This week

What have I been up to this week?

It's been a tough week for most people, I believe. How am I coming to that conclusion? Couple things come to mind. Shadow has been up and hollering at 3 am most every morning except today. I almost threw her against the wall on Friday morning because she just would not shut up.

With her being up, that meant I was up, which equals me being tired and crabby. Not a good combo for me.

Work... ugh. The EUA finally got finished, only to have it turn out to be a disaster. I didn't know it had gone live until someone from the Support Center got a hold of me. It was ugly, people didn't understand it, and the woman who created it never cleared it with me before it went live. The she said she couldn't change it. Our communications person went to the project manager for the new system to see if there was anything he could do. We sat down with that team for a half hour and banged out some changes and got the EUA taken out of production. The systems team is going to make some back end changes that will make it easier for the general public to do the EUA and won't stress the Support Center.

Then I get a service request about putting Visio on Citrix boxes. That is just a bad idea with an audit waiting to happen. I find out someone already approved putting Project out on Citrix without approval. The guy running the Citrix boxes told me his group isn't the licensing police. I shot back that I am the licensing police for ALL platforms and I'm not about to let Visio on a Citrix box until I have the full details of what's already out there with Project. That got me some cooperation, but my boss and I still need to sit down and figure out how to deal with it.

Given how things are going, I'm going in to work next Friday. The building is open and I should have the entire floor to myself. I can listen to music without headphones, I won't have to put up with the boys and their bickering, and I should be able to get some work done. Some of the stuff I want to do has to be done in the office - the VPN is way too slow.

On the personal front, other than being bone weary tired and crabby, I've had a few aha's. After my peer-to-peer coaching last week, I realized how many values I have that are conflicting. The scope of those value conflicts clarified during meditation this morning.

The values conflicts group into four main areas: finances, time management, love and food. They also sub-group, in that finances are dependent on time management, and food is dependent on love. The majority of the issues I'm dealing with fall under those four categories or the sub-groups.

I'm thinking I want to mind map each area. Plot out what my self talk is about the various areas, see if I can find the conflicts so they can be resolved. I suspect if I put the four of them together there will be areas of overlap that may point to a central issue. Deal with the central issue, pull the pin on it, it goes away and the rest falls into place.

I'll putz with that tomorrow between doing some syntopic PhotoReading and doing the rest of the usual weekend chores.

I'm looking forward to sleeping in for four days in a row. I need the break. Even with working from home on Thanksgiving - I'm on my own this year - and going in on Friday, it's a break. No real schedule to deal with.

That's my week in a nutshell.

I had all these great ideas...

And now I'm not remembering them. Go figure.

Where to start? Work. EUA still isn't up and running. The gal finally got to starting it this week, but it won't be tested and actually up and running until sometime next week. The director and finance manager know the reason why it's not ready yet, so they can't yell at me.

Had an incident with one of the boys on Wednesday. Tuesday morning he and a female coworker were talking about some of the inappropriate emails his uncle and father in law sent to his work email. One of the things he said horrified me and left me wondering if he has the balls to say that knowing I'm not 10 feet away, what is saying behind my back?

I stewed on it for a day, then made up my mind to confront him on it. I told my boss about my idea of peer to peer coaching, and she said go for it. I figured she didn't need the details, just that I was doing it.

I emailed him that we needed to have a private conversation. He got back to me asking for a specific time, which was fine with me. He actually cut a meeting short by a half hour to get to me sooner.

On the way to finding a room, I told him I saw him as a wet behind the ears puppy, because he's just turning 28, either last Sunday or tomorrow. Once in there, I told him it was his conversation Tuesday morning that had me concerned. He apologized several times, stating that he didn't remember what he said but that he felt bad for making inappropriate comments. I told him about situational awareness, being aware of who's around you and thinking about what you say before you say it. I also told him about the shadow effect and made it a point to use several of his Republican heroes and how they have fallen as examples.

