The Difference Between A Schmidget and A Shart

Today while walking back from lunch a couple of my colleagues, Chloe and I had a very riveting discussion about words. Another of our colleagues does not like the words "moist" and "fart." Now these are probably not the best words, but I do not have a problem with them. Karl commented that by themselves, these words are fine, but together they make the phrase "moist fart" which is really bad, and not only when you say it, but when it happens to you as well. Karl says he calls these "moist farts" a shart, while I would call them a "schmidget." We discussed this for a moment and came to the conclusion that with a "schmidget" you are probably checking your pants, but you are still good to go. With a "shart" you check your pants and are in trouble. Hopefully you packed a separate part of pants.

The Carpets

The Carpets here at the Hilton are pretty nice. I just have one complaint. I have scuffed my toe more this week then I have my entire life. I swear. The carpet just kind of jumps up and grabs your toes and then you do that half-run, half-stumble to regain your balance. It is crazy. I was not the only one with this problem. I saw many other people with the same problem. I don't know if this had anything to do with the actual carpet or because the hotel is so new. I will have to remember this and report back next year.

Today's View

I talked to Diana from my room yesterday. I opened the curtains and just looked out while we chatted about the cat, scrapbooking, the kids, and a bunch of other stuff. It was a good time. From this view you can see Coronado, the Coronado bridge and out into the Pacific Ocean. It was a cloudy day yesterday so the view was not as blue and clear as it has been the rest of the week. Here is the view I described to Diana:

Past Couple Days, part 2

Sunday morning I got up and did the Vela breakfast again. It is good. I get an omelet and everything. This morning for breakfast I run into Richard Watson and have breakfast with him. Eventually Kristin and Ivan join us.

We get to work on our continued setup. By now I am sorting the meetings schedule for Sales and printing out analyst meeting sheets. This takes a couple hours. We also start setting signs and registration opens this afternoon. I have a late lunch by heading over to the Tin Fish with Karl and the Knof. It is pretty good, but is still a $12 hamburger, and it was not great. I can't wait to get back to five guys in Salt Lake. This is some good burger.

We get done around 6pm or so and I go up to my room. I start watching Sunday night baseball on ESPN and quickly fall asleep (I don't have any fantasy players in the game). I wake up in the middle of the night and decide it is too late for food and go back to bed. I sleep well.

Monday is another breakfast. I get up early and have breakfast all by lonesome. I do see a couple BGers while there and stop and chat with them for a while. It is some analysts and LD and Littlkins would laugh if they saw me talking to them.

Monday is the first day of workshops and almost everyone arrives. I keep working on presentations and meetings. I show Tearie and Stepani around the venue so they will know where everything is. Monday night is also the company dinner. We have a good time hanging out and talking with colleagues. I get to bed early because the show is really starting tomorrow.

Tuesday morning is a full-day of workshops. I don't do much for workshops. I am getting ready for general sessions on Wednesday. I am getting a bunch of file replacements and edits and I am following up on still missing files. In the afternoon I have my big AV and Room Coordinators meeting as well as the BG speaker orientation. Both of these go pretty well. We have a couple concerns, but are ready to go for Wednesday.

The Opening Reception is Tuesday night. The food is good and I chat up some attendees from Milwaukee. I go back upstairs to prepare for Wednesday morning. I have to get agendas and announcements and guides and stamp cards all ready for the next day. I get to bed at a decent hour. The morning is coming soon.

Wednesday is finally here. The general sessions. This is when things get very real around here. And you are going to have to wait to hear about it.

See you tomorrow.

Past Couple Days, part 1

Let me fill you in on what has been going on over the last couple of days here in San Diego.

I arrived pretty early on Friday morning. There wasn't much of a security line at the airport and I basically breezed right through. I even made it through security with my house keys in my pocket. Not an easy feat if you have seen how many keys I have on my keyring. This also does not bode well for the state of security in our airports, plus, I swore to myself that I would remember not to even bring my keys this time. I am not going to need them. I put my keys in my bag and go to the gate.

At the gate I pull out my computer and take part in the new free wi-fi at the SLC airport. I see Joshua and his fiance at the airport. I write my itinerary for my wife and update some presentations. I do not see Tom anywhere, but assume he is a big boy and will make it in time. Tom shows up right as the plane starts to board and he runs up to wait in line. It is time to get on the plane, but I wait. This way I do not have to wait in a line to get on the plane, I can just walk right on. Why are people always ready to quickly wait in line. I don't get it.

