Corporate Outing Time

My company actually is having a corporate outing. In the internet economy, these are few and far between these days. And my neighbor was shocked when I told him we were having one. "I thought you guys were going bankrupt! That's the impression I got from the news stories on you guys!" So the media has been as unfriendly to us as the markets. What do you expect.

So yeah, we have enough money to do a nice corporate outing. Hopefully this time next year we will still have enough money to do a corporate outing.

Last year was funny. The marketing/outings group didn't put one together fast enough for the likings of our EVP, so he put one (actually, had his admin put one) together for just our department. It was a 1/2 day business meeting with a 1/2 day fun. Full day out of the office. It was nice, because I'd only been with the company for 2 months at that point, so I got to know some of my co-workers, and in the late afternoon they welcomed our spouses and kids. Seeing as we live about 2 miles from the site of the retreat center, my kids were there and swimming like maniacs.

The funny thing about the whole corporate outing thing is this place has four pools. No one I know is going swimming. It's been the hot topic of discussion. "I'm not wearing a bathing suit around all those guys!" "No way, I don't want anyone to see what I look like in a swim suit!" So these huge olympic plus sized pools will be pretty much unused for the day. It makes me giggle. Last year I swam, I was the only one. Only because Geoff is a mental case in the water and has no fear, so I wanted to be nearby. And nearby meant in water.

The beautiful thing about the corporate outing is there is free food, lots of free beer (my friend Mark is over tapping the keg right now...) and perhaps a little volleyball if I feel like playing. Otherwise, I'm hanging in the pavillion, shooting the shit with some pals, and hanging out.

I'm sort of in the mindset that this is a waste of time though. There isn't any business aspect to this, which sort of bums me out, believe it or not. Most of you who know me well know that I don't pass up free anything OR an excuse to not work. But seeing as my next door neighbor's impression of my company is we're sliding down the shitter, I know most of the employees here are feeling kind of down and experiencing existential conflict over what their future holds. Some sort of short, helpful, encouraging blurb/speech/pep-talk from our CEO or our President would be .... encouraging. But I guess that's not part of the deal.

So I'll gladly go and drink free beer. Hang with friends. Not work. And wonder if we'll be doing this at this very time next year.

On another note, just HAVING one is a sign that we consider ourselves still going forward and still alive. Vibrant. With Future. So I'll take that as my "pep-talk." I guess.

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Doug is taking Sunil to Boston today to hang out, seeing as he is kid free and Sunil is going back home tomorrow... so how is Doug kid free? Geoff is in school he started up yesterday, and surprise surprise, Jessica's first day of school is today. I thought it was Thursday. But she was at a friend's house yesterday and the talk was of ... first day, which Jessica was told was today. So she came home and informed us.

I was shocked. I called the school to confirm and as sure as eggs is eggs, her friend was right.

Damn. How am I charged with the responsibility of raising children??? I'm a fucking clueless distracted moron. There should be laws against shit like this! Me, being a parent. HA!

And anyway, I hate that school starts BEFORE Labor Day. That sucks! I so very hate that. It should be outlawed, that way I'd always know when school starts.

So last night Jessie and I ran around looking for the last couple pieces of school supplies that she needed (we were going to do that this afternoon after the corporate outing) and we shopped a little for clothes, and went home late. She got to bed after 10pm, so we had a talk about waking up with a smile on face as a reward for me letting her stay up late and take care of her needs. She's a good doobie. She got up, showered, ate breakfast, dressed and even had time for me to paint her nails. Which we normally don't do.

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This past Saturday, we went to Boston to the Museum of Science. It was a lot of fun. We let Jessica go off and do whatever she wanted. For the first time really. Alone. She spent a great deal of time building virtual fish in a computer driven fishtank.

We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Cambridge. It was mobbed. Sunil managed to get separated from Doug in the mall while we were waiting for our table, and about 70 minutes after we got to the mall (with the 20 minute wait for the table) he refound us.

He was kind of pissed, we were pissed, both parties understandably. We couldn't figure out how Sunil couldn't just come find us; Sunil asked at the front counter if we'd been seated and was told no.

Rather than distrust the blonde retard at the front counter and come walk through to see where we were, he went back out and walked around. Finally he found us. So we were there for over 2 hours, while we first ate, and then he got to eat...It was a bizarre night.

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My friend Carrie came over on Sunday, I have a picture of her to post. She's darling. We went and looked at my neighbor's house, which is up for sale. They're asking $339,000... which boggles my mind.

Well, I ought to get some things tied up in the next 10 minutes so I can be ready to go. I have my sister's digital camera (yeah, I'll mail it back soon!) and will take some pics of the activities and my friends, with their permission of course, and post them here. I am pissed though at my computer situation. Here's the deal:

• I have a PC at home, the DVD drive is broken and I have to take it to the Gateway Store to have it fixed. It's been broken since... March. Uh, Okay. I suck and should be less lazy. But I haven't gotten it fixed yet. So I can't install the software to download the pictures from the camera... so...
• I brought the camera into work, installed the software and went to unload the pictures. Then I remembered my operating system (Windows NT) doesn't support USB, which is the camera's interface. Super shit!
• I just found a co-worker who is running 98. She doesn't have a USB port on her PC.

