Sunday, May 26, 2024

RTO

My where-we-work has always been interesting.

My first job, I was still in college in Seattle. The company was still forming. I was the first officially hired employee (the other two founders still had their day jobs elsewhere and were working with a company somewhere else who wanted to fund the whole operation).  I worked from my dorm room or the library or the computer lab until I graduated and they paid me to move to L.A.  Then I worked from my apartment until we had an office. Sometimes before we had an office, people came to my apartment for meetings.

Then I worked for a church in L.A. and I had an office. I had a few volunteers who worked with/for me, some of whom would come into the office, some of whom would do all their work remotely from home. I had a few different places where I could go and work, so sometimes I'd go and hide when I wanted to get stuff done without interruption.

Then I worked for a large non-profit in Seattle. Most of us were in the office, but I did have one person who reported to me who worked remotely from Colorado. And later an outsourced team in India who would do work overnight and I'd have a call early in the morning to accept the completed work back. We had a few buildings and I walked to a lot of in-person meetings. 

After that, an agency in Seattle. Our clients were everywhere from the floor above us to a few blocks away or even L.A. or Chicago. We did a lot of voice calls, but also a lot of email.

Then I got hired by a company in L.A. and they proposed that within a year they'd move me back to L.A.  They would fly me down monthly and I'd work in the office for a few days. I had my own desk and sometimes I wouldn't really have need to interact with anyone while I was there. My supervisor didn't have any impact on my day-to-day work and the person who directed a lot of my work sat on a different floor and never came down to our floor. The rest of the people we worked with were at an agency in San Francisco.  So we'd have some voice calls, but it was mostly email. 

Then I moved down, worked out of the office, we reorganized so that we were situated together in a quad with other people who had the same direct report as me and I started getting connected with people at work. I eventually had people reporting to me and we had our own quad. We did start having daily standups on another floor as we took more of the work inhouse from the agency.

Then I moved to a company that was only in-office. Remote work wasn't permitted at all. Until COVID, then everything changed, they started hiring people all over the country and we worked for several years with people we'd never met in person.

Until I left and started working remotely for a company in Utah. Most of the people I worked with were situated in D.C. and so I regularly went to the D.C. office and rarely Utah. Lots of Teams(etc.) calls. After COVID, they called nearly everyone back to the office so now I work remotely and have someone who reports to me in the office and someone I've never met in person who lives in Indianapolis. And I'm regularly on calls with people in D.C., Utah, Indianapolis, New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado and other places people whose location I'm not sure of.  

I had a point when I started writing this. For a moment, I had forgotten it, but now I remember.

I was thinking today about this while I was at church - remotely, of course. The church is in Ann Arbor but there's a big contingent of people who attend remotely, whether from Ann Arbor or from other places.  People today were talking about Lansing and Kansas City and one woman who said "northwest Nebraska" is as specific as she can get as the local gas station has a sign that says "You are nowhere" and there's nothing near where she lives to speak of that would give anyone a sense of location.  

Anyhow, all this to say we had an online discussion after the call and I kind of lurked without saying much.  Sometimes it is hard to put myself out there and speak up. That's a challenge when I am expected to think on my feet for a living, but sometimes if the focus of the meeting isn't on me, it's easier to just listen, or to offer up a comment in chat, letting others read what I have to say and then inviting me to expand on it, or affirming or contradicting my thoughts. I didn't feel like I could necessarily relate to the conversation so I didn't want to derail it with my thoughts. Sometimes I feel like this at work - that if I jump in, I might derail things. So sometimes I add things in chat. And it works really well. Someone will read it, call attention to it, affirm (or contradict it) and ask me to elaborate. Then it flows, I've contributed and I haven't derailed or stepped on anyone else.

If we were in person, we have less of a chance for side-conversations or to line-up potential future conversations in chat even when it may benefit the overall conversation. Sometimes you want to ask another person in the meeting if they're feeling the same way you are, so that if you do speak up with an opposing viewpoint you know you won't be out there alone - or to at least vet your thoughts and know more about why you're on your own - and if it's worth bringing up in the larger group setting, or later individually, or not at all. Because if you're on your laptop or phone in the meeting, too many people assume that it's unrelated to the meeting or because they had side-conversations and assume it's counter-productive or negative about them.

