Flibbertigibbet

One More Thing about Hairs

I hate having nose hair but pulling them out makes me cry sometimes.

More Information About My Body that No One Requested

Since I've well-established that sometimes I blog about things that people don't really care about regarding my biology (eg. urine, feces, etc.) I thought I would let you in on something else.

I grow hair on my ears. Like, on the lobe. I get these long, crazy hairs.

How weird is that?

My dad has hair growing out of his ears, which I think is to be expected because he is old.

I pull these hairs out because I really don't need anything more drawing attention to my ears, but I can tell you the temptation to put beads on them is really quite fierce. (If ever I do, you can rest assured that I will post pictures.)

And if I may chase a tangent briefly, I really have a strained relationship with my body hair. And by "body hair" I mean all the hair on my body excluding that atop my head.

First of all, I never had to shave more than once a week until midway through college. Even today, when I don't shave, I really just look like my face is dirty.

I don't have any chest hair except for two random hairs that pop up now and then. I pull those out, too.

So, I have spotty facial hair, and two chest hairs, and random ear hairs.

That's all I have to say about that.

There is a beeping...

somewhere near my office.

It sounds like it's outside on the street, but I'm way up on the 8th floor. I shouldn't be able to hear someone's watch beeping from here.

Maybe the terrorists are after me. I will keep you posted as this breaking news story unfolds.

Update: My bookbag came to rest on my sports watch. Mystery solved. The terrorists still have not won.

The New Hotness

I'm a Chevrolet Corvette!

You're a classic - powerful, athletic, and competitive. You're all about winning the race and getting the job done. While you have a practical everyday side, you get wild when anyone pushes your pedal. You hate to lose, but you hardly ever do.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Found via those yahoos over at SBD.

How's the Job Search Going?

Boring.

Hunting for jobs is boooorrrrriiiiinnnng.

I've sent my resume to many, many, many companies about specific positions and I've heard nothing. I've sent my resume to several headhunters and I've heard... nothing.

I've recieved many calls over the years from headhunters, but never when I was looking for a job. Their timing sucks.

Also, since I'm looking for a job in NYC, I think my location may be working against me. I think that that is silly. Don't they know that I will bring a folksy, down-home flavor to their company that will charm and beguile their customers out of thousands, even MILLIONS, of dollars?

*sigh*

I sent the latest-greatest version of my resume over to a friend of mine at IBM and she told me it was weak. (!!!) She said that I have five years of experience and that there is no need to restrain myself to a single page. Her resume is six pages and I think that's too much, but I'm thinking about making a two-pager.

So, I bought this program last night called ResumeMaker to help me beefing up my resume and more easily customize it when I need to for specific jobs. It says it does lots of nifty things, so we'll see.

Anyway, boring boring boring. No one is calling me. No one is emailing me. No one is trying to sweep me away to the Italian Riviera for cocktails.

So, basically, this is an update to say that I have no update.

(I've been looking for a job for less than a month now. I am perfectly aware of my impatience, here, so don't bother telling me to chill out.)

Define Audacious and Unprofessional

So, on Friday, I recieved no fewer than 6 calls from a client for reasons that are not entirely clear to me. He kept saying he wasn't sure of things and I kept showing him the document and where it outlines the answers to his questions and he kept sounding like he was satisfied but then he kept calling back. I have no idea what he wanted, but he asked to schedule a call with me today.

Well, I said that would be fine, because I try to be helpful and customer-focused. And he sent me the conference call information.

I dialed in at the appointed time (actually a few minutes early because that's how I do) and waited on hold. And waited. And waited. And waited.

I waited for ten minutes and he never showed. Finally, I hung up and send him and email:

Hi, Customer Contact Who Doesn't Show Up To Meetings! [CCWDSUTM]

I waited on the conference line for 10 minutes today, but no one else dialed in. Looks like we missed one another.

If you still have questions you need answered, please let me know. I can try to answer them on a one-off basis or we can try to schedule another call. Just let me know.

Also, over the weekend, I received the .zip file to my personal email address. [Yes, I let him email my personal email because he was having trouble with our spam filter here at work and I did look at the files over the weekend, like I said, I'm helpful] You have a good looking site there. It’s not coded to specifications, so I would urge you in order to keep costs down that you have your developer follow the specifications found here: [Insert the URL I've sent to him several times already but he hasn't followed.]

If there are any questions about the spec, I would be happy to clarify anything that seems unclear.

Thanks and have a great day!

Flibby

I was irritated that he didn't show, but I tried to keep my irritation from showing in my note while at the same time pointing out that this is a problem.

He writes back:

Hi Flibby,

I’m sorry for missing the meeting. I had to meet someone for an event we are sponsoring. Do you have time to meet now? If not, can we reschedule for later today?