So I'm going to case out the PC where my intern sat this past summer. I believe it is running 98 because he can password protect his system, I know the password, and I just have to pray there's a USB port on that piece of shit. Then, I'm golden.

More after the outing!

Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated. All your portals are belong to us...

I work for the corporate office of an internet company that owns a bunch of other companies. In this economy of internet dot-bomb companies, I'm psyched to have a job.

In working for "the corporate entity" I am watching the culture of the way things have gotten done in the past change. And I am afraid I am part of the change-implementation team. We are consumed with how we're going to save money. What can we cut? Where can we slash? People are no longer people, they are "head count" like cattle. Anything that can be automated should, and the humans who did the job dutifully before will assist in making the automation happen, then be handed pink slips.

We have a portal. I work on the web development team. Our subsidiaries built their own portals... some of them. They felt they liked their autonomy, they bought servers to keep stuff safe and in house, while we busted our asses putting in an infrastructure to enable them to use the servers here for content. They aren't interested in our portal... they want to use their own.

So, they're pissing money away, which is fine if they want to pay for it out of their profits, but oh! Lookie here! THEY ARE NOT SHOWING ANY PROFITS! Oh, so sorry for you.

We've put forward initiative to consolidate all portal operations here in house, which is great for me because it protects my ass because someone has to be in charge of stuff, and we have just enough people in house to do that right this minute. It also guarantees that we'll be busy as beavers for the near future in getting content from the subsidiary's portals into ours... by hook or by crook. And, then, people at the subs will be let go, because we'll do it in house now. End of conversation.

All your portals are belong to us.

So I totally feel like I am part of a Borg Collective. The philosophy had been to let the subsidiary companies operate totally on their own, with their own everything, but that proved to be incredibly unprofitable. So, now the plan is to centralize as may operations as possible.

Nice to meetcha. I'm Christine of Borg. You will be assimilated. And I'll absorb all your stuff and it will be part of the collective. Resistance is futile... and I obviously feel so good about it.

(By the way, I am not a big Star Trek weasel in any way, shape, or form, but I always have sort of feared the concept of the Borg. Nameless, machine-like entities just sucking up whatever they come across and destroying its identity and personality... that's what business is all about though). I can't say as I think any of our centralization activities are wrong. I mean, money is the bottom line. Our stock is lame. We've got to do something NOW so we can be here in 10 months. In 2 years... so I can keep getting paid.

So I'm trying to figure out what our strategy will be to politely, and with great encouragement and education around it, get people to see that this is all for the good.

The good of the collective. I mean, the corporation. Right.

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On another note, I rented some movies in Doug's absence as he is now someplace west of St. Louis. I watched one of them last night. "The Wonder Boys," with Michael Douglas, Tobey McGuire, Frances McDormand and Robert Downey, Jr.

It was an amazing movie. I loved it. I won't talk too much about the plot, but suffice it to say it takes place at the University of Pittsburgh for the most part, many scenes filmed in the Cathedral of Learning, and there were lots of road scenes around the rivers and in very Western Pennsylvania looking neighborhoods. I love Western PA and what it looks like, and enjoyed the visuals, as well as the story. The story weaves round and round several problems that crop up in the day of Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) as he prepares to go to a University dinner party full of pompous windbag authors and pretentious English students. A world of Writers and Wannabe Writers, that echoed a lot of what I remembered from my college years.

Michael Douglas' character, Professor Grady Tripp, was likeable enough in a pathetic way, even if he was kind of a self centered jack ass unable to end a book he's working on, is unavailable emotionally and spiritually for his wife, and has knocked up his lover, the University's Chancellor. Tobey McGuire is wonderful as a creepy student named James Leer who fabricates an unbelievable life of suffering and pain, which he pours out in stories that he maintains are autobiographical, to the point where his fellow students are sickened by his tales and can't stand him. Robert Downey, Jr., is pheomenal as Crabtree, a gay editor/manipulator of writers (and in the end, the young author James Leer).

My favorite scene is when they're in a bar and they scope out a patron and make up a story about what he's all about. They name him Vernon, and proceed to weave this imaginative tale around him about where he got scars, and how his brother was murdered by the mob. It reminded me of something that I used to do with my friend Bonnie in college, where we would just create fiction based on what people looked like. I watched this scene with amazement, watching them enjoy the creation of a tale, watching the characters feed off each other's imaginations, and it really made me laugh. I highly recommend this movie. Good ending (a little too hollywood for my liking, but an okay ending nonetheless) and I think I will rent it again when Doug gets home from his trip.

Okay. Gotta run. I have to pick Geoff up from pre-school because I am in "single-mom mode" this week while Doug's away. I have been dropping him off very early and getting in here, very early. It's good to get out of here very early.