Trip to Duluth
February 11, 2008
Jenn and I went to Duluth this weekend for our three year anniversary. The first thing we did was go see our old house in proctor. The place looked like hell, just like it did when we lived there. Then we went and checked into our hotel and headed to east Duluth to see our old apartment. The front door was locked but the back door was open, as it was when we lived there, so we went in. We found our way into the laundry room and I was surprised to see that the hangers I left there over two years ago were still there
I thought for sure someone would have taken them by now.
We went to breakfast the next day with Rod and Heather. I wanted Tara to come out too but she lives in Ely (two hours from Duluth) and hates me so she stayed home =/
Spackle came with us but didn’t have much fun since he spent the majority of his time in the hotel watching HBO
Topics: Places I Went, Stuff I Saw | 2 Comments »
Monster Trucks
January 20, 2008
Jenn and I were bored yesterday so we went to the Metrodome to see monster trucks.
It was nuts!
Topics: Places I Went, Stuff I Saw | 1 Comment »
A Super Post
December 17, 2007
Since leaving Freeze I never really took the time to write out why it sucked so much to work there. Luckily for you, my former co-worker Chris did. You can read all about it if you Click Here.
UPDATE: For some reason Chris shut down his blog so here is the text as it appeared on his site
IT Professional the Right Way
So I have started a new job for a new company in the past week. I will not name companies because I don’t believe they have to be mentioned. People who I have worked with in the past know my past companies I have worked for.
I have worked under four IT managers
in the past 8 years and 2 of them were good. Thankfully, one of those four managers I am currently working for. The first IT manager I worked for was a terrible manager, knew very little about IT topics and refused to listen to his staff. The company I worked for at the time had a CTO that saw something had to be done with this manager for the good of the company and the good of the IT dept. This IT manager was moved to another department and I got a new IT manager. He was a great manager in my opinion, he listened to his IT staff, he empowered his IT staff, and he backed his IT staff. I learned a lot from him, how to manage people, how to handle day to day politics, how to get things done.I loved working at this company for this manager, I unfortunately had to leave this company because the they were bought out. I moved to another company in the area that sounded great. With their talks of bonuses, trips, and free pop. In the interviews the IT manager talked about how cutting edge they were and all of the huge projects they were working on. I joined their team, moved into the lead Network Administrator position. From the first week that I was working for this new company I knew there were issues in the department.
My first week another Network Administrator quit without notice basically saying he could not work another day under this particular IT manager. In the following weeks I saw blow-up after blow-up of different IT employees when they had run-ins with their manager. Things rolled along somewhat ok for the first 6 months I was there because we were really busy. The company was building a new corporate building and we need to set it all up. Once we moved into the new building and really settled in the issues that had been brewing really started to explode. More and more highly stressed blowouts were occurring among staff. It got to the point where a number of staff went to the COO about it.
The environment at this company in the IT Dept continued to degrade, projects of all kinds broke down. Nothing new got approved without overly drawn out battles with the IT manager. Projects pushed by the manager just wasted everyone’s time. Larger project would get restarted halfway through by the manager and shifted from person to person throughout the staff. The entire department basically lost the will to work, a 2nd person in upper management was involved with the issues and still nothing change. IT personnel started to jump ship, 9 of the 11 staff within 9 months. A 3rd person in upper management was involved and still nothing changed.
It is my opinion that a bad manager is a bad manager, it doesn’t matter what training you send them to or how many discussions you have with them. You can micro-manage them and still they will be a poor manager. Their staff will know this and once the staff loses all respect for their manager the game is over the department has broken down. You can do one of two things as upper management, you can ignore the reality and try to fix the manager, you can hope it gets better, even throw money at it. The other thing you can do it make the hard move, replace the manager, hopefully before too much damage is done.
Thankfully the first company I worked for that had a terrible boss realized what needed to be done and was able to turn around the dept almost overnight. Instead the second company decided to look the other way as their department was decimated by the in battles between staff and management. Is the feelings of one person that much greater than the lives of 9 others and the stability of the company as a whole?
To my fellow past co-workers: Brad, Brye, John, Mike, Mike, Allen, Chee, Calvin, and Josh good luck in the future. I am sure your future jobs will be brighter than you past. Garry I hope things can turn around there before things are too late for you.
