The A is for Abysmal

Well, today is the first day in a very long time that I have run out of things to do at work. I’m not really sure what to do with myself. I have no doubt that something will pop up at 4:00 and suddenly I’ll be working like a mad man and trying not to stay too late. But in case that doesn’t happen, perhaps I should go looking for some work. I’ll give it a little longer and see what else pops up. I do have a giant stack of papers on my desk of things that I didn’t know if I should throw away or not. I could make my way through and throw away or file. Cleaning up around the office is always a great way to seem busy and waste a lot of time.

This weekend is my family’s big golf tournament, followed by Liz’s family’s large get together. Anyone that knows me probably knows about the golf tournament. 80-85 people getting together at my family camp, and 72ish of us going out for a great round of golf at a surprisingly nice course. I have played very little golf in the last couple years. I love golf and wish I could get out more, but it just costs way too much money and takes up a little too much time. I did get to go out 2 weeks ago for the first time in 10 months to get a little practice. I was going to hit some balls before that round, but instead decided just to go for it. I think that worked out pretty well. It wasn’t the best, but I started to find my swing again about 2/3 of the way through. Unfortunately, despite the very little golf I have played, I will probably be an A player again this year. Everyone is ranked as an A, B, C, or D so the teams are close to even. The golfers are for the most part, not nearly as good as they used to be, so we are struggling for A players. Because of this struggle, the general mentality is “once an A, always an A.” I used to be a good A when I played on the school golf team, but that was along time and many terrible shots ago. About 3 years ago, I did win the tournament as an A that set my status in stone for a long time. Though the very next year, I got last place as an A with one of the worst scores in our tournament’s history.

Due to all of this pressure of being an A, it is clear that I need to prepare more for the event. So I did what any player would do, went out and bought Wii Tiger Woods Golf 2010. I have no doubt that I will be striking the ball like Tiger inside a couple days. Even if it doesn’t improve my game, and clearly it won’t, I think it was a good investment. I have been playing a little bit of Tiger Woods 2007 lately and actually really liked the game. The swing is no where near a real golf swing, but the game is a lot of fun. At the same time, Nintendo has released the Wii Motion Plus which is supposed to give you character a much more 1:1 movement ratio. I just bought the game on my lunch break and can’t wait to get home to play. They say it is much more like swinging a real club. I know that is not going to be true, but I think it will be a big step in the right direction. I’m pretty certain you can’t miss hit the ball. If you swing too slowly, you can hit really short, and you can miss hit puts, but I know you can’t miss swing and top the ball, or miss altogether. That would be cool. I do know you can fade or slice easily, and control much more short shots. Apparently there are a lot of added features to the game over the older versions that I am looking forward to. More modes and realistic tournament settings. There is online play to take on other people 1 on 1 or enter tournaments, and you best score is compared against others. I look forward to that. You can also play with real time weather. The wii looks up the weather conditions for the course you are playing, and if it is rainy or windy in real life, it is rainy or windy in the game. That is awesome. Now I really can’t wait to get home and play. I’m bound to be one of the best players at the Running Deer Lodge Open this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

Just Numbers

Working in treasury and finance for a mid size company has put me in some interesting situations. One thing I think of from time to time is the amount to money I deal with or see on spreadsheets on a daily basis. At times I deal with very large numbers. For starters, every spreadsheet I work with is at least shown in thousands. No one cares about seeing the full detail of numbers. If a lot of calculations are being run, people become very comfortable with variances of 5 – 10 thousand dollars. If someone is attempting the very challenging task of reconciling our database with some other list of numbers, and that person can come within 10k, they did a great job. There are times I do high level calculations that are only shown in millions, and if I’m off 1 or 2, it is simply chalked up to rounding errors. It is odd how comfortable I can get with working with such large numbers, and at the same time not be ok with my personal checkbook not tying out to the exact penny.

I oversee the insurance for our company, and consequently oversee the spending of approximately 7 million dollars a year. That is real money that I receive invoices for, review, and submit to my boss for payment approval. These numbers are often regular payments, but occasionally not. Last week I had to walk into my boss’s office with the bad news that some large claims came in and we had to write a check that day for 160k. These thinks happen, and I’m use to it, but from time to time I realize the craziness of the words I am speaking.

