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My boss came up from San Antonio today and we met up tonight, conveniently near where I'm going tonight for an event MECA's putting on at Kenobi. He was his typical self but the food at Serranos was good. And prettty quick. Too bad the company blew.

Labels: drinking, food, work

Not only might this possibly be the greatest sandwich ever conceived but I actually exceeded during the execution creating something beyond my own imagination. We've got turkey, roast beef, bacon with tomato, lettuce, hard boiled egg and home-made guacamole. I don't know if I could've done this without being in a food-deprived coma so I was in a bit of a zone creating this masterpiece. That and I basically finished work 20 minutes ago before I started this up so needed to get my head off the paycheck-getter. And it was well worth it. It is so good I believe I'll have this on the day of my execution.

Labels: food, work

I'm killing time on a call taking some shots of Tai Chi's townhouse.  In stifling heat, I might add.  This place might be hotter than my house. I'm sticking to this leather couch and might've already drank a gallon of water. I'm pretty sure it is hotter in here than the 82° outside. Anyways, the low-light picture taking ability of the 3GS isn't any better than the previous incarnation but that's to be expected without a flash (I opened up the blinds to get some light in to get it this lit up). So, I better get back to listening to this call; I'm just hoping I don't pass out before I have to talk.

Labels: tai chi, technology, work

I've got my office outside set up and the speakers are kicking! You can make out the light of the speaker in the second photo. The third photo is of the only thing working around my place right now, my Polaris. Regardless I shouldn't be floating around in my pool with my iPhone; seems pretty reckless.

Labels: house, technology, work

neolefty sent me this great article about BAD work habits.

Labels: work

I'm on a break from this crazy training but at least I got a gyro from Arpeggio Grill. I'll be all oniony for those surrounding me. OK, back to the grind; only another seven hours to go!

Labels: food, work

A pretty quiet weekend, but I did get to introduce some folks to Shady Grove. I broke from tradition and got a chicken sandwich instead of my standard chicken fried chicken. The latter might've been better to have some leftovers for the week. Especially as I've got a long week ahead: training from 8 am to 7 pm all week except Friday where I get to go from 8 to 4. Tons of fun.

Labels: food, work

I finished my last day of work until the 29th, but I have calls tomorrow and Monday. How does that work?

Labels: work

And it isn't even noon. And I haven't quite recovered from last night's shenanigans. All I know is my boss is taking the rest of the day off, so so am I. To the Flying Saucer I will go.

Labels: drinking, work

I was pulling some older pictures from my camera to my computer and came across these pictures from back in June. There was a long conference call/team meeting that I made some food for. Starting with tomatillo sauce that I made (and with a store bought roasted chicken), I made some enchiladas. I did all the work the night before and cooked it in the morning (the last pic) before heading in. Warming up food at 9 am is always fun.

  
  



And I had plenty of chicken shredded up so made some chicken pot pies (before and after the oven).

  

Labels: cooking, work

Crazy busy at work. So much that I'm heading out at lunch to see a movie.

Labels: work

My 5 am call's over and now I've got a quandry; go back to bed or stay up. I'd stay up for sure, but Yo!'s coming to town and I'll probably need my rest. Oh, the questions.

Labels: work, yo

Woo hoo, my 3 am call's been moved to 5 am. Glad nobody called me.

Labels: work

Crazy busy at work and what am I doing? Working from home today and leaving early to go drinking!

Labels: work

I woke up around 3:30 and couldn't for the life of me fall back asleep. Well, not until close to 6. And you know what that means? Sleeping in until past 8:30. Good thing the office lost power so nobody noticed me showing up at 9:45.

Labels: minutia, work

Heading to bed now from my all my fun work. Fun, indeed!

Labels: work

Not only am I leaving work near 7, but I've got to work tonight. And when I say tonight, I mean around midnight on a call.

Labels: work

Ugh, back at work. I really could go for a vacation.

Labels: work

I love getting up early for conference calls. Though I am pleastantly surprised that I'm not as beat as I would've thought. Especially since I went to bed close to 1. That's one if you don't know how to read numbers.