CCWDSUTM

So, let me get this straight: I plan a portion of my day around this guy, he fails to show up and then he expects me to either a) drop everything to meet with him or b) rearrange another portion of my day at the last minute.

GeeletmethinkaboutitNo.

My schedule is full for the day. I have plenty of calls and projects to work on for the whole of my business day today, so dropping everything to make a meeting that was suddenly preempted by some other thing isn't really a plan that works for me.

We're all busy professionals and that's all the more reason to act professionally. If you can't meet, send an email. If someone walks in when you're about to having a meeting, tell them you'll get back to them and dial-in. Scheduled meetings take priority over walk-ins.

His meeting has been preempted by a blog post. Now, I gotta get to work.

Update: Yesterday, I sent him a list of times I would be available to meet today. This morning, I came in and had a meeting appointment from him for a time that was not on the list I sent him, so I had to decline and reiterate my available times.

This man is clearly an idiot.

Overheard in the Men's Room at the Movie Theater

[cell phone rings]
Flibby: Hello?
Sales Guy: Hi! This is sales guy!
Flibby: This is Flibby. How are you?
Sales Guy: I'm fine.
Flibby: Is there something I can help you with?
Sales Guy: Your number came up on my phone a little bit ago.
Flibby: Huh. Maybe the phone dialed in my pocket.
Sales Guy: Oh.
Flibby: Well, have a nice evening!
Sales Guy: Yeah. I just called to wish you a good night. ha ha!
Flibby: I'm in the men's room at the movie theater, so I'm hanging up now.
Sales Guy: Oh. Yeah. That is weird. Bye!

Ordinarily, I would not answer the phone in the men's room, but I had just walked in and no one else was in there. But still. I'm getting weird in my old age.

Overheard in Email

Sales Support Specialist: I’ve actually had an RFP years ago that asked who our favor Brady Bunch character is. This question was buried in the Technical section of the RFP so I can totally imagine how it got there.

Flibby: Jan. Definitely.

Sales Support Specialist:I said the dog. We didn’t get the deal. I think the correct answer is Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.

Flibby:It’s always Marcia. But Marcia winds up on the front porch of her mobile home eating cheetos, smoking Virginia Slims, and married to Kevin Federline.

Jan is the winner because Jan get I.T. done.

Overheard on a Conference Call

Finance Guy: So, did they ever identify the bug in the software?
Flibby: Not yet. They're still looking but the last I heard they had exhausted all of the options they could foresee. They're baffled.
Finance Guy: So, is it still causing problems?
Flibby: Not really. The problem does not seem to have arisen again since the first major outage.
Finance Guy: Wow. So they don't know what it is. Maybe it's a phantom and it's just gone now.
Flibby: I guess we could say that but that's not really my understanding of how computers work. The bug is still out there.
Technical Support Guy: *snicker*

Overheard on the Sidewalk

Flibby: When are people going to trust their instincts and just know that I'm an asshole?

Why The Man Is Always Trying to Hold Me Down

Celebrity Gossip Buddy: This woman KILLS me!!

Liz Hurley says she hates being so famous. “’The positive things are very shallow; the positive things would be things like: Getting any restaurant reservation you like! Getting to the front of the line! Being given free things! So what?� the former model turned actress told the Observer magazine. “The traveling is monstrous because you get bothered all the time. The hell of going on holiday when you’re famous! You can’t go anywhere! It’s just no fun!�

Flibby: What kills me about it is that she acts like she is just magically famous. As if she hasn't done anything to warrant it.

Celebrity Gossip Buddy: I think she is a tool

Flibby: If I'm ever famous, the words "Damn right, my milkshake is better than yours" will be coming out of my mouth every five minutes or so.

Hell, I say that a lot now anyway.

Best Cartoon of 2005

The award for best cartoon of 2005 comes down to Johnny Test and the Life and Times of Juniper Lee.

(The worst cartoon of 2005 is Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island, by the way.)

Johnny Test is a kid with flame-like hair whose sisters, Susan and Mary Test, are scientific geniuses. They use Johnny as the test subject for their experiments. There is also a talking dog who drinks a lot of coffee. The show is very funny although the humor does get into the potty sometimes. Like how Johnny got the power to emit giant flaming farts and the dog's name is Dukey.

The Life and Times of Juniper Lee is about a young girl named Juniper Lee who becomes the Te Xuan Ze. The Te Xuan Ze is kind of like the vampire slayer except her job is to keep the magical world from interfering with the regular world. Most people in the show can't see magical creatures, but Juniper has a little brother, Ray Ray, who can and she is also accompanied by a Scottish, talking pug named Monroe. Ray Ray is my favorite character on the show. The humor of the show is mostly pretty innocent and campy and thoroughly enjoyable.

