interrobang (‽)

As Training Lead, one of my responsibilities is to provide User Procedures for the system we’re implementing. Because users have a nasty habit of taking my official global User Procedures and changing them to match what they want to do, I publish them in Adobe PDF format. And because I generate all of the User Procedures out of OnDemand, I just get OnDemand to publish directly to PDF, which it will happily do if you have the full version of Adobe Suite installed.
In order to meet licensing requirements, here at my current client if you need a piece of software […]

At the risk of sounding older than my tender 43 years: They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Consumer electronics, that is. Last month my TV finally packed up (and within a month of getting my surround-sound in place, FFS!). This is a Toshiba 50″ plasma flat screen, which I bought for the not inconsiderable sum of $2,000 three years ago (actually as a 10-year anniversary present for the wife - ever the romantic, eh?). About a year ago one of the HDMI ports stopped working, which was irritating but not the end of the world (it has a […]

I’m two weeks into an eight-week residency in ‘beautiful’ Port Allen, Louisiana. For those not up to speed on their American cities and states, Port Allen is on the other side of the Mississippi from ‘beautiful’ Baton Rouge (and about an hour up the coast from New Orleans - you’ve heard of that, right?). Both Baton Rouge and Port Allen pretty much exist only for the petroleum industry (hence my being here), and both sides of the river are chock full of refineries, tank farms, and barge moorings. Both cities tend to prepend ‘beautiful’ to any mention of their names […]

After three or four years of pretty much daily usage, I finally ran out of space on my first iPod. This was one of the old (but not oldest) 60gb models, and I’d already taken the precaution of not ripping all of my CDs to it - leaving off dozens of Zappa bootlegs, but recently I’d run out off space and had to start removing stuff I just don’t listen to that often, such as all of my Orb CDs, and my early Stone Roses B-sides. But then of course I’d get a real hankering to listen to something that […]

As a contractor, I’ve been fortunate to work for the same client for some 16 years. Admittedly this has actually been for six different legal entities, and via four different agencies / consulting companies, but always for the same corporation. During those years, I like to think that I’ve built up a good reputation as a solid, reliable worker. So I was somewhat miffed recently to find out that I was now - after 16 years - to be subject to a full background check and drug test.
It turns out that this is an annual check, and was brought in as part of […]

When I first moved to the United States, it was to work as a consultant on a new SAP project. One of the other consultants was a Cuban called Gil (the name stuck with me…), and during my first week there, he gained his U.S. Citizenship. The team organized a big hoopla to celebrate, decorating his office with the Stars and Stripes, getting in a cake, and so on. During the festivities, the consultant’s supervisor described how Gil had originally come over on a boat without a cent to his name x years ago, and now here he was, “living the American […]

One of the things about being an ‘independent’ contractor/consultant is that everyone assumes that you have loads of money.  Sure, you may get a bit more in your pay packet than Johnny Punchclock, but there are a lot more factors to take into consideration - things that a salaried employee’s company shells out for. One of these things in moving expenses.
I’ve been fortunate in that my work has taken me to a number of different places: from England to Belgium, from there to Singapore, then to the U.S., then back to Belgium, and finally (so far) back to the U.S. […]

Given that I was flying out of Chicago in December, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that my flight back home to Houston was cancelled due to snow. What was a surprise was that the snow was in Houston, not Chicago.  Apparently Houston had been hit by a freak cold snap, resulting in an inch or so of snow.  This may not sound like a lot, but for a city that has no real need of snow plans, it is almost on par with a disaster.  (Hurricanes we can cope with, but itty-bitty snowflakes?  Whoa!)  So schools were let […]

Earlier this year I managed to commit all sorts of social and business faux pas by going over to Japan without a stack of business cards. Over there, everyone you meet - from business people to the concierge at the hotel - hands you their business card and expects the same in return. I was blithely unaware of this and subsequently appeared even ruder and more antisocial than usual through my perceived unwillingness to be contacted. I’m due back in Japan in December, and this time I’m determined to be prepared.
I do actually have several business cards (one for my […]

After 18 months of development, my current project is finally being implemented at the first of ten scheduled sites.  This being a Warehouse Management project, the site is - obviously - a warehouse. Which means that most of our users are forklift drivers, plus a handful of ‘office-based’ supervisors, and a few gatekeepers.
My training team (three including myself) has been here conducting training for the past month, and this week the developers arrived in force, deposing us from our training room, and generally riding roughshod over everything we’ve had organized since we got here.  Despite having managed to navigate our way around the warehouse […]