The plane ride is a breeze. I play Fuzzle the whole way and get an all-time high. Over 2700 points. I am awesome, but I do not have Internet access to see how my score rates in the entire world. One day I will get into the top 10, it is on my bucket list.

At the hotel, we start stuffing bags. Vision Events (a vendor we use) has sent over some of their people to help. This was very unexpected, but also great as we basically finish everything we need to stuff on Thursday thanks to their help in the morning. For lunch I have a cheeseburger. It is pretty good. I don't really enjoy the fries.

That night I meet up with the Knof, Karl, Kristin and Ivan for dinner at Vela, the restaurant at the hotel. I have the Penne. Vela has changed all their food names to science fiction people for comic-con. It is pretty cool. I don't remember who my pasta was named after, but I did look it up on my phone and thought it was pretty cool. Ivan got the lemon chicken. I don't remember what anyone else got.

Get up the next morning and head down to Vela for breakfast. I find the source of all bacon (see my picture in a different post) and have an omelet and sausage and bacon. A pretty good breakfast. Ivan and Karl show up as I am finishing and Ivan gets googly eyes for a Dexter star and just has to get an autograph.

Up in the BG office we are working like crazy. The booths arrive and Kirstin and I decide where the sales pen should go. We discuss other layout options for things like the sales booth and other odds and ends. Saturday seems to fly right by but we get a ton done. In the late afternoon I go up to my room to work. I have a pretty comfy chair in my room - instead of the hard-backed chair in the office (which, by the way, is the same chair we expect our attendees to sit in all week).

I finally decide that I should go get some dinner. I decide to walk down to Seaport Village and go to the Village Baker. I always go here when I am in San Diego. They make some good sandwiches. I have the club. Get a Sprite to drink and then stop at Ben and Jerry's. I get the strawberry cheesecake shake (one of my favorites). The shake does not taste as good as a Coldstone shake, but it is good. I walk back to the hotel, but this time I decide to walk front of the convention center instead of behind it. I should have taken pictures the whole way. I saw a couple of wonder women that should not be wearing that costume. I saw the entire Justice League - acting like they were the real Justice League and a whole bunch of other people that I did not even know. It was very exciting.

Once back to the hotel I ran into Kristin and Ivan who had gone to the Weeds panel. They had a good time, but Mary Louise Parker was not there, so they were sad. We chatted about the panel and about work the next day and then we parted ways so I could go eat my dinner. I go up to my room and open my Sprite and it blows up on me. I was not happy. It's not like I shook it. I ate the sandwich and drank my drink and all was good. I then went to bed.

Catch more of my adventures in San Diego tomorrow!

I Am In San Diego

Burton Group Catalyst Conference is this week. I have been in San Diego since Friday getting ready for the conference. The pictures below will let give you the view of the hotel at night (look how many room lights are on!). The other picture is off the 4th floor balcony out towards the water.

This is the same hotel that the family and I stayed at in March. It is a very nice hotel with a great layout for our conference.

Catalyst is getting started today with workshops and gradually eases into general sessions later this week (Wednesday through Friday). I will be updating with all the latest news from Catalyst as the week goes on.

Stay tuned!

Have Your Cake

Burton Group is a great company to work for. So great that people make cakes with our company logos on them!
What is even better about the look of this cake is that it actually tasted good.

Oh, and by the way, if you need a cake decorated I know someone.

San Diego Hilton Bayfront

While in San Diego we stayed at the Hilton Bayfront, a new hotel in San Diego and the same hotel my work will have our conference at later this year. This is a beautiful hotel and is very nice. We had a great time on the 18th floor. A great view where we could see the ocean and downtown San Diego. Here are the pictures:

Wednesday

I am writing about Wednesday on Thursday. I was out late playing basketball. It was a good time. We actually had 10 guys so we were able to kick the younger kids out and just play. It was fun. 3 hours of ball can really hurt your legs. Mine are aching right now. I just got a charlie horse that was pretty bad. I manned up though and Diana does not even know. I am pretty cool.

