A funny thing happened

Generally speaking, I'm not particularly a social animal. I suck at, and generally don't enjoy small talk. If I'm at a social activity, it's hard for me to walk up to someone I don't know and start a conversation. And for the most part, I'm ok with that.

So when my boss told me I had to go to a trade show and sit in a booth, I was not excited. I know our product very well. I know how to talk to prospects, find out what they do, what they're interested in, and what other applications we provide that might apply to them. Once I'm talking to someone, I'm pretty good conversationally.

But I had never been in a booth before. So I was nervous. I volunteered to stay back and man the phones. The boss said no chance. So I went.

I showed up about an hour before I had to. Registration didn't show up until 10 minutes before I was supposed to be in the booth. So I had a lot of time to get more nervous. Eventually, I got in the booth with my coworkers and put in a 3 hour shift.

Thing is, I liked it. I am passionate about the technology we provide and it's utility. So getting to talk about it is sorta cool. Other than the setup and tear down of the booth, I'm looking forward to doing another one.

Communication and shameless plug

I am what you might call an IM whore. I am on MSN, Yahoo, AIM, GoogleTalk and Skype almost all day long. It's an amazing way to keep in touch. So I found a Skype Widget that works with blogger. It'll tell you if I'm on line, and you can click it to talk or chat with me. Cool huh? Widgets rock. As soon as I find a good one that works with the other IMs I'll throw that in too.

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Also, if you look right below my Archive section on the right, you'll see "Click to Call me." WTF is that you say? Well, it's another way to keep in touch. My company (IfByPhone) offers click-to-call services. So you click on that link and you'll see a pop-up. Put your number in, and your phone will ring. Then my phone will ring. And we'll have a nice little conversation. We'll talk about what the hell DearWife and I are going to name the new baby.

For the record, you can do the same thing for free (with 100 free minutes). So feel free to check it out, and if you have any questions about it...click-to-call me.

Routine

Work has been pretty crazy for the last two weeks. The company I work for, IfByPhone is starting to really get some positive traction, and we'll be launching a marketing campaign soon, so it promises to get even busier. I can't tell you how cool it is to be working at a place that is so clearly on the upswing.

Even though it's been a big adjustment after having so much, ahem, time off, it's been very cool. I'm learning a lot, and there are a bunch of smart and cool people here as well. To prove that point, all the technical guys knew who Ash was when I brought him in, and there is a SeaLab 2021 fan as well.

I'm one of those people who is more efficient and gets more done overall when he's busy. So I guess that means one of these days I'll get my stupid printer working on my shitty new expensive Dell PC.

Life getting in the way

I was planning on doing a bunch of things this weekend. I wanted to post about the cool things ifbyphone's technology can do. I wanted to get a little bit ahead of a self-imposed deadline on a report for work. I wanted to take the Christmas lights down.

I took the kids and did some errands on Saturday. We had people coming over, but I still could get some work done after they went home. Except LittleBrother suddenly came down with a very painful ear infection. And I didn't have new insurance cards yet. So DearWife and LittleBrother went to the Emergent Care place late on Saturday. I stayed home with BigBrother, who wanted to stay up until they got back. Needless to say I didn't get anything done. LittleBrother is feeling much better with a little infant motrin.

Then today, when I was going to start getting some work done, my home PC died. And of course, it's the hard drive, with about 6 months worth of unbacked up MS Money files and worst of all, Digital Pictures. Oy. I still hold out hope that I can get everything off of the HD.

My Day

• 12:01AM: Go to sleep after not being able to get work out of head for 2 hours.
• 12:30AM: Wake up when BigBrother walks in the room scared from the monster storm. BigBrother gets in bed with us. Squirms. Squirms some more. Finally get back to sleep around 1AM.
• 1AM: Call from work. Problems.
• 1AM-4AM: Problems not resolved. Send email to bosses indicating that we have an issue. Possibly tragic, possibly inconsequential.
• 4AM: back to bed, set alarm for 7. Stare at BigBrother thinking how lucky you are. But not long enough to keep the work problems out of your head.
  
• 8AM: Wake up when work calls. Realize that you slept through an hour that you should have been helping out. Realize that you set the alarm for 7PM.
• 8:01AM: Told that there actually was never a problem. It wasn't the system that was down, it was the testing that was bad. Ugh.
• 8:05AM: Come downstairs doing best Zombie imitation scratching head. Grab coffee.
• 8:10AM: DearWife says 'this is so cute, come see what LittleBrother is doing!" He's taken his pants and his diaper off, gotten diaper wipes from the bathroom, and he's wiping himself. Which is cute, until you realize that he has reason to wipe his butt, and he's wiping his hand in it.
• 9:00AM: Decide that going to work is a good idea, head in.
• 9:30AM: Realize that this is no big deal. Feel confident in ability to rise to the challenge.
• 9:30AM-5PM: work blah blah blah
• 6:30PM-8PM: Play with kids. Realize how incredibly lucky I am.
  

Not a formal complaint

The new job is chaos. I thrive in chaos. It is energizing. And honestly, I dig it. I am ready for the challenge.

But there are downsides. I am currently in my obsessive phase. In the past, it would happen with school or video games. When I was taking programming classes, I'd dream code. When I was heavy into CivII, I would wake up at 3am and start thinking about how to eliminate the dastardly French (insert white flag joke here).

Now I'm doing the same thing. Only it's not quite as geeky. I wake up and think "what if I she to put this person in that position?" And I'll be up all night. The worst part is that I can't remember the cute ass things the boys do.

DearWife will give me the download every night. "I was amazed that BigBrother...." "You would be so proud of LittleBrother, he ...."

And as of this moment, I cannot tell you what she told me last night.

The good news is that I'm going to be out of this phase soon. And I have this blog at least to remind me where my priorities are (should be).

The whole work life balance thing is ...hard. I honestly don't know how some of my friends handle it.

Work fun

I normally don't write that much about work. One of the reasons for the lack of posting recently is because work has been going through some changes. The company I work for has about 45 employees. We just got bought out (yesterday) by a 26,000 employee company. A $4 billion company.

So there are changes, and I've been a little distracted. It's a positive change, but it could be a rather large one. For a while, I expect to be Office Spaced, reporting to at least 3 bosses. There should be some really interesting and challenging work to do, so that is good.

As part of the get-to-know-you meeting with our new parnet, our president is having a mandatory pot-luck. Everyone in the company is supposed to bring something (presumably home made) to participate. I repeat. Mandatory. This is the 4rth such pot luck in the last few months. You might infer from my tone that I don't like this. You'd be correct.

I commute 4 hours a day to and from work. The last thing I want to do when I get home is bake.
The guys who work for me are in general agreement with me. So we decided as a group to order delivery wings from a local Chicken place. The wings are pretty popular. More popular than the hot dogs, Jewel-branded hummus and pita chips.

Now, all the sudden, small minded co-workers are emailing the president complaining that we're going against the spirit of the potluck. The lunch room is ablaze with controversy....particularly now it's not just my team that's doing it. We added a support guy to our little group.

Everyone was aghast. Even the hot dog guy.

So....to recap. Our company is being bought out. Our internal structure is changing (some people will be changing jobs, some reporting to new people, promotions, demotions). The culture of the company will eventually have to change to meet the parent's. And half the company is worried about chicken wings.

At least they have their priorities straight.