Can I be glad the week is over, and today is Saturday? It started with such great promise too. Had a good Monday….maybe the fact Monday was good should have clued me into the other mania that would soon follow.
Work is, just, well…work. As a friend of mine who is an engineer says (see Hubman, I can play nice with engineers…occasionally), as he likes to say, “If work was fun they would call it play and wouldn’t have to pay you to do it.”
I will have to say that I love it when “partners” discover while you are on the phone with them that their team is being incompetent (especially when you already knew it.) We have been going in circles on an issue for the past three days with our big, brown friends, and about 45 minutes into a technical call with their team, the person leading the effort on their side said, “oh, I think because the file looks bad, my system is just throwing it away.” Her cohort’s response, “What? You don’t generate a log or an alert or anything saying ‘hey, this file looks bad so I’m throwing it away??’ How can you NOT be doing that??!” There were five us on the call at our company – you could hear us all collectively put the phones on mute so we could laugh out loud. We had suspected something like this had been happening for days but were told explicitly that their system would never do that. And, we were the idiots. It was a great way to end the week.
During the middle of my mania on Thursday, I received an out-of-the-blue call from a head hunter. She was given my name by one of the people with whom I used to work. The head hunter has two positions she is looking to fill for a local company. I happen to know this company and know that many of the people working in IT there are unhappy and looking for a way out if they can find it. I am always amused listening to the head hunter’s description of the company and its culture in contrast to what I’ve been hearing for a few years from friends who work there. The positions are decent. Both are Project Management positions of high visibility doing what I enjoy at the right salary level that will keep Garbanzo in the lifestyle to which he has become accustom. She made it clear that personality fit is key, but they want someone now. I am not apt to walk away from my current company yet given the company hiring, the severance amount I would be walking away from, and the grief leaving would cause to the current project I’m on (don’t want to burn bridges). Oh, and both positions are contract-to-hire which generally occurs in the 4-6 month range. Not ideal. Regardless, I’ll be polishing up the resume over the weekend and sending it to the head hunter. We’ll see what happens. Clearly her candidate database is light in this area, so getting my resume in the mix will be good.
The run Thursday night was a lot of fun. I didn’t take a lot of time to explain what it was all about – but it is like an urban treasure hunt. The map is revealed at 6pm. You collect tickets at each location you reach. Each location has a different number of tickets associated with it depending on distance from the running store, etc. You get back before 7pm when the raffle starts. Since they have pretty good sponsorship for these monthly runs, the prizes are pretty good. Nike gives away like 5 pairs of shoes, a iRun-iPod kit, etc. The other sponsors are local businesses which give stuff away as well as hydration companies as well as good running socks companies. The raffle time is pretty fun. There is music, drinking and snacks. People are having fun. Competition is just not there which is what helped make it fun. There was probably over 100 people there. Garbanzo mapped the route we took after we got home, and we ran about 4.3 miles in around 45 minutes. Not bad considering we had to deal with traffic, stopping to get tickets, tripping while trying to avoid a dog, etc. It was like a huge party afterwards as people ate, drank, and just socialized. We will be doing the First Thursday run in September, I think.
Oh, and that beer I was drinking was an Invasive Species IPA brewed by brewing company called Captured by Porches Brewing Company. It is a small, family-owned brewing company. As the husband-wife team served beer, their small son was wandering around mingling with the runners. People were talking to the husband about how he brewed it because it is an IPA but better than most. And, you know the IPA is good when Garbanzo will drink it. He is not an IPA fan, but loved this stuff.
On tap for our weekend, a dinner party with some college friends which is always dangerous as we all like good food and good drink. (Pictures will be posted Saturday, I’m sure!) And, we may take the kids to see the G-Force movie Sunday afternoon. And that is it! The rest of the time will be just getting stuff done around the house and relaxing.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!!
