Life is Crazy

This has been one of the longest months I have had in a long time. Things at work seem to be dragging out. Things come up and are rushed making other things take longer. It is December so I really don't have all that much desire to spend all my time in the office.

Kristen has helped me a ton this month. I have had struggles at work and struggles at home. She has helped me remember what is important in life and that no matter what happens there will always be two people standing right next to me. God and her. She is such an amazing person.

Thanksgiving

Its very hard sometimes to be thankful for the things that God has given us. Sometimes I see how much I don't have and get down on myself. It takes something like a holiday to get me back into the right perspective. I am by no means deprived of things that I need. I wish that I had more toys to play with or clothes to wear but when it comes down to it I am very well off.

I just wanted to take the opportunity in this post to say thank you for things that I have. I have a fantastic girlfriend, a warm and wonderful family and great friends. Thank You Lord.

Off to a wedding

Another friend is getting married. I am driving to Humboldt, Kansas today to go to Mitchell Kanaks wedding. I lost the invitation so i hope I spelled his last name right. I haven't seen Mitchell in years! Then Nick invited me to go to a Royal's game with him and Mitchell and his fiance. That spawned the whole wedding invitation thing. I am not sure if he would have invited me otherwise.

Oh well. I will get to see my closest friends again. Todd and Nick, Mitchell and some others that I lost contact with when I went off to college.

Good news! Nick is going to be starting school Monday! He is going to be in a crash course that lasts 6 months. They will get him all his necessary certifications to be a Network or Desktop Technician. Something like that. He made me very proud by taking this step. I can't wait to see how he does.

Ok. I'm out.

Another Day

So many days and not enough time. I have been working harder than I have in a long time. I look back though and it doesn't even compare to how hard a lot of people work. I don't know how people do it! I spent day after day working hard at work and now it is Friday and I am BEAT! I just want to sleep. I know that if I do sleep now I won't be able to sleep tonight.

I have been thinking about something I have heard a couple times in the last month now. That a majority of good leaders keep journals. I want to start doing that but I don't know how to begin. I guess keeping a blog is one way. But I feel it should be more personal than that. I feel that it should be something that I keep to myself. A place for me to put down my thoughts and not worry about people criticizing me. I guess i will keep contemplating.

Complaining

I think it must be in my blood to complain. It was pointed out to me last week that I had previously been complaining about having nothing to do at work. Last week I found out that two of my team members are 'pursuing other opportunities'. I heard this as..." scott has a lot more work to do now".

Instead of taking this as a good thing I took it that now I have to pick up the slack and will be working my butt off just trying to keep up. As I said, it was pointed out that before I heard this news I was complaining about not having anything to do. Now that I have stuff to do I started complaining again.

The question that pops up from time to time ... "Why does it take somebody else pointing these very obvious things out for me to recognize my actions?" Since that conversation I have still stressed over having a lot to do. But I also am able to swallow it down and know that I am able to take this on and have the potential to handle this challenge. I firmly believe that this is God's work. I asked for things to work on and he has answered. This will let me prove myself and maybe make some progress in my current position.

Thank You Lord

out

Royals Fireworks!

I went to a Royals game last week. I have only been to a few games in the past. They still aren't any good but at least I can drink now! :) I actually sat through most of this last game and stayed afterwards for the fireworks display. It was a really good fireworks display. Not the best I have seen but I have seen the Disneyworld Fireworks display and you can't really get better than that (in my opinion).

I just thought I would share a pic I took with my cell phone.

Privacy

There has been such a big hoorah over privacy lately. Mainly dealing with the facebook release of the code to show users what all their friends are doing. Relationship changes, profile updates, picture changes, etc. There are plenty of links out there talking about this right now. I personally don't understand what the big deal is all about.

Only the people you have added as friends can see your changes! If you don't want people to know what you are doing then don't add them as friends! It is as simple as that. Or don't use the website.

I haven't ever had much of a problem with putting my information out there anyway. I wish that we didn't have to worry about keeping things so private. I wish that people wouldn't take advantage of a situation every chance they get.

Gripe gripe gripe...right?

Short Post

I don't have a lot of updates. The weekend was spent studying and sleeping. Kristen and I went to the airshow yesterday. It was interesting. We didn't have to pay because we sat on top of a parking garage across the interstate away from the airport. The airshow was held at the downtown airport so a ton of people staked in downtown on parking lots and a park on a hill. Nothing too exciting. They had one guy do a bunch of really cool tricks with his plane. They had some skydivers too!

Speaking of skydiving... Kristen and I are going again this weekend. They are having a boogie down at Freefall Express. We get to take the larger plane up to 15K feet. It should amount to about a 45 second freefall. I am excited! We are taking three new people with us too! Jason Whiteley, one of Kristen's coworkers (also named Kristen) and Jim Swanson. Jim is the husband of one of Kristen's coworkers. He is also a vet and helps run the kennel where i take aero to get groomed and when i have to go out of town.

