So I got chipotle tonight… and they have a calendar for sale for 2007… and on it says something to the effect of:
2007 …and still no flying cars
that rules. although I am not sure I like chipotle as much anymore. It is good, but it isn’t as healthy as I would like, and I am trying to eat healthier food lately.
So last night I hit up the gym with bob… I think it was the first time since we were pregnant with Mason that I went… I was a bit apprehensive, but I had a good time. I walked up to the one on webster, which is ~1.35 miles each way. It was REALLY crowded, as it always is in january as people go to work off the holiday weight and fulfill their new years resolutions (ableit short lived). It always dies down in february.
Anyway… bob and I worked chest and back did 30 minutes of cardio. Then I walked back home. It was super nice to get back in there and feel less like a lazy slob. It was also great to hang out with bob, as we haven’t hung out as much lately.
I am thinking I am going to try and make it a monday night thing. It would be good to have that on the schedule again. I would like to get rebecca there too, but she won’t be lifting too much weight, being pregnant and all.
But I am feeling good today, a bit sore, but good. Good sore. Tomorrow might be a killer though, we’ll see.
I was out monday and tuesday from a stomach flu… it was annoying. And Mason got it. And rebecca’s mom got it. grrr. But whatever, all is good now and I am feeling much better. It was nice having time to lay around, even if I did feel like throwing up alot.
I got a bunch of stupid organizational crap done, but it was still nasty. But I am feeling much better and back at work and getting back in the groove.
so I watched as it was unveiled earlier today and I was so excited. It is amazing. I have rocked the nokia 3650 for years, and recently I have been rocking the moto v878, which is lame, but small and works fine, enough, for a phone. I have been in the market for a new phone for a while, but I was waiting to see the apple offering. The Nokia N series was the ones I had been eyeing, but I really want wifi on the next phone I get.
I knew that the apple phone was going to be cool, but I didn’t imagine it would be this cool. I was sitting there ready to order it up on the spot until they got to the ‘cingular’ part. I REALLY don’t want to dump tmobile. seriously. weak. Why does it need to be exclusive? I hate that. The only thing they need it for is the visual voicemail, which is fine, but as far as I can imagine, it is a pretty layer over IMAP email. I mean, it is cool, but I am not THAT impressed with it. But as a friend pointed out, if you had to screen LOTS of voicemail, it would be nice. I don’t get that much voicemail. or rather, I just don’t ever listen to it.
But yeah, I keep coming back to the iPhone. I keep checking plans on cingular’s site. I keep looking at the Nokia N Series. And I keep coming back to one thing:
All the other phones suddenly suck.
Seriously. I mean the iPhone’s interface is SO nice, that even the best Symbian stuff is lame. Let alone the motorola clunky menu system. Palm OS is still stuck in 1996. And I won’t run a Win based phone, not that I think it is a great interface either. The transitions are amazing. It is like a fancy flash website that is done CORRECTLY. The touch screen interface should pan well, since Apple cares enough about that to not mess around. The screen quality in terms of pixels per inch is supposedly insane.
And what can I do? Seriously, switching to cingular is my current option. OR… they are saying release in the US in june, so lets say that is q3. Europe, q4. I doubt that there will be a europe exclusive carrier, since europe doesn’t really work that way. So I would wager there will be a carrier agnostic version by next xmas/early 2008. I guess I could wait for that. And in all honesty, we are taking about an extra 3-4 month wait, I can do that.
But man. The other phone builders need to get their rear in gear. Even the best nokia hardware is going to suck unless there is a major software update.
I must have watched the iPhone minisite videos 5 times already. I am impressed. I want one sooooo bad.
That is really it. I am not going to go into the details. But sometimes, I rule. Right now, I am ruling.
So what have I been listing to lately:
Mashups… I have been listing to a bunch of this stuff, which has been fun… Dylan just brought a CD back from cali that has bunch of good stuff. Girl Talk’s 3 albums have been getting some play too
I am robot and proud…. kind of like if the postal service had done a chill out album… super nice. no vocals, so it is great in the background music. I am happy with it.
So what have I been listing to lately:
Mashups… I have been listing to a bunch of this stuff, which has been fun… Dylan just brought a CD back from cali that has bunch of good stuff. Girl Talk’s 3 albums have been getting some play too
I am robot and proud…. kind of like if the postal service had done a chill out album… super nice. no vocals, so it is great in the background music. I am happy with it.
not that I am big on resolutions, but I am working on a few things lately:
1) Keep the blogs more up to date, especially the baby one. Time passes quicker now with a kid, so I need to keep track of the baby things. And with the second one coming, I want to keep track of it better. When rebecca writes in the baby books, we often look at the blogs and the fotki albums for indicators on the dates. So the better records I keep, the more on top of it all we will be.
2) Get to work on time. Not that my coworkers care, but I tend to come in around 9:30-10am. That is fine, except that means I get home around 6pm. If I get in earlier, I will obviously leave earlier. And get home earlier. I am not spending that much of the AM time being productive, or spending quality time with the family, so I may as well reduce it. It is not like mason lets us sleep much later than 730a ANYWAY, so I am trying to get out the door a bit after 8a. So far so good (I started last week)
3) Energy usage. I am trying to use less energy when possible. I have swapped most of the light bulbs to the low wattage florescent ones and I am making a pic effort to turn things off when I leave the room. Also, as rebecca will attest, I am way into the gas mileage that the Camry gets (which is really good btw, I can get high 30s/low 40s on the expressway, driving nicely). I will still waste gas at the track, etc, but I will still attempt to offset it in other ways. We’ll see how much more I can do. I would love to reduce the electricity usage in the house more. Not that our bill is high, but none the less. I am also going to try to take the bus more and walk more to and from work.
