Beverage Review: Coke Zero

Since switching to diet drinks, I have been trying to find Diet Coke with Splenda, but haven't been able to locate it yet. However, I stumbled across Coke Zero and decided to give it a shot.

Like Diet Coke, it also has aspartame, but also adds acesulfame potassium, whatever the hell that is, as a sweetener. I am sure it's good for you.

I have to say that it is much better than Diet Coke - there is hardly any aftertaste at all, and is very close to the taste of a regular Coke, but without the "mouth feel" of the full sugared version. I'll be sticking to this until I can find the Splenda version and do a side-by-side comparison.

There's Always Complications

Good News: My consulting client wants me full time

Bad News: There are "complications". They are not with the position, the manager, my location, or anything at the micro level, but rather a "high-level corporate issue". I know what it is, but can't say more than that in a public forum.

The good news inside the bad news is that if the bad news works out okay, the resulting position will have a lot more responsibilities than I first thought. The bad news inside the bad news is that the complications could result in them not needing me at all. The issue is supposedly going be worked out by the end of this week.

"Get Him On Board"

What the CEO said to the VP after my presentation. So I think it went well.

In the past, getting and taking a job offer wasn't that big deal: Husband got job offer. If he lived in a different area, he sold the house, pulled the kids from school, moved to the new house, and started the new job. As we enter the 21st century, a variety of things have created huge shifts in this model:

• The Working Spouse - Women are in the work force like never before, earning boat-loads of money and running their own businesses. If hubby gets a job, it is no small thing to move the wife away from a career - especially in the many cases where she earns more than he does.
• Insane Housing - I live in SoCal, which isn't cheap, but I bought in six years ago. And I am two miles from the ocean. The new job would be in Silicon Valley and there is no way I could afford a comparable house in NoCal that wasn't less than an hour from work and at least that far from the ocean.
• Schooling - My daughter may be only four years old, but we are shelling out relatively big bucks to send her to a private pre-school. If we were to move, the chances of getting her into a comparable preschool in a decent timeframe are nil. In upwardly mobile, highly populated areas, waiting lists for preschools, elementary schools, or anything outside of the dismal public school systems are unbelievably long.
• Technology - This is the plus side of the trend: the internet, cheap long distance, and cheap air travel has made working remotely easier than ever before.

So as I enter negotiations in the next day or so, the question isn't whether if I work remotely, it's how many days I work remotely. And this could be a deal killer since I have no plans to spend 4-5 days a week away from my family (and there are plenty of commuting workers that do just that). So let's hope that the manager is reasonable on the number of days each weeks he expects me to be "local".

Couldn't They Just Extend an Offer?

My GENESIS Consulting gig wraps up tomorrow with a final presentation to a group of people that includes the CEO and one of the Board of Directors (it's a public company). I finished the project last weekend, but yesterday a flurry of last minute changes came in based on what the Board Member is likely to ask, so instead of having a day to relax, I am suddenly in "crunch mode" revising everything. Goes with the territory.

The company asked me to stay over an extra day for a customer meeting, but told me "We want you to attend the meeting, but due to the nature of the discussion, we're not sure how the customer will take a consultant being in the room. Why don't you think about how to solve this problem."

The obvious solution would be to make me a full time employee. And sure enough, I noticed this morning a new req on their web site that wasn't there when I started the project:

Marketing Director - will be responsible for developing and implementing product plans and roadmaps in (my field of expertise) , including identifying target markets and customers, product positioning and messaging, competitive analysis, ROI tracking of portfolios, yada yada...

If they had added that they wanted someone good looking, it would match me exactly.

I suppose the way they're doing this they can see if I am interested first, but I think I would have preferred a hard sell. But with a hard sell they would lose the upper hand in salary negotiations. I'll see where this goes, but it looks like the dance has started.

There Are So Many Good Lines to Choose From

Ah, Office Space, one of the all-time great films about working. Jawa Report is having a "favorite line" contest, thanks to news from Prof Chaos that the movie is entering "real" cult status with midnight showings.

There are tons of lines from that movie that are classic, but one that keeps going through my head recently because of my present job situation:

Peter: What if 30 years from now we are doing the exact same thing?
Simir: It would be nice to have that kind of job security.

What's Your Most Productive Part of the Day?

For the last few months I have been getting up early - around 5:30 or so - and working. Mrs. Director wondered if I was developing a new sleep pattern, but the honest truth is that the early morning is one of the most productive parts of my day. After eating a quick breakfast and grabbing a cup of coffee I am a machine, cranking out all sorts of work, research, slides, you name it. Part of it is that I don't have the distractions of calls and emails at that hour, but part of it is my brain just seems to come "on" at that time. This starts trailing off around 10am, at which time I usually coast until lunch.

After lunch my brain takes a nap, even if I don't. 1~3pm I am sort of blah. I don't care what sort of deadline I might have, my brain just won't function. Even doing routine email is difficult, so it is a good time to read through blogs and other low-level "passive" activities (like blogging how my brain won't work).

Around 4pm I pick up steam, hitting a really good stride around 6pm. This session would go until about 7pm, but 6pm is when family-time starts. I sometime try sneak in work during this time, and have gotten in hot water a few times with Mrs. Director when she comes into the living room to find me on my computer typing away, and Little Miss Director parked in front of the TV. I want to spend quality time with my kid, but sometimes I just have ideas searing through my head and have to get them down.

