Chilling

I was invited over to my friend's for dinner tonight, and being that he's my friend and his wife is a great cook (and super cool) I gladly accepted.  I know the diet took a hit, but man was it good.  She made this Rueben dip that was so good I got a recipe for it, one that I now share with you:

8oz shredded Swiss cheese

1/4lb chopped corned beef

1 cup sour cream (fat free ok)

1/2 cake of cream cheese (fat free not ok)

1/2 can drained sauerkraut (not sure on the size of the can, looked about 8oz)

Mix it up, bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  Serve with rye Triskets.

 

This is some seriously good shiznit.  Its good enough to get me to actually turn on an oven to make it myself. 

Posted by pp2 @ 7:49 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

What a tangled web we weave

So late last year our facility got its own computer server.  What that meant for us was secured drives and some other speed-up stuff.  It also meant we could host a website for our facility on the company's intranet.  When the IT guy told me about this I was pretty excited...I saw the value in being able to upload instructional and informational docs for all (within our facility) to see, and some stuff for anyone else in the company to view.  Bottomline: great communication tool.

However it wasn't necessarily seen as a good thing by our heirarchy.  Some good issues were raised, mainly a concern about having to create the above-mentioned docs.  Our  resources are already stretched beyond reason (meaning full-time employees) and dedicating time to creating those documents isn't really feasible right now.  Plus, as my boss put it, "You're (meaning me) going to wind up going through them all anyway".  Hooray.  So we got a promise that there was no commitment from us to have the site populated in any certain way or with any kind of deadline.  Then we decided on what kind of tabs we were going to need, and our IT guy built it on Friday with one of the IT special project guys.

It was also decided that I was going to be the one uploading docs to it, which was fine.  So they made our IT guy the owner and gave me secondary access.  Then both IT guys came over and sat with me to show me how to use the tools to edit the site.  I'm by no means an expert on this stuff, but I have had a website or two in my day so I had a general idea of what I was doing.  I just had to get used to the control panels.  The IT projects guy saw this and told our IT guy to go ahead and make me an owner too, save him some work.  So then we went over the new toys I had at my disposal and within an hour I had redesigned the front page of our site, added a slide show for the main page, and uploaded a couple docs including our internal phone directory.  Go, me. 

So now I have big plans for this sucker lol, and I know my boss was worried about this happening and its happened.  I already have created a couple training docs for my department I'm going to upload along with a bunch of those spreadsheets I've created over the years for the rest of the facility.  Why not put those templates up, right?  Plus there are monthly reports we mail out.  Why mail them when we can just post them monthly on our website?

Oh yeah, this is gonna be fun.  Only problem is they're going to expect me to pay attention to my regular job too. 

 

Posted by pp2 @ 6:20 am EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

Want to feel old?

The Go-Gos are not only still around and performing, they're in their 50s:

And they're still hot, so there you have it.

Now you may be wondering why I am surfing youtube for Go-Gos videos.  As the ladies are singing, its all about the vacation.  I finally get to take a couple days off next week, and boy do I need them.  Its been crazy busy just about every day and it seems everyone but me has somehow managed to take a few days breather already, but with 2 new guys and no backup for me if I'm not there I've been dragging my ass in every day rain or shine, sickness or fatigue. 

So anyway, next week begins the start of a new month which traditionally means a slow couple of days.  I believe we've got these guys to the point where they can obviously handle the day to day aspects of the department, but do some trouble-shooting of things that are bound to crop up more often than not.  Thats the biggest thing, solving problems.  The last couple weeks we've had a glut of them and I've been able to give them hands-on time in SAP fixing stuff and they've taken good notes.  Plus in a worst-case scenario I have the company cell they can call me on, thats why I have it afterall.

So yeah, I'm excited about a couple of days off to relax and vegitate.  I do believe my plans will consist of drinking beer and playing Star Ocean. 

Posted by pp2 @ 1:30 am EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Random musings

Eventually I want to get a nice little condo, but until the job situation solidifies (ie, I know I'll still have a job) I'm not going to go looking for anything.  So that means it was time to renew my lease in the apartment again, which I did the other day.  To my shock, for the 3rd straight year my landlord did not raise my rent.  He's a pretty cool guy, he owns a Pakistani restaurant (which makes sense, being that he's Pakistani) and works 7 days a week there.  I've been over there for dinner, it wasn't bad.  The spices were a bit too exotic for me though so that led to...problems...but it was tasty otherwise.

