It’s Friday afternoon, it must be time for a roundup
You may be wondering why I do these on Friday afternoons. You see – my employer does something called Summer Hours between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Employees who choose to take advantage of the program work an extra hour Monday through Thursday and go home at noon on Friday.
I do not choose to take advantage of Summer Hours, so the place is quiet on Friday afternoons. I have time to write a little on break.
Work
I had a good conversation about career paths and discovery and discernment with my boss this week. This is probably setting off alarm bells in most of your minds, but we have a really good rapport (we’ve worked together since about 1996) and I fully trust her to be discrete. There are benefits to both sides in being open and honest with your boss, and we plan to make good use of them. I can’t say more here. I’m glad that it went well.
I had a medium-sized project go live today. It was a bumpy installation – caused mainly by a consultant who doesn’t know our setup and change management package. It’s not his fault – everybody has a hard time the first time. Once we got the issues worked out all is running correctly. I have another one going live soon, and a third larger project going live at the end of the month (with pieces continuing to be worked on into September).
I am getting a brand-new laptop at some point in the next few weeks. They’re here, but I’m a low priority replacement (others have broken systems or are new employees working on “loaner” PCs).
Work has been generally busy. In the last 2 weeks I’ve had an overwhelming number of problems, issues, and small requests. It’s like everybody decided to hold them until the last week of July and then dump them all on me at once. I think I’m through most of them, but the workload did increase for no apparent reason temporarily.
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This weekend is a bit active. My parents are coming over on Saturday evening and we are headed out to see a Trenton Thunder baseball game. The Thunder are the AA affiliates of the NY Yankees and have been playing in Trenton since 1994. Our seats are behind the 1st base side dugout and I think they’re the 2nd row behind the dugout (or maybe the first row).
Then on Sunday I head up to Camp Johnsonburg for check-in for the last week of regular camp. I’m going to be in charge of medical form paperwork this week due to my friend Jill’s vacation – she is usually the person doing the job. It’s looking to be a bit warm. I think there are lots of kids from my church going this week, but I’m so far away from the actual check-in tables that I probably won’t see them. This isn’t my last visit for a long time – I’m also planning to attend the Youth Worker Training on September 7, and I’ll be chaperone when my church’s Sr. Highs attend the camp Sr. High Retreat in November.
Church
We’ve finally got the Welcome and Outreach Task Force started. We have 8 members with 2 outstanding invitations. For the month of August, we’re doing optional reading assignments on our topic. I’m reading The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church by Reggie McNeal. In September we’ll get everybody together face to face and really get started.
The Youth Director came all the way to Bristol for lunch earlier this week. We talked about my career search and the upcoming Confirmation Class. He had lots of good input on the career discussion. For the Confirmation Class, he’s asking how he can get me involved without overbooking my time. At this point it looks like I will end up being the Cat-Herder for the group of mentors assigned to the confirmands. That’s an easy assignment – a bit of work up front but after that just keeping people on schedule and watching for problems. I’m also probably going to teach a few lessons – probably polity and beyond that we’ll see. I really want to be involved in this process because the youth that I know who are the right age are really great!
All other areas of my life are fine at the moment.
Have a good weekend!
Another Roundup
I’d like to apologize to my readers for the lack of deeply thoughtful articles of late. Life and work are a bit busy at the moment and I only have time for these roundups.
Work
I’m on the old laptop, reloaded from scratch. I’ve been told today that I’m getting a new one in the next few weeks. Given that this one was nearly top of the line when we bought it in 2000 or 2001 – it’s time. Company culture issues aren’t touching me as much as they had been a while back. One of the “problem children” has resigned and another in a different state has been told that her job is moving to my location by spring and her department reorganized. Given that and a few other things I can’t mention here it’s unlikely that she’ll be here by then. It’s unfortunate when people lose their jobs, but in some cases it’s necessary – anybody who consistently and willfully provides negative productivity (not only are they not productive, they make others less productive) needs to go.
Church
I had a good meeting with with the Youth and Young Adult council this week. We’re getting ready for the new year. We talked a lot about the philosophy of how we lead/schedule the group and some possible changes. The one thing that was a common thread was consistency – that each weekly meeting follow the same pattern and that we choose simple and meaningful as opposed to trying to do a major production each week. This follows the trend in Youth Ministry nationally to move away from the “let’s bring in new converts” blockbuster events of the 80’s and 90’s and for most the over-30 crowd in the council represents a step back to what they experienced as a youth. We’re also talking about changing the names of the groups. Right now they are CHAOS (Christians Hanging Around On Sunday) for the Senior Highs and WILDLIFE (which is an acronym nobody can remember off the top of their heads) for the Junior Highs. The youth director wants to de-emphasize the chaotic aspects of the names and I agree. We’re going to see what the youth want early this fall.
