Category: play through

Speak It Before You Speak It

This morning I had a very important work meeting. It involved five people including my Boss, a counterpart in my same organization, her boss and the Big Boss of us all.

My counterpart runs a team that works very hard but she and I have arrived at cross purposes over a large project in a large country in Asia.

So she and I agreed to have a meeting with Big Boss and let him decide which way to go with this.

I got the task of setting up the meeting and presenting the situation since I’m the one asking for big changes around here.

Fair enough. I planned ahead on this. I wrote up my meeting notes, sent them around for review/comment then chatted with my direct BossMan about the project and how he wanted me to frame the conversation.

This morning, I was feeling pretty nervous. This meeting represented a big turn in a huge project, and the success of both me personally and my team.

I knew my stuff and I knew what I wanted to say. However, on this year’s performance review, my boss detailed an area for improvement.

Long story short, when talking to executives, he wants me to get to the point. I’m a writer, a storyteller at heart so I want to set up the scene, fill it with the drama, bring around resolution and denouement then leave it with a complete ending.

BossMan essentially told me to knock it off. “Speak in conclusions” is the latest business buzz phrase.

So as I drove to work this morning I started running through in my mind how I could present this very essential issue along with my counter-argument to my coworker’s case (which is quite legitimate), and manage to come away a winner.

Wanna know what I did? I practiced. Yup. I got to work a bit early, and I got up on my feet and I practiced aloud what I wanted to say. I spent about twenty minutes running through my story, editing it down, getting to the “here’s what I want from this meeting.”

When the time came to get on the phone, I felt pretty confident. I presented my case in a very crisp manner. My coworker presented her side too, but it was a bit rambling and I think she and her direct boss weren’t on the same page.

In the end, Big Boss came down on my side of the decision. Afterward my direct BossMan told me I’d done a good job.

Practice. Aloud. Such a simple answer that makes such a difference.

I always practice before a full on presentation, but I often forget to do a run through before a key meeting like this. It helped. A lot. I looked like I had my business together.

Whew.

By the time the hour long phone call was over, it was 9:00am, I had sweated through the armpits of my shirt and I needed shot of tequila. And then another.

But by god I got ‘er done.





Image from UAB School of Engineering website.


Hot Town, Summer in The City

Whooo, yesterday was the last day of July. Today’s the first day of August. Hot times, no? The dead of summer. Sun high in the sky. Shorts, flip flops, and sun tea.

Asphalt so hot you can’t stand on it cuz it’s melting.

Then around 4:00 the monsoons roll in and unleash the rain and hail. Finally the sun sets on a warm, beautiful night.

Right? Oh wait, that’s New Mexico.

Fourteen years in the Bay Area still hasn’t gotten me used to summers that look like this:



Copyright 2011 Rafael Monterrosa, and used with permission.

This beautiful photo was posted yesterday by my Twitter friend and San Francisco resident, Rafael Monterrosa. Sutro Tower is partially hidden in the background as the fog crawls over the hill, ready to lay down and blanket my City.

I swear to you, the fog is a living, breathing entity.

Summer mornings start out gray and overcast. By noon, the gray has burned off leaving beautifully warm blue sky days. THIS is the golden California they talk about. Just about the time I manage to sit back with a glass of iced tea and let the sun warm my bones, the fog rolls over the hill, the temperature drops twenty degrees, and the pants, long sleeves and hot beverages come out.

And ya’ll wonder why we crazy San Franciscians have a party for a glass. You have no idea how nice an Irish coffee is on a cold damp summer night in the Bay Area.

I guess for me, the ol’ “make hay while the sun shines” is in effect. I just took a nice long walk in the blue sky’d afternoon, eyeing the fog already peeking over the hills to the west, ready to smother the warm out of my day.

*sigh* No wonder my Vitamin D is so low. Frappin’ Marine Layer.


Am I? Is it? Could It Really Be? Oh. Nope.

As I learn more and more about the art of photography, I’ve become enamored by the retro look photography made popular by the people at Lomography, Hipstamatic and Instagram.

I own several plastic cameras and I actively use the Hipstamatic app on my phone. I’m not as in love with Instagram, but I see a lot of fun photos posted on Flickr and Twitter, so why not?

While perusing the Photojojo online store (I’m a little bitch for Photojojo), I stumbled across the Diana+ lens and adaptor for a DSLR camera.

I was stoked! I don’t own a Diana, though I do own a Holga, and the thought of having the look of a Diana lens on my digital camera made me happy. So I ordered it.

Today I went out in the yard to take the new lens for a spin. I’m not going to lie to you, this is a tough lens to work with. It has zero electronics inside so shooting is all manual. This fact is actually good for me as I need to keep practicing my exposure triangle (ISO, aperture and shutter speed).

When I came inside and took at look at my photos, I felt only sort of “meh” about all of them.

Here’s the best of the lot.



Copyright 2011 by Karen Fayeth

After fiddling with these photos and playing with contrast, I went online to take a look at what others were saying about the lens and maybe pick up a few tricks.

I stumbled across this review from a user named Blunty3000 titled “Stupid Hipster Lens Review – the ‘Dreamy Diana'”.

Blunty’s main gripe seems to be that he had to pay “Sixty sodding dollars” for his lens. From what I can discern, Blunty is from Australia. I only paid thirty sodding US dollars for my kit of lens plus adapter.

