This week has already been quite busy.  My development partner is out of town attending his grandmother’s funeral, so I got today experiencing the rare pleasure of coding all day long.  I have a day punctuated with a few meetings tomorrow, but it should be more of the same.  In fact, the rest of the week proves to be more of the same but my pair will return on Thursday so we can partner up to finish the rest of the project.

As nice as it is to be coding, the change that I am referring to is more exciting.

Providing all the final plans go well, next week I will be travelling to Switzerland and Austria for work.  I’m excited about this because I have never been outside the country, but nervous for this very same reason.  It will be an exciting adventure, however the run-up to this trip means that I will be spending some late nights coding and then I will be away for a week.  That’s about two weeks being at least somewhat absent from Tasha and Eve, which is tough as well.

The fun parts: I will get to see an ocean.  I will get (and then loathe) international plane rides.  I will get to see the inside of European office buildings.  I might even get to see a sight or two while we’re there.  I wish there was a way that Tasha and Eve could come along!

Not much to report on tonight… we got some snow here in Westminster so I was a little late coming home from work, which meant I had to turn around and make it to Church quickly for my Knights of Columbus meeting.  The meeting ran long, and then I had to de-ice my car and slowly make it back home.  I spent the rest of the night doing some small chores and trying to unwind for bed, and here we are.

I’ve been on a minor roll at work lately, so far 2012 is going pretty darned good.  Here’s to hoping I haven’t just jinxed it!

Today I made the conscious decision to approach an important meeting in a collaborative way instead of a confrontational way.  I was the only technical voice in the room from our side so I explained my case, why it was beneficial for those involved, and we walked out with a simple and mutually beneficial design with some very influential partners.  In the moment, I felt like I was knocking it out of the ballpark and I must have… two of my colleagues had already emailed my boss, his boss, and his boss to praise my efforts before we even left the building.

I have been reading ‘Leadership Gold’ and had just finished the chapter on the value of a pre-meeting… my colleagues and I had met ahead of the meeting to “get on the same page” where we discussed how things would unfold and where I initially hatched my plan to approach the problem in this way.  The other guys did a great job of keeping us on message and focused on the correct things, documenting the decisions, and executing their marketing and project management craft.  We fired on all cylinders today, and that just plain ROCKS.

This was my first real opportunity to visit a customer in this way and I feel like I made a very good showing for my company.  The customer is happy, we are happy, we have a clear path forward and everyone wins.   Short of getting a raise or promotion, I don’t know how today could have been any better.

Those of you that have been keeping up with me on social media may understand that while I have been relatively silent on the blogging front I have actually been quite busy.  Between work on my Dad’ ukulele project (almost done with the finishing!), the demands of parenting, and my day job are adding up to not much free time to plunk away at the keyboard.

Things at the office have been carrying on to a crescendo in recent months, with responsibilities mounting and actual empowerment waning.  I’m struggling to find a perspective where I actually feel valued right now.  Instead of moping (beyond the obvious exception on Friday afternoon) I have taken to educating myself in such a way to ensure that I don’t end up “motivating” people in this same way.  I’ve been reading up on how to inspire people in the same fashion that Winston Churchill did, and various leadership blogs.  My current situation may be less-than-ideal, however I will win the day with patience and self-improvement.

All of that unpleasantness aside, I am finding ways to relax.  My in-laws visited and my father-in-law and I had a nice bonding experience while cleaning my garage.  He had some great ideas about getting more utility and space out of my workshop set-up, and I’m happy to say that we got a lot accomplished.  He says that next year he’ll come back and help me wire more outlets and shop lights out there so I can get even more use out of it.

That’s all for now, hopefully it won’t be weeks between updates from here on out.

Here I am, sitting at the gate in Denver waiting to find out if I get one of the overflow seats on this flight to Peoria. This frustrates me, since I booked my flight two weeks ago. All the same, my ticket says confirmed and the lady at the baggageclaim told me that I have a seat on a flight butthey may change aircrafts on me. *sigh*

I will be in town for two days to attend a work meeting, and I hear that I am heading into 105 degree heat indexes. There is a man sitting next to me who fell asleep waiting on his flight, I have no idea how people do this. I would be far too paranoid about missing my flight. Plus, I drool in my sleep. Embarassing.

