01.22.07
Posted in Work at 5:08 pm by psychephylax
Seems like I always abandon the blog for something else…Usually nothing.
Digging through my old emails I found this little gem. Got a good chuckle out of it again.
From: My Manager
Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006
To: Nick
Hmmm. Nice technicality
This messages was sent from my BlackBerry.
—–Original Message—–
From: Nick
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 23:43:29
To:My Manager
Subject: RE: Action Required: Status Immediately Available
Sure, but she never specified the timezone…Montana is 2 hours behind NY, so technically, my email arrived there by 5pm..5pm Montana time.
—–Original Message—–
From: My manager
Sent: Thu 9/7/2006 5:22 PM
To: Nick
Cc:
Subject: RE: Action Required: Status Immediately Available
Didnt she ask for you to repsond by 5pm on Thursday ?
—–Original Message—–
From: Nick
Sent: Thu 9/7/2006 5:19 PM
To: Coworker; My Manager
Cc:
Subject: RE: Action Required: Status Immediately Available
Jean, that info is correct.
Thanks, Nick
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10.28.06
Posted in Work at 5:32 pm by psychephylax
Well, I have been exteremely lazy in updating this, especially that I have been sitting on the bench for the last 3 months doing nothing but collecting money. Who says consulting sucks?!
There is a project in the works in Philadelphia but they haven’t signed the Statement of Work (SoW) yet so they keep telling us to postpone the travel plans until they do sign. I did go down to Philly Sept 18/19. Got lost both of those days. So I promptly ordered a Garmin Nuvi 360 from Amazon.
Since it’s portable, I can also give geocaching a shot.
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06.27.06
Posted in Work at 5:08 pm by psychephylax
Called up to find something out from Marriott Customer Service and asked them to give me my lifetime numbers.
*drum rollllll*
467 nights
1016403 points
That’s over a year in Marriott beds.
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05.16.06
Posted in Work at 9:27 am by psychephylax
Hello,
The lodging and travel expenses in this expense report are related to a commute from xxxx, NY to yyyy, NY. This is approximately a 2.5-3 hour drive each way, and is not considered local. This is why Nick is utilizing a hotel, rental car, gas and per-diem.
Thanks
-Steve
So my boss sent them a reply (seen above), which then resulted in the email below:
The expense inquiry for your expense report ending 03/31/2006 has been completely resolved. No further action is required on your part. Thank you for your cooperation.
I did have a much longer nastygram typed up but since this has been resolved, I see no point in sending it. Just a waste of time for everyone….
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05.09.06
Posted in Work at 9:33 am by psychephylax
***This expense inquiry supercedes any previous expense inquiry for this expense report.***
We have reviewed your expense report ending 03/31/2006 for compliance with the Company’s Expense Reimbursement Policy. One or more items appear to be inconsistent with that policy, and requires further explanation and/or documentation.
Please carefully review the items outlined below. Your response needs to specifically address the Comments section. Contact us immediately with any questions and/or forward the appropriate documentation outlined in the Comments section to the address below before 05/26/2006. If we do not hear from you by that date, we will assume you agree that these items were improperly charged on your expense report, and process the chargeback accordingly. When this occurs, your future expense reimbursement submissions will be reduced by $1333.16.
| Original Line Number |
Expense Type |
Incur Date |
Original Amount |
Chargeback Amount |
| 2 |
Lodging |
03/24/2006 |
$494.79 |
$494.79 |
| 3 |
Per Diem Meal |
03/24/2006 |
$444 |
$444 |
| 5 |
Lodging |
03/17/2006 |
$246.52 |
$246.52 |
| 7 |
Ground Trans Excl Mileage |
03/17/2006 |
$38.35 |
$38.35 |
| 8 |
Ground Trans Excl Mileage |
03/11/2006 |
$37 |
$37 |
| 9 |
Ground Trans Excl Mileage |
03/24/2006 |
$26.5 |
$26.5 |
| 10 |
Group Meals |
03/24/2006 |
$46 |
$46 |
Comments
Line item # 2-3, 5, 7-9 Outside of Expense Policy Guidelines Description: Claimed lodging, per diem and fuel in NY which is local office location. Action required: This is not a reimbursable expense; No further action required …………… Line item # 10 Outside of Expense Policy Guidelines Description: Claimed a meal at Goshen Plaza Diner on 3/28/2006 that included all company employees. Action required: This is not a reimbursable expense; No further action required
Upon this expense query being either partially or completely resolved, you will receive an automated message noting the change in status.