I remember the leader of Zoom saying he believes everyone should be in person (of Zoom!) because he liked the give and take of live meetings and people talking over each other and the rapid nature of live conversations, that everyone is too polite in zoom calls. But what I remember from live meetings with everyone in the room is that there is a real risk of monopolization by the extroverts and the bombastic and the narcissists. If you only value the opinions of the loudest talkers in the rooms - the ones who are fine to talk over people, then by all means, force everyone into this model. But when you do, you lose the opinions, insight and perspectives of the quiet, the meet, the thoughtful, the introspective, the introverts, the polite and the processors. 

I don't mean myself, I mean the many people I have worked with over the years who were brilliantly quiet, who did not put themselves out there - but when you talked to them one-on-one or when you conversed in Slack or email, when you gave them advanced notice that you wanted and welcomed their engagement and then made it easy for them to engage, they shone, and we all benefited from it.

But if you only want the loudest voices, the ones that are happy to tell you what they think unsolicited, the ones who are confident and self-assured that they are the smartest person in the room, the ones who are energized by the sound of their own voice, the ones who know you have nothing better to do than to drop everything when they wander by your desk, by all means, shove everyone back into the office.

Friday, May 24, 2024

Delta

 I have done way too much research, but I'm changing my preferred airline from Delta to American.

Growing up in Seattle, it had been mostly Alaska. There was some Southwest thrown in there, but I hadn't really ever given it a lot of thought.

I've come to learn over the years that I never want to try Spirit, but weren't all airlines the same?  I hadn't been a regular flier.  Maybe a conference each year and then there was a period where I was working remotely and had to go into the office a few days each month so that meant a lot of flying.

But in my current job, I'm flying 5 or 6 times a year. When I did my first flight, I guess I picked American because of the time of day, but since then, I've been doing my research.

First off, all of my coworkers are flying from Salt Lake, so they take Delta. They keep telling me how great Delta is. When I go to Salt Lake, I take Delta, but it's fake Delta and it's eh. 

I recently took Avelo for a family trip and was surprised - there was more leg room than American and the seats were more comfortable. 

So I've started looking more closely at Delta. So far, I've only found two negatives:

The flight I'd take would be at 8 am from LAX instead of 1 pm.  It would get in sooner, but that long drive to LAX would be much earlier in the day.  And the credit card is $150/yr instead of American's $99/yr (which they seem to have forgotten to charge me for this year).  

But from what I can tell, Delta has wider seats, more padding in the seats, more leg room, free wifi, seat back screens (they're working to make it possible to extend cast your phone to the screen meaning you could work from the plane with just your phone and a bluetooth keyboard, instead of your laptop).  They apparently have better food choices as well.

On the negative side for American, I just keep reading more and more negative things. Like how they give new flight attendants a letter they can use to help apply for food stamps (because American pays so poorly).  Delta doesn't have a union because their flight attendants have never voted to unionize.

Delta's mechanics are so good at their jobs that they do maintenance work for other airlines - they do lots of the type of work mechanics enjoy, leaving the less fun urgent stuff to local airline mechanics.

American seems to be trying to be OK.  Delta just seems to be trying to be great.  Time to listen to my coworkers. Why did it take so long for me to listen to my coworkers? Because I have points. It's amazing how much stuff like that mentally locks you in.

Also, American's auditors are KPMG. KPMG is bad.

If anything here is wrong, it's just a mistake in my research.


Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Begrudging

 It's been way too long since I posted. It's been on my to do list and at this moment, it's the least undesirable thing on the list, so I guess it sort of wins. 

It's been a whirlwind. We were working on renovating my wife's mom's kitchen.  And then my wife's brother died. So we all flew to Boise. It went better than expected, but I didn't actually get to attend the service because it was too overwhelming for Ben. But he still did well on the planes and in the new place and we have to make any apologies to the AirBNB host for broken/damaged stuff, so that's good.

Less than 24 hours after we flew back, I was on another plane for DC. And then right after I got back, my wife and our other child were off on a planned bonding vacation. We also had a tree removed because it had broken and was leaning on our neighbor's house and some plumbing work done last week. Then there was a scare over the weekend that maybe my mother-in-law's refrigerator was dying, but everything seems OK again for the moment.  So this is the first "normal" week in awhile and I'm here for it. I've slept poorly the last few nights, but then that's not all that unusual. Well, normal if not for annual meetings with the school district and with my financial advisor and an industry peer has asked to get on my calendar. So it's still overwhelming.  5 hours of meetings today.  Bleh.

