work – Chris' Site

Fontuky, Simi, Palm Springs, Salton Sea, Weist Lake, El Centro

So to start off, I drove a LOT this weekend. Check out my trip here.

So not to much has really happened since my last post. I hung out with Jason and his new boy James on Saturday, got a new couch which was TONS of fun. And VERY comfy!

Sunday was rock climbing and this new guy came who was HOT. Lucky! Yum! Anyways, it was a GREAT day of climbing. We’re headed out to Death Valley on Feb 20.

After that I drove to the Salton Sea which was a mess, took some pics then drove to Wiest lake to camp. Smelled LIKE SHIT!

Got up Monday morning and drove to El Centro, Took about 10 minutes to fix the problem they were having down there, so that was annoying. I hung around till 11:30 to make sure everything was working and then headed home.

I’ve txted Kris a few times this week. No reply. Guess we are not friends any more. Oh well!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been very very busy!

So going back, two weekends ago, Kris and I went to San Diego{/wiki] to visit his friend Suze and for my Birthday. We had a mostly good trip down there, but it became clear as the weekend went on that he only went down to see his friends and I was a total third wheel. He HATES and bitches when people are the third wheel, so I got very annoyed. Sunday he asked what I wanted to do, I told him the one thing that I would have liked to see and do again that I know in town. Now, I don’t know San Diego, and if _I_ took a friend to a town that I knew very well and they didn’t know very well, I would come up with suggestions of things for them/us to do. I was offered no such items. So instead we basically wasted the day wondering around and watching a movie. On the ride home he asked what was wrong. I told him, he BLEW up at me saying that I was only pissed because the weekend wasn’t ALL about me. We haven’t spoken since. He told me that I was being childish. Ugh. Whatever.

We went to the San Diego wild animal park while there. That was tons of fun at least! 🙂 I took like 400 pictures with the new camera. Only kept 200 of them. Still trying to widdle down to my favorites. I’m going to have to get used to deleting images now that EACH picture is 10megs!

So anyways, Birthday week wasn’t all that exciting. Jason and I had a heart-to-heart one night, I got a birthday package from Aaron and Erick which was VERY nice of them! Although, I just went to get some chocolate out of the box and there’s a WHOLE bar missing!! WHO the FUCK steals a bar of chocolate out of someone’s box on their desk!? Ugh. These are the idiots I work with.

Speaking of idiots. So my big project that I was all exciting about before the holidays. Well the boss man has TAKEN IT OVER and is ruining it with lightening efficiency. Basically he’s writing the requirements without EVER talking to the end users about what they want to see changed and what they do, etc. He says, “I have a basic idea of how things work.” You MIGHT. BUT that doesn’t mean you have ANY IDEA about how things are ACTUALLY working! Plus part of this project is to REDUCE the number of Excel spreadsheets that are wondering around the company. Well you would think that you would NEED TO KNOW what those are and how they are getting used to be sure that they are going to be worked into the new software. He has NOT begun at ALL exploration of what those spreadsheets are. VERY ANNOYING.

Also he designed a [wiki]Gnatt chart in fucking EXCEL! Who does Gnatt charts in EXCEL!? Idiots do Gnatt charts in EXCEL, that’s WHO!

So then, remember how I went to Caborca and NO ONE knew the fucking passwords. Well apparently LAST week German, the guy in Caborca, figured them out or remembered them or something. So anyways, the boss calls me the other day and we proceed to have a 20 minute convo in which I have to EXPLAIN TO HIM in detail a reason why my solution to a problem is the ONLY solution. I mention SEVERAL times in my reasoning that this is BECAUSE WE DO NOT KNOW THE passwords. AT THE END of the convo, the boss says, “By the way German has access to the server now”. I ask, “How is that?”. He says, “because he remembered the password”. DON’T YOU THINK that’s something you should have mentioned to me RIGHT AWAY when you found out?! Don’t you think that’s something that would be HELPFUL to me to do my FUCKING JOB!

Anyways, so for my Birthday Jason and I had Champagne and Cake, just a low-class day. Nothing to exciting. I really wasn’t into my birthday again this year.

So this past weekend, I was gonna go on a quick backpacking trip with JoEric and Claudia, but it rained and was nasty and it’s a good thing I didn’t go because I ended up pretty damn sick all weekend! So Saturday I dropped of Asparagus off to George and then went to Griffith Observatory with Jason and his new wife. Had a good time overall, came home, took a vicodin and went to bed.

Sunday I spent the whole day laying on the couch. Tried to do laundry, but everyone else in the building apparently had the same Idea. So I got nothing done.

Back from Caborca

So I’m back from Caborca, but writing this post in San Diego now.

It’s been one whirlwind trip down south. We got down there about 6ish on Monday and went straight to this restaurant called “La Carret”. This place had the MOST AMAZING food ever! You get this neat little heater thing with tons and tons and tons of Carne Asada, ribs and cow udders on it. With tons of vegetables and stuff on the side and you make your own tacos. I seriously could have eaten a full one by myself! We typically had one for every 2 people on the table! Anyways, met with all the employees down there and had a good time chatting and what not. Got done about 9ish and went to the office to do some work and then got to the hotel by 11 I think.

