Harry's Ruminations

It's been a fascinating, sometimes frustrating year.   Today's my last official workday; I'll probably check email from here on out. Some highlights to share: Code activity That pretty much tells-the-tale.  Up through July I was hot and heavy on of our projects, then I had a week of vacation (which was awesome...I really recommend Nags Head, NC .)  Throughout that time, I was working with a very sharp team, and we had a go-live with our changes on April 23d.  I didn't sleep much that night.   Things would go downhill from there.  I can't go into much detail, but from April -> August, we were on an effort to move the hosting of our solution, and it got aborted when the company made a switch in strategy and the entire Ops group supporting us left.  This left us high and dry, and we eventually retargeted on another path that delayed us 6 months. In early September, I got shifted from my previous position to one with our Retail Publis...

Except for a 1 month break during the summer, Maria and I have been swimming every weekday morning, and I'm quite proud of our progress. In January, we could barely make 1 half-lap of a 25 yard pool without being totally out of breath. Maria was very scared--she could barely swim--and she would only do kickboard stuff at first.  I was a complete goof, and the thought of doing even a full 25-yard stint frankly scared me.  I couldn't coordinate my movements, I couldn't breathe properly, and everything felt like a struggle.  I honestly didn't know if we'd make it out of January still swimming. As I sit here today, we're both up to 1/4 mile in the pool each week day apiece.  Maria's confidence is much higher, and she participated in a local swimming club in the summer.  As for myself, today marked the first time I swum 11 Fifty-yard lengths without using a kickboard.  I've just about gotten bilateral breathing on the forward crawl, and my technique...

Once upon a time, my employer decided I was enough of a naive workaholic to put me on a list.  This list contained other people who were naive workaholics.  They decided they should herd us together and teach us to be more effective, slightly less naive workaholics. The guy who taught the class had many nuggets of wisdom, but this one stuck with me.  He drew this simple diagram on a pad of paper at the front of the class.  Simple enough?  He went on to explain. "How many jumps are there between you and the CEO?  4?  5? More?   Let me tell you something: Everyone between you and the CEO is playing a game.  The CEO doesn't have to; everyone works for him. You don't have to, because you're the lowest man on the totem pole. Everyone else is playing a game.  What's maddening is the # of games one has to play to get anything done.