Work

Monday August 27

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I am working towards a deadline for a big project at work. Were not late yet, but I have concerns about making our date. I generally am very sensitive to this sort of stuff but there is still a lot of work to be done, not a lot of time to do it, and I may have to run out any time have a baby. That last part about having to leave in a moments notice is probably what’s causing me to be the most concerned. Generally this kind of hectic work pace happens towards a deadline but as I said it is a little different this time because MC is due in two weeks.

Most of my day today involved making sure things were on track for the project that is due, and generally ensuring that we haven’t missed anything. The other half of the day was making sure everybody on the team knew what their priorities were.

I left work a little after 5 PM because MC and I have an appointment after work interviewing a perspective postpartum Doula.

Friday August 24th

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Today has been a long day at work. I got the office around 8 a.m. I treated myself to an omelette from the cafeteria and then started my calls from 9 a.m. Schedule call to up all morning and early afternoon, and then working out some issues with an ongoing project of the rest of the day. By 4:30 I was exhausted figured hey its Friday in the summer I was cutting out about 30 minutes early.

No major plans for the evening at home. M said she was leaving in a bit from work so she least won’t be home late. Hopefully we can just relax for the evening.

First Day in London

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I spent the morning getting from the airport to the hotel. And I unwound a little. I walked over to Canary wharf mall near where the office is. I need to get a SIM card for my Galaxy Nexus phone and iPad. I was impressed at how easy it was to get, and the price was not that bad either.  I wasn’t happy I couldn’t use my AT&T iPhone 4S because it was locked to AT&T, but I was glad I had an unlocked Galaxy Nexus that i could use.

I tried to have some breakfast at Starbucks but ended up just having a Danish because he did not have the sandwich I wanted.  After that i headed out to meet Colin by the London bridge station.  Well first it was at another station and i didn’t see my text until i was already at the location i was originally going to.  I then turned around and headed to the London bridge station.  It was only a 15 minute detour.  Once there Colin was running late.  I walked around a bit, then just goofed off on the internet and read a bit in the sun until he arrived.

We checked out an open air market.  had some food.  I got some fudge.  We then walked and had a drink at a pub.  After that we walked all the way down towards were we were going to eat dinner.  it was right near the London Eye.  We walked along the river.  it was fun.  We were early meeting his wife so we had a drink outside by the river.  i tried Pims for the first time.  Colin insisted.  it was good.  We then meet his wife and had dinner, and then they had to rush off to get a delivery.  We parted ways at the tube station.  I made my way back to the hotel.

It was a good finally meeting Colin.  I considered him a friend for a quite some time since I start working at Reuters, however other than Skype video chat’s we have never met in person.

Wednesday May 9th, 2012

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Today i was in the office at 3xsq.  Long day with several face to face meetings as well as calls.  I had lunch with Eamon and we did our 1on1 at lunch.  I also had an interview with a prospective candidate.

I sat at Abhinav’s desk.  Scott showed up for the interview so I couldn’t sit at his desk even though he sat somewhere else and Rajesh sat at his desk.

After work i went for a hair cut.  Leon cut the top of my hair shorter again for me but left the sides a bit longer, or shall i say he faded it in so the bottom was short and the upper sides were a bit longer.  Not sure if i like it but i am giving it a go.  Last month i had the top much longer to try that out.  i didn’t like it.

First Day Back at Work

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My 1st day back from a 3 day vacation I decided to work from home. Thankfully I did not have a ton of meetings so they would catch up on mail and my tasks. There was not a lot to report today. A pretty normal uneventful day. Sometimes that’s pretty nice, and sometimes  it’s kind of boring. Today after going to DC over weekend was nice to be it would get stuff done.

Last Day Before Vacation

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On my last work day before a week off I had to tie up all loose ends at work.  It was tough but i think i handed everything off ok.

After work M and I meet up with Luke and some other people for a few drinks at Windfall.