So I got that email last night. At first, I laughed…Then I got angry. Then I laughed some more.
In our Expense reporting system there are only 3 locations for New York.
- NY-Yonkers
- NY-New York
- NY-New York City
My field office is in New York City, so that’s obviously not the one I’m using since I’m upstate New York. NY-Yonkers is kind of close but still not there. So the only logical selection is NY-New York which, to me, means that it covers the remainder of New York State. I guess the company pencil pushers don’t agree.
I’m guessing their expectation is that I drive home for lunch every day, or bring lunch with me since my home is 120 miles away from the client site and 47 miles away from my field office (The client site is 71 miles away from the field office)
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04.09.06
Posted in Life at 9:21 am by psychephylax
I’ve been saying I will buy a car for about 2 years now and I never did. Partly because I didn’t have the money to get what I really wanted, partly because I didn’t really need a car since I get a rental car from work 90% of the time. The other 10% I borrowed my mom’s car or bummed rides from friends when I wanted to go out. The other 10% that drove me to buying one.
About 8 months ago I sent out quote requests to 6 different dealerships (3 in VA, and 3 in NY). Out of the 6 dealers, only 2 replied back . Competition Infiniti and Atlantic Infiniti. Out of the two, Competition Infiniti didn’t ask me to stop by to talk about pricing and everything was upfront and exposed. So I felt comfortable dealing with Alan (The Internet Sales Manager who replied to my quote request). I was debating between the G35x and the FX35 AWD. I was very interested in bluetooth in the car, and there were rumors that the FX was going to get it the bluetooth option. So I waited and waited and April 1st our Vehicle Purchase Plan (VPP) from my company kicked in. Alan knew what I wanted and after stopping by on April 1st, the car was ready by April 8th and I took delivery.
I got a Diamond Graphite FX35 with touring/sport/tech/hands free packages. Once my permanent registration arrives, I’m going to get a new license plate.
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03.23.06
Posted in Work at 9:51 pm by psychephylax
This project is amazing. I was here a year and a half ago and it was completely different in some ways and is very similar in others. Client involvement is almost non-existent. There are conference calls being conducted that almost made my head pop they were so amazingly boring. We have scripts that we wrote to automate a huge number of tasks and in the time I was gone nobody from the client has taken the time to transition the scripts over and take over that responsibility. When we’re done…We’re going to get up and leave and the client is going to have a bunch of scripts they won’t make sense of. Amazing.
Today was great. We had a conference call to troubleshoot a voice quality issue. One of the people on the bridge says “We need to investigate which brand of eMTA is having a problem”. Hellllllllooooo…There’s only one kind being deployed. Why would there be a need to investigate this? But I digress….
I spent most of the day reading up on SimpleSoft CM/eMTA/device simulator. I don’t really like software simulators. There are bottle necks which may skew results. 200 modems booting up on a software simulator is not the same as 200 real modems booting up. One will lead to a much more accurate test.
Next Friday, I’m working from home. Yes!
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03.22.06
Posted in Work at 6:22 pm by psychephylax
Got back to the hotel yesterday and in the shower there was a spray bottle for cleaning. I guess the cleaning person forgot to take that with her. I hope they weren’t expecting me to clean the bathroom myself. They took it back today though. Good thing too, otherwise I would have conned the front desk into giving me Marriott Points. A few years ago my coworker Steve wound up using a wash rag as a hand towel (YUCK!)