I am beginning to think my "in the works" band project with my buddy Dan the drummer man is not going to happen.  I blogged before about him wanting me to learn some country songs to play with him at his buddy's jam night, and ultimately I just couldn't do it.  I probably could've learned to play them, but after listening to those songs like 3 times I wanted to quit playing music entirely if it meant I would never have to hear them again.  So instead I agreed to just go, have a couple beers, and watch him play.

That turned into this guy's band (which is my buddy's old band, turned country) coming over to Dan's to jam instead.  I was invited over and he figured maybe after the HeeHaw I could sit in on some jams to other songs.  Which turned into "I don't think they'll be playing anything but country, dude", which turned into me deciding not to go.  Plus the weather is bad tonight and its a long-ish drive, so it was better to just stay home.

From what Dan is telling me, they make good money playing out and playing country.  He kicked around the idea of us learning some country songs, getting some guitarists, and getting us some of that money that country bands seem to be making, but I couldn't do it.  I've already told him that if he really wants to play with those guys again and get paid he should by all means do it.  I mean seriously, I will find another band once I'm ready to start looking again so if he wants to do this he should.  I'd be bummed about not jamming with him, but thats rock and roll.  Or I guess country and western.  Or something.

And speaking of my old band, I still keep in touch with the drummer from there, Brian.  He's had a lot of stuff going on the last few weeks, but I think maybe at some point in the near future I may head over and jam with him a little just for kicks.  Plus he wants to check out my new pod. 

And as for me, I'm still playing with the pod and trying to get it to work right.  It doesn't seem to be compatible with the recording software we're using in 2old2jam, which sucks, so I may return it for something that is compatible.  We shall see.  Meantime I am still practicing and working on learning new songs, stuff that might be a little different from what I'm used to playing.  I know the country songs fit that description, but the trick is that I actually have to like listening to them as well.  Eventually I'll update my profile on bandmix.com and see whats out there, but I'll probably wait until it warms up a little before I do that. 

So for the rest of the weekend I think I'm going to chill out and catch up on some games.  I bought an iced tea brewing thingamabob last weekend that I haven't gotten around to setting up, so that sounds like a good project for the morning.

Posted by pp2 @ 4:01 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

Overkill

The last few weeks....well, truthfully the last 4 months, but moreso the last few weeks...we've had to buckle down at work and do a lot of self-examination to tighten up our game in preparation for the inevitable scrutiny we would come under from our new ownership.  This year the eye of Sauron (if you will) has turned upon us and fortunately all our ducks have been lined up and we've been able to show that our 99.999% (no exaggeration) accuracy rate at our distribution center is completely legit and achieved without smoke and mirrors.

So what did that get us?  More scrutiny, lol.  We've been getting hit with more and more inane requests for information by the day.  I've blogged before about how I have been knee-deep in excel creating all these spreadsheets to sort and present data, and it just keeps going.  Currently I'm preparing training documents (sort-of SOPs) for my department (complete with screen grabs!) and have been requested to do this for other departments as well.  And oh yeah, still training 2 guys in the ways of my department.  Thats actually been the project I've been most pleased with.  I was given 2  20 year guys who have almost no SAP experience and had never used a Microsoft Office program aside from sending an occassional email.  Fortunately their attitudes were terrific when it came to learning, and they are progressing so well its almost mind-boggling.  Not only are they becoming quite savvy in SAP, but they have become fairly proficient in excel as well.  They've been picking up the trouble-shooting techniques I've been teaching them and are now spotting potential problems like pros.  Not to sound condescending, but I'm really proud of these guys.

Anyway...so I've had a lot of projects dumped on me, some of them kind of pointless and/or redundant to things we've already submitted.  So yesterday I get an email forward from my boss of a request for information from Corporate Finance.  So as I go through the request I can only shake my head at the silliness of whats being asked.  Then something caught my eye, the final "request" that I thought I could answer right away and with minimal effort.  Of course my interpretation of that request might be a little off, but you can decide that for yourself. 

Here is the email I sent to my boss:

 

Please let me know if this information is acceptable, and I will begin gathering data from the other full-time employees to work up similar profiles.

 

For the record, he got a laugh out of it.

Posted by pp2 @ 6:35 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments