I learned something interesting yesterday

Yesterday in our section meeting, Scott, the new section chief, mentioned that almost no one in the Intranet group where he just came from, wanted to work from home.  Of course, the common reasons were mentioned as to why not.  In his case, is wife works from home and he has a toddler at home.  The interesting thing is that the first reason he gave why others did not want to do it was temptations and distractions that would/could get in the way of the workers being productive at home.  So, in that aspect, I’m not so alone after all.

 

And, as an aside, it seems that Jesus, one of the contractors, does really watch movies during the day.  When David pointed that out some weeks ago in one of the section meetings, he had glanced in Jesus’ direction.  I knew that Jesus tended to do some of the same extraneous things that I did, however I didn’t figure it as an actual fact.  Hmmmm …..

My collection of notes

I need to put all of my notes into one location, and one location only.  I have my little notebooks, where I have stored snippets of information for most of the time that I’ve been here.  I have the notes that I’ve collected on my projects and systems that I’ve worked on, stored in Outlook.  I have notes stored on digital post-it notes.  They are spread everywhere.  I never know which way to turn when I need to look up something.  Since I am now moving all of my Outlook notes, which are now incorrectly stored in the Tasks section, over to WinOrganizer, I should do the same thing with all the other notes that I have stored all over the place.  That way, there will then be only one place that I should be going to when I need to look up something.    And, once that was done, I would have one less reason to not be able to work from home, since I said that I have a lot of paper notes here in my office.  I could even take that a step further and scan any of the books and manuals that I frequently use here.  Actually, now that I really think about it, I think that I already have digital copies of the ECOMS books, so I wouldn’t have that excuse either.  So, that leaves only one outstanding thing.

Modification to my monitor setup

I made a slight modification to my monitor setup here at work.  I have a little Lilliput monitor, one of the smaller ones that give you maybe a 6^th of a regular monitor’s size.  It has just enough extra screen real estate for keeping lists and whatnot, without it taking away from my main screen areas.  Up until now, I have had it sitting below my other screens, however I never really ‘saw’ it.  This morning, I decided to set it up above my middle monitor, directly opposite from where it used to sit.  I have found that I spend most of my time looking up towards the top of my monitors.  I don’t think it has all that much to do with creating stuff (upper-left quadrant of the brain) versus trying to remember stuff (bottom-right quadrant).  I think it really has more to do with the fact that all of the command areas are at or near the top in most Windows products that I utilize.  The taskbar is at the bottom, but I only search in that direction to better locate a window that has been covered by another, or to right-click for the Task Manager, or to click a menu selection from the toolbars that I have anchored there, or on the rare occasion to start a not-often used program from Start or to access Settings.  I think I go to that section less than a 4^th of the day, maybe.  I’m hoping this new setup will be much better, so that I more readily update date my Clarity list so that I keep track of what I’ve done, and to review my to-do lists far more often than I have been doing.  Only time will tell.

 

Thanks ….

 

Monica Collins

Appl Sys Prog Analyst I

Information Technology Directorate

Army & Air Force Exchange Service

214-312-2353 

collinsm@aafes.com

Visit our online store! www.shopmyexchange.com

 

 

Video iPod

Remove all movies and TV shows from silver iPod.  Better yet, empty it and sell it, and go back down to two.  It’s time to reduce things in my office that cause problems.

 

Thanks ….

 

Monica Collins

Appl Sys Prog Analyst I

Information Technology Directorate

Army & Air Force Exchange Service

214-312-2353 

collinsm@aafes.com

Visit our online store! www.shopmyexchange.com

 

 

FW: Conversation with Starcher, Michael J.

And this is probably true; I will hopefully remember this quicker next time it happens because I had to search for the answer, expending brain cells, as opposed to having the answer given to me.

Thanks ….

 

From: Collins, Monica P.
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 3:32 PM
To: Starcher, Michael J.; Collins, Monica P.
Subject: Conversation with Starcher, Michael J.

 

Collins, Monica P. [3:15 PM]:

Michael, do you have any dealings with Partners?

Starcher, Michael J. [3:29 PM]:

I have an application or two ON partners, but I don't work with Partners itself

Collins, Monica P. [3:30 PM]:

I figured it out.

Starcher, Michael J. [3:30 PM]:

ok - sorry for not being able to respond sooner

Collins, Monica P. [3:30 PM]:

no worries; I'll probably remember it better this way anyway lol.

FW: Conversation with Brown, Tony E.

Tony's accolade actually makes me feel good, especially after the way the day started.

 

Thanks ….