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03.20.06
Posted in Work at 11:43 pm by psychephylax
Well, truth be told, I am a fan of the Marriott. I hope so, since it’s the only chain I’ve stayed in for point gathering and status aquizition in the last 2.5 years. However, once again this week, I’m staying in a double queen room and not a king. You’d think they would treat their Platinum guests better.
I also bought a Plantronics Discover 640 Bluetooth headset so I can leave my cell phone by the window and still take calls if someone actually calls me. Having no cell phone reception kinda sucks. All of my coworkers have either Verizon or Nextel so their phones still work.
The drive up to Middletown was boring. I stopped by the rest stop on the NYS Thruway to get a Starbucks. The coffee was ok, but the lid cracked and coffee spilled all over the desk. Now, if this landed in my lap and the coffee was extermely hot, I would have been exteremely pissed. Lucky for me, it just splattered on the desk and didn’t go all over the place. Although some did get on my sweater.
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03.16.06
Posted in Work at 1:21 am by psychephylax
So this morning I left my house around 7:05 to make the drive upstate. The ride is a joke compared to the drive down to Virginia. After you get onto the Palisades Parkway in New Jersey there’s almost never any traffic unless there’s an accident. So I got to the site at 9:30. Had the grand tour by my friend Steve who’s been here for a good two years now.
The building looks like an doctor’s office building. You’d never think there’s a lot of expensive equipment inside. Some observations: there’s lousy cell phone reception around the building and even worse inside. The room I was sitting in would probably be considered the basement. Cingular = 1-2 bars max. T-Mobile had more and worked fine. It pays to have two cell phones. Reception isn’t terrible by the window so I’m thinking I will get a bluetooth headset I’ve been eyeing and leave my phone by the window so I can take calls.
It’s pretty damn cold upstate right now. Flurries when I arrived and a temperature of about 38 degrees Fahrenheit. The room was very cold. There’s a miniature space heater that we kept on to heat up the room. Did a good job for a small heater. Then we went out to get soome lunch at a new place I’ve never been to before. The food was alright but I had a great reminder about this area. Everyone takes their sweet time doing things. Getting a wrap in NY is about 5 minutes, about 7 minutes in VA and upstate it’s a good 20 minutes. It didn’t help that it was also freezing in the place we were eating at. I was glad that was over.
Work was ok, nothing spectacular since the first few days is just getting in the groove of things. I proof read a doc Steve was supposed to deliver today. Well written but repetitive. After I did that, I got a set of 10 new markets the client plans on launching VoIP at in the next few weeks/months. First step is to analyze the hardware (Cable Modem Termination Systems) for discrepancies and minimum requirements. I wrote some of the scripts that did this 2 years ago. Steve took over so setting that up was a piece of cake. Running an Expect script followed by some parsing in Gawk/Awk will give me the results by tomorrow afternoon.
After we left the lab, I checked into the hotel. Allison was here. She worked here a year and a half ago when I was here last. She’s funny and still remembered me. Kicked back for a couple of hours and then Steve called me to see if I had dinner yet. I did not so we went to Franco Di Roma’s which is a good Italian place here. I lost count of how many times I have been there and the food is always good. They still sell the awesome cheesecake! Franco still remembered me too. That place is probably caused me to put on a few pounds. After we had that Steve suggested we go to Red’s.
Red’s is a unique place. If you take a sports bar, nudie bar and mash them together set that up in a college dorm and dim the lights you’ve almost achieved the feel of Red’s. The bartender is stil the same guy who’s been there for ages. The beer doesn’t cost 8-9$ like the local places by my house. So we had a few drinks and left. In one day I caught up on almost everything I would have wanted to do. They did finish the Red Robin place and the Chili’s that was being built a year and a half ago.
I haven’t visited the trailer but I assume it’s still there just like it was a year and a half ago.
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