And the Days Drone On

I'm certain that I've mentioned it before, but the last time I returned to Ireland after having spent 7-8 weeks with my family, the gravity of the situation hit me hard. Once again, I've found the harsh reality of being away from my family hard to swallow. The recency of events such as holding my son and kissing my wife are still firmly imprinted upon my brain.

Over time, the imprinting will soften. The brief respites back home are hardly enough to renew them. I'll easily lose myself in work and the feelings of closeness to my family that I've enjoyed for the past seven weeks will fade. It's getting old. Let me rephrase: It's getting older.

Yet, the light is at the end of the tunnel. I'll be transitioning off the project over the next 4-5 months. I can't wait.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

Planning is often thrown to the curbside even though it is the most important part of any project or program. This post (fortunately, or unfortunately) is about how a plan worked (or didn't work) in my fantasy football draft today. It turns out that I planned well, but incompletely.

Today I surprised some of my friends by actually showing up at our fantasy football draft when I was supposed to be logging in remotely from Ireland. In Ireland, I have not had access to any real fantasy football information - plenty of fantasy soccer information, but no fantasy (American) football information. So when I arrived in Chicago with family in tow, I needed to get my hands on a fantasy football magazine post haste. I was able to get one on Saturday and began my preparation with only 24 hours left before the draft.

The nice thing is that I still had enough time to put together a plan for the first four to five rounds, but I was utterly unprepared for the last seven or eight rounds. I executed my plan flawlessly for rounds 1-5 picking up exactly who I wanted to pick up and event got one upgrade because a better player slid to me. Yet, I still left the draft with a so-so feeling because I didn't like what happened after round five. I may have done ok, but it didn't feel good because I didn't have a plan.

I like to think that if I had more time to plan, I would have planned properly for the last seven to eight rounds as well. Instead of shooting from the hip, I could have targeted specific players in specific rounds. In failing to properly plan for the full draft, I now have some work to get my team set for the season. Though I believe that fantasy football is 40% draft and 60% team management. I still have the opportunity to plan for the season (yet still remain flexible enough to pounce on opportunities when they present themselves).

So my little piece of wisdom for everybody today is that proper preparation prevents poor performance. It is easy to do well when you prepare. It's not as easy to do well when you have to wing it. I'm not saying that it's impossible to do well when you wing it, it's just harder.

I'm heading back to Ireland tomorrow night. I love these 3 day turn-arounds on trans-atlantic flights.

For reference, here's my team for 2010 (keeper league):

QB: Carson Palmer
QB: Ben Roethlisberger
RB: Joseph Addai
RB: LeSean McCoy
RB: Ryan Mathews
RB: Darren Sproles
WR: Brandon Marshall
WR: Steve Smith
WR: Terrell Owens
WR: Santonio Holmes
WR: Devin Hester
WR: Jacoby Jones
K: Adam Vinatieri
K: Dan Carpenter
DEF: New Orleans
DEF: Detroit

Dealing with the Pile of Email

As so often happens, when I got back from vacation I had a pile of email clogging my inbox. I thought that it would be a good idea to share some advice on how to deal with this backlog that is inevitably waiting for us when we return to work. I have become a master of dealing with such situations. Are you ready for this sage advice? Can you handle it? Here you go:

Throw it all out without reading it.

What? I can't be serious can I? I'm deadly serious.

It works because it functions under one important principle: If something is REALLY important, somebody else has kept a copy of it. I learned this lesson from one of the first bosses that I worked for who would routinely throw things out without reading them. When I asked him why did this, he explained: "If it's really important, it will show back up on my desk." . People keep copies of important documents/emails. Don't be a pack rat; let somebody else be a pack rat.

Is this a perfect system? No. It typically fails when you have a boss that likes to make unilateral decisions without your input. You know, when somebody sends out an email (copying you) asking your boss to make a decision on something where they SHOULD wait for your input, but choose not to do so.

So - as with many systems - it's only perfect in a perfect world . . . and we all know that the world isn't perfect. So use the advice at your own risk. Personally, I have my email setup so that my VIP's show up highlighted when the come to my inbox and truthfully, I read the VIP email and then toss the rest.

Hopefully this advice lightens your workload at least a little, or at least helps you cope with the fear of returning from vacation.

