Category: yes boss

Which Side of the Pond Are You On?

Yesterday I had to attend an all day meeting with representatives from a fairly large British company. We work very closely with this company, and almost daily I’m on the phone talking to these Brits. I think I’ve spoken about this in quite a few previous posts, but I’m a bit of an Anglophile, so I have a lot of fun with these quirky cats from London.

After our day long business meeting was done, we all went out to a fabulous Italian restaurant in San Francisco to celebrate over good food and good wine.

As we all waded into appetizers and Chianti, the good natured ribbing began all around. The Brit sense of humor works for me and let’s be honest, it’s extraordinarily easy to make fun of the squishy British man.

At one point, I’d brought up a topic which after a long bit of convoluted conversation (you had to be there) landed us on the topic of the Steve Miller Band. Which then caused one especially posh guy (think of a messier and louder Prince William) to start naming off Steve Miller songs.

It went something like this (hear this in a Brit accent as you read):

“Ah, Steve Miller. Yeah, right, Abracadabra, isn’t he? Fly Like an Eagle, sure. And what about Space Cowboy, then? You know, Maurice, wheeet-whoo!”

To which I replied, “So, are you a midnight toker?”

And he took a prim sip of wine and responded “no, I’m a cowboy joker.”

Which caused the rest of the lads to break down in giggles. Then these London boys got down on a riff about cowboys, and how they all fancied themselves to be cowboys.

Well now we’re in my zone, right? I know more than your average person about actual cowboys, so I just sat back in my chair with my own glass of red and stayed quiet while these Brits went off on their version of the American cowboy.

My over active mind started imagining some sort of summit meeting. I imagine my best friend’s back patio for this event. We’d serve good food, and we’d set up a nice long table. Squishy Brit boys sitting down one side, New Mexico cowboys on the other.

Same planet, worlds apart. But not so different, I suspect.

I believe both sides would agree on the importance of beer. They may not agree on the brand, but the concept, hell yes.

They’d both be able to dish up hearty doses of self-effacing humor.

And each would talk with their own particular accent that would make the other say “huh?”

Ay god, what an event that would be. Once everyone got past the awkwardness, I bet it would be one hell of a party.

Or one hell of a fight. Hard to say.

I think I should ring up my best friend and get to work on the party planning.

Or maybe I need to go a little easier on the Chianti next time.





Photo by Raúl Fernández and used royalty free from stock.xchng


Craft Catatonia

Hoo boy….I am beat down to a nub. I have been arts and crafting my ass off in preparation for the upcoming local county fair.

While the term “county fair” may imply something small and hick-ish, my local fair is anything but. It’s a huge event

Back in February, I visited with my godkids in Las Cruces, and they were all fired up about their own county fair coming up in September.

My niños are all about 4H and have decided to raise pigs this year to show at the fair. Their excitement was contagious, so I came back to Northern California fired up and ready to participate in my own fair.

In fact, I was so excited that when the guidebook arrived, I decided to sign up for four events. Four. Which means I’m either stupid or sadistic. I, uh, have a full time job.

Since the fair kicks off June 11, my four entries are due, oh, NOW.

The events I’m doing are: short story, photography, visual art, and baking.

Yes. I said baking.

The short story had to be turned in over a month ago so the judges had plenty of time to read and evaluate the stories. Last week I got the smoking hot news that my story won my genre category, which was Western.

Whoo hoo! The fair hasn’t even started and I’m liking this already!

The story will be published in an anthology of stories put out by the Fair and sold to benefit charity.

Pretty damn excited, I can tell you that!

The photography entry has gone fairly well, too. I knew which photo I wanted to use and it was a matter of getting a good print made (harder than it sounds) and then cutting the mat and framing the piece. I got that done mid-last week. Boom!

The visual art piece is a Dia de los Muertos inspired craft. Oh, how this work has vexed me. I had a *very* ambitious idea and have spent the last couple months constructing tons and tons of tiny details and figures and touches. The work, just finished this morning, doesn’t include all of the aspects I’d hoped to accomplish, but I have to say, I’m very proud. This project really pushed the bounds of my abilities as both crafter and storyteller.

Yesterday evening I slumped back in my chair, catatonic. I had nothing left. I had glue and paint all over my hands, sweat on my brow and an ache in my lower back that defies superlatives.

But yet I was still compelled to keep going and finish this piece on deadline, for no other reason than the pure satisfaction of having completed something so very boundary testing.

I did it. I DID it. I’ll be damned…I actually did it. Whoa.

Today I’ll turn in the framed photo and the art work and then I’ll do a little “I made it by the deadline” dance.

Then I’ll collapse.

But wait, there’s more! The deadline for the fourth event comes up next week. I entered the “ethnic desserts” category and I’ll be whipping up a batch of Biscochitos.

New Mexico! Representin’!

And then I will eat my fill of anise seed treats, slip into a sugar coma, and sleep for a very long time…or at least until The Muse taps me on the psyche again.





Stamp Out Business Speak

So when I wandered over the fun Theme Thursday page, I noted that this week’s theme word is: Cloud

Whenever I get the weekly word, I always take a moment to sit back and think about it. What are the first impressions that come to mind? What hits first?

So I did that this week. Cloud…cloud…what does that say to me….?

