Fitting 12 gallons of stuff in a quart jar
It would appear that I am going to have to force myself to make the time to update my journal. After wasting most of Wednesday waiting around for my duplicate passport to get delivered, it finally arrived this morning. I did manage to make a meeting last night, which probably was a good thing, since it meant I didn't get more frustrated with the current state of the political scene, by watching the debate even though I still have not figured out which candidate I most want to vote AGAINST. (I don't think I have ever in my voting career found a presidential candidate I wanted to vote FOR).
I had actually started this update yesterday evening, but a fat finger fuck up sent my entry off into never never etherland so I have not put in my tangential rant about the political system that I had started yesterday evening. I think that probably should wait for a post of its own anyway, if I make it at all.
So yesterday was chock full of various "honey do" activities, some of which actually were for me, but me do doesn't sound so cool. First order of business was to take care of sending off my request for the absentee ballot. Hopefully, by the time I leave on 25 October I will have figured out which candidate is less wrong so that I can exercise my right and privilege to vote. The next order of business was to get the license tag renewed for the Endeavor so that there will be one more year of legal driving of the SUV. To finish off the morning, I had to sign my duplicate passport that I had gotten and then send it back to the office in Houston in case the situation arises where I need to apply for a visa to someplace while I am currently out of country.
Yesterday morning, I also received an email from my son who almost never asks for money for a little financial help with the legal fees that are about to be incurred so that my favorite daughter-in-law can get the visitation rights for my step granddaughter changed. This of course, is so that when my son gets posted to Italy next year, his family can move there to be with him. Once again, I was glad to have the resources easily available that I could go by the credit union and get a check for $3000.00 cut for my daughter-in-law and sent off to Tennessee.
Having taken care of all those various errands, I then went over to my dad's house to spend some time with him and to use the engineering firm's high speed internet connection to catch up on some company emails and some of the other things I do on the web. One email was from a boat that I had worked on in India asking me how to set up the web based hardware monitoring system, so that was a moderately quick email explaining the different ip addresses to monitor the hardware on the internal web gui. There were about two dozen other emails pertaining to the project that has just started. As if the job was not going to be high profile enough, it appears that there are going to be two new pilot projects started associated with the boat I will be working on. The first is a computer based learning project that has already been set up via the internet, but since bandwidth from the boat makes that rather difficult, they have installed the program on the local intranet on the boat so my team will get to be guinea pigs for the non web based program.
The second pilot program has to do with some new MS Project Pro related project tracking software. Apparently, we get to be the first group to use this system to track time and resources on the project. I don't know yet what all will be involved, but apparently we will be responsible for monitoring time and resources onboard for the project with "Project Web Access" This is supposed to commence in the middle of November with some level of training for us on how to use the system. (I suppose it will be remote training, since we will be on the boat when it starts.) My ego wants to believe that these pilot projects are because it is *MY* team, but it is quite likely that it is a case of we are the newest boat and are just starting a project, so "Let's go with the new boat" is the real philosophy. Perhaps it is really a little bit of both? *shrug*
One other (well two actually) email had to do with me needing to swap a team member with one of the other teams. The reason for the swap is that the company lets people opt out of going to malarial infested countries and so a team member for a boat working off Nigeria has exercised that option. However, the email requesting that I poll my team for someone to swap over was recalled, resent and then recalled again. Needless to say, I am a little confused by that. I have since put a call into my boss (more international tolls to further burn the next several months of telephone allowance), but had to leave a message on his voice mail.
I probably should wind up this post as it has grown substantially (don't they all?) and when my wife gets back from a doctor's appointment, we plan to go to the Tulsa version of Oktoberfest. Of course we will get to go again on Sunday, but that trip will be with my daughter and her family. Anyway, looks like it will be a full weekend with two trips to Oktoberfest, tomorrow being my last mowing of the lawn for the year and then Sunday evening another dinner at my dad's.
Hope everyone else has a great weekend!
I had actually started this update yesterday evening, but a fat finger fuck up sent my entry off into never never etherland so I have not put in my tangential rant about the political system that I had started yesterday evening. I think that probably should wait for a post of its own anyway, if I make it at all.
So yesterday was chock full of various "honey do" activities, some of which actually were for me, but me do doesn't sound so cool. First order of business was to take care of sending off my request for the absentee ballot. Hopefully, by the time I leave on 25 October I will have figured out which candidate is less wrong so that I can exercise my right and privilege to vote. The next order of business was to get the license tag renewed for the Endeavor so that there will be one more year of legal driving of the SUV. To finish off the morning, I had to sign my duplicate passport that I had gotten and then send it back to the office in Houston in case the situation arises where I need to apply for a visa to someplace while I am currently out of country.
Yesterday morning, I also received an email from my son who almost never asks for money for a little financial help with the legal fees that are about to be incurred so that my favorite daughter-in-law can get the visitation rights for my step granddaughter changed. This of course, is so that when my son gets posted to Italy next year, his family can move there to be with him. Once again, I was glad to have the resources easily available that I could go by the credit union and get a check for $3000.00 cut for my daughter-in-law and sent off to Tennessee.
Having taken care of all those various errands, I then went over to my dad's house to spend some time with him and to use the engineering firm's high speed internet connection to catch up on some company emails and some of the other things I do on the web. One email was from a boat that I had worked on in India asking me how to set up the web based hardware monitoring system, so that was a moderately quick email explaining the different ip addresses to monitor the hardware on the internal web gui. There were about two dozen other emails pertaining to the project that has just started. As if the job was not going to be high profile enough, it appears that there are going to be two new pilot projects started associated with the boat I will be working on. The first is a computer based learning project that has already been set up via the internet, but since bandwidth from the boat makes that rather difficult, they have installed the program on the local intranet on the boat so my team will get to be guinea pigs for the non web based program.
The second pilot program has to do with some new MS Project Pro related project tracking software. Apparently, we get to be the first group to use this system to track time and resources on the project. I don't know yet what all will be involved, but apparently we will be responsible for monitoring time and resources onboard for the project with "Project Web Access" This is supposed to commence in the middle of November with some level of training for us on how to use the system. (I suppose it will be remote training, since we will be on the boat when it starts.) My ego wants to believe that these pilot projects are because it is *MY* team, but it is quite likely that it is a case of we are the newest boat and are just starting a project, so "Let's go with the new boat" is the real philosophy. Perhaps it is really a little bit of both? *shrug*
One other (well two actually) email had to do with me needing to swap a team member with one of the other teams. The reason for the swap is that the company lets people opt out of going to malarial infested countries and so a team member for a boat working off Nigeria has exercised that option. However, the email requesting that I poll my team for someone to swap over was recalled, resent and then recalled again. Needless to say, I am a little confused by that. I have since put a call into my boss (more international tolls to further burn the next several months of telephone allowance), but had to leave a message on his voice mail.
I probably should wind up this post as it has grown substantially (don't they all?) and when my wife gets back from a doctor's appointment, we plan to go to the Tulsa version of Oktoberfest. Of course we will get to go again on Sunday, but that trip will be with my daughter and her family. Anyway, looks like it will be a full weekend with two trips to Oktoberfest, tomorrow being my last mowing of the lawn for the year and then Sunday evening another dinner at my dad's.
Hope everyone else has a great weekend!