And the award for Best Cartoon of 2005 goes to...

Johnny Test!

WOOOOOOO!!!

Johnny is a happy, outgoing boy who eagerly confronts new adventures. Although the show is more silly than serious, Johnny's problems, no matter how implausible, are solved through intelligence and determination.

Juniper Lee, by contrast, is all about magic. Yeah, she's clever and determined, but she's also a whiner. It's always, "Waaaa! I can't tell my friends that I have magic powers." It's also a very PC show that does its best not to offend both in specific and general content. Funny though it is at times, it's not nearly as good as Johnny Test.

You can catch Johnny Test on the WB Kids line up on Saturday mornings.

Get Your Hot, Steaming Truth!

Which Website are You?

This webquiz found courtesy of the Ice Scribe.

This Post is Gay... Just Look Away

So, I was just watching Project Runway and then I was on the global interweb and I found out that Elie Saab is a MOST excellent fashion designer.

And then I started wondering what my (female) date is going to wear to the AIDS Athens Oscar night. Since it's March, I really need to remember to ask her about it tomorrow.

Larval Stages of Demonic Apotheosis

I have an announcement that may cause me to immediately lose the better part of my readership.

I am becoming a sales person.

I know. I started in business as an entry-level production simple code monkey. I built websites. Then I quickly became a manager of my team and then the entire development staff. I organized and established the inital iterations of what is now our QA department and processes. I started the project that enabled my company to bill for support requests and gain an additional half million in revenue a year. And then I my fatal error: I established product-specific sales engineering.

These days I don't manage people or write code or even troubleshoot technical issues. I use all of what I've learned for my nefarious purpose.

In the past, I've had a rather prickely relationship with our sales force. Classically, sales teams do not get on with with operations teams. The sales reps are always shovelling manure to get a signature on the bottom line. Then they are no where to be found when the ops team realizes that they're expected to deliver the impossible. Sales representatives (and I do feel I'm qualified to stay this at this point) think that operations teams are holding out on them and charging way too much money for the easiest things.

Let's all be honest: at some point or another both the ops folks and the sales folks are right.

The sales crowd really is a blessed bunch. Touched, really. But, I promise, not all sales people are bad.

I know. Can you see? I've been infected with their evil. I'm defending them!

And to make matters worse, I'm looking for jobs as a sales engineer. I'm going to be one of them!

With that in mind, I've been focusing on my presentation and speaking skills to improve my product demos and conference calls. Today was a fairly intense day; I had about 3 and a half hours of calls and all but 30 minutes of that was contiguous.

And I TOOOOOTALLY rocked it out.

I'm not even kidding. At the end of two of my calls today, I had customers thanking me for helping them spend their money. I even had to tell them things they really didn't like hearing, like that their project would take two months longer than they were planning. But they worked it out.

So, yeah. I'm totally going ot the dark side. It's kind of scarey.

But at the same time... where's my commission, yo?

Nueva York, Where Am I?

How on earth have I been lulled into such a state of misery and unconsciousness?

This weekend I came across this old post in which I say that "I made up my mind a couple of weeks ago that my primary goal is to move to New York in the next 18 months."

Obviously, that wasn't a very meaningful resolution because I completely forgot about it and I now have less than two months to fulfill it.

Even still, the recent events with me narrowly missing a six-figure income and dropping out of college have acted as shakabuku.

Debi: You know what you need?
Marty: What?
Debi: Shakabuku.
Marty: You wanna tell me what that means?
Debi: It's a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever.
Marty: Oh, that'd be good. I think.

But somehow I've spent the last 16ish months just moping around here. First it was hating my job and not finding one and not knowing what I would rather do because this job sucked so much that I didn't want to do anything and then starting back to school and all that and then the boss quitting and... Well, time really flies! Even when you're not having fun.

I definitely need to pick up the pace and get moving on getting to New York. It's a land of riches and wonderment where I can meet wonderful people and do wonderful things and make lots of money and set up my base of operations for global domination. (No, I'm not one of those remote island types.) I've always wanted to live there and there is no good reason I can't.

Well, the reason I have for not moving right this instant is my j-o-b. I need to make sure I'm employed when I move because being homeless in NYC is not the romantic life of skyscrapers and Starbucks of which I dream and aspire.

So, if you have a job for a smart, determined, mostly friendly business person with a little technical know-how in NYC let me know!

I'm SO Over Christmas

I cannot believe I put up this so many lights. It really didn't seem like this much when I did it, but it is taking FOR EVER to get them down.