4) Take better care of myself. Primarily food intake and exercise. I eat enough bad food, so I am trying to eat healthier. And I really don’t exercise much, so I am trying to get more on that. This is also a continuation of what I have been doing for a few months, so it isn’t NEW per se, but…
So we’ll see how those work out for 2007.
the holidays are over, and so it is. Everything went well, but we ran around like idiots visiting family, etc and I would have preferred more time to be lazy and work on projects, etc. But such is life.
We did christmas eve at my parents. It went fine, we were there for 7.5 hours, which is kind of long, but it was nice. Christmas day was at Rebecca’s parents, and we were there for 11.5 hours, also a bit long, but it was nice.
Even though I was annoyed by my change of plans, even though it was never to be, I went to work on wednesday. And sure enough, one of the staff’s hard drives died in the AM, forcing me to quick rebuild the machine. So even if I HAD gotten the time off, I would have been in the office anyway. So it worked out…
On new years we went to the party at kieran’s and it was super nice and chill. I had a great time. Rebecca drove and dropped D and Sarah off and went home. Yesterday we chilled out until we had to go pick up mason, who spent the night at the dugan’s. We got to sleep in until about 12:30. it ruled.
So back to work tomorrow.
so I was at work on thursday, and did a bunch of stuff, and went into my boss’s office and updated him on some projects. Then the following:
me: do you have a problem with my taking wed, thurs, and friday off next week?
boss: no
me: I didn’t want to bring it up until I got this stuff all done, since these were things I wanted completed before hand.
boss: yeah
so I was like wooot. done! then friday afternoon… boss pokes his head in as he is leaving…
boss: see you next week
me: well, I’ll see you after that, per our conversation yesterday
boss: well, per my answer yesterday.
me: well, I asked ‘do you have a problem with me taking those days off’-
boss: and I said yes.
me: oh, ok, I guess I’ll see you wednesday.
boss: see you wednesday
the issue is two fold. First, I am positive he said no. But he probably wasn’t giving me full attention, and I probably should have phrased it differently. But the larger problem is I have this feeling like my boss thinks I am never getting enough stuff done, which I find extremely frustrating. I would be able to blow it off if I spent my time screwing around, but I actually work all day. Sure, I screw around here and there, but it doesn’t exceed the amount of time the average person takes on smoke/coffee breaks, say a total of 30 min in an 8 hour work day. And I usually work more than 8 hours/day. Not to mention the time I spent NOT at work going through the company SPAM, checking the server logs, making sure the backups ran, etc.
So where is the issue? I spend my time working, and I get things done, but the boss is still not happy. Next step? Well, I attempted to make a todo list and prioritize it so that I would better meet his expectations, but that failed. I mean I still use the todo list, and I think it is a great tool. The issue is I can’t get the boss to give the list any attention. He won’t look at it with me, he won’t participate in it, he won’t add to it, and he won’t prioritize it. When I ask him to give a hierarchy to the items, his answer is always ‘they are all priority number 1′. Awesome. I usually respond something like ‘I understand that, but I have 4 hours left in the day, what would you like me to start on first’. To which he typically responds with his speech on multitasking. As if I don’t multitask.
His speech is usually something like ‘well, when the computer is loading, you can be doing something else, like putting those widgets on ebay.’ That would make total sense if I ever spent more than 45 seconds watching a progress bar do something. But honestly, it is hard to switch gears to another project when you are talking about 30-60 seconds of down time. So I just have to guess at the priority list myself, and hope that is what he is thinking. I presume I am at 50%, but that would be hard to gauge, since the only feedback I get seems to be the boss asking me if the OTHER things are done. I mean we have talked about things, I will go do project A and walk in to tell him that is done, and it would have been done in a appropriate amount of time. And he will say something like ‘ok good. Did you finish project B yet?’ And I’ll be thinking… ummm, 10 minutes passed, and I did project A in 10 minutes, which was fast, and you seem to think that I should have done project A AND B in 10 minutes?…
Grumble grumble grumble.
So frustrating. He doesn’t really read emails from me, and it seems he rarely wants to discuss things with me.
I think it is time to move on to another thing. I don’t need a boss that doesn’t appreciate me. I know that I am working hard, and I think that overall, our office does well. We are virus free and have been for years. Email is never down for more than a couple hours. I can’t recall the last time the office work was disrupted for more than 1 hour. I have VPN running, webmail, mobile devices, etc. People can work from home. We have backups and I can restore files very quickly. We have never had a catastrophic loss since I have been in control. Not to mention I have made some excel sheets that have greatly improved the business flow of the staff and have caught many an error that otherwise could have slipped through the cracks. Not to mention I am now an ebay wiz, since we are constantly selling things, and we almost ALWAYS get more money than the average ebay transaction.
So yeah, grumble grumble grumble.