The youth director also asked me if I wanted to help lead the Confirmation Class. This year is the first year doing the class for 9th grade youth (it had been 8th grade, and last year there was no class due to the switch). I’m honored to be asked, a little uncertain about my ability and the strength of my faith being sufficient, and probably nearly overbooked already. The Welcome and Outreach Task Force is about to get started, I’ll still be working with the Senior Highs weekly and attending the YAYA council once a month, and the confirmation class is every other week for 8 months plus 3 weekend retreats (one just overnight). I’ve asked the youth director to lay out time expectations, and perhaps I can be a guest speaker on topics that I know well (polity would be one, and I’m sure that there are a few others).
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The Lawrenceville church and a Princeton church (I think it’s Nassau Presbyterian) are putting together a new young adult event called Theology On Tap. It’s the 2nd Thursday of each month (starting September) in the Yankee Doodle Tap Room of the Nassau Inn in Princeton at 8pm. The idea is for 20’s/30’s somethings to get together and share a drink (alcohol optional), fellowship, and talk about theology. You can find more information HERE, or in the Theolodoodle group on Facebook. I barely qualify by age, but it’s intriguing enough to me that I’ll probably attend at least the first session.
The youth director also told me a freaky coincidence story. He was at Triennium 2 weeks ago, sitting with a woman minister friend of his. She was working on a sermon. On the table she had laid out a Bible, some books, a few printed e-mails, and one printed blog post. My director asked, “Can I look at that?” and picked up the blog post. You’ve probably guessed by now – it was one of mine (either from here or a comment elsewhere). He started laughing and when she asked why he explained: “This is one of my adult advisors.” Since Triennium was attended by youth from all over the world, he claims that I’m now internationally famous! Somehow I doubt that, but I’m glad that folks are finding worth in my ramblings.
Life
All is well, but we’re so busy with other people’s events (family, camp, church) that we’re neglecting work around the house. The outdoor trim needs to be painted, the garden needs weeding badly, and the driveway needs to be sealed. We need to decide whether or not to pay someone to do some of these things (we can afford to) or to stop our commitments and just get it done.
We also need to be sure that we get some downtime.
On the new laptop
I got my “new” laptop (really the old one reformatted) back today. I think I have the few extra pieces of software installed and I think I have my environment back to stable. It’s nice to be home again.
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Friday Roundup
For reasons that will be clear below, I’ve been quiet this week. Here’s a roundup.
Work
The big event this week happened on Wednesday. My work laptop (which I’ve had since 2001) caught a virus mid-morning. It appears that this virus’s purpose in life was to download other viruses, spyware, trojans, pop-ups, and to take over the box so completely that the machine was unusuable. I finally had to resort to contacting our Desktop Support folks (I prefer to fix my own problems most of the time) and we agreed that there was no point in saving the box. The hard drive was wiped and is being reloaded from scratch. I have a loaner PC for a few days while they complete the reload, and then I’ll have to spend time getting the reloaded PC back to the way I like it.
I’m an IT person. For us, the loss of a PC or changing PCs is a very emotional thing. We spend at least 8 hours a day working on the PC. To us, the PC is a lot like home – we install applications that make life easier, we change the background, we have our lists of bookmarked websites, etc. Losing the PC to a virus or hard-drive crash is like your house burning down. Moving onto a loaner PC is like staying in a hotel – you can’t really do much to it and it doesn’t feel quite like home. The one exception to this rule is a better PC. That’s like selling your 1500 sq. foot house and moving into a 2400 sq. foot house. It’s an upgrade!
I may also get upgraded in the near term – I’m waiting to hear.
Also happening at work this week – the division that I support got a new top guy. He is something we haven’t had for many years – knowledgeable about the business, makes good decisions, and is a friendly person who is easy to work with. We haven’t had that combination since about 1998. This bodes well for the business. If he were able to get the culture changed (which includes people outside of his control – so I don’t think it’s likely) I might consider staying.
Camp
I’m headed back to camp for check-in this coming Sunday. I’m looking forward to it, as I always do.
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Church
Our new Associate Pastor ran the service last weekend alone – our senior pastor is on vacation. She did a great job. I wonder if anybody else saw her take a deep breath just before she stood up to speak the first time.