Today was a pretty normal day, except for the part where my office was shaking and loud noises were happening. I should tell you that today was a very windy day. Very, very windy. There have been these huge metal things out in front of the building. I have no idea what they are, but they are big and look heavy.

I guess they are not heavy enough because the wind picked one of them up and threw it through the lobby window of the building. Huge crash, my entire floor was shaking. I had no idea until I heard other people talk about it.

That is about the only thing that happened today. We did have breakfast pizza for dinner. It was good. Another creation by Diana that turned out super yummy.

Getting Excited

I have been working on a big vendor briefing project at work lately. When I say lately I mean for almost the past year. It seems like I have had the project on my list for ever. This Friday I have the big debut of the new process/system with our analyst team. This is the part where I get nervous about how it will be accepted. Will someone see a huge flaw in the system that I have overlooked? Will there be a revolt because of the extra responsibility?

I have been lock and step with my boss on this project, so I don't think there will be any problems. I really, really hope that there is not any problems. I cannot think of any and I have been through the process hundreds of times. I have gone through the system so many times I am sick of it.

Friday is my big presentation and then IT rolls the system live. By Monday all of the companies vendor briefings will be routed through the new system. Some of the cool new features (like you care, but it helps me write this stuff out so I will be ready on Friday):

• Automatic routing of the briefing through the routing topic lists
• Sales notifications
• Synopsis for each briefing
• Vendor can upload presentation files directly
• Emails that contain all pertinent information
• Reminder emails to managers
• New overview and FAQ for vendors

I cannot wait to finish out this project and finally be done with it! Once this is done I will be finally be able to focus on my other objectives for the quarter.

Brown Bagging It

I have actually been brown bagging it at work. I usually either go out to lunch or just do not have lunch. I have refused to brown bag up to this point. There has been a couple times where Diana has tried to switch me over, but I resisted. This time, I am not resisting. Diana and I have had a long talk about our current financial situation. Things are fine. We really have no money problems. Little debt, relatively cheap car payments, and I make enough money to be able to put some away at the end of every month. So you are now asking, why were you talking about your financial situation?

Well, Diana and I have plans, we want to progress in life. Once day move to St. George, buy a big house, ensure ours and our children's future by putting away enough for college for the kids, plus saving more for weddings and other things that will surely be coming. All this and my company has frozen salaries for the year. How am I going to get a raise to help us along our financial path? The only way I get a raise this year is to save money.

"Brown bagging is saving money." That is what I say to myself as I take my lunch in the morning and eat it in the afternoon. It is just so much funner to eat out. To make things fair, I am still doing Monday Wendy's and then one other day a week I go to Costco for a hot dog or a slice of pizza (I love Costco pizza). This seems like a pretty good trade-off.

We are doing other things as well. Refinancing the house to a better rate (a no-cost streamline refinance). I am looking at our car insurance to see where we can save (will be switching in April when current contract expires). We have also been looking at other items that we could reduce our monthly spend on.

It is going to be a long year, and it also looks as if things are going to get worse out in the world before it gets better.

Who knows, maybe a year from now I will like brown bagging it so much I won't even notice.

Been Sick

I have not felt well lately. I really started feeling bad last Wednesday (it probably did not help that I spent the [late] night playing basketball). I have been very achy and my throat has had a little bit of a scratch in it. The worst was my nose. I was overflowing awesomeness (my nose was running) all day. Thursday my nose stopped running, but I was still congested. My head was hurting, I could not breathe through my nose. I kept blowing my nose but nothing would come out. When I spoke you could tell there was no air coming through my nose. I was awful.

Even though I was sick, I was still working. I had many things going on at the end of the week (I did have donuts on Friday) so I could not stay home. Saturday I basically stayed in bed and rested. I got up to help make meals and to go to the restroom, but otherwise, I was in bed. I took a couple naps and it was good. On Sunday I had meetings in the morning and then church, which I could not miss. I got home, had lunch, ran a couple more errands and then faded fast. I dropped into bed and I was out. I slept for multiple hours. I did not get up until after 6. It was quite a nap. I woke up and my wife said that I did not snore (which was a first for the weekend). I still felt stuffy and sore, so I had some dinner and watched the first 5 episodes of 24 and then went back to bed. I was tired.

