Not Too Shabby

My replacement had his first escalation meeting yesterday afternoon. After watching him stress and sweat the past week or so over various issues, he handled himself well. While I am sure the people involved were not pleased (he did exactly as he was supposed to...he followed the process and they are always looking for shortcuts), I was. The only real setbacks he had was one I had predicted would happen...the group does not plan on meeting again for TWO WEEKS and the fact that there are too many chiefs and not enough indians, as we us to say at my old job. Some escalation. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?

Another item I was able to find out AFTER hi meeting was that the 3-4 escalations they want, 2 or 3 of them are for PILOT projects that are not even live yet. It seems some of the beta testers are not happy with the results so the mgmt team on the customer side thought they would invoke the escalation process to make things work faster and better. Wrong answer. The thing that really burns me is that the mgr on our side AGREED with the customer, albeit he did admit he has no understanding of the processes. After I explained to him how all this works, he seemed like he was beginning to see the light. We shall see.

Anyhoo... I think the Swede will do well. Now all he has to do is remember he has other responsibilities as well. He has been slack on them because the number of R&D cases has been low the past few days. I hope today is different.


I had my first real high severity incident yesterday afternoon, although my TL/trainer/co-worker said they all do not go as smoothly as that one did. I know that, but it was nice to have one go smoothly from beginning to end (I finished up the paperwork this morning)...especially since it was my first.

I got home took care of the dogs (feed/water/let outside) and then made some rice to go with the cold shrimp we were having for dinner. Just before my wife came home I tossed the fresh green beans my wife steamed the day before in the microwave oven to warm them up. After setting the table, I watched a bit of TV to wait for my wife.

As soon as she got home we ate and she told me that if I finished vacuuming the house, she would clean up the kitchen. She had vacuumed half the house before she went to work and now only the bedrooms and office were left. I got that done in pretty good time and shortly after we both had finished, we took the dogs for a 2 mile walk.

The walk was pleasant except for the mosquitoes. All the rain we have gotten has really caused a mass influx of the critters in this area. I am pretty sure we have not had this problem since we have been here...going on 6 years now. Nonetheless, I feel like I am the "flavor of the month" for the little pests. I bet I get bitten at least a dozen times on each walk. Ick. Good thing that West Nile has not been major problem here...yet.

We got home and I watched a little of "America's Got Talent"...sort of a modern version of "The Gong Show". I quickly grew bored of the poor singing, dancing, and pectoral flexing and grabbed the laptop and browsed the web. Soon I was tired and went to sleep...