Well, I started coming down with a cold late last night. Joyous. I have been a one-man snot factory today. Hopefully none of my friends here picked this up from me at our gathering last night. [I was feeling kinda meh, y'all, but I thought it was a sinus infection and not a cold, and I really wanted to see everyone.]

In other news, things at work continue unabated. The week off was awesome, and I’m glad that I took it, because if I hadn’t, the crazy events of the last two days might have put me over the edge. [It's all been good, very, very good. If this business is feast or famine, well ... let's just say that we have more leftovers than you did at Thanksgiving and Christmas combined. And no refrigerator. It's cuh-razy, y'all.] As it is, my head’s still spinning, but it’s like, “Wow, this is nuuuuuuts.” In a good way.

Posting may be light while we absorb the glut and while I fight off the rhinovirus.

Time to go back to the well yet again: An Equation of Motivation.

This year, I have a pretty high c—things have been going well, even if I’m tired and frustrated—but my h factor is pretty high. [Especially as I think about work pretty often during non-work hours.] I’m sure that f is pretty high, too, because, well, I haven’t seen the folks in a while. [See also: busy with work.]

What about you?

… there are four people in a meeting, you’re the only male, and it’s the women who bring up the Iron Bowl.

This actually happened to me this morning. The discussion of whether Alabama should fire their coach went on for about three minutes, and, grinning, I finally piped up and said, “I’d like to note that I’m the only male in the room, and we’ve been talking football for the last five minutes.” We all broke up in laughter.

[Have I mentioned lately that I really genuinely like almost everyone I work with? That is so, so true of everyone in that room this morning. Good people who are very good at what they do---mostly, keeping me out of trouble.]

I was wrong on Monday with what I said about work.

Surfacing again in December.

Well, tomorrow promises to be fun. The last of the three massive proposals that I’ve worked since August [with one week of a "break" in between ... said break consisting of delivering one RFQ resposne and two ROM responses] finished printing [paper copies] and burning [CD-ROM] this afternoon, so we put one set into the hands of an overnight shipping company and another into my hands. Why me? Well, my Houston-based boss is an Auburn alum, and he drove over today to go to the game tomorrow. I’ll leave here around an hour before kickoff tomorrow [so as to miss all game-related traffic] and arrive around the middle of the third quarter or so with the proposal. I’ll cool my heels until the game is over, and then I’ll meet up with the boss and physically hand him the box-o’-proposal.

[We don't mess around. Another option was putting me on a plane to deliver it in person; I'd carry the proposal on and check any baggage; the proposal is more important than any clothes I might lose, y'know?]

But really … I will get paid [time and mileage] to … drive my brand new car 500 miles. Said car is not supposed to be driven aggressively for the first 1,000 miles so as to allow time for the engine to wear normally before you drop the hammer with the turbocharger and hit 6,000 RPM in second gear getting up to speed on the on-ramp. [I mean, I won't speed, but I'll get up to speed quickly.]

Oh, break my heart. You want to pay me to drive the car that I’ve not had the time or energy to drive much since two weekends ago? Oh, okay. You have to twist my arm really, really hard …

On Sunday, I’ve got church stuff, and after that’s done, I’m heading to Nashville to see MPJ and Sandra play at The Rutledge and also catch up with Joe Bassett. I rather doubt that any of my local people [that is, Rick or Jonathan] would want to go to a Sunday night show, but I’ll take riders if they want to come along.

Of course, I have to hit the ground running back on Monday. But I’m ready to cut loose a little and get out of town. My little car hasn’t left Madison County yet!

Spending my days in the basement of the Proposal Center at work. It’s very bunker-like. [Reminds me of the ideal office I'd have in a house with a basement, but I digress.] Hoping not to work the weekend at this point, especially as, well, Sunday is my birthday. Proposal due Monday, secondary RFQ due later next week, nervous breakdown presently penciled in for week of 9 Oct.