Labels: work

Well, the weather here has turned somewhat. It's sort of snowing but definitely icey. The low has in the 20s the past couple of days. Definitely colder elsewhere but in my drafty place it isn't comfortable. Leaving work around noon yesterday was smart, but even smarter is not even thinking of going into work today and tomorrow. The roommates are grounded, too, but we went outside and I took some pictures of the madness. Anyways, we might head out to track down some food pretty soon, but definitely not much movement around here today besides that.

Labels: house, jmvc, weather, work

There's some sort of conference in our office this week so our boss asked that we be in the office by 8 am and be dressed somewhat nicely (that only means no jeans to me). Well, the weather's been shit all weekend and there are advisories out for now until noon Tuesday so I assumed we'd get an email telling us to work from home. Well, I was up at 6:30 and made a nice breakfast (scrambled eggs with ham and spinach), but there was no email saying to stay home. So I ventured in around 7:30 through slick roads and a couple of accidents (two cars spun out on the I-183/Mopac breezeway) just to find an email from my boss saying to stay home. Well, I think I'll stay a couple hours to kill some time before fighting my way back.

And I see a stew or some other comfort food in my future.

Labels: cooking, stupidity, work

Well, I am back home. I've already had my first conference call and am ready to call it a day. Too much traveling back from Buenos Aires through Houston back to Austin. I'll have to get some pictures up, but I need to get myself some sleep, for sure. Good time in Houston unpacking my bag because security wouldn't let me carry on my items I bought from duty free. That was tons of fun. But at least I have some whiskey and wine from down there. Though I settled for the red label instead of the blue.

Labels: travel, work

Beautiful night of watching Hell's Kitchen and drinking Guinness. And I made this great salad for me and JMVC (though I kept the fried chicken for me). It's that much sweeter knowing I'll be busting my hump at work tomorrow. And before you start feeling sorry for me, it's really for work I should've done over the course of the last couple of weeks. Or even later.

Labels: drinking, jmvc, work

I sent off a reminder about the party on Sunday and one of my coworkers made a blaphemous comment about there being rain that day. I immediately gave her the evil eye and cast her out. Now I just need to cast myself out of the office.

Labels: work

So I've come back to the office. So far, it has been a gigantic
mistake. I feel fine, that's not the issue. The issue is this place
has removed the water cooler and coffee machine (not that I drink
coffee, but it's the principle). Worse, it appears that the proxy
server is gone so my days of unmonitored internet access have gone the
way of the dodo bird. I see lots of days working from home in my
future. Or using email to update the site. Or my phone.

Labels: stupidity, work

Not only have I arrived at the office before 9 am (8:53 to be exact), but I was able to make an spinach, red pepper and tomato omelet, put together my lunch, take a shower, and closed my garage door (which is a lot more work than one would imagine).

All of this so I can get into the office for two brand new conference calls (sorry, two brand new daily conference calls). I'm into the second one and am pretty sure these are total wastes of time.

Labels: cooking, work

A great day going so far around here: Fat Boy came by and we had a nice lunch by the pool; he then tracked down a piece that came off the Polaris down at the bottom of the pool; and now that thing's running around picking up all the small shit at the bottom that you can't quite see. It's running like a champ, a mo fo champ!

And between it all, I've managed to actually get some conference calls in.

Labels: food, house, work

I can't get out of my house! Damn conference calls.

And my dumb ass messed around with my coffee tables and busted out one of the connector things. I'm really technical, I know. I should be a carpenter. Or Jesus.

Labels: work

I'm involved in this crazy, crazy project. And have been for nearly every day I've been at this job. Well, we were given a date to hit for this thing, even though all of our estimates and projections didn't match what those dates were. We've got issues out the ying-yang and those dates weren't going to get met regardless of the amount of folks we threw at the problem (oh, and there's a budget issue so we can't throw resources at it, but that's another story). Well, here's the kicker: we find out today that we need to have everything done 2 1/2 weeks earlier for testing that some knuckle head forgot about.

Good times in corporate America!

Labels: work

This has to be the best all day conference call ever! I've managed to clean the pool (though still it still is a hazy shade of green), do some laundry, take a little nap, make myself lunch, and listen to this crazy call. I just hope it doesn't run over tomorrow because I have to get to Vegas and lose some money.