I've been working on the brick path to my mother-in-law's apartment and trying to get more drywall up on the ceiling in my office, but we have not yet returned to working on the kitchen. All the new cabinets are assembled and sitting on our back porch.  

Preparing for a trip to Salt Lake next month and already planning for the DC trip after that. Thankfully not doing the annual trip to Chicago this week.

I just want to sleep.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

120: Yellow

It had to have been on sale for a really good price, right? As much as he hated his neighbors, were they really the type of asshole who would buy a car that color? Why would anyone buy a car that color? It wasn't quite the color of a banana. It wasn't quite the color of mustard. It wasn't even the color of a yellow caution sign. It just lay there. An uninspired, ugly, boring annoying color. 

The bright color made one think of a toy, but this would be one of those toys that languished on the shelf, a depressing, uninspired color that drained the life from you just to look, improving with each layer of dust until it was shoved to the very back of the shelf and hidden behind a collection of stuffed animals. The stuffed animals hadn't been placed there. They'd just sort of migrated to that spot to hide that ugly toy.

And there it was, parked on the street, always in the corner of his peripheral vision.

How did it even come to be? In an era where car manufacturers only painted in blacks and grays and whites and dealers purchased an even more limited selection, who looked at a soiled diaper and thought "I want a color even less pleasing to the eye?"  Was there a mistake in the factory? Had the mixing machine had a failed software patch or a broken spray nozzle? Was this the winning bet in a "design a truly hideous paint color" contest?  Was the purchase itself even a part another bet?  Did someone win because the car sold at all?

Snapping his fingers he thought maybe he finally had it - perhaps his neighbors were colorblind. Yes, that must be it, he thought to himself. Perhaps they could only see in shades of gray. Perhaps the color was a nice gray, like battleship painted in eggshell with several clearcoats. That helped. Now he felt sorrow and pity for these pool colorblind neighbors and at the same time envy - they must have no idea how disgustingly banal their infectious ooze-colored car was.

Sill, he decided that was no consolation - the car would probably never be hit. Unless its color drove someone to madness, in typical everyday driving, it was more likely that anyone that looked it at would reflexively jerk the wheel away, causing the car to blissfully drive down the street leaving revulsion and collisions in its wake.

Monday, January 01, 2024

Happy Meh Year


I read somewhere that if this were the 1900s, I'd have reached the average lifespan for my gender and race. But I guess with advancements in science and medicine, now my age only puts me at 66% completion based on the current averages. I guess we're supposed to be grateful.  

So, I guess around we go again. 

I have this thing about thermostats.  I think they should only be set to numbers like 70, 72, 75, 78 or 80.  Any other numbers and you're just being too picky.  I guess if I apply that years as well then I suppose I should plan to be back here in another year making another post because 2024 is a non-number. Hopefully that means we can make it a bit of a quiet year.  I don't know if that's possible with the election coming up later this year, but I'm not running for office and my vote doesn't count, so what do I care?

I don't want to stand out, I don't want to make a name for myself, I don't want to make waves. I don't want any big changes. I really want this year to be meh. It feels like I get more and more tired so if we can just have a nice quiet non-year that's my goal. I'll read some books, lose some weight (hopefully) and see some home improvement projects completed (office fully drywalled and possibly ceilinged, a door professionally installed where we're missing one currently, a tree removed, pickets added to the front porch, maybe some furniture built), but yeah, I really want an unimpressive, quiet, under-the-radar year.

Here's to meh.

Sunday, July 09, 2023

Organizing my Gmail

 With a little bit of help from ChatGPT and trial-and-error, I have a script that helps me keep my Gmail accounts more organized.  

I have five labels:

**0**, **1**, **2**, **3** and **4**

What the script does:

For mail over 12 hours old, add label **0** and **1**

For mail over 30 days old, remove label **1** and add label **2**

For mail over 90 days old, remove label **2** and add label **3**

For mail over 1 year old, remove label **3** and add label **4**

For any mail that's read, flip it back to unread.

It runs every hour.  (Label **0** is a holdover from something else and it's less important.)


Anyhow, this allows new emails to come into my inbox and if I deal with them right away (that is, I delete them), then everything's good.  If it's not something I can handle right away, it moves out of the inbox.  