One thing I love about aerospace and small manufacturing concerns: they often change hands. Case in point:

1. Company A was someone we bought pressure gauges from previously. Go to Company A Web site: see that they are now a division of Company B.
2. Call Company B. “We’re not that division. Try Division C.”
3. Division C: “Please try corporate.”
4. Corporate: “We spun those guys off when we sold that division to Company D. Here’s Spinoff E’s number.”
5. Spinoff E: “I have no idea what you’re talking about; we sell edge-welded metal bellows. But, I know a lot about Company A; we were a part of them 20 years ago, and I still do business with them. Do you know what division?” I check. “Oh, Division F. Yeah, they’re still branded in Company A’s name, somehow. Here’s a few contact numbers.” I thank Spinoff E and make a mental note to contact them the next time we’re buying edge-welded metal bellows products. [I actually have an application in mind, but now way I was telling him. ]
6. Division F of Company A: “Hmmm … that may have been us, but how about you call Corporate Sales in Miami? They know more about the legacy hardware of Division F of Company A than we do, because our division really exists on paper, having bought concerns G and H in 2000.” I think Division F for their time.
7. Corporate G: “Let me transfer you to contracts.”
8. Contracts H: “Well, I have some part numbers very close to this. When did you last order these?” “1997 or 1998.” “Aha! That explains why they’re not in my computer.” “I imagine not, especially as it’s probably a cal-custom, one-off part from one of your COTS product lines.” “Probably so. Let me take your number and call you back.”

So, after all that, I finally got to someone that quasi-recognized my hardware. Of the five vendors I’ve contacted on this job, only one has remained the same in the interregnum from when we last purchased this hardware [all of which pre-dates me, really, although I have had some limited interaction with these corporations on hardware since purchased].

But the fun of all of it is this: I’ve got an in at about six companies now, thanks to those conversations and being good at giving them information so I can help them. Sure, I had to sit through a couple sales pitches, but … what’s the loss? I might need those again someday.

This is the fun stuff…

It’s like the Office Management Gods, knowing that I’ve bought a house and have thus excised my painful personal moves, are now trebling my office moves to amplify the pain. Tomorrow, I’ll settle into my third office in 2006; this afternoon, I gotta finish packing up the old one and then make a quick trip to the new one to figure out how all my furniture will fit in there. I think that the new office is going to be even smaller, too. Fuuuuuuun.

But hey: the office still has a door, that door locks at night, and my badge reader works every morning. I can’t complain too much…

Well, you get the point from looking at the thin archives this week that I’ve been dang busy, and if you look around, you’ll even figure out why. Suffice it to say that it’s been crazy. In amongst all the fun, I’ve come down with one of my biennial cases of otitis externa, which has me down from stereo to mono. Not-so-fun times. Thankfully, I have good medication in-hand for dealing with it. I’ll be back and kicking soon. Meanwhile, I’m digging out the 3000+ feed items that had accrued since my half-hearted pass through FeedLounge on Monday.

I was here at the office until 2200 last night, and I’m here for who knows how long today.

I’ll come up for air on the weekend…

Hallway conversation just now:

Boss: “Do you know this guy that [good friend who I'm not listing here] recommended to us?”

Me: “Nope. I’m too far removed from those folks any more.”

Boss [to guy next door to me]: “Did you look at this kid’s resume?”

Co-worker: “Yeah, he looks really smart. We should probably grab him.”

Me: “Hey! [Good friend] gives really good recommendations!” [raises arms over head] “He recommended me to work here!”

Boss [rolling eyes and laughing]: “I had no idea about that.”

Networking? Good.

My work email INBOX is now empty. It’s been in a non-empty state for a week, and it feels good for it to be clear. Hopefully I can do a similar scythe-wielding routine on my personal email when I get home tonight. My uncle [I only have the one ] is in town this week, so I now need to call him and catch up with him regarding dinner plans and such. Once I get home, maybe I can get my email moved over to Fastmail so I can once again have access to it at the office.