Tuesday we got up, at breakfast at the hotel with all the co-workers and then headed out to the office. Apparently the truck we were supposed to be driving was in the shop, so we had to wait around to get that fixed. About 10 we got on the road to the first stop. Got there and found out that NONE of the passwords I was given before coming to Caborca worked! So I was basically LOCKED OUT of everything! I couldn’t do SHIT. So I get on the phone with the guy who PROGRAMMED the software and SETUP the servers/etc. He has NO IDEA what the passwords are. So I call my boss, ALSO has no IDEA what the passwords are. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! IDIOTS! Who does not WRITE DOWN THE FUCKING PASSWORDS.

So basically the whole trip was a wash. I couldn’t do anything that I was supposed to do. So we went onto the other sheds and had a good time, had lunch around 2ish and met up with the other 2 guys from the LA office. Found out that they both HATE my boss as well. In fact one of them got into a YELLING fight on the phone with him. It was quite hilarious! Other other sheds were fun and it was cool to see how the asparagus grows and get’s packed and what not. They also apparently burn off the fields before they start harvesting, which I find strange. But whatever!

The last one we were at right around sunset, so we drove across the fields to the base of this huge mountain, got there and found a HUGE nail in the tire, so we drove back to the farm shed real fast and stopped to change it. Well that’s when the fun started! We couldn’t get the spare tire to release and then they couldn’t get the TIRE to come off. There were 7 Mexicans POUNDING on the tire to get it off.

We again had dinner at the same place, had about 30 people there, with all of our growers and what not. It was funny because Dole came into the same place with their ONE grower, while we had like 25!!! LOL. You’d think they would have a lot more people then we are since they are such a HUGE company! Again got back to the hotel late and watched a movie and crashed, AFTER we got locked out of our rooms and had to fight with the stupid front desk people. Idiots fucking DE-ACTIVATE ALL keys every day and you have to go in and have them re-activated. How stupid!

Wed we got up and had breakfast at the hotel again and then off to the fields! Again had a good time, this was a short day and went back to one of the BIG sheds that was packing. It was cool to see it all in full force.

Went around town after that, saw the church again, did some shopping, etc. Had dinner at the same place and ate WAY to much.

Thursday was the drive home, which wasn’t too bad. Got home around 5ish, but called in sick anyways on Friday. It was a REALLY long week. And Friday ended up being REALLY long as well. People are complete idiots!

We couldn’t send ANY emails to Costco and the main phone number was NOT working at all. UGH. I also sent the boss instructions on how to add additional email accounts to someone’s Outlook. He replied back saying he couldn’t figure it out. He had ONLY followed the FIRST of 8 instructions!!!! UGH. What is wrong with people.

Anyways, so here I am in San Diego now… We went out to the shout house which was tons of fun!

Well, time to go! Adios!

Merry Christmas EVERYONE!

Merry Christmas!

It’s been a busy busy week here in Iowa. TONS of stuff going on.

Got some AMAZING news last Friday at work. I got my approval for the $500,000 software implementation. I also had a meeting with the CEO regarding the idiot CFO and some other plans I had for the company. So that was GREAT!

Saturday I got back to Iowa with noooo problems what so ever on the flights! Which was GREAT. Got home and went to bed.

Sunday I got up and went out with Angel and had a great time. Monday went to gym with mother and then wondered around all day long and went out and did something that night. Tuesday I drove mom to work and went around doing stuff. Also went out that night with Angel, then the saddle where I met this REALLY cute/nice guy who’s a comedian from Chicago. We ended up going back to his parents house and talking/cuddling till 4am! I left his house to 3 inches of FRESH snow and TONS more coming down. Had to drive home in that shit, no plowed roads or anything, it was SCARY. Got all the way home and then almost ditched the jeep in my parents drive way. Did a 360! LOL.

Wed got up at 7:30 and drove mom to work, then ran around doing stuff that day and then drove down to grandma’s house with the aunt and cousin. Lots of fun there. We went out and visited with the Great uncle, and great Grandma. It’s amazing to hear their stories and I hope that I’m in half as good of health as my great grandma is when i’m her age! It’s also really amazing to see the different between my 76 year old Great Uncle and my 97 year old Great grandma. My uncle is in VERY poor heatlh, whereas she is in amazing health still!

Ok. Gotta go help the family. Adios y’all!

Lets spend $16k to save $10k!

So, almost 2 months ago I presented a plan to my CEO and CFO on a way to save nearly $5,000 a month in costs.

To save this though, it would have cost them $10,000 to cancel some bills contracts that we are currently in. They said no to just flat out paying the $10k and they wanted our old IT Contractors to negotiate the bill down since they “got us into this mess”.

Ok, really? The old IT people have NO business reason to do anything for us any more. WE NO LONGER use their service.

However, we ARE still paying them $3,300 a MONTH to do NOTHING! Yes, that’s right, $3,300 to do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Well the CFO doesn’t want to tell them that are going to stop paying that until they negotiate us out of that other contract.

So in the last two months, we’ve spent $6,600 on the IT Contractors to DO NOTHING, plus another $10,000 on services that we are over paying for.

So essentially we’ve paid $16,000 just to save $10,000. What kind of fucking business sense does that make?

UGH!

I brought this to the attention of the CFO today and said, “If we’re gonna keep giving them money, why don’t you just give it to me and I’ll do nothing extra for you”. He laughed.