The big project I have been working on for that past few months is an insurance claim for a machinery failure at one of our plants. This has been a challenging, partially exciting, partially sad project that I have dedicated a silly amount of time to. All of the manufacturing of this plant relies on this piece of equipment that took 5 months to fix. This essentially shut down the whole plant and just ruined their business for that time and will most likely never recover from all of the customers they lost. For some help, we have an insurance policy that covers such an event. I have done all of the work on this claim and have had all of the contact with the insurance carrier. I have assembled mass amounts of data and presented it to all of our executives for their review before submitting it. After submitting this data, I have had some meetings with the insurance carrier to discuss the details of the claim. The basis of these meetings is another one of those odd moments to wrap my mind around the reality. I am person representing a company asking other people for a few million dollars. Weird right? “Hi I’m Zack, nice to meet you in person. How can I answer any questions, and when can you write me a multi-million dollar check?”

The peculiar part of working with such large sums of money is how comfortable I can be with it. This brings me to the challenging part, how does it relate to my relationship with Christ when I spend over 40 hours a week focused on money. It is my job and we are certainly called to do our jobs well, but when you think about not focusing on worldly things, money is one of the big ones. I’m not saying that I’m living in sin by having the job that I have; these are really just thoughts that happen to be flowing through my head. I could most likely chalk it up to trying to live a balanced life in a fallen world, but maybe I shouldn’t.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day. Thanks for reading.

Big… Bodda Boom

Greetings to you good and faithful reader of my blog. I have not posted in over a month. I am ashamed and undoubtedly certain that the World Wide Web may have shed a tear in my absence. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Both good questions with somewhat non-profound answers. For the most part, I have been right here, doing much of the same thing I have been doing. The only different things I have done are, being sick for nearly 2 weeks and MAN WEEKEND. Being sick has kept me far from focusing on my computer aside from the work I had to do, and Man weekend kept all of my spare computer use time looking up ideas for explosives, and then making videos. I apologize for my lack of posts, but I dare say the wait was worth it. This post on the weekend manhood definition will most likely spit in the face of my past few posts and be awarded a medal for doing so.

The idea and planning for a man weekend began as a small glimmer of imagination, from the feeble minds of a few good friends. We thought perhaps we could pick a time in late spring for a large group of our friends to get together to celebrate that which every man longs to do… really stupid things. All we had to do was gather the people, pick a setting, and decide what we wanted to do. Gathering the people is surprisingly not an easy task. Picking a weekend that more than 10 people have free is nearly impossible at this stage in our lives, but we pulled off a solid 13 showing. The setting was easy, and deciding what to do what half the fun. We had some amazing food, solid poker (which I add I won both tournaments), good debates, sweet campfires, shooting, cannons, and explosives. Here is a video summing up a good portion of Man Weekend 09.




Upon my return from Man Weekend, I was alas able to tell some more people of the details, since we survived with no serious injuries. Though I questioned my judgment for a moment, I told my boss that I built a cannon from one of our products. Her immediate reaction: “tell me you have pictures.” I of course told her I had videos and she immediately stepped into my office to see the video of us firing the cannon. I also showed her the explosion from some propane tanks and another one of our products. She of course thought the videos were fantastic and exclaimed that I had to show our CFO. I showed the CFO who was thrilled and had me put it on a jump drive to mail out to some of our other offices. RIDICULOUS! I just sent around the video of the cannon, but have since made a video just for our company to enjoy with 2 cannon shots, and 2 explosions. I identified what product it was for everyone. I think they are all proud.

Man Weekend is officially here to stay. Everyone that was there wants to make it an annual event, and I suspect it will be easier to get an even larger group together next year. I’ve already got some calls about what we can do to improve the cannon for next year. The nice thing is, with all the enthusiasm at work, we might just get corporate sponsors for our next event.

Thanks for reading.

Miscellaneous

There has not been very much of writable stature that has crossed my path in the last couple weeks. Minor things to note, but that is about all. You will therefore get a post of assorted items, I’m sorry that is all you get.

For a while I got re-hooked on watching Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia… Fantastic. I know that show is the bottom line of morality, but that is what makes it so hysterical. I watched the entire 4th season in 3 days. Favorite moment: "Is it racist that I would rather eat this guy than that guy? I don’t think I can handle being a cannibal and racist."

