At my second startup we had to keep track of how many hours we worked each week. The justification was vague: something to do with a client contract. The numbers each week were public so things got competitive. Developers began working even crazier hours – noone wanted to be thought of as a slacker. As anyone who has tried to sustain ultra-long work hours knows, things got bad over time: more mistakes were made, people lived in their offices, the place started to smell, external relationships were strained, people got sick easily and still came into the office infecting co-workers, etc. The sad thing was that management didn’t recognize that there was a problem. People wanted someone to say “hey, it’s okay, you can ease up!” but they didn’t. By the time burn-out set in, the level of resentment of the managment team was huge. ...

Once there was a Cat. She was an old, wise Cat. Cat came to the department. The programmers didn’t like Cat. Cat made them work and be honest. “Tell me the Truth!” said Cat. So they told her the truth. The managers didn’t like Cat, either. “Don’t tell us the truth!” said the managers. The managers were sad. They needed to be done. “Done, done, done by Christmas!” they said. ...

Talked to Phil last night about that 1990 325is…got within $150 of buying the car, but I’m at the high end of my price range. After Tax, Title, License, and the “VIN Inspection” at the sheriff’s ofice, it’ll be an extra $350. More bad news: Insurance on E30’s is just as bad as the MINI, while insuring a vehicle for a whopping $2500. Yike.

Didn’t get the Knoxville E30, but the Lord had pretty much prep’d me for that…had a strong feeling in church that wasn’t going to fly. Feeling a VERY strong tug towards the 325is up in Cincy; I called the local BMW experts here in Lex and they said they’d never heard of 1990 M20 needed a headgasket repair. Taking a hard look at the car budget and trying to figure out what I could offer the guy / what I could afford.

With only hours until the end of our Ebay auction, Bella and I went up to look at a BMW in Cincy: Awesome little car…mint condition (almost), owned by a former autocrosser + racer. It’s his wife’s car, and you can tell she really doesn’t want to part with it. Negatives: - Hasn’t had the head-gasket done, though I’m researching prices on it right now… - “smells like an old car” - wheel + tire combo isn’t as nice as the one in Knoxville. - price is pretty high for what it is. ...

Today was the first big milestone on our path to being debt free: We paid off all our credit cards, and we paid-off the Olds Intrigue. Our 5-year-old car is now officially paid for! W0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000T!

:-) I’m currently the highest bidder on a 1990 325is down in Maryville, TN (outside Knoxville). Whitney and I have been drooling over this car for days now, and we finally decided to bid on it this morning. I bid it up enough to get rid of the “Buy it now,” so it’s just a waiting game at this point. I think we’ll head down there and inspect it Saturday. I’m excited, and a bit frightened. This is what I’ve wanted, but the price is rather high.

Hmm…I’ve been to a German-speaking country, I’d like to learn a bit of the language, and there’s a Free German language series on the internet. Niiiice.

Just in case you wanted another gander: Here it is..

Typically, when you see a title like that, I’m being sarcastic. Not today…yesterday was tiring but awesome with me spending two hours splashing around in the pool w/Joey, then enjoying a great dinner casserole from Whitney, then getting TWO people very interested in buying the MINI! Then this morning…crisp and beautiful, with the rising sun lighting the drowsy world, and AirOne on 95.3 blasting dcTalk’s “Jesusfreak” on the radio. Ah, to feel alive again! ...

at least two more interested parties in the MINI. :-) Should have it sold by the weekend, hopefully! One guy’s from Louisville, the other from Williamson, WV.

So, around 4:30 Friday, busily trying to make the UBS server work as advertised, I heard something go ’tink-tink'. Now, UBS’s tech building is a huge cube-farm, arrayed around a central stack of elevators. “Conference rooms” in such an environment are just a big cube with a conference table. So, I swivelled my head left and saw the WHOLE AREA around a table, two cubes over. Okay, I figured…birthday party or something. ...

Were the last few days a dream? I collapsed last night at 9:45 and woke-up 12 hours later sore everywhere and feeling hung-over. Charlie and I calculated that we got 7 hours of sleep in 3 days, and I think it just caught up with me. Had some awful dreams, too: Something about Whitney & I owning one of those 100-year-old turret houses downtown G’town, and then 25 or so kids coming to stay with us from Hurricane Katrina, then her spending all our money while I was in Zurich on a new refridgerator.?.? ...

Mushing along at only 486 MPH, headwinds blocking us all the way. As restful and serene as our last trip was, this is a cattle-car. Seems like every coach seat is taken, and I’m seated in the middle of the 767 off the left Aisle. Turbulence has people getting airsick and the ‘fasten seatbelts sign’ constantly illuminated. Ugh. At least we ARE going home today. For most of yesterday’s marathon, 8am to 1:30am session, it looked like we hade no end of problems and that we’d have to stay through monday or deep into next week to solve their problems. However, we caught some breaks in the afternoon, and again in the evening, culminating in a successful test at 1:30. If we did the same procedures 10 times, probably 9 out of those 10 times, UBS would’ve demanded us to stay. ...

Hungry and frustrated. The bed was comfortable (it was a BED, not an airplane seat…yay!), but Im still jet-lagged. Need…coffee… India didn’t come through for me (at least, not yet). We’re due @ UBS around 8am, and we haven’t eaten yet. Met some interesting people yesterday…Kurt, the guy w/cool blue eyes and a quick smile who seems to be under a great deal of pressure, Yvonne the 6-foot-tall middle aged gal who’s our main contact. All were nice, and UBS seems much like any other large corporation, when you get down to it–cubes and politics and processes to follow for everything. ...

Midnight Thursday, Zurich time, 30k feet above the earth, in a 767 going 500 mph 6400 miles…that’s what it is roughly from Atlanta to Zurich, and this ultra-mobile cylinder is eating them up smothly so far. They’ve just done first food service, announcing we’re to be in the air long enough (8+ hours) that we’ll be having dinner AND breakfast on this flight. Yikes. What has me here? Stupidity, mostly…the customer saved their mission-critical issues for last, and their rollout of Lexmark printers is due Friday, one way or another. So, $6k worth of last-minute tickets has C and I headed over to Switzerland. ...

Guy1: Hey, I’m buying an engagement ring! I just paid cash for a Mazda Miata, and I won’t be able to do all the car stuff I want to do in the coming year, but at least I will be getting laid more often, for a while anyway. Guy2: Do you have that in writing? * * * :-)

Randomness: - Kentucky lost in a worthy effort. Joey woke-up from his nap in time to half-watch the game w/10 mins to go in the 2nd. Not a great game, but a great performance from a mediocre team. Once Morris fouled-out, I knew we were done, but Sparks almost pulled it out. - Yesterday was yard-work day, as Joey and I went out and honey-did: Put down pre-emergent, fertilizer, covered Whitney’s flowers against the frost, pruned the rat’s-nest of our pear trees, and swept the front porch. Not warm enough to do much else, but Spring is a-coming. ...

One of the hallmarks of my experience in Christianity is my response to the ‘Peace be with you’ ‘How you doing’ moment. In the Catholic mass, there’s a portion where you turn to your neighbor(s) and say ‘Peace be with you’. In many Protestant services (such as ours at Northside Christian), we have a ‘Greet your neighbor’ portion of the service. Until very recently, these moments scared the hell out of me. ...

Read this thread and then tell me you want to finance a car ever again… * * * There are more things in MarkVision than are dreamed of in your philosophy -- David Jarvis Well, fewer things in 11.0 than in 10.2 ::grin::, but still a bazillion neat little features.