Miscellaneous: August 2007 Archives

My boss told me this morning that he read my blog and found it to be “very boring”, and “why would anyone read it?”. Now I’m wondering if he’s right. Maybe it is boring. Maybe I’m a boring person. Maybe I should just delete it and stick to my Flickr photos and forget the blog.

And on the cemetery plots....
It looks like we are a go as far as buying the plots. They don’t really look at people as couples. They just want the money for the plots. I suppose a problem could occur when we go to put down the marker stone, depending on what it said. I'm not going to volunteer any more information than I have too. The guy who will be showing us the plots is like 80 years old anyway. He just wouldn't understand.

Aside from that though, if this works out, we would be in the same cemetery as Nathan Hale (oddly enough called the Nathan Hale Cemetery). How cool is that?

THEN
I haven’t posted recently because my life has been changing a great deal over the last six weeks. Some good, some bad. That’s the way life is.

First, the bad, because I don’t want to end this update on a sour note... I had a complete change in staff at work. All in all, not a bad thing. For those of you who don’t know what I do, I run an IT department for a mid-size company in Connecticut. It’s not that I’m bitter about people leaving. People leave companies all the time. So yes, I do understand that. And, people leave for better opportunities all the time -- nothing wrong with that, and I understand that.

I try to take care of the guys who work for me to every extent that I can. I don’t watch the clock to see when they are at work. If they are late, never once have I questioned it. I trust them to do their jobs. I don’t baby sit the staff in my department. If someone needs a lot of attention, I’m probably not the manager to work for. In short, I give them all the space they need to grow. And eventually, I know they will leave.

It’s not that they left that has left a bitter taste in my mouth. It’s the way it all happened. Pretty much, within a three week period, they were gone, each after spending years in my department. Now, much of that is timing. It was not a conspiracy to exit all at once. It just happened that way. So why do I feel sour about this?

I’ve thought a lot about it. One person who left said that he would call me within a couple of weeks to have lunch. Do you think he called? Nope. I know... this is my baggage. I thought of him like a brother. The bottom line is, I suppose I should start thinking of people who work for me as other managers do; a commodity and nothing more. Don’t think of them as people because most likely, in the end, the favor won’t be returned. It’s extraordinary that the movie Ordinary People came out in 1980, and of all the lines in the movie, one sticks out vividly. The father is a stock broker. His wife just left him and he’s sitting outside in their back yard. His son, who was going through a lot of mental anguish from his past, tries to comfort his father. His father turns to his son and says, “Well, don’t put too much stock in people. They’ll disappoint you.” I thought at the time how much he was hurting, and full of disappointment. Well, that’s how I feel now.

So, I’ve withdrawn from blogging so I can form a brand new department. But I look at people who work for me a bit differently now. And, I look at people in general differently. You see, I am a very giving person. I care for people, obviously to a fault. People tell me I have a big heart. It’s true, I do. But where has it gotten me? I’ve come to realize that people are the most self serving animals on the face of this planet. And I’m not actually sure anymore that it’s possible to even have a “friend” at work.

So, I’ve been working on average about 14 hours a day and forcing myself to take weekends off. But on the weekends, I find myself tired, withdrawn, and depressed half the time. So all of that is the bad news, I suppose.

NOW
The good news is, I am getting to a point that I have a functional department again, so I am able to put in fewer hours. And next weekend, I’m seriously thinking of going to the Newport, RI area for a photo outing. I’m not sure where I’ll end up, but it will be the first long weekend that I’ve had in a very long time.

NEW TOYS!
Today, I’m going to go for a hike with Kent and spend some time together. It’s beautiful out and we need time together.

When my Nikon D200 was in the shop, I purchased a DVD on it that was highly rated. I thought I knew my camera well, but this DVD showed me things that just blew me away. More on that later, along with the new toys that I purchased yesterday. No, not those kind of toys. Get your head out of the gutter!

Yeah I know... I’ve been absent for awhile. Work has been consuming me somewhat, but I’m on the road to re-focusing my life a bit. I’ve covered what has happened at work, so I’m not going to re-visit it. Suffice to say, if you let work control your life, it will.

So for the sake of not letting that happen, I’ve completely taken this weekend off to do very little. We did go to the mall yesterday however. When I take photos, I eventually upload some of them to Flickr. That’s all well and good. The only issue I have is the geo-tagging of the photos. I like to place them on the map in Flickr so that people can kind of see where the photo was taken. It’s an approximation of course. And sometimes, as was the case with Olympic National Park, where you are on an undocumented trail (as far as Flickr is concerned), it’s difficult to actually place the photo. What you end up doing is to place the entire set ... somewhere on the map. In reality, each photo has it’s own unique location as many were taken while on the way to see something else. It would be nice to actually be able to see, within a few meters, where the photo was taken.

So, I’ve been doing some research on how to do that. Some GPS units will connect to a Nikon D200, if you have the right cables. Supposedly, the camera will be aware of the GPS being connected and will tell me this by a solid “GPS” indicator on the camera. Then, when I take a photo, the location will supposedly be recorded in the EXIF data within the photo, which also is sent to Flickr when I upload a photo. That SHOULD do it for me.

The complicated part is finding the right cables, and GPS units that are compatible with my camera. I’ll let you know what I find out. It would be totally cool to have a map of each photo along a hiking trail, similar to bread crumbs of where the photos were taken.

And speaking of my D200, it’s still in the shop.

Other news...

We went to a nice restaurant Friday night. It’s called Chikurin, located in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Actually, a former co-worker took me there awhile ago, and I liked it. Then, last Friday night, Kent was on his way home from Salt Lake City. He stopped by work around 5:30, and I decided to take him there for dinner to see how he liked it. The food was good. I love their curry’s. The only downside was that some guy kept glaring at us like he wanted to do us physical damage. Kent mentioned it after we left. I didn’t notice it, but it made him uncomfortable.

If anyone has experience with hooking up a GPS to a Nikon camera, I would love to hear your suggestions. Oh, and finally, I’ve joined the Connecticut Flickr Meet Up Group (thanks to James for suggesting it!). It’s a group of photographers in Connecticut who meet monthly at a different place for photography. It should be fun. I have a birthday party to go to next Saturday, but I hope to make it for my first meet up with them.

Have a nice day everyone!