 

From: Collins, Monica P. [mailto:collinsm@aafes.com]
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 3:27 PM
To: Brown, Tony E.; Collins, Monica P.
Subject: Conversation with Brown, Tony E.

 

Collins, Monica P. [3:10 PM]:

Tony, do you have a moment, please?

Brown, Tony E. [3:10 PM]:

yes

Collins, Monica P. [3:18 PM]:

I think that I just figured it out.  The spreadsheet is xlsx.  Let me try changing it to xls and see if that is the problem.

Brown, Tony E. [3:18 PM]:

ok

Collins, Monica P. [3:26 PM]:

woo-hoo!  that was it!!

Brown, Tony E. [3:26 PM]:

good for you!

I hate that I have to do this. (pt. 2)

I’m sure that suggestions to myself such as the previous one are only coming to my brain because I have just been chastised for some transgression.  Why can’t I ever think of them when things are going good?

I hate that I have to do this.

Just now, while going through menu screens to set up a job to be submitted, I yet again noticed an error on the main menu page that I have been meaning to tell George about.  As I usually do, I was about to interrupt what I was in the middle of doing and instead send the email to George, with screen prints and everything.  What I should have immediately thought to do was to write down a quick note to tell George about the problem (since I only remember it when I am actually again looking that menu page, and I’m usually about to go to that selection; any other time, it does not cross my mind).  I had to actually make myself close the opened email that I was about to type and instead create a digital post-it.  (big sigh) I wonder if it will ever become second nature for me to write down the things that I think to do while I am in the middle of something else instead of interrupting whatever it is that I am doing to go and do that other thing.  Writing into these journals should probably be the only time that I allow myself to interrupt myself, however even then I could probably apply the same rule and just write the subject of the journal entry on the post-it and then expand on it later.  (Big sigh).

A repeat of the Retek project

Here we go again.  Concerns were raised because I have so far not had as much output for the Easytrieve conversions as the others in the group have.  Shit.

I should be a little forgiving of myself

After all, I have gone over two weeks without Lithium.

 

This is one of the reasons why

Over an hour spent reading, on subjects that didn’t need to have that much time devoted to them.

 

Lithium and Strattera

I will be glad when Friday is here, so that I can get my Lithium refilled.  I had figured that I would do halfway ok, since I did have Strattera to take, however that did not seem to be the case.  I have continued to be much too hyper of course, and all that the Strattera is accomplishing is that I come back to my interrupted train of thought that much faster.  The interruptions, however, are still there, the biggest pain in the ass about my personal version of these maladies.

 

Wall-E revisited

I’m still watching this movie nearly every workday at least once, along with several Star Trek episodes. 

 

Thanks ….

 

Monica Collins

Appl Sys Prog Analyst I

Information Technology Directorate

Army & Air Force Exchange Service

214-312-2353 

collinsm@aafes.com

Visit our online store! www.shopmyexchange.com

 

 

Working

Yesterday, while trying to work from home, I kept interrupting myself, mostly by watching Red Dwarf on my PC at the same time.  Today, along with getting one too many IM interruptions, I’m checking out some YouTube videos.  (big sigh).

 

'Stable Environment'

For most of the last month, while working on this conversion project, I have been working alone in a contractor’s lab.  The entire group was supposed to be working in here, but people have gone back and forth between working in here and working at their own desks.  Steve, the guy running the project, had said that he wanted to have everyone in here, on the very least while we are starting out.  That never really happened.  Hell, even he has gone back to his desk; he hasn’t been in here in maybe three weeks.  I’ve decided to stay in here while this project is going on.  I usually have to give a fairly long spiel to explain to people why I am working in here.  While I was just talking to Adrian, he summed it up into a very succinct phrase: I like having a stable environment to work in.  That explanation is perfect.  I even wrote it down and stuck it on my wall.  The next time that someone asks me the question, I will simply point to it and tell them that they could have the long explanation or the short explanation and I decided to be nice and give them the latter.

 

I noticed that it has also helped by having others know that by my not being at my desk, I am not available to work on just anything.  It even kind of reminds yourself of that fact.  I think that Steve had mentioned some to that effect, too.

January has started

I worked late last night.  I have until the end of January to get all of my goal items completed, so I will be putting in a lot of (unpaid) overtime this month to get the courses and assignments completed.  Also, I will need to put in some time on this Easytrieve Conversion project.  Since the conversion project will take up all of my time during the day, my evenings will be filled with catching up as much as I can on my other assignments.

 

OK, enough time wasted

I just spent maybe an hour and a half (maybe 2, not really sure) album shopping at one of my favorite two sites.  It’s amazing what a sale does to the average sale-lover; way, way worse for me and those of like-minded, er, ‘values’.