We ended up talking for an hour about several different subjects. He wants to be a leader on the team, to some day be a manager like our boss is. I told him about my leadership experience and that I would be willing to share some different things with him to help him along. I also told him about my empathic and healing talents, along with the coaching, and that looking at the therapeutic coaching program would help him.

It was an interesting conversation, and I think I got through to him. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when he talked about it with his wife. I can just imagine what he's said to the rest of the boys.

Friday I was at the Women Venture conference. The first break out session of the day was good - Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad. He talked about how he uses Twitter and other social media to keep in contact with his ever growing team. There were several other things he said that I think I can use with the boys.

The second session I should have skipped and gone to something more interesting. Lunch, however, brought things back on track. The main speaker was Marilyn Carlson Nelson, former CEO and current board chair of Carlson Companies (think Radisson, TGI Friday's, Country Inns and Suites, etc). She had a lot of good things to say, along with some statistics that hit home. She also did a bit of a round table with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Gloria Perez, CEO of the Jerimiah Project.

Since I got out early, I did a bit of shopping on the way home. I've needed new jeans for a while, so I stopped at the store where I've gotten the best fit - ie the inseam is the right length. The store has gone to shaped jeans, based on if you're boxy, curvy or in between. I qualify as curvy, so I started with a pair of what I thought would fit. Get into the dressing room, get them on. They are TOO big. OK, so I go back out to find the next size down, none on the shelf. Clerk says try the next size down, if they are too tight we can order the next size up.

So I go try on what I think is going to be too small. Pull them on - they fit. Perfectly. O. M. G! That's two pants sizes down from what I have been wearing. So, do I chalk it up to actually being smaller, or do I chalk it up to being in a differently fitted jean? Split the difference, I'm still down two sizes.

While I was there I also spotted a burgandy shirt. The red hued shirts I do have are starting to wear out - the polo has holes in the sleeve ribbing, the sweater has a couple snags in it, and the chamois shirt is for winter only. This one is a good color on me - bright or fire engine red makes me look like a huge zit. This color I can wear.

To make it a good shopping trip, the store even had a 30% off sale going on. What should have been over $120 I got for $89.

And while I was out, I also got passport photos taken. My passport expired in March, just have not made time to get it renewed. Now that I have the photos, just gotta spend the $75 to get it done. Never know when I might need to pick up and get out of Dodge.

A good weekend

Well, I've gotten a few things done this weekend. Thanks to P being up in Forest Lake yesterday, I was able to run Chael up to where I wanted to store him and get a ride home. With Chael safely tucked away for the winter, today I got the rest of the garage cleaned up so I could get Taez in.

Here's the before:



Here's the after:



I hauled out two contractor garbage bags full of junk. It's amazing what piles up in almost 13 years of being in the same space.

Now Taezen is parked in the garage. There's space for me to get out of my door, there's plenty of room for the other guy to get in and out of his car, and his passenger can get out as well. I marked the drywall so I know how far in to go - when the outside rearview mirror is even with the mark, there's a foot of space in front and about a foot between the trailer hitch and the garage door. I also marked the front middle of the space, so I know about where to aim Taez's nose.

Ahh, no more scraping windows or trying to get the inside of the windshield to defrost.

While I was at it, I also fixed the door. For the last couple years it's been really hard to shut the inside garage door. I took a good look at it today and figured out why - some dumbass moved the strike plate in a quarter of an inch. Since I know how to use tools so well, I pulled out the screws, re-drilled the holes and moved the plate back to where it should be. Now it will be easy to close the door.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. In putting stuff back together, my back has reminded me that it's been pulled. A couple weeks ago in kettlebells my back started hurting really bad - enough that I was crying. Not that I let the instructor see that... So when I saw Dr. R Thursday night, I asked. I've pulled the muscles that run right along side the spine. Moving things around partially un-did what I had accomplished since Thursday.

Now I need to order some Bio-Freeze and use that before kettlebells to help keep my back loose so I don't injure it any further. I need to take care of me before I can take care of anyone else.

