Tuesday, February 24, 2009

My Job is Like Internet Dating

I inadvertently told a client today that "my job is like internet dating". Note to self: remember to engage brain BEFORE opening mouth.

I work for a company based in Illinois ("I-ain't-sick" if you ask my 4th grade geography teacher), but my home office is in California. I do my job from my home in Colorado. So a bad commute for me is when my black cat isn't readily visible in my dark hallway and I either trip over or kick her. Most days I don't comb my hair or get out of my PJs until I decide that I want to go outside for lunch or to work out. I can get up 15 minutes before a meeting and no one knows the difference. I can make faces at the phone when someone is annoying me and not risk my boss showing up to see my childish display. On the down side my work is ALWAYS here and I can get caught up in "one more thing" for work and suddenly it is 11pm. I actually have to set my alarm if I have something fun to do in the evening because I've worked through it more than once. In the office you get a clue because everyone else leaves or they turn the lights out!

But consider the similarities between working-from-home and on-line dating*:
  • I never meet most of the people I talk to
  • most of my conversations are via email or instant message
  • if I want to meet someone it requires a pre-arranged meeting place (usually a public place)
  • and I need to tell that person what I will be wearing/carrying and send them a photo (try meeting someone at the airport whose only recognizable feature is their voice)
  • when I do meet this person they look nothing like my mental picture
  • our relationship in person is nothing like our relationship via electronic communication (neither good nor bad, simply different)

Later today this client called me back (apparently the faux pas wasn't too bad...or they're attributing it to the 'quirkiness of rocket scientists'). I had asked them to test a change I made to their data. In this call my lovely client told me that it wasn't working. I swore it was! They insisted that I log in and see for myself. Ah, they were right (dangit). What do I say?

"Oh, I guess I have a commit issue." [Forgive me for this explanation, but in the database you can do all kinds of things when you have the auto-commit feature turned off, but until you type "commit" none of it is saved.]

So now the client thinks I have commitment issues - in addition to a job that's like on-line dating. (sigh)

* I'm not an expert. I don't even dabble anymore. But I did at one time try this. I think I failed the eHarmony personality test and it was all downhill from there. I'm not bitter (I swear) just disenchanted.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Professional Experience

Something to keep in mind in today's economy:

"There's another line of work that requires less than 30 minutes of experience to call yourself a professional," says Marc Rabinoff, Ed.D., a professor in the department of human performance at Metropolitan State College of Denver. "And that's prostitution."

Women's Health, March 2009, p. 120

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Kiwi Project: Premlinary

I have a trip to New Zealand coming up. I know basically nothing about the country except:
  1. Parts of The Lord of the Rings movies were filmed there. Pretty, but whatever.
  2. New Zealanders call themselves 'Kiwis'. This refers to the bird, not the fruit. I think if the fruit first.
  3. My super-cool friend Calle lives there. This alone is enough to warrant a trip!
  4. They have wineries and mountains and beaches! What more do I need?
So I've started reading random things about NZ. I won’t bore you with all the stats, but I did read the CIA’s World Factbook page on NZ. Seems like a pretty “modern” country.
  • First country to allow women to vote!
  • About the size of Colorado, Italy or England.
  • About the same population as Colorado (NZ ~ 4.1M, CO ~ 4.3M)
  • The "main" or most populated island is the North Island -- where the capital of Wellington is. This is where Calle is.
  • The Maori came over from Polynesia around 800 or 900 AD.
  • The British Captain James Cook arrived in NZ the first time around 1769.
  • The highest mountains in NZ are all on the South Island in the Southern Alps.
  • They have mountains with glaciers on them!

This completely derailed my fact-finding mission. Of course I had to know how high the highest mountain is there! Being from Colorado I am a somewhat of a mountain snob and what others sometimes call mountains look like hills to me.

The tallest mountain is
Aoraki/Mount Cook at 12,319 ft. Not bad – and apparently still growing about ¼ inch per year. But the Southern Alps are also battered by something called the Roaring Forties. These are (apparently) westerly winds that tear around the open waters at about the 45°S latitude picking up momentum in the open waters – and lucky NZ is the first land mass in the way.

Aoraki means "Cloud Piercer" in Maori.

This is fantastic - I'm going someplace with colorful names like Kiwi and Cloud Piercer and Roaring Forties!

PS - It's interesting that the mountain has a Maori name and a British name. I will have to find out more about this history. I also came across a "fact" that the Kiwis are fiercely competitive with the Aussies. I wonder if this is like the Avs fans think we have a rivalry with the Red Wings. The Red Wings couldn't care less... And I wonder if this is some business-person's interpretation.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Hi, How are you today?