It is interesting, when your head is all stuffy like mine is and you wake up. While you are laying down you are OK, but as you stand you get all dizzy and feel like you are going down. You just have to stand for a second to get your bearings back. That was me as I woke up. And it had snowed the night before so there was multiple inches on the ground and I just did not have it in me to shovel. I decided right then that I was going to have to work from home today. I just did not want to wait in traffic for an hour to just to get to work.

As the day has progressed I have felt better. Still sniffling, still blowing my nose plenty, but I am on the right side of this cold now. Good thing, too, I have got to get to work tomorrow, lots to do. Today was a good work day though. I spent the morning updating the wiki training area of my works intranet and the afternoon working through the timeline for our next European conference. In between both of those items I worked on other projects I have going.

Diana has also been sick. I feel bad for her. Her sickness is different than mine. She says her liver hurts. I have been giving her a bad time about it, but it is funny. She also says she has been stuffy, but her main complaint has been the liver.

Hard Day

"In this economic climate."

How many times have you heard that statement in the past couple months? If you are at my house or at my job it has been quite a lot. Well, today "the economic climate" became very real to me. People actually lost their jobs today (not me, thank goodness). I know this is going on all over the world and there are probably places that are no where near as nice as my place of employment that has let people go, places where people were actually better off not working there. That does not make it any easier. Letting people go is never an easy decision, and I am sure many sacrifices were made. On days like today I count my blessings and vow to never forget how much I love my job.

Hopefully, Obama and his people can get something passed in congress that can help spur the economy. Until then I will be saving my money and not going out as often, being a little more careful with what I have. I also know that I will get my tax return submitted and get the money in the bank as soon as possible.

The Day Before the Day Before

Today is the day before Christmas Eve. I was up early to let the electrician in that was looking at Diana's present. He found the problem in about 15 minutes and then spent another 15 minutes fixing it. He could not get it to work how it should so he is taking it to his shop today and will get everything set right. He will then bring it back and I should be in business.

After the electrician left I turned on the computer and worked for a couple hours. Today was supposed to be all PTO, but I had a couple lingering issues from yesterday. I am now done working and am preparing to take the kids out to deliver treats to neighgbors and friends.

Once done with treat delivering I am going to pick up a present for Ry-ry from someone around here. This is not a present for Ry-ry, it is a present Ry-ry is giving someone else. I am not saying exactly what all this is because the person that is receiving this present could read the blog. Around Christmas it is hard to have a blog and to have secrets too.

It is barely 11AM and I feel like I need a nap. Well, I better stay busy or I will be napping. Merry Christmas Eve, Eve!

Work Week

All this week we have had the Burton Group analyst planning meetings in Salt Lake. It has been a great week. Being a distributed company (Burton Group has almost 150 employees and only 50 work in Midvale), I do not see my peers and colleagues very often. Being able to hang with them and see them in their element (discussing their topic subjects) was very fun. I am quite the geek, but these guys I work with are really geeks. They dig deep inside of technologies and learn all the ins and outs, I learn just enough to be dangerous.

We started the week (Monday) with a level set of what to expect for the week and that was excellent. Seeing what and where our research is going lets me truly see the genius and work that goes into the company by our high-level executives. Monday night the entire team went to Biaggi's, a local Italian eatery. It was OK, not great, but good. I had never been there before and I will probably take Diana there someday (soon).

On Tuesday there was team planning meetings, but I had to go into the office to do my day job. I am sad that I missed the unconference sessions that took place on Tuesday. I got a lot of work done in the office on Tuesday.

Wednesday I had meetings in the office in the morning but I went up to the hotel in the afternoon to see how things were going. It was really great to see the way the teams work together. Each team is very different, but the ways they communicate are awesome. Some teams have a discussion, some teams just talk, and others get in to more of a "heated" discussion. These guys are passionate about their topics! Wednesday night I went out with the DCS and NTS teams to Cafe Molise in downtown SLC. It was OK, not the best Italian I have ever had, but good.

Today (Thursday) I went downtown all day. It was another great day as the teams discussed cross-cutting topics. It was very informative and I like seeing the life of the analyst. As much fun as the sessions were, I really liked having time to talk with the analysts and get to know them better.

Can't wait for next years planning meetings!