I'm so over this.

Update: I counted 13 strings of lights on the tree this year. They're finally down and my furniture arrangement can return to normal. Whew!

Work Pet Peeve

As we all know, I hate meetings. But one thing that I really hate in meetings is when people can't stay on topic.

I hosted a training meeting today. (I hated to do it, but I knew that if I didn't train these people, then they would pretend like they didn't know how to use the application even though there are instructions posted all over it.)

So, in my training meeting, the attendees start discussing how they will adjust their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to use the application. To an extent, this is fine. 20 minutes of discussion is beyond the acceptable limit.

And then the conversation starts drifting even further afield into other topics about how other teams do things and all of that. Meanwhile, I'm trying to jump in to steer the conversation back, but this group of people are the sort who WILL NOT STOP TALKING. It doesn't matter if you pipe up to interject something or not. They will complete their monologue regardless of what you are doing.

So, I just want to send a memo out to everyone that says, "If I want to have a meeting about how you and everyone else should be handling your shit, I'll do that. Otherwise, all meetings I host will focus on the one particular issues described in the agenda I include with the invitation."

Oh, and can people please show up on time to meetings and include agendas in the meetings THEY host?

That'd be great. Thanks.

It's Raining Men

Not really. That's just what it sounds like on my roof.

Looks like some pretty nasty weather out there right now. Tornado watch until 10 tonight.

Job Opportunity Lost

I just got the call that they've offered the job to someone else.

This is certainly disappointing, but it doesn't change the general direction in which I will be moving.

Next steps: Find new job opportunities

Impatient

There are so many things I'm looking forward to right now. I can't really list them out because all of them are highly contingent on not only my own actions but the actions of others. Even so, I am anticipating many good things for the coming year.

Mystery made, I want all of you to behave yourselves carefully so as to not upset my plans. Otherwise, I will be very cross.

2006: The Year of Kicking Ass

Happy New Year, everyone!

Last night, I went to Atlanta and celebrated the new year with friends. It was great fun.

I'm not really one for New Year's Resolutions because I resolve to do things all the time and the psychological impact of the calendar change really doesn't do much for me. Actually, I don't think it has a big effect on many people and that's why they don't stick with these resolutions.

Well, this year, I decided to make one resolution. It's pretty minor and it's only a New Year's Resolution because the New Year coincides with when I wanted to start. I've just resolved that I'm going to pay more attention to what I eat and adopt a diet that supports my athletic goals. Basically, that means low fat, high protien.

I do really like the Ice Scribe's approach of setting a series of goals, though. What makes it work is that she actually keeps up with those things and most all of them relate to aspects of her life that are already in the forefront of her mind. They're also goals that do require year-long effort.

Another friend of mine has a great idea instead of New Year's Resolutions. He chooses a theme and then the whole year he tries to do things that work toward that theme. For example, he might choose something like, "Financial Stability" and then he tries to build habits like controlling spending and finding good investment opportunities. Or maybe he'll choose a theme like "Health" and then he works on his diet and exercise habits.

I think choosing a theme is more effective than making a resolution because the theme then acts as a guiding principle for any number of decisions. Resolutions by contrast are usually very limited like, "quit smoking" or "lose 20 pounds" and although those are good things, a lot more goes into a year and I think it's important to know what goal is up next.

I should mention that a theme should not be overly broad or too abstract, like "be a good person," and it should also apply to things that a person can actually control, so don't set a theme like "Peace in the Middle East."

2005 wasn't really a very great year for me on balance.

Some really awesome things happened. I met Ice Scribe. I renewed an old friendship. I've made a very promising new friendship. I started working out and saw some results.

But I spent way too long on things that did not make me happy at all. In general, all of the difficulties I had stemmed from not maintaining clarity around my values and even evading those facts to some extent.

So, I started in November 2005, but 2006 is going to be the year of kicking ass That's not really a good theme because it's too broad, but I started a couple of months ago re-establishing habits I had broken when I went to B-School and I've gotten back on track with lots of various things in my life.

If I had to break down ass kicking into areas of focus and goals, I would list the following:

Health and Fitness - Continue weight training, incorporate speed training for running, focus on maintaining a consistent diet that supports my goals.

Career - Get a new job in the area of sales engineering. This will give me sales, client, and travel experience.

Education - I'm going to start taking classes from the OAC in September when the new academic year begins for them. I'd also like to work on Spanish, German, and French this year. (I've already started on German, so I have to keep that going.) And, also, I'm WAY behind on my reading.

House - I have several projects in line around my house and yard, but I want to make sure that I only have one or two projects going at a time and that I finish one completely before starting another.

So, it's a happy new year and the goal is to keep going with that.