As for myself I look to the future and it shows great potential at my new company. I have seen in only my first 5 days that things are back to the way they should be. I am getting things done, getting projects moved forward and making a difference. My boss listens to my opinions and has faith in his staff.
Topics: Stuff I Saw | No Comments »
A Very Long Thanksgiving
November 25, 2007
This year we decided to spend thanksgiving in South Dakota with Jenns family. Jenn, Spackle and I left for Sioux Falls Thursday morning and went to dinner at Jenns grandmas that evening. On Friday Jenn and I left around noon to go shopping and left Spackle at her brothers house where we spent the night. Later that day around 5PM we got a call from Jenns sister In-law, someone had left the door open and Spackle ran away; In the middle of the city, at the beginning of rush hour, two blocks away from an interstate. Jenn and I drove back and started looking for him. We searched until 2am without any luck. We went inside and made a flier and spent two hours posting a hundred of them around town.
Dead tired, we slept for maybe two hours and went back to searching and posting fliers until the sun came up. Once 8am rolled around we went to the shelters and animal clinics to see if maybe someone had found him. No one had. We went back to searching. Finally around 4pm (23 hours after he ran away) animal control called, they had him in custody. We picked him up and he was in pretty rough shape so we took him to the vet and they fixed him up with some bandages and a new collar
Spackle’s pretty pissed about the cone; I figure it’s a good punishment for running away.
Topics: Places I Went, Stuff I Saw, Things I Did | No Comments »
School is Complicated
October 22, 2007
I just finished a week long training thing at work. It was pretty intensive but in retrospect it probably wasn’t as hard as it seemed. Here is my fridge:
On the right is a paper Jenn had to write for a college class and on the left is a paper I had to write in my training class.
So Yea.
Topics: Places I Went, Things I Did | No Comments »
Broken Truck
October 7, 2007
I took my truck to a shop on Thursday to see what it would cost to get the brakes and exhaust fixed. They took a look at it and gave me a quote for almost $1,600 so on Friday I went to NAPA and picked up all the parts for under $400. It took me all day Saturday and half the day Sunday to replace the catalytic converter, muffler, rotors, pads, calipers, drums, shoes and springs. Since I saved $1,200 doing the job myself, I bought a desk to replace the one I burned last month.
Topics: Items I Bought, Things I Did | No Comments »
Too Many Boxes
September 30, 2007
Jenn and I are now completely moved into the new apartment. There are boxes everywhere and the dog stairs take up almost half the living room. It’ll be nothing but unpacking for me for quite some time.
Topics: Places I Went, Things I Did | No Comments »
Moving and Fire
September 1, 2007
Ever since I got my new job I couldn’t wait to get out of St. Cloud. I found a nice apartment that takes dogs and today was my first day of moving. While I was packing up all my stuff I realized my desk, which I had found on the side of a road about two years ago, was a piece of crap. So rather than transporting it to my new apartment; I drug it outside, stood it up on its end and set it on fire.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I don’t have a desk.
Hmm.
Topics: Things I Did | 1 Comment »
Tripping the TripSense
August 18, 2007
I have Progressive auto insurance and I’m signing up for the TripSense program. The TripSense is a device that plugs into your car’s ODB-II port and gathers data about your driving habits. After six months you attach the device to your computer and let it upload its findings to Progressive who supposedly gives a discount based on good habits like not speeding.
It has to be plugged in at all times or they won’t give you any discount. Here’s the catch; I would have to stop driving like a maniac! This is unacceptable. To solve this I built a bypass module so the TripSense thinks it’s plugged in but never gets any data, which will make it think the truck is off allowing me to drive recklessly and still get a discount. We’ll see if it works in about 6 months.
UPDATE: I got the full 15% discount, it works like a charm.
Topics: Crap I Built, Items I Bought | 1 Comment »
New Job
July 7, 2007
I have been at the new job for a week now and I absolutely love it. At first I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle working for a company thats managed properly, but somehow I’m pulling through. I understand that my last employer lost yet another member of the IT department. I really feel sorry for you guys, its got to be hard to get anything done with a staff of nearly 2½ people.
Where I work now, half of the building is office space and the other half is manufacturing. Ever since I left Ainsworth (Potlatch) Ive missed the manufacturing atmosphere. Knowing there was a chance I could get my fingers cut off was pretty exciting, and I get a similar feeling here knowing theres a chance I could get my fingers melted off in one of the soldering machines.
Awesome
Topics: Other Crap | 1 Comment »