management monday

so, we had our management meeting today. adam brought in posters to illustrate his points. why he couldn’t just use the whiteboards, I don’t know. anyway, it was great… in a twisted sense. he explained to us his great system for making it so easy to see which drawer name correlates to which bin number, using this folder structure. see? I about died when mick jr said, “but we have spreadsheets that tell us that…” oh man. lauren kicked him under the table as he started telling adam that it was a waste of time to do it that way. “shh,” she said. “bite your tongue; it won’t do any good to tell him.” adam also showed us his verification process, which had 3 phases. I wish I had my notes with me; I’ll just have to do the best I can without. here’s the process he used:

phase 1 – incorporate rescans of rescans; verify that the image of each rescan matches up with the original image.

phase 2 – check off rescans on qc list

phase 3 – check original images for rescans; verify that the name of each image matches up with the original name

there was more, I know, but that’s all I can guess for now. at any rate, I had to bite my tongue when he showed us that. he was having people go through manually to verify that all the rescans on the qc list got done — after lauren showed him the simple formula to figure it out. plus, you see how in phase 1 he checked that the image was correct, and in phase 3 checked that the name was correct? can you explain to me why you couldn’t do both at once? it seems to me like that might save time…

lauren couldn’t stop laughing when I told her about the drive key thing from friday. I had an 80gb drive in my hand, asked adam if he had a key for it, so he hands me one and says, “do you know how to use it? do you need me to show you?” for crying out loud, if I know that it needs a key, I probably know how to use it. my goodness. so all day we were making jokes about that, and I kept asking her if she could show me how to do really basic stuff. the funniest part is that adam doesn’t seem to have a grasp on a lot of basic stuff. what fun.

watched one fine day last night. talked to ryan on his drive back up to logan. today after work I went to aaron bros. frames to get a frame for that watercolor, the one for ann; I also found a “decorative wall decor with wall mirror and ledge” for $15. maybe I’ll find a picture to put up, because that on its own makes very little sense. then cost plus world market was right next door, so of course I had to stop in. got some tea light candles and holders — china pear. it smells pretty good, though my main reason for that scent (aside from it being one of the few tolerable ones) was the color. it’ll match when I paint my room. granted, I’m using them now, but it was a bag of 25 lights for $3. I thought that was a good deal. I also got some chocolate, of course; but I left it in the car to minimize the bulk I had to carry inside. I’ve really got to clean my car.

oh! the most glorious thing came in the mail: a statement from scholarshare, the california governor’s scholarship fund I have. well, I thought it was gone. I used the last of it for my tuition this past fall semester — but lo and behold, I’ve got another $1,170 for 2005! I have no idea why they put more money in my account, but it’s very good news. it means I can go ahead and start that humanities class through independent study. and another after that. and another after that. all on the state of california. thank you, people in charge of education!

untitled?

so ryan might get engaged soon. but to which of the two potential girls, I don’t know. he doesn’t know. it’s a rather interesting situation. and the one I hope he’ll pick is the opposite from what I would’ve said a week ago. funny how things change like that, huh? anyway, we talked for a long time last night. wait, we always talk for a long time. I got lots of bedtime songs, though, and I told him I felt spoiled because he sang all my favorite james taylor songs. although I was kind of asleep at the time, I enjoyed it. it’s nice to be pampered, even if only over the phone.

tried doing my hair in ringlets today. how on earth do you think lauren does it? her hair is way shorter than mine, but her curls come out so well. bah. I felt like I had cocker spaniel ears all day. it was alright, though, and the interesting stuff at work kept my mind off the weird hair.

here’s the scoop: daryll called this morning to let us know that tomorrow they’d be bringing back all the rescans, complete, and that was 106,874 images. I played around with a lot of pscu numbers after that. want to see?

images on spreadsheets – 174,044
redout bins not included in indexing – approx. 12k (this is factoring in blank removal)
missing images – 5,025
total pscu scans – 191k give or take a few.

well, then we have the 106,874 rescans. I know that includes about 67k redout images, which, after the blanks are removed, turns into only 53k. as luck would have it, 30k of those are already indexed or in the process of being indexed! which leaves 23k redout images still to be indexed, and another 30k full-folder rescans that will get indexed again. then there are just 10k images to be reincorporated.

“just 10k.” funny, isn’t it? the reincorporating is going to give me wrinkles and grey hair. but anyhow, it got really good after that. amanda was in the office today, and she came in to tell liz and lauren and I all about what happened yesterday. mike wasn’t there, for whatever reason; and as part of the “verification” process, amanda discovered quite a few errors with — well, with pretty much everything he did. some folders had been rescanned backwards, which isn’t horrendously bad, but some rescans were given wacko names. for instance, an image would be named 01-MAR-MAR-0010.jpg when it ought to have been 02-MAR-MAT-0010.jpg. now, you look at that and say, well, it isn’t too far off. but you have to manually match the image up now. that’s a big naming error. at that point mick came into the office and asked us to come into the conference room, because he had just gotten off the phone with daryll, who called to let him know about a big problem they’d run into.