Another amazing thing. An “older” woman (older than my parents) had some sort of back issue. When I started attending last year, she was essentially permanently bent over at a 90 degree angle using a walker with wheels. Then she disappeared for a while, and when she showed up at church she was standing straight! This past week she was the musical soloist, and at her age she still has a very strong and true voice. It’s good to see her get back to something else that she had lost. Very inspirational!
I’m a little worried about the youth group. I didn’t go on the Mission Trip a few weeks ago. I’m sensing that the group is at least temporarily breaking into two groups – those who went on the trip and those who didn’t. After the fund raiser for the trip at the beginning of June, the youth director stopped inviting people (students and advisors) who weren’t going on the trip (reasonable – the meetings were about the trip). I spoke with the adults and youth who went on the trip and I felt a fairly universal vibe from the youth – if you didn’t go on the trip you let them down. I would have hoped that the folks who stayed home (including some of the students) would have been formed into the “Pit Crew” or “Support Team” or even “Prayer Team” supporting those who made the trip. On the up side, I seem to have been active and supportive enough that I’ve been included in the group that plans things for all 3 groups (Jr. High, Sr. High, Young Adult) and we’re meeting next week.
Home
Wife is good. House is good. Cats are good. We need to paint a few things around the house, and we need to get the fireplace chimney fixed/replaced. Otherwise all is well. I’m most of the way through the new Harry Potter (no comments with spoilers, please).
That’s the Friday roundup. Have a nice weekend!
What’s Going On? Redux
It’s been a while since my last post, so I’ll give you another wrap-up.
This past Monday at work I experienced what might be a last-straw event. As last-straw events tend to be, this was a little thing that pointed out a pattern that I had seen before. The short version – I was helping a co-worker and a Vice-President work through an issue. The Vice-President said some rude things and cut off discussion with an “I make the decisions, I don’t have to listen to ideas I don’t like” attitude. I responded by starting to walk away, and then returned to finish the discussion when drawn back by my co-worker. I was upset and talked to my direct supervisor about the situation. I was even more hurt later during a conversation with my co-worker. She stated rather vehemently that she didn’t want to get involved because you can’t take on a Vice-President and it would only end up hurting both of us. I found this ironic because I have fairly recently gone WAY out of my way to help this co-worker. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to work in an environment where power and position bring the privilege of behaving badly towards lower-level people. I also expect myself and others to speak truth rather than avoiding conflict. I really don’t think I fit in here anymore.
A confession: My birthday is coming up rapidly. This will be a year ending in “9”. I kinda wish that nobody would notice this year. (THis is NOT a veiled attempt to drag birthday wishes out of my readers – it’s an emotional statement.)
Last Sunday I went back to camp to help out with check-in again. As it turns out this was a good idea; there were about 230 kids to check in – nearly every unit between just short of capacity and just over capacity. We ended up dividing the medical form job that I learned the previous week between three people and were able to hang on and keep up. I was only there for a few hours – I went to church back at home first and then drove to camp. I didn’t stay for dinner – it was 94 in the shade and all those bodies in the very full dining hall would be … ripe. Camp must really mean something to me to get me to drive 3 hours round-trip to spend 4-5 hours working.
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I was scheduled to fly again tomorrow but the club canceled the flight – the plane I had booked needed a repair. I just looked and another plane is scheduled to come out of maintenance just when I need it, so I don’t think I’ll chance scheduling that one. I probably won’t get into the air this weekend, but that’s OK. I have family stuff to do Sunday afternoon so Saturday I really need to spend the day on chores.
Job discernment continues. I’m reading Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
That’s the roundup. Lots going on in my head, but most people in my life wouldn’t notice. The important people in my life do.
Random Bullets from my head
My life has been … not so much turbulent as full of changes at my periphery and disquiet in my mind. Here are some random thoughts:
- Today is the last day at my company of the woman who sits across the aisle from me. She started with the company about 3 months before I did back in 1993. For the last almost-year we’ve sat across from each other and been very happy (we both like quiet, we enjoy each other’s company). I’m really gonna miss seeing a beautiful, intelligent, and friendly face every day.
- Also at work: the CIO has realized that morale within the IT group is not particularly good. We’ve had four voluntary departures in the last month (out of a group that was about 45 people). He’s holding lunch meetings with a smattering of people in each (everybody goes to one of them) to talk about issues. I took the initiative to meet with him this past Monday. I scheduled the meeting for an hour and his questions drew my list of issues out to an hour and 45 minutes. It was a good session and minor happenings since show that he listened to what I said. The problem is that many of my issues are outside of his direct control – they are company-wide.