Labels: work

Somebody brought their kid into the office today. I think she's a director or something (the parent not the kid). Glad to see somebody's getting an education around here.

Labels: work

Holy shit, my boss is out of town and I forgot to go into her office and feed her fish. I hope those things can go a few days without eating.

Labels: work

People sometimes ask me why I don't wear my badge outside the office. Well, here's a clear cut example:

Incogegro's always been a fan of Chick-fil-a, so I figured I'd head there for some lunchy lunch. Well, I'm not sure if you've been to one but CFA's are friggin busy. The line for the drive through was around the building, the parking lot was chock full, and just about every seat inside was filled. Through some miracle of science, the line at the cashier went quickly and I found myself a seat.

On my way in, I forgot to take off my Nextel lanyard on the way in, but shoved the badge into my shirt. So I sit down and some dude from the other table starts chatting. The conversation went something like this:

Dude: "Do you work at Nextel? I used to work there."
Me: "No, I got it from last year's NHL All-Star Game."
"That's awesome. Where do you work now?"
"Oh, I work at XXX."
"Really, that's awesome. What do you do there?"
"Oh, I'm a widget fastener. I just started a couple months ago."
"Widgets? That's awesome. I used to that when I was at EDS up in Plano."
"I used to work there, too. Small world."
"That's awesome. You sound like someone with a very similar background to my own. I'm coordinating some IT development and we could use somebody with skills like yours. You at all interested?"
"Thanks, but I'm really happy at XXX. But I might have some friends who might be interested."
"Really? That's awesome. Here's my card. I'll let you get back to your lunch. Thanks."

So I took his card and ate my lunch. Then Andrew Awesome gets up and leaves. And without saying anything to me. I wasn't interested at all, but you don't cold-call somebody at lunch and then just walk off. Jack ass.

And that's the reason I don't wear my badge out.

Labels: work

I took the advice of one of my coworkers and dumped the D-link 102.11g router. I am now sitting by the pool connected with my vpn and totally wireless. Getting about 18 MBPS right now, so I can't complain a bit.

Labels: work

Just got the news that my boss gave birth on Saturday to a healthy baby girl. The baby was almost a month premature, but that's good for me because boss lady never had a change to come up with a turnover plan. That means I can get away with MURDER.

Labels: work

So I just had to send a proposal to somebody to approve who didn't even authorize the proposed project in the first place. I have a feeling this will be a tough sell.

me: "Hey, can you pay for this project that you've said isn't necessary?"
them: "Fuck off"
me: "Yeah, I'll let myself out."

Labels: work

So I had to run to Chilly's place this morning to sit on his porch to access my work email. While driving there, my car starting chugging (never a good sign). When at Chilly's, I realized I didn't have my VPN token. So I sent my status report and then headed home to find a dozen workers in my yard before heading out to get my car worked on. Along the way, I drop my brother off at the rental car place (where one of the workers was a girl from a town in Taylor, Michigan!). Then I got to wait for an hour at the dealership before they sent me to the rental place for a loaner. On the way to work, I get a call from my dad about wanting to have the workers pull a shrub from the front yard. Work's turning into my sanctuary. And I'll probably get fired from here for spending my time blogging. C'est la vie, bitches!

Labels: chilly, house, work

I can't get this damn VPN to work on with my D-Link wirelss router. I've read a bunch of shite from discusion boards to no avail (please note that I must take this matter seriously if I'm reading). Without work from home I am but a shell of a man.

Labels: work

So I'm waiting on this guy since friggin January to get a project completed. The guy gave a demo last week three times to show the same basic shit. And then today he's in the office changing locks on his cube. WTF? This guy needs to get run over by a truck.

I guess it doesn't help that I can barely walk or sit down. My quads are so friggin sore. Damn paintball!

Labels: work

While walking down the hallway, I happened by my supervisor's office. She's off today, but somebody left a note with a picture on the door. What the fuck are we still in college? What's next, dry erase boards? If it is college, this dorm sucks.

Labels: stupidity, work