The Liberal Party of Canada had their convention this weekend and out of it came a new party president in Mike Crawley (over the Chretien-era Sheila Copps), support for legalizing marijuana, and opposition to study severing ties with the British Monarchy. The first two decisions I agree with – the party’s needed to step forward from the bygone age of Chretien for a while now, and it’s good that a major political party has finally recognized the will of our nation’s citizens (plus the swing of money spent on enforcing current marijuana legislation and new taxes into the coffers doesn’t hurt). But this last decision I disagree with.  Continued…

I had coffee with one of my oldest and best friends today and she told me of a great idea: every New Years’ Eve, write a letter to yourself recapping the year. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them? What events and occasions did you celebrate? What were your accomplishments and triumphs? Then, the following New Years’ Eve, you read your previous year’s letter and write a new one.  Continued…

It’s a running joke between my wife and I where I claim I did all these amazing things in the 11 days between my birth and hers and counter her challenge by asking to be proven wrong. Whether or not I invented rope (which I did) isn’t the topic here though. This is about the guy in my office who likes to pontificate and speaks like he came up with common phrases or ideas.

To be fair, this guy’s been working for about 25 years and has seen and done a lot of things that people can benefit from hearing about. But inevitably during one of his lengthy sermons he’ll say something like, “what I like to call ‘lead times’ for resources” or “the ‘Agile’ approach,” which are clearly industry-standard concepts. It’s at times like these where I find myself pulled in three directions: 1. searching for a way to escape from the time vortex, 2. keeping my eyes from rolling back in my head, and 3. stopping myself from accusing him of being a charlatan. Escape tends to be the one that loses out.

A few months ago, I supported the go-live of a large, organization-wide project. Along with many other poor souls, I ended up being given a crash-course on becoming a zombie:

Trying to deliver on someone else’s promises is frustrating, especially when you weren’t involved in making those promises. To make matters worse, this person won’t acknowledge that their commitments can’t be delivered on in the time frames promised. But, rather than face reality and let an already-overworked team know that the revised delivery dates are okay, the message back is, “just work harder.” Thanks, we’ll get right on violating the laws of spacetime.

And so the frustration goes. So much so, that it’s akin to screwing your dick into a light socket connected to a dimmer switch. At first it tingles but eventually you’re clenching your fists and screaming.