Brand loyalty

I took this pic rather a while ago, but I’m putting it up now because I’ve only just begun to use Jira and Confluence. I’m not sure I love them to buy a vanity plate in their honor.

That’s all I got, folks. It’s been quite the week.

Cleanup on Aisle 45*

Holy crap—not for nothing was #TrumpMeltdown trending on Twitter yesterday. Imma just leave you with this:

YouTube miracle

A while ago I wrote about how you can learn to repair pretty much anything via YouTube. No matter how arcane your problem, someone’s uploaded a homemade video on how to solve it.

Well, when I got home yesterday afternoon, the house seemed really warm, and when I lowered the thermostat, nothing happened. Believe me, yesterday was a day when you didn’t want your AC non-operational.

I’d had an issue some months ago when the thermostat just went blank, and YouTube showed me how to replace the batteries. I didn’t even know thermostats needed batteries—I don’t recall ever having to replace them before. So that was my starting point. But still nothing happened. And the actual temperature actually went up a degree while I was doing it.

Ulp. Off to YouTube.

I was watching some guy walk through the steps of determining why the blower might not be going on. After checking the circuit breaker (not tripped), he lost me when he hauled out some kind of electricometer and read out how many volts were dancing on the head of a pin, and then more dancing in the thermostat. I despaired: “Dude—I don’t want to take a course in being an electrician; I just want AC.”

And at that very moment, I heard the electronic click come from the thermostat. I ran to the front door, and hallelujah, the unit was working. I set the temp for four degrees lower than usual, just to make up for the panic.

God bless YouTube.

Food talk

My friend CA came over for breakfast Saturday morning. While she was here I fed my sourdough starter. If you recall, part of that process involves leaving the starter in a place where light won’t interfere with its absorption of the new flour. Here’s the conversation that took place:

CA: You’re putting it in the dark?

Me: Yes. It needs to be in a dark place to do its work.

CA: And you eat that?

Me:

Well, I guess I live on the edge.

Gratitude Monday: Still getting up

One more shoutout for a friend’s support in my recent, successful-beyond-all-hopes job search. Danger Girl was the statistics-and-analytics person in our business unit at the big software company in Seattle. I learned a lot from her and enjoyed her unique sense of humor. Two distinct characteristics: her strawberry blonde hair and her passion for Disney parks. If I ever wanted advice on any Magic Kingdom on any continent, I’d go to her for the straight scoop.

After I moved to the Valley They Call Silicon, we kept in touch mainly through social media. A few years ago she spied my post on fairy wings at IKEA wherein I decried the lack of colors like mauve. The next thing I knew, I received a pair of hand-painted mauve fairy wings:

(In retrospect, they look a bit like butterfly wings, which is certainly appropriate to the metamorphosis in my life.)

They’ve been the first piece of décor I’ve put out each time I’ve moved since then, and I always get a kick out of reliving the story as I pin them up on the wall.

When I needed a reference from the big software company for my last job, I called on Danger Girl, and she did a bang-up job. So when I was lining my ducks in a row this time, I reached out to ask her if she’d reprise, and indeed she would. But during that conversation, she said something that was a major part of my stars aligning:

In the course of telling her about #playingtowin, I cracked, “Kind of late to be learning this…” and she snapped right back: “It’s not too late if you can still get up.”

Boom.

That was a super-powerful insight, and I’ve been carrying it with me. I coach a friend of a certain age who’s been looking for a job for many months. On last week’s call I brought that up, and it was just as powerful for him. Danger Girl’s wisdom has become part of my legacy, and I’m grateful for her being my support.

Also: mauve fairy wings.

Cocktail party

Going back at least two years, early in the reporting or Cadet Bonespurs’ criminal acts , someone on Twitter proposed an Impeachment Cocktail. I don’t remember the specifics, but I do recall that it didn’t strike me as particularly enticing.

Well, since Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House will be opening an impeachment inquiry, the Interwebs have exploded with recipes and photos of contenders for the beverages to be imbibed alone or at impeachment parties. America is about to get as drunk as it did on 5 December 1933.

And here are a few of the possibilities:

However, I rather agree with this guy, who owns a drinking establishment in the District They Call Columbia:

Best practice

When you start work at a new employer, part of the onboarding process involves training in company policies. These days, the training is typically computer-based. Over the past week or so I’ve been taking about one per day, because some of them run longer than an hour.

Yesterday it was business ethics, followed by active shooter training, and I wanted nothing so much when I got home than to take a shower and watch non-stop puppy and kitten videos.

This downer was magnified by the knowledge that the current occupant of the Oval Office would fail the most basic ethical quiz, and the full understanding that “active shooter” is now embedded in our culture.

My workspace is about five meters from one of the entrances to the elevator lobby. The entrance, BTW, is double doors. Glass doors. So I’ll probably be one of the first victims.

