resolutions
not that I am big on resolutions, but I am working on a few things lately:
1) Keep the blogs more up to date, especially the baby one. Time passes quicker now with a kid, so I need to keep track of the baby things. And with the second one coming, I want to keep track of it better. When rebecca writes in the baby books, we often look at the blogs and the fotki albums for indicators on the dates. So the better records I keep, the more on top of it all we will be.
2) Get to work on time. Not that my coworkers care, but I tend to come in around 9:30-10am. That is fine, except that means I get home around 6pm. If I get in earlier, I will obviously leave earlier. And get home earlier. I am not spending that much of the AM time being productive, or spending quality time with the family, so I may as well reduce it. It is not like mason lets us sleep much later than 730a ANYWAY, so I am trying to get out the door a bit after 8a. So far so good (I started last week)
3) Energy usage. I am trying to use less energy when possible. I have swapped most of the light bulbs to the low wattage florescent ones and I am making a pic effort to turn things off when I leave the room. Also, as rebecca will attest, I am way into the gas mileage that the Camry gets (which is really good btw, I can get high 30s/low 40s on the expressway, driving nicely). I will still waste gas at the track, etc, but I will still attempt to offset it in other ways. We'll see how much more I can do. I would love to reduce the electricity usage in the house more. Not that our bill is high, but none the less. I am also going to try to take the bus more and walk more to and from work.
4) Take better care of myself. Primarily food intake and exercise. I eat enough bad food, so I am trying to eat healthier. And I really don't exercise much, so I am trying to get more on that. This is also a continuation of what I have been doing for a few months, so it isn't NEW per se, but...
So we'll see how those work out for 2007.
the holidays…. are over
the holidays are over, and so it is. Everything went well, but we ran around like idiots visiting family, etc and I would have preferred more time to be lazy and work on projects, etc. But such is life.
We did christmas eve at my parents. It went fine, we were there for 7.5 hours, which is kind of long, but it was nice. Christmas day was at Rebecca's parents, and we were there for 11.5 hours, also a bit long, but it was nice.
Even though I was annoyed by my change of plans, even though it was never to be, I went to work on wednesday. And sure enough, one of the staff's hard drives died in the AM, forcing me to quick rebuild the machine. So even if I HAD gotten the time off, I would have been in the office anyway. So it worked out...
On new years we went to the party at kieran's and it was super nice and chill. I had a great time. Rebecca drove and dropped D and Sarah off and went home. Yesterday we chilled out until we had to go pick up mason, who spent the night at the dugan's. We got to sleep in until about 12:30. it ruled.
So back to work tomorrow.
grumble grumble…
so I was at work on thursday, and did a bunch of stuff, and went into my boss's office and updated him on some projects. Then the following:
me: do you have a problem with my taking wed, thurs, and friday off next week?
boss: no
me: I didn't want to bring it up until I got this stuff all done, since these were things I wanted completed before hand.
boss: yeah
so I was like wooot. done! then friday afternoon... boss pokes his head in as he is leaving...
boss: see you next week
me: well, I'll see you after that, per our conversation yesterday
boss: well, per my answer yesterday.
me: well, I asked 'do you have a problem with me taking those days off'-
boss: and I said yes.
me: oh, ok, I guess I'll see you wednesday.
boss: see you wednesday
the issue is two fold. First, I am positive he said no. But he probably wasn't giving me full attention, and I probably should have phrased it differently. But the larger problem is I have this feeling like my boss thinks I am never getting enough stuff done, which I find extremely frustrating. I would be able to blow it off if I spent my time screwing around, but I actually work all day. Sure, I screw around here and there, but it doesn't exceed the amount of time the average person takes on smoke/coffee breaks, say a total of 30 min in an 8 hour work day. And I usually work more than 8 hours/day. Not to mention the time I spent NOT at work going through the company SPAM, checking the server logs, making sure the backups ran, etc.
So where is the issue? I spend my time working, and I get things done, but the boss is still not happy. Next step? Well, I attempted to make a todo list and prioritize it so that I would better meet his expectations, but that failed. I mean I still use the todo list, and I think it is a great tool. The issue is I can't get the boss to give the list any attention. He won't look at it with me, he won't participate in it, he won't add to it, and he won't prioritize it. When I ask him to give a hierarchy to the items, his answer is always 'they are all priority number 1'. Awesome. I usually respond something like 'I understand that, but I have 4 hours left in the day, what would you like me to start on first'. To which he typically responds with his speech on multitasking. As if I don't multitask.
His speech is usually something like 'well, when the computer is loading, you can be doing something else, like putting those widgets on ebay.' That would make total sense if I ever spent more than 45 seconds watching a progress bar do something. But honestly, it is hard to switch gears to another project when you are talking about 30-60 seconds of down time. So I just have to guess at the priority list myself, and hope that is what he is thinking. I presume I am at 50%, but that would be hard to gauge, since the only feedback I get seems to be the boss asking me if the OTHER things are done. I mean we have talked about things, I will go do project A and walk in to tell him that is done, and it would have been done in a appropriate amount of time. And he will say something like 'ok good. Did you finish project B yet?' And I'll be thinking... ummm, 10 minutes passed, and I did project A in 10 minutes, which was fast, and you seem to think that I should have done project A AND B in 10 minutes?...
Grumble grumble grumble.
So frustrating. He doesn't really read emails from me, and it seems he rarely wants to discuss things with me.
I think it is time to move on to another thing. I don't need a boss that doesn't appreciate me. I know that I am working hard, and I think that overall, our office does well. We are virus free and have been for years. Email is never down for more than a couple hours. I can't recall the last time the office work was disrupted for more than 1 hour. I have VPN running, webmail, mobile devices, etc. People can work from home. We have backups and I can restore files very quickly. We have never had a catastrophic loss since I have been in control. Not to mention I have made some excel sheets that have greatly improved the business flow of the staff and have caught many an error that otherwise could have slipped through the cracks. Not to mention I am now an ebay wiz, since we are constantly selling things, and we almost ALWAYS get more money than the average ebay transaction.
So yeah, grumble grumble grumble.
ah, the joys of being a parent…
As many of you know, I drive a loud audi. It is actually probably too loud, but I enjoy it, so I am not feeling too bad about it. Anyway.... last night I drove home from work, as I tend to do, and I parked in front of the house. I parallel parked it in the spot in front of the house, so I was making a decent bit of noise. I parked and got out and as I was pulling out the keys to unlock the front door, it opens and rebecca is there holding a smiling mason. Not used to being greeted at the door, I asked what was up.
Turns out as I pulled up and was parking, mason was hanging out on the 3rd floor with rebecca. Mason pointed at the windows and said 'daddy'. That is awesome, my child recognizes my car by sound.
The joys of being a father.