TGIF

This has been a better day than most. There was some brain bending work trying to get the MSDN subscriptions to match up with the Visio licensing. Found out the EUA process won't be worked on until Monday, which pushes everything back until late next week. Other people aren't responding to email requests for assistance to do an end run around a stick in the mud.

The drive in was interesting. One of the radio stations is sponsoring the Kiss concert tomorrow night, so Gene Simmons was on. One song in particular got my attention: God gave us rock 'n roll. It almost came off as a gospel version of Kiss, which is just such a contradiction. Didn't hear my song before I got out of Taez, darn. A couple of them did stick in my head most of the day.

Not much for plans for the weekend. I need to get Chael into storage so I can put the garage back together so Taez can go in the garage. Thankfully P is going up to Forest Lake to see some friends tomorrow afternoon. I can run Chael up to the Fridley Hitching Post and store him there. She can pick me up on the way back. Works well. Come next spring I can hit up one of my team mates to pick me up on their way in to work and I can ride Chael home.

My contract was extended. For now it's to the end of the year. My boss and I were talking about it today. She wants to hire me. It has to happen some time in the next year, as the company has a two year contract limit, then you need to take 60 days off before you can come back again.
She believes that what I've been doing so far has proven they can't do it without me. She has a meeting next week with the director, the other manager and the HR dude to talk about what things are going to look like personnel wise. She needs to start planning for budgets now, as the fiscal year is late April, not calendar year.

That would be way cool to be hired on as IT asset management. That pays much better than an admin does. And given all the things I'm getting my fingers into... Active Directory group management, secure AD group, actually getting in there and messing with structure... I should probably ask the guys if they have any books I can Photoread so I don't mess things up.

Now I'm just waiting for G to get back so we can discuss holiday plans and get D clan involved as well.

where'd October go?

Time seems to be moving faster the older I get. Wasn't yesterday September?

Where am I at, what am I up to? Well, still playing with the shadow work. I finally sat down yesterday between doing laundry and making yogurt and watched The Shadow Effect. It's a good documentary on the current state of affairs from both a personal and world perspective.

The second disc was what I was really after. The second disc is all of what's on the first. The bonus is that she stops at different places and asks some pretty thought provoking questions. I'm not all the way through the second disc yet, it takes some time to think about what she's asking and writing it all down.

A couple places made me cry. The one that physically hurt the worst was the forgiveness section. My eyes were fine before and after I cried, but during that segment my tears hurt my eyes. Leaves me wondering how toxic those tears were, given how I reacted and how bad they hurt.

My buttons have been pushed a lot in the last two weeks. We're getting closer to removing Project and Visio and are still hammering things out as we go. One of the issues has been getting me a specific bucket set up for software licensing. One gal is holding up the process, really defending her territory. In doing so she's managed to push my buttons on anger, fear and a couple others. I've had to do other things in order to give my mind a break, then go back to figuring out what was causing those buttons to react. Once I figured it out, I could do the things she needed done so her territory would be kept safe.

I sat down with P a couple weeks ago to figure some things out. The story kept circling around until the noose was set and either I said it or else. The good part is, I don't remember much of what I said, other than doing a conversion of the steel suit of armor to the super spider silk that can stop 4 mm rounds. Trade the weight that doesn't do much for me for something more fitting and flexible and can still protect me.

Then, of course, I get woke up with nightmares of my voice being ripped out of my throat. In the dream someone put a black bag over my head, so I tried to scream. Nothing came out. In the back of my head I heard something about light, so I cranked up the inner light in my belly and expanded that to drive back the darkness. That was a sure sign the house shields needed to be reinforced/replaced.

Time change still has both Shadow and I out of whack. Shad wanted breakfast at 4:30 this morning and would not shut up about it. I held her off until 5. We'll have to work towards 5:30 breakfast for her, only in four months we'll be back to this schedule. Bah.

So, that's what I've been up to. Crochet a bit. Read through the latest Kris Longknife book, twice. Read another book in another series. Figure out what's going on in my head and body. That's enough to keep me busy and out of trouble.