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My Weekend Thus Far
Dec. 3rd, 2005 02:19 pmThe weekend did not start out spectacularly well. Fridays are typically very quiet workdays if one is working on short-term projects: our senior managers are terrified that something may get started and/or occur which cannot be crushed out of existence wrapped up by 5 PM so the only people with serious workloads are those working on multi-week or multi-month projects, or those struggling to clean up their messes from earlier in the week.
I do have several long range projects but they're mostly on cruise control at the moment, zipping along on their own steam with only monitoring and minor course corrections required periodically. Other work groups around the company are not quite so lucky/competent. I was pulled into three other someone-please-save-us incidents with groups not in my division. How they discovered I exist or who put them onto my trail remains unknown. I am pleased to say however that two of the crises were repaired rapidly and while I couldn't perform miracles for the third for lack of appropriate access, I was at least able to point out what went frightfully wrong and how they can fix the problem.
While I don't like surprises --especially at work-- this was probably a good karma day as the company beginning to focus on our annual performance evaluations once again. It's always a Good Thing to cultivate a fan base.
I was supposed to have a routine one-on-one telephone meeting with my immediate boss at 3 PM but when he hadn't called by 3:03, I called him. He was busy with an issue and promised to call me back in 2 minutes. I didn't realize at the time that this meant very large values of two. Having not heard from him, I called him back at 4:55 PM. I quickly updated him on my project status (largely repeating what I had already sent in e-mail, but I guess he likes to hear my voice) and I left the bunker at 5:10 PM.
Rather that skipping home, I headed into downtown DC to meet with my regular Friday night happy hour crowd. The sudden windy cold snap and a number of other commitments kept the bulk of our group from meeting at 30 Degrees, but there was nine of us brave enough to make the trip (I learned it takes 90 minutes during rush hour traffic to get from my cube to our cocktails --this may be useful information again some day). After a few drinks, we wandered south on 17th Street NW to Bua Thai, one of my favourite Thai restaurants.
Following dinner, it appeared that Jeff was feeling a little drowsy and since the temperature had plunged well below freezing, Kent & I volunteered to drive him home to Arlington, VA. Driving through DC is much more pleasant at 10:30 PM than it is during the day: we made good time. Our trek home up Rock Creek Parkway was lovely too.
This morning, Kent was up early and headed off to his role-playing game in Virginia. My day so far has been entirely composed of a light lunch, chocolate and lounging in front of the computers. Life is good.
Tonight, we will be heading to Mi Rancho for dinner with friends, then on to De Lounge in Wheaton, MD, for country dancing.
I do have several long range projects but they're mostly on cruise control at the moment, zipping along on their own steam with only monitoring and minor course corrections required periodically. Other work groups around the company are not quite so lucky/competent. I was pulled into three other someone-please-save-us incidents with groups not in my division. How they discovered I exist or who put them onto my trail remains unknown. I am pleased to say however that two of the crises were repaired rapidly and while I couldn't perform miracles for the third for lack of appropriate access, I was at least able to point out what went frightfully wrong and how they can fix the problem.
While I don't like surprises --especially at work-- this was probably a good karma day as the company beginning to focus on our annual performance evaluations once again. It's always a Good Thing to cultivate a fan base.
I was supposed to have a routine one-on-one telephone meeting with my immediate boss at 3 PM but when he hadn't called by 3:03, I called him. He was busy with an issue and promised to call me back in 2 minutes. I didn't realize at the time that this meant very large values of two. Having not heard from him, I called him back at 4:55 PM. I quickly updated him on my project status (largely repeating what I had already sent in e-mail, but I guess he likes to hear my voice) and I left the bunker at 5:10 PM.
Rather that skipping home, I headed into downtown DC to meet with my regular Friday night happy hour crowd. The sudden windy cold snap and a number of other commitments kept the bulk of our group from meeting at 30 Degrees, but there was nine of us brave enough to make the trip (I learned it takes 90 minutes during rush hour traffic to get from my cube to our cocktails --this may be useful information again some day). After a few drinks, we wandered south on 17th Street NW to Bua Thai, one of my favourite Thai restaurants.
Following dinner, it appeared that Jeff was feeling a little drowsy and since the temperature had plunged well below freezing, Kent & I volunteered to drive him home to Arlington, VA. Driving through DC is much more pleasant at 10:30 PM than it is during the day: we made good time. Our trek home up Rock Creek Parkway was lovely too.
This morning, Kent was up early and headed off to his role-playing game in Virginia. My day so far has been entirely composed of a light lunch, chocolate and lounging in front of the computers. Life is good.
Tonight, we will be heading to Mi Rancho for dinner with friends, then on to De Lounge in Wheaton, MD, for country dancing.
