an ice box into a sauna.  Quite often one of the days is in the fall when it's been cooler and then is suddenly much warmer outside one day.  The reverse usually happens in the spring.
• This was also the second day in the past week when I felt like I was a highway construction worker. They're fixing the roof at work, which apparently involves a whole lot of tar/asphalt, hammering, and drilling.  The resulting fumes then get sucked in by the air handling system (the same one that wasn't working so well today).
• Three cheers - there wasn't a line when I went to vote today at 7:15 AM.
• I turned my ankle a bit when I was warming up to play racquetball today.  The disappointing thing is that it used to be my "good" ankle.  I'll have to start doing some flamingo exercises to help strengthen my ankles now.
• Why is it necessary to reduce the swelling on an injury?  If it's your body's natural response to injury, why shouldn't you just let it do its thing?  Does swelling prevent or accelerate healing?
• News of bad health/luck seems to be the rage lately.  A friend here has a burst appendix, and Ananias misplaced her elbow.  I believe it has been located again.
• Fall seems like it's speeding by at lightning speeds.  August, September, and October all just flew by.  November is also shaping up to be a bit busy as well.  Will this train ever slow down?
• I should do a post for my guests this past weekend, but I haven't downloaded my pictures yet, so I'll hold off on that.
• When I have a time limit on making a purchase, I waffle a lot less and am much quicker at making a decision.  Especially if the deadline is today.
• I didn't mean for this post to be so gloomy, but that's kind of how it turned out.  I'm actually in a pretty good mood today despite feeling stressed because I have a lot of "people" time and a presentation for work coming up this week.
• Today was beautifully sunny - actually, much of the past week has been.

Farm out, peeps.