 

Almost All Mac, Well Sometimes…

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For over a year I have opted into a “bring your own equipment” pilot with my company.  It basically allows me to use a Mac at work.  There has been a great community helping with how too’s, what apps to use to replicate Windows apps, etc.  For the bulk of that time I have generally opted to continue to use a Windows machine.  It wasn’t because I wanted to, but it was because of limitations of email.  More specifically it was Entourage was a horrible app that came no were near its Outlook for Windows equivalent, and then it was that Outlook 2011 wasn’t compatible with the Exchange system I was using.  Last month that last part changed and I was able to use Outlook on the Mac.  It was the last major piece to my going all Mac again at work.

Over the past month I have been going days using all native Mac apps when working remotely and then days of using my Windows machine in the office.  For the most part I am able to work 80% or more on native apps on my mac when I try.  There are a few websites I need that require IE, plus doing certain things in Sharepoint is better looking or just easier to do in IE.  I can do a lot in Sharepoint on the mac but I do default back to IE a lot.

I also had a few issues with Webex on Lion.  I still have issues if logging in via one of the two Webex portals I use.  The other I found a work around for and it does work.  So half the Webex’s I need I have to goto my iPad or a VM.

As I mentioned earlier the big hold back was email.  Now that I can use outlook 2011, for a while I didn’t want to.  It is Outlook and much better than Entourage, however it is not as feature rich as Outlook 2010.  Plenty of reviews covered that.  But even with its limitations it is growing on me.  I am not yet ready to go all mac every day but I am getting closer.  Right now I am at 2-3 days a week.  Since I sit at a computer 8+ hours a day a change like this will take a while to get used to.  For now I hope to continue to be mostly Mac at work more days a week.

 

The Not So Big Hurricane

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Saturday M and I were planning on visiting a judge we are interested in being the officiant for our wedding. I was very concerned about the weather based off of what I was reading about the hurricane and the travel advisories. M was less concerned but I was worried that if we woke up Saturday morning and the weather was bad we wouldn’t be able to cancel our Zip car reservation. Because of those concerns and not being sure if the bridges would remain open if the winds got bad Friday night we canceled our zip car reservation. The judge was very understanding.

Saturday we planned on doing stuff in the apartment since we canceled our plans and figured it would be a good idea to stay home. Those plans plans got shot to heck when my mom called to see if I wanted to goto my cousin Derek’s wedding. He had a few cancelations due to the weather and wanted M and I to come. In our family to keep numbers down the 1st and 2nd cousin’s (my parents) are invited to stuff but all the kids are on the B list or else it would be too many people. I wasn’t offended at not being invited, but I totally forgot the wedding was Saturday. M and I talked about it and even though we (mainly me) didn’t want to travel upstate in the morning that we would risk going to long island at night for the wedding.

We got there just in time for the service and had a good time at the party. We left right after dinner to try to avoid the weather getting too nasty. That was already too late. Halfway home it got really bad out. I asked M if we were really stupid to be out if almost no one was on the road. The LIE was basically empty. That was almost scary. Thankfully we made it home without incident, except our strained wits if that counts?

Today I had several calls with work to review the status of things related to the weather. I am always amazed at how organized were I work is regarding incidents and disasters like this. It makes for many calls on the weekend but in the end thing weren’t down with any of the products i support so i was very happy.

Now M and I are relaxing on the couch. I am blogging and she is working on the wedding registry. I find it a bit cure that we both have Macbook’s (M on the 13″ Pro and me on the 13″ Air) on our laps listening to music. It is a nice relaxing end to a crazy weekend.

Day Off

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After working every night from Friday to Tuesday and parts of the day over last weekend I decided mid week to take a day off. Little did I know at the time that a major hurricane was supposed to be coming to the east coast. Honest, it wasn’t a master plan of mine or anything.

I was able to get most of the day to relax. I just verged out on the couch and on the computer. it was nice, but later in the day i did have to deal with minor work related stuff due to the Hurricane.

In general a nice restful day off.