Operation Recycling

Before I tell the story let me preface by letting you know that I choose to pay extra money every month to participate in my city sponsored recycling service...and we actually use it. And furthermore, I even let John throw his recyclables in my bin so he doesn't have to pay the fee.

I work at a software company in Austin. Some of my co-workers would be classified as hippies that live by the Keep Austin Weird mantra. They also believe it is their duty to recycle (which again...I have no problem with). These same people have setup some separate bins near the trash can in our break room for cardboard/paper/cans/etc. There is not a pickup service for recycling at our office so several of the hippies have volunteered to take care of it.

As you can guess, this means nobody actually ever takes care of the recycling which means we end up with full bins and a bunch of 'trash' piled up around the bins. Some time ago my boss decided to take matters into his own hands. Each Friday afternoon, after most of the employees are gone, he takes the contents of the recycling containers and the crap piled up around them to our dumpster. I laugh every Friday when I see him doing this and two weeks ago I decided to ask him about it.

He said that those hippies are disgusting and don't take care of this crap so he will. We went on to discuss that they probably assume that one of the other hippies is always taking care of it so the disappearance of the 'recyclables' will never be questioned. Yesterday, my boss was out of the office and as I was about to leave I noticed the full bins and trash piled in the corner of the break room. So I went ahead and 'recycled' the stuff for the hippies by putting it in the dumpster.

My boss is happy there is not a rat nest in the corner. The hippies feel good that they 'recycled'. And I got to laugh to myself as I perpetuated the shadow operation. Everyone is happy.

National Air and Space Museum

Earlier in December while on a work related trip to Washington, DC, we had some time to kill before our flight home so we stopped at the National Air and Space Museum near the airport. A ton of info about the museum can be found on their website.

All I had was my crappy camera on my phone, but here are some of the pictures I took.

The place was really cool and if you are into planes and what not it's a neat place to visit.  A definite recommend from me if you are in the area and have the opportunity.

John Loves Work...My Work That Is

You guys all know how much John loves dealing with customers...and people in general for that matter.  On Friday I had some repetitive work to be done taking one list and cross referencing it with some large log files to extract some information for our marketing firm.  Manually this probably would have taken a couple of days and would have made me cross-eyed.

My alternatives were to do it myself or to let our marketing firm do it and bill us hourly.  I thought the task could easily be automated...just not by me.  So I decided to test John's brotherly love.  I wrote up some requirements and emailed them to him late Friday.  Saturday morning he called me from Biloxi to confirm some of the details and in about an hour he emailed me a script to do what I needed.

First, I got the Roomba to vacuum my house.  Now I've got John doing my work for me.  If I can convince someone to exercise for me I'll have a bunch more time to do what I excel at...drinking beer and holding the couch in place.  Mad props to John for taking care of me.

Get to Work

Day by day I have the joy of showing up to work so I can hear my co-workers discuss politics.  On this great day (day after the VP nominee debate) my co-workers have now been going on for an hour discussing the debate, economy, war, etc.  Each week the discussions get slightly more heated and run on longer and longer.

I can't wait for all of this to be over so maybe some of these jokers can get back to doing the work we are paying them to do.  Unfortunately, my guess is that it probably won't end there.  If McCain wins I'll get to hear about how we are just getting 4 more years of the same.  If Obama wins I'll get to hear about how all of his wonderful change.

In my personal opinion, most of the people in my office are unqualified and should not be debating the topics they are discussing.  How about rather than arguing our energy policy...you get to working on some of the bugs in our product so we can keep our jobs?

Lance Armstrong must run our lawn service

This morning when I arrived at work it was raining. I noticed that the water sprinkler system was still on full blast as well. Makes me wonder if Lance Armstrong runs our lawn service since he likes his water.

In other exciting news the Vegas trip is coming up next week. Let Michael and I know when you are getting there. I hear they will be giving away tons 'o money while we're there.

Best Summer Job

The other day I was catching up with Luke via phone and we were discussing easier times back when we were still at State during the summer.

That summer we (Luke, Michael and me) worked at the machine shop . One of our first jobs was individually packaging shelf clips for resale. This may very well have been the best job in the world. My first memory of tackling this job was sitting over at Luke's trailer and setting up our version of an assembly line. The tasks included: cleaning the clips; packaging the clips; sealing the packages; and counting them. We were able to complete this at a significant pace all while keeping cold beers in hand and watching Michael's Girls Gone Wild collection.

My other favorite job at the machine shop was packaging the hot dog rollers. This one actually required us to go down to the shop. A slight amount of attention was necessary here since we had to keep count of how many rollers we put in each box. But we had a good time talking about how cool it would be if we had our own hot dog roller at home and making plans for the evening.

Yep, those were the days. Making a little pocket change and going to class during the day. And spending our evenings grilling and pitching horseshoes. Now, I'm spending my summers working 10-12 hours a day during the week so I can have some spare time on the weekends to mow the lawn and go to Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond (if there's time).

This weekend I had the pleasure of replacing some rotted wood on the exterior of my house. Holy crap it is hot outside. Luckily I dragged my resident handyman, John, down to help out and figure out how to cut the ridiculous angles needed. Not quite the same as packaging shelf clips or hot dog rollers like we did at the machine shop.