Besides being an Ashley MacIsaac* album title, this is my pet peeve of the day. And before I go too far, I promise to write about something that doesn't bother me in the very near future.

Why must the drive-thru people ask me how I am today? They don't care. It irritates me to leave a question unanswered OR have to say "Fine, thanks, how are you?" and wait for a response. Plus, I have difficulty suppressing the temptation to be a smart alec and say something like, "Well my dog got hit by a bus yesterday**, my boss just yelled at me for something he screwed up**, and it's too windy for a bike ride today, so I'll just have to get chubby by ordering crappy food here and paying for it from the change in my ashtray. How are you today?"

If the fast food joint must prolong my drive-thru experience by adding something pre-recorded*** while the drive-thru host makes change for the car 4 cars ahead of me, then just please say "Hi, thank you for choosing [fast foot chain] today. Go ahead and order when you're ready." Or if really necessary to prolong my wait to interact with an actual human that can actually take my order, maybe add in a blurb for the latest rearrangement of the 7 ingredients available with a nifty new marketing name and tell me it's available to try. But don't ask me if I want one. Questions take longer because I must answer them or seem rude.

Maybe they should just take the human out of the equation at all. They could install a touch-pad ordering system (covered by a rain/snow guard of course). Of course they'd also have to provide a thing of sani-wipes so I can clean off the pad before ordering (think of those wipes at the grocery store so I don't have to share germs with the last person to use the cart). And a conveyor belt/mechanical arm to deliver my food/beverage options. Although, maybe this is asking too much. Even in The Fifth Element, there are still humans involved in the order-taking process. And that film is just about dead-on with how I envision the future.

Just skip the "pleasantries" and get on with getting me my food. I'm very grumpy when not fed. (I submit this as evidence.)

*** I didn't realize these were recorded until today. It never bothered me that a guy said the "Hi" message, and then a woman took my order, and then a guy handed me my food. I figure it takes at least 5 people to complete my order anyways in this day of specialization of skillz. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about "How many peeps does it take to make you a Chalupa?" but I'm not feeling particularly clever at the moment.


** Hyperbole

* And let me just say, I love Sleepy Maggie. I wish I could fiddle like that... Or play the guitar like a (bleep) riot... As long as I'm lamenting musical talents I do NOT possess I should probably confess that my mom sold the family piano because neither of us kids showed any talent. She's absolutely right - I didn't really bond with the piano.

Friday, February 13, 2009

[0] Origins

In trying to uniquely identify myself in the blogging realm, I was immediately put into a quandary. I'm still defining who I am (at almost-38, I know, pathetic!), so how do I pick (and commit to keeping) one moniker?

So I gave up and decided to go with the thing I was going to blog about today. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts, I'll most likely change my mind in the morning (I won't be killing my apprentice, though, if I do change my mind).

Today in a meeting at work, our fearless leader talked about the launch* of a new project. As with many of my co-workers, I'm on the project, but don't finish my tasks and start actual work until later. The kick-off meeting included some facts about the virtual team:

  • 200 years of experience**
  • members in 4 times zones
  • diverse backgrounds (including a rocket scientist!)
  • etc.
This is something I will never live down. For some reason the fact that I got a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from CU-Boulder in the early 1990s is fascinating to people. The guy that got me my current job mentioned it in his recommendation. Our trainers tell the clients. Which is fun. Because I show up on-site and the client is ogling like I am from another planet*. It usually takes me some self conscious moments of checking my zippers and buttons and a trip to the bathroom to see if my hair looks like mad-scientist hair to decide it's not me but some weird corporate culture thing at this client. Then later in my visit someone at the client site will slip up and say "it's not rocket science". I'll flippantly say, "even if it was, I could still help you." [My BS in AE allows me to b***-s*** with the best of them, really!] Then they get these great big grins on their faces and admit that that trainer who was there last week mentioned it, but swore them to secrecy.

Granted I work in the insurance industry, so it's probably somewhat unusual. But really? The cold war ended around the time I graduated. Only like three lucky superstar* individuals got jobs in AE. I wasn't one of them. In fact, I voluntarily switched careers when I graduate because I HATED a class I took my junior year called Aerospace Dynamics. I got a D. [I wasn't alone. 60% of the class W/F'd or got something lower than a passing C.] This meant I didn't have to repeat it, but that I couldn't take Propulsion the next semester. I ask you, what kind of Rocket Scientist can't understand orbital transforms?

At any rate, there have to be a lot of my fellow AE graduates out there in non-related fields. Or am I the only one whose degree gets used as a selling point in unrelated industries?

* are you thinking of rockets yet?

** does this seem like an odd statistic to anyone else? I feel like I should be 200 years old - and then who'd want me on anything besides a history project?