So here’s to hoping I get onthis flight as scheduled, if not know I have prepared the Seinfeld “taking the reservation/holding the reservation” speech just in case. Keep an eye on Facebook for up to the moment hilarity.

Today was a long day at the office.  A crop of bugs popped up, and I was basically the only person on our team in Westminster today.  That meant it was up to me to triage the bugs and determine the best possible course of action.  I tend to do this best when I have a pair to program with… someone to bounce ideas off of and determine the best course.  Investigation is harder when done alone in a vacuum, and it was this reality that I was stuck with today.

This made the day pass quickly, however I was happy to see the end of the work day.  I screwed up my back at karate on Friday, so I headed to a fix-up chiropractic appointment right after work and it was much needed.  The doctor had to spend a fair amount of time on my lower back and my upper neck had a very loud adjustment.  It feels much better now, I need to get back to strengthening exercises so my back doesn’t slip out so often.

The rest of the evening was spent listlessly surfing the Internet after dinner.  I may look for more ways to make myself unplug more often… I find that I’m spending a lot of time aimlessly surfing around on the Internet.  If I have a project to work on that’s one thing, but if I’m just burning time that’s a big waste.  I haven’t decided how I’m going to accomplish this quite yet, but it’ll be something to work on.

It was an interesting day at the office… when I arrived I quickly noticed my schedule was perforated with meetings, and what I really wanted to do was code.  I took as much advantage of the short breaks between meetings to work with my pair to program and solve some problems.  I got to have a very good meeting where I got to assert one of our architectural guidelines when they were going to be violated, and I got the point across well enough and crisis was averted.  We had a long lunch for one of our coworkers that was celebrating their 5 year service anniversary, and I got one more problem solved before calling it a day.

I was wiped out when I got home from work, so I took a much needed nap.  I’m optimistic for getting a lot of recreation in over the weekend, I have designs on making Attempt #2 on Dad’s ukulele kit.  Let’s hope I don’t ruin it!  More soon!

Without noticing, I’ve missed a few days of blogging (the shame!)… I guess life has been pretty busy lately.  With PW out of the office, I have found myself staying at work longer to help keep things running along as smoothly as possible.  Over the weekend we got a few nice days, so I spent a lot of time outside getting chores done and preparing for my mother-in-law to arrive tonight.

The weather is warming up here in Colorado, so I’m beginning some of my outdoor past-times like yard work and grilling.  Soon I’ll be taking another stab at my Dad’s ukulele project since the replacement kit came in the mail last week.  The baby is still doing very well, but she has been fussy in the evenings which is part of the reason I have been absent the last few days… she’ll start getting fussy and the only way to soothe her is to either walk with her or get Tasha up, who usually needs my help preparing the supplemental bottle and what-not.

That’s really about all that is going on right now.  Lots of work, lots of baby care, and little play.  Hopefully that will turn around this weekend, when I plan to put some serious time toward getting Dad’s ukulele project back on track.  More soon!

Today I got to spend the day off in the best possible way, catching up on some much-needed sleep.  Tasha took the morning feeding, and I took the mid-morning feeding which afforded us both some extra extended periods of rest.  This made a huge difference in our demeanor on the rest of Saturday, however we missed several things on the To-Do list due to sleeping in.  No big deal.

After we finally got out of bed, we headed out and had lunch at Denny’s and then went over to Target and the pet store.  While at Target, I got two new pairs of jeans and a couple of new t-shirts… this is the first time I’ve bought new clothes for myself in awhile, so it was fun.  I had taken a Benadryl when I left for lunch due to some extra allergies popping up, and by the time we made it home from our outing I was sporting my classic “the Benadryl is working too well” medicine head.  So I went back to bed for a two hour nap.

I’ve spent the rest of the evening finishing up a side job, and I’m looking forward to a productive day tomorrow.  More soon!

Today was another long day at the office, but at least I was prepared for this one (scheduled late meeting to accommodate many time zones).  For this reason, my evening was fragmented into many different tasks, notably watching the American Idol finale, eating dinner, watching Eve while Tasha had her night out, and working on a side project.  The baby was good and I got most of the rest of my side project done, now it’s in the client’s hands for a few days.

I’m looking forward to a long weekend, despite the fact it’s supposed to continue raining.  Having some time off is going to be quite a relief after this week, hopefully some relaxation will do me good.