Retirements and meeting the CEO
a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://bp3.blogger.com/_5w5ZZWchEd4/SEiU1QjkcZI/AAAAAAAAEG8/5J1KkbHJPBg/s1600-h/DSCF1116.JPG”img style=”margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;” src=”http://bp3.blogger.com/_5w5ZZWchEd4/SEiU1QjkcZI/AAAAAAAAEG8/5J1KkbHJPBg/s320/DSCF1116.JPG” alt=”" id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5208576611752112530″ border=”0″ //abr /span lang=”en-us”span style=”font-family:Times New Roman;”This is a sort of work-related blog, something I usually don’t write about. I work for a large organization that has about 5,000 employees and I receive about 1.3 email messages per week announcing that someone is retiring. In the past week, one of the head honchos retired with much fanfare. He has been with the organization for 51 years and 23 years as its a href=”http://picasaweb.google.com/moulec/Meeting_Dr_Fellegi_CEO”CEO/a. Around the office this was a really big deal. They organized a lottery to select employees that could informally meet him and wish him greetings for his retirement. I was selected to informally join 700 other employees to meet him. This came as a big surprise to me. My first concern was what to where, a tie, a jacket, a tie and jacket or my normal work garb. In the end, I opted to wear my usual work stuff and not to get to puffy about the gathering. I joined the reception line in our cafeteria and very slowly marched along towards the CEO. In the background, they were playing very sad and somber baroque classical music almost as if I was attending a state funeral. In hushed tones were told that we had only 15 seconds with the CEO. I can’t remember what I said to him but his reply what that we were all colleagues together. Tom, one of the guys I work with, took my picture with the CEO. In the afternoon they had live streaming of the formal retirement ceremony delivered to all employees’ desktops. I’ll talk about a couple of nuggets from the ceremony. The CEO mentioned the whole exercise was like eavesdropping on his own funeral. The new CEO was eager to know what the outgoing CEO’s wife put in his cheese sandwich to promote longevity. The last nugget is sort of weird. One of the vice-presidents gave a testimonial of the CEO and didn’t have a chance to proofread his speech. I think that he had intended to say that the CEO had been a pillar of the organization but due to translation he said that CEO had been a boat anchor to the organization.br //span/span
Ice flows on the Ottawa River..but not for long…
I work in a tall building near the Ottawa River. Today, I was looking out the window and noticed another sign of spring, ice flows making there way down the river. In the winter the river freezes thick enough that you can snowshoe across to the province of Quebec. The chunks of ice are getting smaller so the water temperature is getting warmer. Further up the river a few brave soles are kayaking the rapids while protected by a thick wetsuit. Doing an a href=”http://www.schools.ash.org.au/daptohigh/eskimoroll.htm”Eskimo role /ain the frigid conditions could be a fatal paddle/outing if you don’t recover quickly. I’ll see if I can post pictures in a couple of days.br /br /In the afternoon, I found myself in a bit of an emergency situation as the mercury had started to climb to an Ottawa warm 21C/70F. I was starting to cook but not for long as two zips later I was comfortably wearing shorts.
2008 Goals
2008 Goalsbr /br /* Run a 1:30 half-marathon timebr /* Go on more OHOC outdoor adventuresbr /* Do more hiking tripsbr /* Climb more of the 46ers (46 highest peaks in the Adirondacks , NY)br /* Loose 10 lbs by May 30 (race date –National Capital half-marathon)br /* Hike the West Coast Trail/Shenandoah National Park/strikeOld Smoky National Park/strikebr /* Run a faster Baltimore half-marathon ( 1:34 ) in October 2008br /* Visit Brent ( Algonquin Park ) by canoeing and portaging and bring along a digital camerabr /* Reach 500,000 Babble point (now 350,000) www.playbabble.combr /* Do more cycling (road and mountain biking)br /* Geocaching goal 900-1000 finds by Dec 31 2008br /* Become more mobilebr /* Complete an Olympic Distance triathlon (1500m swum/40km cycle/10km run)br /* Swing dancing – Learn the Lindy Hopbr /* span style=”font-style: italic;”Take the train to Baltimore/span
Sweating in software
While out for my run along the canal (39F and rain) tonight I decided to let my mind wander and started to laugh about something that happened a couple of years ago at work. I was working with a new employee on a piece of software and English was his second language. This program contained a lot counters for counting things. He decided that he would spell the word count as cunt. Every time there was a count in the program he would use cunt. It made reading his program a tiny bit fun. I had mentioned that perhaps he should use another word as in English it is not a nice word. He was adamant that the word was fine with him. It got changed in the production version of the program only after we had a code review session and someone explained what the word meant.
Butt Evacuators
Butt evacuators are topic that I have wanted to blog about for some time. These guys have been on my mind for quite some time. I guess it was one of the first things I noticed when I started working at the research facility. Every morning, I would see them with their gasoline powered vacuums sucking up discarded cigarette butts. The butt evacuator looks and sounds like a leaf blower but it sucks up things, rather than blowing them away. I would usually see them again after lunch sucking up more butts. The butt evacuators were two portly identical twins. One of them was more rotund than the other. They would have to butt evacuate the perimeters of 15 buildings that make up the research complex. Through spring, summer and fall they would be out there sucking up butts. After a while they changed their schedule so I didn’t see them quite so often. Then they had the cleaning staff walking around the building sweeping up the butts. While walking to work recently, I could hear this roar in the distance, they were back, the butt evacuators had returned and they were busily sucking up butts again.