The shoe that I’m waiting to drop involves me going to Houston next week. Would you want to go to Houston the first full week of August? Me neither. They also serve who sit and sweat, though.

Kind of a crazy week for me: the boss is out of the office, but things are happening all over the place, so I’m staying busy. I have one price to come up with tomorrow, a pricing job to kick off with Procurement, a contract that’s just come in to get in place, and other things to support. Throw in a couple two-hour telecons and having to keep an eye on things for my boss, and I’m kinda covered up. The constant switching is sapping my energy a bit, at a time when I’m trying to rest up for my weeekend—I follow up the Blogathon with a day full of church activities. [No, really … I’ll go from the Blogathon to church, where I have to sing at both services and practice during the Sunday School hour for a singing event that I have that afternoon. Yeah, I’m probably going to be going 32-34 hours without sleep. I want to take Monday off, but … no time. I’ve done worse, though.

Speaking of the Blogathon, I’m kinda stunned by two of the anonymous donations that have come in. Let’s just say this: one had three digits, and another had four. I’m very appreciative, mainly because pleding to drop that kind of coin indicates that you believe in the cause that I’m supporting. That tells me that I’m doing this for the right reason—the way I look at it, I figure that raising awareness of Blood:Water is what I can do right now. “Maybe you got money / Maybe you got time / Maybe you’ve got the Living Well / That ain’t ever running dry” Thanks.

So, quiet now … posting fury later.

You’d think that, given the facts that I 1) have to leave directly from work to head to Nashville tomorrow and 2) won’t be back until, oh, Tuesday, that I’d be close to packed for my trip.

You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. [Well, you wouldn't think that if you know how I roll.]

I crashed after I got home tonight; I had a minor panic last night when I saw that one of my Japanese customers planned to call this morning. As I think I noted earlier this week, my boss is out of town on vacation, and so is one of my colleagues. My other day-to-day colleague went to KSC yesterday, which left me as the only engineer in the program office. Hey, if you’re going to be the boss, temporarily, it’s cool when you just have yourself to boss around.

Anyhow, the Japanese phone call kinda threw me—I’d wanted to have this conversation last week when I wouldn’t be the only one on this end. Now, it turns out that he didn’t call [and won't be calling in the morning ... whew], but I was a bit leery of winging it on my own. No real reason; I’m the one closest to this quote effort, and I knew all the answers to give. But I didn’t sleep well at all, mainly because I knew I needed to be up early and maybe into the office by 0600 if he was going to call. [The 14-hour time difference between Huntsville and Tokyo sucks when we're trying to have a phone conversation.]

Hey, it could have been crazier … it could be like the time I was on-campus at UAH, overseeing the construction of some barricades for one of UAH’s Frosh Mosh foam parties when another one of my Japanese customers called me on my cell phone. Kat was with me, and I think she enjoyed seeing my eyes bugging out of my head.

Been an interesting work week: everyone leaves town, and most all of the contracts we’ve been working to get all show up. I told my boss that he has to take vacations more often. Of course, all this work focus has made trip planning wholly secondary, which stinks as I need to be packed and ready to go in … eight hours. [Don't you love my coping mechanism, babbling through this entry? Me too.]

Okay. Must pack. Must find food. Must … hit … Publish …

Man, I forgot what hell it is to build 2000-item schedules by hand. Lest I forget again … pain. Lots of … pain. [Of course, the thought of being paid overtime hours for what is, essentially, data entry has a certain appeal. Not as much appeal as wrinkling my nose and having all of this done, though.]

And yeah, I’m in here in the office today, rather than yesterday as planned. I’ve already been here four hours, and I’m leaving at eight. But I’m having a better day than Lillian, who’s been induced in labor today and should deliver sometime in the next 12-24 hours. When I get home, I’ll have to make sure to tell the story of how they got together at my misfortune.