Wednesday
I ran into Jim, another former co-worker from BlackOps, in the cafeteria today at lunchtime. I said hello and re-introduced myself (“You used to work at BlackOps didn’t you?”). He asked if I was eating in the cafeteria, and of course I said sure! #Networking We were also joined at lunch by Chris, one of our Principal Technical Writers, and a young female TW visiting from our office in Brno, Czech Republic. Jim sent me an invitation to connect on LinkedIn right after lunch, which amused me.
Right after lunch I had a virtual meeting, calling in to the Town Hall meeting with the Chief Financial Officer that they were having at HQ. I really like that our executive team wants to take the time to talk to people and get questions and feedback.
Right after that, the Technical Program Manager walked through our area and asked me if I’d me the Product Manager yet? He’s only in the office one day a week, and I’d lost track of what day it was and hadn’t realized this was his day in the office. I popped him an e-mail and we met up for a quick introduction and a short white board talk about the product. Now I’ve got a face to go with the name.
Right after that I had another virtual meeting, we were “crowd-sourcing minimalism” which is just a fancy way of saying we were peer editing a couple of docs. Someone went to a JoAnn Hackos conference on Minimalist Writing recently and now they’re on a kick to edit down their docs. The couple of examples we looked at weren’t overly wordy, but were kinda badly organized. Nothing compared to the wordiness I dealt with at The Mushroom Farm, where I reduced the word count by 35% when I was converting the documents to single-sourcing in a new tool. But peer editing is always useful, and it gave me a look at some of the documentation that my fellow writers are producing, so it was a useful meeting for me.
Today was the first day I had to force myself to go home. Another good sign. I was making progress and getting excited about what I was reading and I kinda feel like, between the white board talk and what I was reading today, that pieces are starting to come together. Being excited about work again is a good feeling.
When I got home there was laundry and dinner and the season premiere of Agents of SHIELD on the DVR. Are they really doing Ghost Rider? OMG, this show may have jumped the shark. *eyeroll*
Right after lunch I had a virtual meeting, calling in to the Town Hall meeting with the Chief Financial Officer that they were having at HQ. I really like that our executive team wants to take the time to talk to people and get questions and feedback.
Right after that, the Technical Program Manager walked through our area and asked me if I’d me the Product Manager yet? He’s only in the office one day a week, and I’d lost track of what day it was and hadn’t realized this was his day in the office. I popped him an e-mail and we met up for a quick introduction and a short white board talk about the product. Now I’ve got a face to go with the name.
Right after that I had another virtual meeting, we were “crowd-sourcing minimalism” which is just a fancy way of saying we were peer editing a couple of docs. Someone went to a JoAnn Hackos conference on Minimalist Writing recently and now they’re on a kick to edit down their docs. The couple of examples we looked at weren’t overly wordy, but were kinda badly organized. Nothing compared to the wordiness I dealt with at The Mushroom Farm, where I reduced the word count by 35% when I was converting the documents to single-sourcing in a new tool. But peer editing is always useful, and it gave me a look at some of the documentation that my fellow writers are producing, so it was a useful meeting for me.
Today was the first day I had to force myself to go home. Another good sign. I was making progress and getting excited about what I was reading and I kinda feel like, between the white board talk and what I was reading today, that pieces are starting to come together. Being excited about work again is a good feeling.
When I got home there was laundry and dinner and the season premiere of Agents of SHIELD on the DVR. Are they really doing Ghost Rider? OMG, this show may have jumped the shark. *eyeroll*