365 #34 - Comme ci...comme ca

Tuesday, February 7

Today I am thankful for yet another awesome boss.

I enjoyed working for my boss at Nikon.  He was awesome.  Certainly one of the 2 or 3 best there.  Today I learned with conviction that my boss here is awesome, too.  Possibly awesomer.

It was an early day - I was at the IBM plant at 6:20.  My co-manager met me at the door, showed me how to get dressed in IBM's version of the bunny suit, and we went to passdown.  My guys were there.  My boss and co-manager decided that it would make sense to split the field engineers basically into front half and back half.  I will get the front half, the guys who work Sun-Tue and every other Wednesday.  At passdown, the night shift is finished, and they tell the day shift what happened.  Day shift asks questions, and then the night shift goes home and the day shift starts to get work done.  Along the way, I got a fab tour, and saw the machines I'm responsible for for the first time.  I thought back to my time in other factories.  That's what those machines were doing!

We went from meeting to meeting, finished about 9:30.  9:30-noon was spent in accomplishing what I could on my new hire training.  Still had a lot of access and connection problems.  I had a training class noon-1, and then took a lunch break and talked with my brother.  After lunch, my boss had time and energy to get me set up.  I had 6 different issues, each requiring tweaks, phone calls, and solutions.  By 3pm they were all fixed.  She is awesome.


So I started my training - lots of videos to watch.  Some of it is well-done, some of it is written so high-falutin' that it doesn't have meaning.  And of course, it is narrated by actual employees.  Some of them are engaging, and some aren't.  But I finished a couple of them.  And by this time, I knew I had to make a stop at the Wal-Mart pharmacy for dinner.

I stepped out of the office, and saw real clouds for the first time here.  The sun was gone behind the hills, and gave them just a bit of color.  And I realized that I have already started taking the natural environment here for granted.  My commute from the hotel to work is all of 8 minutes.  The first half mile is ugly.  And then I'm on a country road with some other cars, doing 45 through the forest, with a farm home every once in a while.  There are hills everywhere - no flat farmland here.   And the hills do not have condos on them.  They have trees.

And, honestly, I was tired and desperate for photos.  I began suspecting I had a sinus infection last night.  Today I made a quick trip to WebMD.com and found that I have the exact symptoms for a mild sinus infection.  And I am also certain that that is what my doctor was checking for on Friday.  The only problem is that it has gotten worse since Friday.  So I drove to the hotel, got the Z-max prescription he gave me "just in case" and headed to Wal-Mart.  They take Nikon insurance.  So I sat down and waited.  40 minutes later, I left the store, confident for the first time in a week that I would feel significantly better in 2 days.  This pond is outside my hotel.  The grass is covered in goose poop.  At least there are some things that won't change vis-a-vis Oregon.


With my prescription in hand, I walked to my room, removed my pills from their foils, and made my dinner: voila!  Antioxidants, vitamin C, Azithromyacin, and pseudo-ephedrine!  What could be better?  So now my blog is done, and it's nearly 8.  My plan for tomorrow is to knock out a bunch more trainings in the morning, talk with a mortgage bank before lunch, and then I have meetings from 1-5.   It's been a bit of a see-saw day - some things not working that should, and those things getting fixed.  My health feeling worse, and now has a prospect of getting better.  Good night!