First thought: Freaking cloud! “In the Cloud” and “Cloud computing” and “it’s all about the cloud.”

RAAWWWWRAGH!

I haaaaaaate the ubiquitous use of the word “cloud” in today’s technical jargon.

This concept isn’t new. It isn’t bold. It’s the same old bullsheet that’s been tried several times with mixed results.

Once upon a time they called it hosted software. And then they called it application service provider or the more hip ASP. Back in the really golden old days they called it a Key Server. Even older than that was the not-very-PC term “dumb terminals”.

It’s all essentially the same.

I think “the cloud” is a dumb topic. Damnit, it’s not new and it’s not anywhere near as cool as the marketing would have you believe.

Here’s what those cloud providers want you to do….they want you to save nothing on your own local machine. They want you to put every single dingle bit of your information on their servers. All of it. All your letters to gramma. All of your negative balance bank statements. Your high school diploma. That email to your doctor about the funny bump on your rump. ALL OF IT.

And in return they promise, cross my heart and hope to die, that they’ll keep ALL of your data safe, tidy and secure.

Umm hmm.

Here’s where my skepticism comes in. I’ve worked in data centers. I’ve been a part of some of the most sophisticated and well regarded data centers in the world. And you know what? Sh%t happens.

Here’s a real world example: Very big data center in a very well regarded Fortune 50 company. My team had racked and stacked a large number of servers and storage devices. We were providing a for pay service to our customers with extraordinarily high expectations and high SLA’s.

Some of the best and brightest database admins, network managers, technical support, and engineering minds maintained this environment to very tiny tolerances.

One evening, the cleaning crew was doing their work in the data center and they plugged their vacuum into the power strip carrying the very, very delicate power balance for that entire row.

And they blew the circuit.

Now, we’d engineered the environment to fail over, and it did….but it was about a week to get all of those servers and storage devices brought back up, data restored and back to running in the production environment.

I suggested we put baby proof socket covers on the power strips, and my suggestion was immediately adopted.

Then there was the time the maintenance crew pushed a cart down the aisle and knocked the Ethernet cable out of every machine at about three feet high level. It took us a LONG time to sort out what happened there.

And then one New Year’s Eve, a new security guard opened a wrong door and set off the alarm. In his haste to shut off the alarm, he hit a button by the door. The button was marked EPO. So he pushed it hard.

EPO means “emergency power off” used in the case of something catastrophic. An alarmed door is not catastrophic. The entire data center went dark and knocked a several million dollar a day online store to go off the air.

Yeah.

My point? If you entrust the cloud, back up your data locally. There are a million yabos in the world who can mess things up, even in the best of circumstances.



Down with the cloud!


Photo by username joegus74 and used royalty free from stock.xchng.


Good Morning, Sunshine

This morning I came wheeling into work with a Very Dark cloud over my head. My boss, who I rather admire, did an unmitigated jerky thing* yesterday (as bosses are wont to do), and after a mostly sleepless night last night, I was still fuming as I drove into work.

I wheeled my way into the parking garage and into my usual spot when I noticed what, on first glance, appeared to be a pile of trash.

Upon climbing down out my decade old hoopty, I looked again at the pile of trash and tilted my head like a curious dog.

Hmm.

There was something not so trashy about the trash. I was compelled to look again at the tableau, a still life in paper, cellophane and aluminum.

The light was perfect, the scene so serene.

So I had to take a photo. Several actually, as it was tough to capture just the right mood.



An empty pack of Camels, a Swisher Sweets wrapper and an empty can of Welch’s Mango Passion fruit juice.

There was something of a discord between this scene and the shiny new Acura parked in the next spot. I suspect this art installation didn’t come from the Acura but arrived somewhere in the small hours of the night.

In my ongoing self study of “where do ideas come from?” I found this particular bit of business to be a fine lesson. Ideas come from being awake to the world around. Ideas come from seeing things with a different eye. Ideas arrive when you look at a pile of discarded items and see something that you just *have* to look at a little harder.

When I saw this bit of trash:

The artist in me had to stop to take a second look.

The photographer in me had to take a photo.

The writer in me is still working out my version of the back story that created this shrine in a parking garage.

The ability to get fired up by the mundane…that’s where ideas come from.



*The jerky thing was not directed at me personally, but it impacts my team in a negative way, and that make Hulk Maaaaaad. Today he and I talked it out and have arrived at a workable solution, so all is well again in Working Land.


Photo taken by Karen Fayeth using the Camera+ app and subject to the Creative Commons License in the far right column of this page.


Let Me Outta Here!

When this week’s Theme Thursday was posted, for like a nanosecond (they seem to be having technical difficulties on the site), this week’s theme was “escape.”

Well, I’ll tell ya, escape is on my mind for this Friday at the end of a long week.

That said….when I first saw the word escape, the first thing I thought of was that movie “The Great Escape.”

Here’s a little known fact about me….even though I’m a girl, when I watched that movie even *I* wanted to be Steve McQueen.









And then there is the movie Bullitt. The thing I remember most about that movie is McQueen parallel parking his green fastback, manual transmission Mustang on a VERY steep hill in San Francisco in just one, perfect try.

Guy’s a stud. Just saying.

Ok, back to work. The quicker I get my To Do list done, the quicker I make my escape to a very nice weekend ahead.