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.