A new hockey season started last week and an awesome game. We had a terrible goalie last season that would flip out every time we lost. He would yell at us and throw his gear against the wall in anger both on the rink and the locker room. He would get especially mad if the other team came from behind to beat us. After a series of tough losses, he vowed never to play for us again, and we were honestly happy about that. The first game of the new season, we were playing a very good team and they picked up our old goalie. The other team was beating us by 2 the entire game. Every time we scored a goal, the other team would immediately get one to reclaim the 2 goal lead. With 7 mins to go, my line mate and I scored 2 goals to tie, and then they scored 2 goals against us while I was on the bench to reclaim the lead. The next time I was out, my line mate and I scored 3 goals to take the lead, and the other line held the lead for the win. Not only was it great to come from behind, our old goalie was furious and was back to throwing stuff and yelling at his team. I must say, it was satisfying to redeem our team against our old goalie.

Weston is coming up on 5 months! Crazy how much that kid has grown. I am so excited for him to start crawling, walking, talking, and playing. I know I still have a way to go, but it is going to be so great to play with my son. He just started dabbling in some real food which is great because I get to feed him. Liz and I just took him to a park and gave a shot at putting him in a swing. It was much too big for him, but we made it work. He loves the outdoors, and I really hope it stays that way.

Work has finally started to calm down a little bit for me. For a couple weeks there I was working a lot of overtime and even doing a little bit of traveling. We got a lot of good work done, but I’m glad to get back to my normal work load. The extra hours may have been worth it though, because out of that I got a sweet new monitor for my office. I’m working with huge spreadsheets, so my boss worked for me a bit to get the approval, and now I am typing on a 24’’ HD monitor. This thing is fantastic! When I open a spreadsheet I can see columns A – AC and rows 1 – 50. As promised, here are some pictures of my office. I took them before I got the new monitor, so you will just have to imagine it.

From the Hallway.

The other side of my office and my white board.

My View.

And of course, my basketball hoop.

Believe, When I say…

Every afternoon I make a phone call

Listen to the voice that warms my heart

I drag myself through a few more hours

Then head on home to try and beat the dark

Her smile will be right there

when I step through that door

And it will be that way tomorrow,

just like everyday before

It's ordinary plain and simple

Typical, this everyday love

Same ol', same ol' keeping it new

Emotional, so familiar

Nothing about it too peculiar

Oh, but I can't get enough

Of this everyday love

What qualities should love possess to know that it is true and long lasting? This is a debatable subject, but I doubt anyone would argue this simple truth:

You know its love when:

• You are completely comfortable singing with each other,
  
• You are completely comfortable singing Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way” with each other (and sounding pretty good I might add),
  
• You take turns on solo parts to let the other person have their fun,
  
• And most importantly: There is silence at the climax of the song when one of the guys sings really loud “Don’t Wanna Hear You Say…” because each of you were letting the other person have it.

Holy Moley!

First of all, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to spell Holy Moley, so I Googled it. The site I used my spelling from was http://en.wiktionary.org. This concerns me. I understand Wikipdia. There is a lot of stuff in this world and standard encyclopedia made by one group of people simply can’t come close to covering everything. People out there know stuff, and many times it is useful. Other times, it is not. Some people can get on there and make things up or simply be wrong. Because of this, you need to be careful. This is all understandable, but I don’t know about a dictionary version. I trust that one group of people, say Webster’s can put together a book of definitions and catch just about everything that should be in there. There are other slang dictionaries and such, again understandable, but could be put together by one group of people. I don’t want everyday common people to be able to make up words and change the definitions of words. Not cool! I’m thinking about adding vertichee, it is just a made up word that I think should be in the dictionary. Most of you may not know what that word means, but the few of you that do should hopefully be laughing.

So…. I haven’t bloged in nearly a third of my son’s lifetime…. That’s quite a while. I’ve wanted to, but other things just kept coming up. A number of things at home with being parents and such, but mainly, work has been very hectic. Lots of large, important projects with challenging deadlines. I’ve been working through some lunches and working late most days. I’m not complaining. I like being really busy. The days have gone by very fast. I got a lot of stuff wrapped up at the end of last week and this week, and my white board is finally close to clear. All of this hard work has paid off though. 2 weeks ago the CFO was walking around and decided that I should have an office. Awesome! I didn’t know if he was serious for a while until later he was talking with the HR director, then stopped by and told me to move my stuff. So now I am in an office. I have a door, a fairly large U shaped desk, chairs for others to sit in, a filing cabinet, and windows that go from floor to ceiling that run the entire width of my office. It is so nice to be able to look out the window and have my office filled with natural light. I have my basketball hoop up and even a dock for my Zune with speakers wired under my desk to be able to listen to music all day. It is absolutely great.