- Between what is happening with my church work (on an upswing) and what is going on at work (on a downswing), I’m wondering if I’m in the right career. That’s right – not just right job but right career. Any assistance for someone undergoing a mid-life career discernment questioning period would be appreciated – leave a comment or use the e-mail link at left.
- This weekend I should be going flying for the first time since the end of March. My blood pressure broke free of control back then – my doctor changed my dosage and I’m now stable again. Actually I’ve been stable since early May, but I’ve been too busy to fly.
- Also this weekend I’m a bachelor. Carolyn is headed up north to go to a garden show with her parents. She’ll stay overnight Saturday and come home on Sunday. My bachelor amusements will include lawn-cutting, bill-paying, and laundry.
- Sunday at church we have the Annual Congregational Meeting. This includes the usual reports and election of officers. I’m not on the program (either giving a report or being elected), so I will probably attend. If it’s too hot (and it’s looking that way) I might just grab a copy of the annual report and check out if they have a quorum. You see, our church isn’t air conditioned ….
- I’m waiting for Verizon to finish installing FIOS in the neighborhood. They ran the underground conduits 2 weeks ago. So far the box in the ground had nothing in it but mud (or high water when it rains – I don’t know if they’ll actually be able to use the box). I’m looking forward to getting FIOS Internet service and dumping Cablevision completely. I might get FIOS TV as well (it’s available in my town) but I’ll have to see how it stacks up against DirecTV. I’d like to keep my HD Tivo, but DirecTV is switching technology for HD programming and a Tivo will not be an option soon. I can do a Tivo Series 3 with FIOS, but I lose video on demand and pay per view. Decisions, decisions.
- The cats are fine, but increasingly geriatric at age 11. Sometimes they still run around like maniacs but those episodes are few and far between.
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Have a good weekend!
Good Weekend – bad work
The weekend was pretty good.
On Saturday Carolyn and I headed up to Camp Johnsonburg for the annual alumni reunion. We saw lots of folks that we don’t see on a regular basis, we had some quiet time for ourselves, we hiked a bit in the woods. Dinner was excellent as usual. We also dropped off Carolyn’s old car as a donation – it’s apparently going to be the Health Center “drive the kid to the hospital” car this summer.
Sunday was quiet at home – church and evening relaxation.
Monday we visited a friend that we haven’t seen since the birth of her latest child a few weeks ago.
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Then, I came to work.
I found out in a short period of time that the woman who has the cubicle across from me is leaving. (Actually, it’s more like we share cubes – they are really tiny and essentially open on 3 sides.) She’s a really talented person who had gotten stuck in a rut here due to the company’s failure to have another person share her job and allow her to grow into a bigger one. We lost another similar person a few weeks ago. The good people are leaving my department (and the company as a whole) far too quickly. I’m about out of reasons to stay.
I’ve recently been asking myself (and a few others) – how can you tell the difference between needing to look for a new job, or needing to look for a new career? Any thoughts? The need to answer this question is getting more acute.
Layoffs Update
I’m still here.
I have 12 names of people who were laid off, but one or two are uncertain. Supposedly there are either 15 or 30 in my building (5 or 10%) and others in other buildings.
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Not a good day. One person that I lost is my “church buddy” at work.
Layoffs in progress
Layoffs are in progress here at my employer and location.
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Bad Day Tomorrow?
Here at work, all signs point to layoff tomorrow.
The company changed the vacation policy at the end of last year. They used to grant an entire year’s vacation on January 1 and if you left the company you’d get paid for unused time. Your time was “earned” last year. After the change, you get 1/4 of your time every 3 months. They grandfathered us this year by allowing us to take vacation ahead of schedule but having to “repay” it if we left having used more than we were granted.
It’s the end of a quarter. If people are working here Monday, they get more vacation.
Our Minnesota office had layoffs last Friday.
We’ve been told that all departments had to cut their salary budgets 8-10%.
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I should be OK – in my department the highest paid two employees have left in the last 6 months and their salaries will apparently cover our needs. The restructuring consultant responsible for IT has said to all of us that we don’t have to worry.
However, I’m looking at 10% of my non-IT co-workers being shown the door tomorrow.
I hope I’m wrong – but all of the tea leaves point to this happening tomorrow.
UPDATE: Nothing happening as of lunchtime. It appears that this rumor isn’t true. I do know that the company recently negotiated a deal with lenders, so maybe they won’t be doing layoffs after all.
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