Vacation Time!

It's about freakin' time! Beth, RJ and I are picking up my parents from the airport tomorrow and driving down to Tralee for a week of vacation!

Tralee is in County Kerry in Western Ireland. Even though it does happen to be the city that my company is headquartered in, I plan to do now work (right . . . ) while on vacation. I've done the whirlwind tour of County Kerry over a weekend, but it will be nice to actually spend some time out there instead of racing around the Ring of Kerry and popping my head out of the window every three miles to take a picture of the gorgeous scenery.

We haven't made any plans on what to do yet, but we have a 4 hour drive from Dublin to Tralee to plan our time out there. I look forward to getting away from work and spending time with my family (as work has made that hard, even though they are here).

How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

I've often seen this book on the shelves at the book store and have always tempted to buy it. I just never pulled the trigger. Recently, when I was back in the United States (for a weekend), I stepped into the local used book store with my niece and we both walked out with an armful of books (for very little cash). My stack of books included this one by Thomas Cahill.

So how exactly did the Irish save civilization? I'll try to summarize as best I can.

At the point in history when the Holy Roman Empire was collapsing, Ireland was converting to Catholicism under St. Patrick. Ireland's geographic location aided them in their ability to seclude themselves from the barbarians in France and Germany that were one of the causes of the fall of Rome.

As St. Patrick was evangelizing Ireland, a trail of abbeys were left in his wake. These abbeys, protected from the barbarians by geography, were the seeds of civilization that fell from the flower of Rome (which had in turn, preserved civilized thought from Greece). Without these abbeys copying texts and adding their own Irish form (writing down their own oral tradition in the margins) to the newly copied texts, books such as The Bible and Plato's Republic may not have survived. The Book of Kells is the oldest existing copy of The Bible and it sits on display at Trinity College in Dublin. What St. Patrick started and St. Brigit continued in Ireland was passed on for three hundred years and the evangelistic Irish monks reached all the way back to Rome, planting the seeds of civilization along the way.

That is . . . until the Vikings came. The arrival of the Vikings in Ireland began the downfall of the Irish influence on civilization as the bejeweled texts (housed in the abbeys) were highly desired loot by the Viking raiders. Thousands of books were stolen or destroyed as Vikings raided the abbeys along the rocky coasts of Ireland. The Book of Kells survived only by being moved further inland to the city of Kells from whence it receives its name. The Vikings eventially created coastal settlements in Ireland and came to influence the Irish culture in their own fashion, but that - as they say - is a story for a different day.

As for books, I found it very informative and pertinent to all of the Irish monastic sites that I've visited. However, if you didn't find the above intriguing, you can probably do without reading this book. This book gets a 6.5 (out of 10) on the HRputer book rating scale.

Use the Black Pump, You Dolt!

I had my first mix up with diesel and petrol (gas) yesterday. I put petrol into a diesel van. That's a no-no. Lucky for me, I was still able to drive away from the gas station.

I was on my way back to the rental car agency and needed to just top off the tank. It probably wasn't a good idea to pull into the gas station a 7am, knowing that I needed to have my wits about me to know whether to use the green pump or the black pump. However, I'll maintain that it wasn't my fault. I shouldn't have had to return the rental yesterday. However, the rental car company screwed up my reservation.

I was supposed to have the van for 7 weeks, but the booked for only 4 weeks. So I was returning the van only so I could go across the road and rent a car from their competitors for the remaining 3 weeks. Apparently in Ireland, there's a tax law that states any rental over 28 days is considered a lease. Leases are taxed at a higher rate and the cars have to be specifically classed as "lease" vehicles. So despite the fact that I reserved a van with this company for 7 weeks, they put me in a rental-qualified (not lease-qualified) vehicle. Therefore, I needed to return the van after 4 weeks. Additionally, I couldn't rent another car from them (return one, take out another) because both cars would have to qualify as "lease" vehicles. If either one is a "rental" I was screwed. The only one they had available for me was a "rental," so I was screwed. Thus I reiterate, it was their own damn fault . . . OK, not really. I was half-awake, uncaffeined and perturbed that I had to return the car. Yet, I was still a dumbass.

