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	<title>interrobang (!?)</title>
	<link>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk</link>
	<description>Random Bursts of Ambient Noise</description>
	<pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:29:59 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>They should rename it the Hindrance-Desk</title>
		<link>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=157</link>
		<comments>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=157#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:11:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dirk</dc:creator>
		
	<category>Life</category>
	<category>Work</category>
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		<description><![CDATA[As Training Lead, one of my responsibilities is to provide User Procedures for the system we&#8217;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 [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Soul Training</title>
		<link>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=154</link>
		<comments>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=154#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 May 2010 20:38:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dirk</dc:creator>
		
	<category>Life</category>
	<category>Work</category>
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		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m two weeks into an eight-week residency in &#8216;beautiful&#8217; 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 &#8216;beautiful&#8217; Baton Rouge (and about an hour up the coast from New Orleans - you&#8217;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 &#8216;beautiful&#8217; to any mention of their names [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Corporate America is taking the piss</title>
		<link>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=152</link>
		<comments>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=152#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Apr 2010 03:02:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dirk</dc:creator>
		
	<category>Life</category>
	<category>Work</category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=152</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As a contractor, I&#8217;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&#8217;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 [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Flight or fight</title>
		<link>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=148</link>
		<comments>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=148#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:30:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dirk</dc:creator>
		
	<category>Life</category>
	<category>Work</category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=148</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Given that I was flying out of Chicago in December, I guess I shouldn&#8217;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 [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Card Sharp</title>
		<link>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=147</link>
		<comments>http://www.planetmanuel.com/dirk/?p=147#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:25:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dirk</dc:creator>
		
	<category>Life</category>
	<category>Work</category>
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		<description><![CDATA[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&#8217;m due back in Japan in December, and this time I&#8217;m determined to be prepared.
I do actually have several business cards (one for my [...]]]></description>
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