This week will entail a lot of studying. I have to get a bunch of stuff done for our Organizational Field Study. Other than that it is just a regular old Monday. Yay for Mondays!

So there I was, right?

I was driving to work today and saw an interesting truck. The sticker on the back of the truck said "Davis Erection Company". I found it quite interesting but started thinking...

How many people really pay attention or would think that was a 'dirty' thing? Did 'Davis' do it knowing full well the hidden meaning? I am reminded of a kid I went to school with. His dad owned his own butcher shop. He had a sign made up: "You may beat our prices but you can't beat our meat". I laugh every time I think about a big sign hanging in the window.

Anyway, that is my thought for the day. Comments?

Back to work.

We're back

We had a great weekend. If I could quit damaging myself it would be much better. I had an infection in the end of my finger last week. It's nothing unusual. I have had several of them growing up. Usually i will just take a needle to it and everything will be fine. This time was different. I popped it on friday night and saturday I saw that the back of my hand above that finger was red. During the rest of saturday and sunday it swelled a very tiny bit but got sensitive. So I went to the doctor today and got some medicine for it. The doctor wasn't worried at all. He just said it was a bacterial infection. Should take a couple weeks to heal up though.

So that was one problem I had. The other was that I decided it would be fun to work out on Thursday. Little did i know that I would be VERY sore all weekend. My triceps and pecks were sore so I didn't sleep well at all. Keep in mind that this is the first time I have worked out at all with weights since april. Yeah, I was sore then too. Before April it had probably been a year or more. So I joined up with Kristen's gym and am now going to try and get in a routine and start easier than I did Thursday. I didn't think i pushed too hard then but apparently I did.

Enough of that!

The weekend was so peaceful and relaxing. Kristen took me and we got massages on saturday. It was the first time I had been and it was amazing. It lasted an hour and a half and time seemed to fly by. I figured i would be bored out of my mind but it was so relaxing (except for when she massaged my triceps!). We went horseback riding and was fortunate enough to go the same weekend they had their classic car show. There were hundreds and hundreds of classic and muscle cars there.

Here is a picture of the cabin we stayed in. It is down about 20 feet from the road elevation and nestled about 30 feet back in some trees. It was so peaceful there. We had a squirrel entertain us by eating from the birdfeeder outside the window and we saw a couple deer on Sunday morning.

Even with the 'injuries' it was a fantastic weekend. I am so blessed to have Kristen in my life.

Weekend

So Kristen and I have been dating just over a year now (it was a year on tuesday). She mentioned a long time ago that she wanted to go to the Treehouse Cottages in Eureka Springs so last spring i made reservations and we are heading there this afternoon! I am excited. It will be a nice relaxing weekend. I plan on reading and we are getting massages on saturday. I can't wait.

So that is my weekend plans. I am taking off of work at noon and leaving Kansas City.

Teams

Question of the day...

How do you get team involvement or commitment?

I have been struggling at work because I am part of a team that doesn't act like a team. Is this the case in most organizations? I go into work, sit at my cube and do my work. I would absolutely love to be working with another person on the same piece of this project.

My current project has two main pieces to it. One person on one half and me on the other. There is a small section where our code comes together. There is one other person who goes to all the meetings but has no productive contributions. He gives good ideas and some decent suggestions but does not code on this project.

The rest of my team is working on many different projects and cohesion is a very complicated topic. Some people have a lot of small projects to work on and some have more complicated involved projects. Overall we are a very effective team but I believe efficiency is lacking.

School is the same way. I have started school again and this class is a team based class. We haven't gotten too far into our team project but so far the communication seems to be dominated by 3 of us. One person is new to the US and English is the 2nd language. She has been sitting back and trying to absorb as much as possible with few (but very good) contributions. The other person hasn't been heard from since our last class.

I guess nothing will be decided here. This will be a problem that will probably plague most teams for a long time to come. Rest assurred. If i think of any tips to help team cohesion then I will surely share.

Back to School

Here I am again. I decided to take a few minutes this evening and add another post. I haven't quite figured out what to write or how to formulate my thoughts here. So i will just write with the intention of being able to come back later and see my progress.

So i have started school again. I am going back and getting my MBA. I am taking one class this semester titled Organizational Behavior. I figure this would be an easier way to ease myself back into school. This is a team based class where I don't have a lot of boring studying to do. I am trying to keep up on the reading and be involved in the team as much as possible. This seems like it will work out pretty well. I have a team of 5 people (myself included).

We have created a site on jot.com. This is a wiki site that they have made very easy to update and maintain. I have started to keep my notes and thoughts on there as well. This way it will be easy to share with the rest of the team.

Google and Blogging

So it appears that google has teamed up with blogger. This is nice because now i don't have to sign in with a different name. I can keep one account handy.

This is my first post in this account. I always seem to say this but hopefully I can keep posting this time. Time for lunch. I will write more later.