Blunty seems to use this product review as a platform to eviscerate hipsters everywhere. Ok, fine. I get that. As for me, I like the retro look photos. I own and enjoy quite a bit of the hipster gear.

But wait. Does that make me a hipster?

Nooo. I mean…I’m over 40. I refuse to wear skinny jeans. I think retro photography is awfully mainstream to be hipster anymore.

Then Blunty makes a point that these hipster photographers are “…pining to feel nostalgia for days they are too young to feel actual nostalgia for…”

Ah. Yes. And there’s the difference. I was actually alive in the 1970’s.

I feel nostalgia for years I actually remember. I’m not a hipster, I’m old.

Back then my sister and I shared a suitably uncomplicated (and now very hip) Kodak FlipFlash camera. Ok, it was really hers but when she tired of it, I got it as a hand-me-down.

It looked like this.



Kodak FlipFlash Camera, photo attribution unknown.


Here’s some of the dreamy, out of focus, widely vignetted photos that made me one of the mainstream back then and an almost hipster today.

This is our family’s cat as a kitten. And yes, that is a poster of The Muppets in the background. Note the “soft glow” the vignetting, the all around retro feel. This photo is circa 1981. Very hip in 2011.




This is me posed at the chicken coop behind our place at Ute Lake. I think my mom took this photo. Maybe my sister. I don’t remember. It has that certain je ne sais quoi with the dry grass, the cloudy sky and the rundown gray stucco chicken coop. How very Grapes of Wrath. I place the year to be around 1977.




So after this dark journey of the soul to determine if I’d become a hipster and should then begin my self-loathing, I’ve come out the other side. I shall go back to shooting my retro cameras with reckless abandon knowing I can make all the old timey photos I want. I lived it baby!



Today when I Googled a photo of an old Kodak FlipFlash camera, I found the *perfect* photo. And where did I find this photo? On my own blog. I’d already posted it a couple years ago. I’m becoming self-referential!


Unless otherwise noted, photos are from my personal family albums and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this and every page of this blog.


It’s Time We Had This Little Talk

As mentioned yesterday, it’s performance review season at work. I received my appraisal on Monday and I just finished up writing a whole slew of reviews for my staff.

So while I’m in the flow, I think it’s time for my Blogging Performance Appraisal.

We’ll rate based on a typical corporate five point scale:

5 – Walks on Water
4 – Exceeds my low expectations
3 – Yer all right, kid
2 – Um. Could you work on that?
1 – Oh, Way No

Let see, now let’s assess performance against my goals.


1) Write a blog post every weekday and occasional weekends.

Rating: 4

Very rarely have I missed a blogging day, and even when I do, I go back and make it up. I’m very diligent on this point and I’ve definitely done everything I can to meet or exceed this goal.


2) Continually produce fresh content for every post, meaning write an original post every day.

Rating: 4

Thanks to my friend NewMexiKen, I was able to install a widget that counts the total number of words I’ve published here on this little ol’ blog. (you can find it at the very bottom left corner of this page)

As of yesterday, that number was 390,597 words since March 2007. I’m very proud of this number. 95% or more of those words were original content, straight from my monkey brain.

If you are keeping score at home, the average book runs about 80,000 words, so in essence, I’ve written 4.88 books over the course of four years.

And that kicks ASS.

3) Create blog posts about topics that fascinate me and written well enough to fascinate my readers.

Rating: 3

Yeah, ok, so I sometimes wander off a little bit toward bodily functions. Occasionally I enter my own personal wayback machine and can’t find my way out. And then there is simply fits and starts of utter randomness.

Fine. I admit it. On this blog I’m entirely self-indulgent. If you, my cherished readers, wanna come along on the ride, I’m happy to have ya.

If it doesn’t work for you, well that’s ok too.

For the record, I ain’t a’gonna change. I’m having too much fun.

4) Have fun.

Rating: 5

Not going to lie to ya, writing this blog is something I look forward to every day. It’s never been something I dreaded or avoided doing. Every post has been a crazy lot of fun to write and in the process I’ve gotten a lot better at writing and editing.

I love looking at this crazy ol’ world through my blogger’s eyes and seeing something everyone else would ignore, then whipping out 600 words about it here. For me, it’s such a sense of accomplishment to publish a fresh post.

Even if that post is about something as ridiculous as square watermelons.

5) Embrace my readers.

Anywhere from 100 to 500 of you visit me every day and read my words.

To you, I’m incredibly grateful.

I rate you all a solid 5.

Now keep up the good work!







Image from fun140gifs.com.


Oh So Very Subtle

First posted here almost three years ago and it turns out it’s still timely.

Earlier today I had a long and spirited conversation with my boss about my need to spend a small amount to better support my organization. Any budget requests are generally rejected, no matter how small. So he and I plotted ways we could still accurately categorize the costs, but make the request seem palatable.

That ability to make it subtle is harder than it looks.

____________________

From a high level meeting I attended at work, during which we had an hour long debate about a difficult and political situation regarding budgets (if you haven’t done the corporate thang, then know that nothing gets hackles raised like budget conversations).

At the end of the meeting, the Financial Analyst said to the Senior Director,

“So, do I make it so?”

“No.” He replied, sternly. “Make it subtle.”

I had to write it down, it was just too good.





Jean Luc Picard facepalm found all over the ‘net. Let me know if this photo belongs to you and I’ll add attribution or remove.