At a staff meeting, our CEO said “I want to be the best in the world at what I do,” and my first thought was “like Wolverine.”
I Am A Big Nerd
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Tag Archives: pop-art
Working Late
One of our clients has a tradeshow coming up soon, so we’ve got a big push going on at work right now to get their site updated in time. Because there’s a firm deadline and a ton of work to get done before the show, I’ve been working late about every other night for the last two weeks, and this week is promising to be more of the same.
I shouldn’t complain, really, because I love my job, and they do cool things like buy me dinner if I’m working late, and this really doesn’t happen very often. But even given that, and knowing this is an unusual situation, there’s no getting around the fact that working late kinda sucks.
Staying motivated in an empty office after dark is hard. I hate getting home long after Zoe’s gone to bed and not having enough energy to do anything other than watch a little TV and go to bed. Mostly, though, I just hate the feeling of weeks passing by and knowing I haven’t really accomplished anything outside of work.
Still, the firm deadline for the client is just a few days away, and after that things should settle back down to normal. So, just a few more days in the weeds, and I can come up for air and focus on some non-work-related things for awhile.
Edit: On the way home, I decided that this post is a little too “oh, poor me,” and that really wasn’t what I was shooting for. Like I said, I love my job, and I have no problem with staying late now and then to get a project done one time. My intention with this post was really just to admit (to myself more than to anyone else) that even knowing all that, working late this much is really draining, and it’ll be nice when this push is over.
Efficiency Magnifier
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
– Bill Gates
300 Balloons
On Friday, our CEO was out of the office for his birthday. So we filled his office with 300 balloons. We got the helium tank from a place downtown, and it took about a half-hour for a bunch of us to inflate all 300. We found out that 300 balloons is the perfect amount to cover the entire ceiling of the office with a single layer of balloons. It looked pretty awesome.
Why I'm Not in the Office Today
So, I woke up this morning to a light snowfall, which was a nice surprise, since we only get snow here once or twice a year (we’re only like 50 feet above sea level). I walked out to my bus stop, and just missed my bus, which was about five minutes early. A few other people showed up, and we all griped about missing the bus, and talked about the snow, and then another bus came. This driver was going very slowly, and wouldn’t even pull up to the curb (no chains). We all piled on, and had an interesting bus ride. Even crawling along at no more than 20 MPH, the bus still skidded a couple of times, and one time nearly drifted into a parked car. By the time we got to the Rose Quarter, no one was reading their papers anymore, everyone was watching out the window at all the cars skidding along the slight incline on the way to the bridge.
Normally, I catch the bus at 7:30am and I’m at work by 8am or so. Today, at 8am, I was only to the Steel Bridge – at which point the bus driver pulled over to the curb and killed the engine. She refused to go across the bridge without chains. Some people were grumbling, but I can’t say I blame her, there’s a pretty steep incline on the downtown side of the bridge.
So at this point, I was stuck at the Steel bridge in the snow, with just a jacket and a hat on. I wasn’t prepared for the hike through snow to work. In dry weather, I could easily have walked to work in 15-20 minutes, but today it would have taken a half hour and I would have arrived half-frozen with sneakers completely soaked through. So I turned around, and walked over to a McDonalds a few blocks away, where Annie (who had to turn back from driving to work in Beaverton at the entrance to US-26) was able to pick me up and bring me home, where I’m now VPN’d into work, and can hopefully be somewhat productive today. If I wasn’t pushing a deadline, I would just take a personal day.