Around 8pm my brain turns off again, so I have found that burning the midnight oil is really a waste. If I have real work to do, I just plug in a movie and wait until the next morning to get to it.

Easy Calorie Cutting Tricks

I have lost nearly 20 lbs. since starting Tae Kwon Do. I'm happy about it, but at the same time paranoid about putting it back on. That isn't likely to happen as long as I keep up my workout routines, but I have started making a few small changes to my eating habits - not dieting, I am talking permanent changes - to insure that I keep the weight off:

Going to Skim - I like milk and drink a lot of it. I changed from whole to 2% as a young adult, changed from 2% to 1% about 10 years ago, and now made the change to skim. Savings: I drink nearly a gallon and a half of milk a week (I have cereal nearly every morning), so this is mainly a savings of 60 fat grams a week. However since I am a calorie counter, I'll count the 720 calories a week.

No Cream in My Coffee - I am one of those people you see at Starbucks happily pouring a third of my cup with half-and-half, essentially turning my venti coffee into a grande cappuccino. Well, that will not be happening any more since I am now only using skim in my coffee as well. Savings: Half and Half has a whopping 39 calories and 3.5 fat grams per fluid ounce, and people putting it into those venti containers are putting in several fluid ounces. I have to average this one down since I usually have coffee at home and put in 2%. I'll put in an even 100 calories saved per week, which is being conservative.

Cutting Down the Alcohol - When I was in my 20s I didn't drink except when going out or on special occasions, so maybe once a week. When I hit my mid 30s I found myself having one - sometimes two - "unwind after work" drinks nearly every day. I am changing to something closer to my old ways, keeping the weekly drinking down to 3-4 times a week, and when I do, I have low-carb martini instead of a high carb beer. Savings: A martini has about half the calories of a regular beer, and of course no carbs. Neither have any fat. I'll put this down as a calorie savings of 500 a week.

Leaded to Unleaded Colas - The old joke about the guy who gets a double bacon cheeseburger with a supersize fry and a diet coke was the reverse for me: I'd find myself in a restaurant having a sensible lunch with a regular coke, so I thought it was time for a change. But this one is proving to be the hardest. I think aspartame has the same long, bad aftertaste as saccharine, and if I have had a diet drink with Splenda, I haven't noticed any taste difference with that either. I don't mind just drinking water, but I drink a cola for its caffeine in the afternoon and don't want a hot drink (coffee or tea) to get it. Savings: The average coke has 140 calories, and I had one usually four times a week, so I'll put this down as 560 calorie savings a week.

So these changes - which are all in my drinks - don't require going hungry, but rather a change in my tastes. And it amounts to around 1880 calories the week, which is nearly a whole day of not eating every week for someone on a 2000 calorie a day intake. So imagine how much the savings accumulate over the course of a year.

Does This Make Me a Failure?

Frank was one of my best friends in high school. We were in many of the same AP classes and hung out a lot together in our spare time. When we graduated in the mid 80s, we were both poised for success: we both graduated in the top 10 of our class, were both accepted into top rated schools and thought the sky was the limit. We kept in contact for a few years, but eventually lost touch since we attended schools in different states.

Fast forward 19 years and we run into each other in Silicon Valley. He is a senior VP at one of the top branded tech companies in the world. The brand didn't even exist ten years ago, and he was at the company before it IPO'd, so he is way in the money.

I am technically unemployed.

Yeah, I have a consulting gig that will likely turn into a full time job. And the salary level will put me comfortably in the top 5-10% of wage earners in the U.S. But as I sat there chatting with him, I felt the crushing sting of failure.

We were at the exact same place 19 years ago, and today we are on different levels - mine far below his. But it wasn't skill or intelligence or ability that made the difference. It was luck.

My start-up flamed out in the tech bust in 2002. But we were close to making it. So close. If only a few things had transpired differently I would be sitting in the corner office of a public company with a nice VP title. His start-up made it. Made it big. Chances are you will cross his company's web site today.

So while he sits comfortably in his corner suite managing his new trust fund I am essentially still climbing back from the hole I fell into in 2002. I try to put it into perspective, but it's difficult not to be depressed

I Forgot - Term Papers Suck

My term paper GENESIS consulting project is now at 40 pages, and I probably have another 15-20 to go (it's due two weeks from tomorrow, so I am in good shape). I forgot how much this sort of thing sucks: sitting down at a computer for hours on end collating information and writing can get pretty boring, even if it is in a topic that is well understood.

The good news is that I had a lot of the information available in other forms, so a lot of it has been cut-paste-edit; cut-paste-edit. The bad news is that instead of just turning the report in and getting a paycheck, I will be "presenting my results" to senior management, so I have to create a companion Powerpoint presentation to go with the report. In my previous consulting projects this happened about 50% of the time, so it's not too surprising.

As expected, however, my consulting for the company has expanded far beyond the report. I get peppered with email questions, brought into customer and partner meetings, and am basically doing general product marketing work. This is all technically outside the scope of the written consulting agreement, but as I am now scheduled to talk about "our next steps" after I give my oral defense presentation, this is a back door way to integrate me into the company as an employee before we sit down to make it official.