Something's Fishy

I walked into the breakroom at work today to get a new cup for water and what did I see in the water tank?
Someone put a fish in the water tank. It is just floating there. Looks like it is dead. Good times.

Rebuttal from Production

LD in production as work commented this on my Geek Update post:

You are so full of crap! Production has workflow! You make it sound like the entire Production team has no direction and is running amuck! It's good that Production has you to save us.

I do not think LD read the whole post. This is what I said:

Production process in SharePoint. Currently, our Production team has no workflow within their processes. I am going to add the workflow. Production uses a system called Bedrock and they also enter all their info into SharePoint. Hopefully by the end of the quarter Bedrock will only be needed for upcoming research and publishing, SharePoint will handle the rest.

What I put is the truth. Production pushes a button and then a person sends an email to alert someone to do something else. My objective is to try and take out the extra work (sending emails and all the double work that is done in Bedrock and SharePoint currently). I do not know why LD got so emotional over all this, I never said production was running amok (she did), I said there is not a workflow in their processes (which in itself says they have a process and follow it), which it 100% true. As far as saving production with my work; no, I am just trying to take some extra work off their hands and hopefully help the company out at the same time.

There you go, feel free to comment how you need to.

Geek Update

I am going to geek out for a minute. Feel free to stop reading now if you couldn't care less about what I do at my job.

The new quarter for me at work started on July 1, but I took so much time off I am barely into my objectives for this quarter. I am trying to take them on but it could be a tight quarter. My objectives this quarter include the following

• Helping the Consulting team. So far I have implemented a SharePoint list for engagement starts and stops that will hopefully free up some time for our Consulting Program Manager. I am also looking at upgrading the Consulting SharePoint dashboard. I don't know what I would put on it, most of their info is in a separate repository so SharePoint can't even access it.
• Production process in SharePoint. Currently, our Production team has no workflow within their processes. I am going to add the workflow. Production uses a system called Bedrock and they also enter all their info into SharePoint. Hopefully by the end of the quarter Bedrock will only be needed for upcoming research and publishing, SharePoint will handle the rest.
• Vendor Briefing process and system. This objective started last quarter and we are going to try and finish it this quarter. We have a process locked down and now we just need to start actually building the system. I will leave this part to IT, and just step in when the training and roll-out time comes.
• Catalyst Conference Europe. There is another Catalyst in October in Prague. I have to do all the speaker registration and preparation stuff again. I also will be working on the complimentary consultations system again. We are using the same system as we did in North America, which means a lot of work upfront to have a great system onsite.
• Client Research Assistant tracking. The new client research assistant position that I manage needs to have some kind of tracking associated with it. We need to know when the correct time to start hiring more research assistants is. I have already built a dashboard that lists most of what the research assistant is working on and have presented to my boss about the current status of the project is. Once I can get the dashboard officially rolled out this objective might be complete.
• SharePoint improvements for Content. This is a catch all for a lot of stuff. When I originally created dashboards there was no integration with calendars or emails. I now have to get all of these things working. I have part of this done and I am showing it off to a couple of the guys tomorrow. Hopefully this will be complete and done as well.

Sorry if my geek update bored you to death. You can save this post next time you can't get to sleep.

Finally Caught Up

I finally caught up on all my work email from over the past three weeks as I was in and out of the office and on vacation. It was sad when I was answering emails from the 18th yesterday. All my reply emails started with, "Sorry for the delay on this reply..."

I am the type of person that tries to keep my inbox empty except for items that I still to respond to or items that I am currently working on. I was up over 200 messages, now I am back down to my around 30 amount that I am usually juggling.

Out of Office

I am out of the office for today and tomorrow. What is so interesting is that I have not set my out of office. I did not set it for Catalyst last week either. I do not know if I didn't because of my Blackberry or just because I did not want to do it. Life sure is different when you can have the always on connection of the Blackberry.

Today while I was at the Webelos Wilderness camp I could not get a signal. I was really away. It was not that weird because I had 5 boys to look after and we stayed pretty busy, but when I sat down to watch the boys swim I thought I could get a signal - but I didn't. I truly had nothing to do. I am bringing a book for tomorrow.

I did receive 20 emails today while I was "away." I only responded to the important ones (sorry if one of yours wasn't responded to, but this was to be a day off).