Category: Life
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Card Sharp
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… Read more
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My Life In The Underclass
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… Read more
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978-1-849680-16-5
For U.S. bands, the traditional way they would know they had ‘made it’ was when they were featured on the cover of Rolling Stone (witness Cover of the Rolling Stone, by Dr. Hook – yes, I’m embarrassed I know it, too…). For UK bands, it was when they performed on the now defunct Top Of The Pops. For me, I always thought that the pinnacle of achievement was getting a book published. Or, more specifically, getting a real book with an actual ISBN published. Many years ago, I worked on the Torchum Never Stops books, but these were self-published [by… Read more
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Hit (it) from behind
I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but I was finally involved in a car accident on the I-10. And no, it wasn’t my fault. I was driving home after a particularly stressful day at work (where I had to berate one of my direct reports for falling asleep at his desk – and I’m not really one for confrontation, so that was really tough for me), pootling along in the fast lane at just around the speed limit, when my car got hit from behind. I pulled over onto the shoulder (thankfully they have one on the… Read more
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Farewell Tour
I’ve just finished my latest work assignment – three years doing the documentation, training, change management and knowledge management for an implementation of SAP Retail. It was a really interesting project, and I’ve learnt more about retail operations than any sensible person would want to know. Being a contractor, it’s inevitable that at the end of the project I would be ‘dispensed with’. This is my fourth large SAP implementation, so the fourth time I’ve been let go. It’s always difficult (I suffer separation anxiety), but you get used to it. One of the activities I always go through is a… Read more