What has been interesting is the people that realize I now have an office and stopping by to say hi. Some of them are happy for me, and some are just jealous, and possibly even a bit angered. I’ve gotten everything from “look at you” to how did you get an office?” I just told them that I sucked up to the right people, which in part is true. I do confess that I feel a little bad. I am certainly young and early in my career to have an office. There are also others at work that work very very hard and probably deserve an office, but our office is split up into different departments and therefore has different space availability. I work for a small department and answer directly to the top officers of the company. There is one person who has always been very friendly to me who hasn’t said a word to me (other than responding to a work related question) since I moved. Oh well, I’m living it up in here for now. I’ll try to post some pictures sometime soon.

Thanks for reading.

All This Time, I Could Have Been Seein’ Things!

Have you ever regularly performed an action for a long period of time, and then suddenly realize there is a much easier way to accomplish it? I feel like this is something that happens to many people that use computers on a daily basis. You discover a short cut key, or a much faster way to do something. Especially in Excel as you find new formulas and quick ways to perform tasks. If you have read my blog, then you know I am a fairly advanced user of Excel, but recently I learned something that was so simple, I was embarrassed that I didn’t know about it. If you have a list with 1000 rows of data and you put in a formula in a new column, I used to put the formula in the top row, and drag the box on the bottom right of the cell down to copy to formula. The annoying thing is stopping at the right spot. The page scrolls down and you try to be careful not to scroll too fast, then you accidentally blow past the last row, then move back up, then down again until you eventually control the mouse well enough the end at row 1000. Instead of playing this game, you could just double click the box on the bottom right of the first cell with the formula and it will automatically copy to the bottom of the list. Brilliant! Finding that has time and again saved me significant hassle and time.

This applies in many other aspects of life. Perhaps you drive the same way to work every day, then one day find out there is a shortcut that is much faster and easier. Maybe you’ve never had the correct form in a sport or game, and if someone just showed you how to properly shoot a basket ball, swing a bat, etc. it would be so much easier. Think about somebody playing wii for the first time. They might swing the wiimote with all their might to hit a baseball, and you could get a better hit sitting on the couch and flicking your wrist. I’d make an argument that it is not as fun to do that, but it certainly is easier. There are even more basic things this applies to. Since I got my drivers license, when I got into the drivers seat of the car, I grabbed the seatbelt with my left hand, pulled it across my body and fully extended my arm reaching to find the receiving end of the seatbelt. If I have had a jacket on, it would be even more challenging. Recently, it just occurred to me to hand the seatbelt from my left hand to my right hand to click it in. I find the receiving end much faster and don’t have to contort my back in the process.

Reflecting on these things makes me wonder… What else in my life could be done differently making the task much easier and less time consuming. Maybe there is a much simpler and faster way to shave or brush my teeth that I never knew about. Maybe there is a trick I am missing to falling asleep at night and sleeping better. Maybe there is something so simple, so terribly obvious that I am missing that could vastly improve my life. Maybe I’ll be 60 years old, and have somebody mention to me, “you breathe funny,” and I find out that all my life I could have been breathing a different way that would have improved my lung capacity for exercise and provided more oxygen to my brain to make me more awake and allowed me to think clearer. Wouldn’t that be terrible to one day found out your life could have been much better?

At the gym, there are trainers you can hire to introduce you to new exercises and give you useful tips and tricks. I overhear trainers giving these tips all the time. “Good job, but if you make this small obvious adjustment, it is easier to lift this weight and will make the exercise more effective.” I try to listen in on these tips because there is a good chance that I am working much too hard to accomplish an exercise that isn’t actually benefiting me in any way. I think we should be able to hire these trainers to give us tips on our daily lives. What if you could hire a professional to spend every moment with you for a week and tell you as your going along how to make everything you do more effective? Hmm… interesting business idea. As Brian Regan puts it, “how could instantly improved vision not be at the top of your to do list?”

Thanks for reading.