It means when I open my mail on my phone, it's never going to be overwhelming, it's just going to be the new stuff.  (I have other filters that move a lot of commercial/bulk mail out of the inbox right away because I don't need to be alerted about sales coupons.)


function processEmails() {
var threads = GmailApp.search("older_than:1y label:**3** -in:trash -in:sent -is:chat");

for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var thread = threads[i];
thread.addLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**4**"));
thread.removeLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**3**"));
}

var threads = GmailApp.search("older_than:90d label:**2** -in:trash -in:sent -is:chat");

for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var thread = threads[i];
thread.addLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**3**"));
thread.removeLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**2**"));
}

var threads = GmailApp.search("older_than:30d label:**1** -in:trash -in:sent -is:chat");

for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var thread = threads[i];
thread.addLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**2**"));
thread.removeLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**1**"));
}

var threads = GmailApp.search("older_than:12h -label:**0** -in:trash -in:sent -is:chat ");

for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
var thread = threads[i];
thread.addLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**0**"));
thread.addLabel(GmailApp.getUserLabelByName("**1**"));
thread.moveToArchive();
}

var query = "is:read -in:trash -in:sent -is:chat"; // Replace with your desired query
var threads = GmailApp.search(query);
threads.forEach(function(thread) {
var messages = thread.getMessages();
messages.forEach(function(message) {
message.markUnread();
});
});


}



To use this script, follow these steps:
  1. Open your Gmail account in a web browser.
  2. Click on the gear icon in the top right corner and select "View all settings".
  3. Go to the "Advanced" tab.
  4. Scroll down to the "Desktop notifications" section and enable the "Allow external programmatic access to Gmail" option.
  5. Click "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.
  6. Open the Google Apps Script editor by visiting https://script.google.com/.
  7. Create a new script file and replace the default content with the script provided above.
  8. Save the script and give it a name (e.g., "EmailProcessor").
  9. Click on the clock icon in the toolbar to set up a time-driven trigger.
  10. Configure the trigger to run the processEmails function at your desired interval (e.g., every hour, every day).
  11. Save the trigger and confirm any necessary permissions.
The script will now run automatically based on the trigger you set up and perform the specified actions on your Gmail messages. Make sure to review and adjust the script as needed before deploying it to your Gmail account.

Saturday, July 01, 2023

Evil Pastors

AN INCOMPLETE POST - MAY CONTAIN SPELLING ERRORS, INCOMPLETE/CONTRADICTORY THOUGHTS.

ORIGINALLY STARTED IN JULY 2017.  

WILL POST AUTOMATICALLY ON JULY 1, 2023 IF I DON'T DO ANYTHING OR IF I DIE BEFORE THEN.

A friend of mine recently posted this (An Open Latter to My Parents' Pastor, Carrie Surbaugh, 07/13/2017) on Facebook. Surbaugh came out last year as a lesbian after years of trying to deny it. She has been active in church her entire life and even recently preached at her church. Her parents have been very involved in their church. But now, after some very public condemnation from the pulpit, her parents feel that they must leave that church.

There was a smattering of comments in response to his post and I felt compelled to weigh in (when am I not?).  I wanted to later share it with Lori but couldn't find it and worried they'd deleted the entire post.  Finally found it a few days later.  Posting a version of it here.

This (Carrie's letter) is a sad letter. Nearly every church I have ever attended has demanded we take a "side" on the issue - either homosexuality is (a) a sin or (b) it is a sin and you're sinning for trying to say it isn't and you should leave because you're not being honest and you don't agree with us.

I'll be honest. For decades I've wrestled the whole notion of whether homosexuality was a personal choice or something someone had no control over, any more than they could choose (at birth) their parents, their gender or their race.  But it was only a theoretical question.

For a long time I was on the other "side" of this argument - for that's what it is - the church demands we take a "side" and then we are either welcome or unwelcome depending on the church. I believed homosexuality to be a sin.

We seize upon this "sin" (if it is one) and hold it up as separate, distinct, more grievous while we all continue in sins of our own. Confident in our salvation, quick to shame and condemn this one particular sin because it's one we ourselves can never see ourselves engaging in.

And that's not love. If you believe it is a sin and someone can be saved from a life of it (hush, I'm trying to make a point), we don't do that by casting them out into the darkness. We do it by showing the light and love of God and making a sinner decide "I want that life."

A person has to be pretty out of touch not to know that those who don't identify hetero struggle, often in silence.

To preach against this sin from the pulpit isn't a charge the "sinner" to repent, it's a wink and a nod to the rest of the congregation that it's ok to continue to be hard-hearted.