The funny thing is that I didn't even realize that I had made the mistake until 8 hours later. I slowly remembered over the course of the day that I used petrol, not diesel. My inner monologue went something like this: "Did I use diesel? Yeah, I think I did. But it WAS making some odd noises. Perhaps I didn't use diesel. But I thought that if you used petrol in a diesel car it wouldn't start? Maybe since I just topped off, it was still diesel-ly enough to start and drive, but gas-y enough to cause the odd rattling sounds. Hmmmm . . . I think I used gas."

My next inner monologue was about what to do: "Perhaps they won't notice? But what about the next renters will they have an issue? How much will this cost me? Shit It's gonna cost me, but I need to tell them." So I called them.

Them: "Hello, __________ rental cars."
Me: "Yeah, I returned a car today and . . . . uhhhh . . . I think I filled it with petrol . . . ."
Them: "The ____________"
Me: "Yeah."
Them: "Yes, you filled with petrol. We're draining the tank now."
Me: "Sorry about that."

They seemed pretty cool about it, but being cool about it doesn't translate into "No charge, sir." I figure I owe them at least a tank of gas - even at exhorbinant car rental agency prices.

A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

A Clash of Kings is the second book in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. You may remember that I raved about the first book of the series: A Game of Thrones. This book was equally well written and the characters still intrigue the reader. However, I found that outside of progressing characters through their story lines, the plot was a little lacking.

As I've pointed out before, I'm not a fan of shifting viewpoints. I was not overly offended by the shifting viewpoints in the previous book, but in this book, it got under my skin. We lost a viewpoint from the previous book, so Martin felt he needed to add another viewpoint to the story - that of Theon Greyjoy. Theon's viewpoint appears to be unneeded, but we'll see what happens in Book 3. He could factor in quite considerably.

I also have a hard time reading chapters about Danaerys Targaryen. Through two books her viewpoint has been present, but her story lies so far removed from the other viewpoints that I struggle with understanding the value of her story. I can tell that eventually she'll have a larger part to play in the main plot, but I'm getting impatient as I've read 1800 pages of this saga and she hasn't.

Jon Snow's story, however, progressed well and culminated to an excellent climax. I am still anxious to start the third book (mostly to find out what happens to Jon Snow and Arya Stark), but I really hope that Martin starts to pull everything together. I felt that this particular book was 1000 pages of bridgework between major occurrences. The feud between the Baratheon brothers just didn't interest me as much because they were minor characters in the previous book.

This book gets an 8 (out of 10) on the HRputer book rating scale, falling a little behind Book 1 (which scored a perfect 10).

Working Like A Dog

Where did that phrase come from? I've rarely seen a dog work (dog sleds and seeing-eye dogs being the exceptions). Mostly, they just eat, sleep and evacuate.

Anyhow, our Project Team Leaders (which I'm a member of) agreed to have on-site Fridays. This doesn't affect me much, but it affects my work team. The on-site Fridays isn't too bad of a concept - it promotes cross-team working and keeps our team members productive on Fridays. The problem that I have with it is the enforcement of a 4pm end time on Fridays.

Though this doesn't affect me (I stay the whole day on Fridays because I'm "local"), it does affect some of my team members. I'm not too concerned about the ones that I suspect are less productive on Fridays. However, I know that I have a few team members that bust their butts when they are off-site and the only flights available to them are at 3:30pm. Their next available flight isn't until 9pm. Getting home at midnight on a Friday isn't a good way to reward your good workers. It's punishing all employees for the sins of the few.

The truth is that on a project of this size, you get plenty of productive people and a few unproductive people. The unproductive people need get their rears in gear or get off the project. Their manager needs to address the issue early and curb the behavior. If they don't, they end up in the situation that we're in now, punishing the whole for the sins of the few.

The last company I worked at put a policy in place that said that all Exempt employees needed to work 50 hour weeks. The reason for this policy was to address issues with a few employees who would show up at 10am, go to lunch at 11am, then leave work at 2pm and go to a Cubs game. All the policy did was piss off the people who were busting their butts. In other words the overachievers were being punished because some managers didn't have the backbone to tell their employees to work a decent working day.

That's what I'd call making your employees work like dogs, except dogs occassionally get a biscuit when they've done a good job. If we're going to ask our employees to work a little harder perhaps we should find a few more biscuits to hand out.