If I’m not, I might be able to make it to the mothers’ room, which has a solid wood door and a heavy upholstered chair, which I might be able to shove against the door. Failing that, there’s also a microwave oven, which I could throw at the shooter; because in the event you can’t run or hide, “best practice” is to fight back.

Bring on the kittens and puppies.

Strange times

Well, well, well, well. Impeachment inquiry in the House. #MoscowMitch doesn’t block a (unanimous, as it happens) Senate motion calling for release of the whistleblower report. Whistleblower (who I hope to God is in a secure, undisclosed location) on track to testify in Congress. Cadet Bonespurs rage-tweeting in an orange-sweat meltdown.

Here’s what lies ahead in the next few months:

We got climbers

Just last week, Cadet Bonespurs was preening in front of the bit of his southern border wall that he’s desperately trying to sell to his knuckledragging, mouthbreathing racist followers as on its way to completion. He was bragging lying about how his “beautiful” wall is impenetrable and unclimbable. His rotting word salad, specifically:

“We have, I guess you could say, world-class mountain-climbers. We got climbers. We had 20 mountain-climbers. That’s all they do—they love to climb mountains. They can have it. Me, I don’t want to climb mountains. But they’re very good, and some of them were champions. And we gave them different prototypes of walls, and this was the only wan that was hardest to climb.”

Well, folks in Mexico have turned his “impenetrable” wall into a climbing competition tourist attraction.

So it is serving a benign purpose, after a fashion. Which is more than can be said for the increasingly sweatiily apoplectic Kleptocrat.

Gratitude Monday: the strength of friendship

As I’ve noted, many people helped me during my recent job hunt. Someone who has always encouraged and supported me was not called out earlier because she deserves a gratitude post all to herself.

I’ve known CA since before my first stint in the People’s Republic in the mid-90s. She and her husband own a photo/video studio and she’s one of the few people I know who have more books than I do. She’s got a terrific eye for design, composition and color; before I moved into this place, I showed her floor plans and realtor photos of the space, and followed her recommendations for how to arrange my furniture. (I’d also had her join my realtor and me once on the day I decided to make the offer.)

We get together for weekend breakfast as often as our schedules allow, so we can sort out all the world’s ills. Also, dish. Dishing is very important to one’s sanity.

Even though the corporate ecosystem is not her thing, CA always listens to my gripes and rants. She’s the one who leaves me little surprises at my front door (like an Easter basket of mustard greens for the brown bunny that likes to eat my herbs). Some years ago, I was struggling with trying to recapture the Tigger side of my personality, she sent me this guy:

He went with me in 2015 to the on-site interview I had for my last employer (in my handbag), and he went with me last month to the on-site interview with this one.

When I had to submit a bloody video for an innovations competition I was de facto never going to win a couple of years ago, CA and TM spent hours shooting and editing it for me. I may not have been the worst talent they’ve ever worked with, but I’m sure I’m in the top ten. They didn’t show it.

CA has encouraged my explorations. When I went to Ireland in May, she told me she loved my blog posts, and the photos. Some of the best (and most-needed) books I have on slowing down and taking breaths were gifts from her. Also, I have an amazing collection of fridge magnets and buttons with slogans like, "If they can send a man to the moon, why can't they send all of them?" and a Mark Twain quote, "While the rest of the human race are descended from monkeys, redheads are derived from cats."

On my Metro ride home the day I had the Dalìesque discussion with the head of HR, I texted her with the news. Her immediate response: let’s have dinner at the club (the local golf club of which she and her husband are members). She fed me.

In the time since that dinner, CA’s commented several times that I seem much stronger than I have in the past. She’s right, and it’s really heartening that she validated my sense of what’s going on. Every time I passed through a gate in this last hiring process, I shared the news with her first, and she squeed with me.

I had to submit a headshot against a white background for my security badge, so I asked if CA and TM could shoot one real quick. When I showed up, their living room was a photo studio, with lights, backdrop, posing stool and camera all set up. It must have taken them hours. They patiently worked with it all and me until they got enough shots for us to pick one. I loved watching the two of them operating as a perfectly aligned team. TM had already phoned the security folks to ask what format they accept; while we were working on the final choices, he called again to ask whether they preferred square or rectangular. I was so humbled and kind of ashamed at the level of work I’d put them to, but my head shot is terrific.

(As an aside, DR, the guy who made the internal referral, told me, “My badge looks like death because I drove in starting at 4 that morning to avoid traffic and ran my car battery down while taking a nap in the parking lot….My badge mostly says ‘I require a nap and/or may be a raccoon.’” My badge says I am ready to roll.)

I am not big on personalizing my work space, but I feel like CA’s card and the mug she gave me are appropriate for my desk:

As you can see, I’ve already baptized the latter with a latte. If my colleagues pay any attention to the former, they’ll know the way to my heart.

It may be Gratitude Monday, but one day is not enough to express my appreciation of my friendship with CA.