interesting thing: daryll told mick that the problem was with the stuff mike qced. which, yes, we looked at the images, and he did miss them. but those can be rechecked. personally, I find bigger issue with the naming errors and scanning order. we called adam then to see what was going on. actually, mick called, but it was on speakerphone. I’m not sure if adam knew that. so adam started going on about how he was doing his “verification,” and they were finding errors that weren’t on the original qc lists, etc., etc. mick asked how he’s doing verification, because he has never made that clear. adam says, “I’m looking at the rescan list, and verifying that each of the files listed there has been rescanned.” yeah, guess what? 1. there’s a really easy formula to do that in excel; it saves time, it’s accurate, lauren showed him how to do it and wrote it down. 2. that’s qc. not production. there’s no need whatsoever for them to be onsite doing that. 3. adam said he wanted to make sure everything was good to pass off to data. hmm… it’s interesting to me that they (according to him) haven’t finished any bins — or even folders — to the point where they can be passed off already. they’ve been doing “verification” for several days and yet not a single folder has been completely checked? maybe I’m just slow, but does that make sense?

it’ll be an interesting day tomorrow as well. liz and amanda won’t be in until 7am, but there’s a meeting at 6 with adam, lauren, mick, daryll, and me. who knows if patricia will be in there. when liz was saying earlier that she didn’t want to be in the meeting, because she knew she’d explode at adam like last time, I said I should be the one to raise all these issues. everyone thinks I’m so quiet and nice and I don’t know what I’m doing, I just say “well lauren told me to do this…” or something like that. this’ll be a good chance to show I do know what I’m doing, and I have every right to bring up issues I have with production or with any other part of the process. to tell you the truth I’m kind of excited to see how well I handle it.

today was payday, and I got a lovely little check. ok, not so little… it was $2 shy of a grand. which was just fine with me. I took myself shopping to celebrate. oops, not supposed to do that. I also went to the library and picked up my books, so probably tomorrow I’ll start on those. isn’t it nice to not have work to do in the evenings? oh yeah, I also have an optometrist appt tomorrow afternoon. new prescription! wahoo!

song stuck in my head: eyesore by new found glory
movie I want to watch: seven brides for seven brothers
anything else: nope

the saga begins.

I haven’t got the time or energy lately to sit down with a real journal. most of my days are spent in front of a computer now, anyway; I figure at least now I’m keeping track of my life online. and I feel like being quasi-anonymous for a while. I can suppress the english major within me, ignoring all the rules I know about grammar and punctuation. …actually, all I’m doing so far is not capitalizing the beginning of sentences, but trust me — it’s a big step.

tomorrow will be crazy at work. the girls will be back from the san luis job, and I think mick wants me to give liz and patricia something to do. I’m not sure if amanda will be here or down at pacific again. if she’s staying at the office, I’ll have her start indexing the pec stuff that heather ruined. liz should have plenty of her own work to do. I need to get the rescans from pacific incorporated, but I can’t really have someone else do that. it will be interesting, to say the least. I have an idea how to do this though.

here are my thoughts on all the employees and managers at mha:

adam – I can’t quite figure him out. mick says he’s learning a lot and doing much better as production manager down at pscu. it was insightful, though, to happen to see his notebook while we were in a meeting last week. perhaps I shouldn’t have, but he was sitting across from me and it was open to his list of new year’s resolutions. they were good resolutions, and I hope he keeps up with them. probably two of the reasons I’ve never really warmed up to adam are (1) he’s turned his back on the church and (2) he has an illegitimate daughter. those go so much against two of my strongest convictions that I’m having a hard time not holding it against him. I know it’s incredibly judgmental of me, and now that I’ve quantified it, I’ll work on stopping.

amanda – she’s known mick for ages, and he trusts her; she’s apparently done really well down at pscu, although she was just on qc. I can have her index pacific redout bins because she understands the job. I could also have her work on pec, because I need it finished way sooner. I don’t know amanda at all, since she was hired on for the pscu job and was only in the office for about 20 minutes every morning. but if mick is right about her (and he usually is right), she’ll be good help for me.

daryll – I think they picked the right person to move into liz’s position with qc, and to also take over bernard’s sales position. daryll is confident, organized, and always follows through. he’s been so good about giving me details, and checking in with information that is important from a data handling point of view. I don’t really have any connection with him on a social basis, but I’ll probably get to know him better in these coming months as we work closely together.

diana – I’ve only met her once, but she’s way high on lauren’s good list.

heather – not a good employee; I know we aren’t going to keep her, and I think I’m going to be the one who lets her go. that’ll be new. she really messed up on this pec indexing, and while I realize that I gave her plenty of instructions (both written and oral), I’m still afraid that it was a shortcoming on my part that made her misunderstand the project. now I have to completely redo all the work she did — granted, it’s only 26k images, but I was hoping to have this completed and ready for billing by tomorrow afternoon. now it doesn’t seem so likely.

irma – when she first started working at mha, she knew absolutely nothing about computers. she’s come so far since then. even though she isn’t entirely comfortable with everything, she can keep up with the expected hourly scanning rates. plus she does really good work with prep. she’ll probably do the entire batch 04 prep for pec herself. irma and I had a fun chat on friday during lunch. I like her. she’s about ten years younger than mom, but it’s interesting how age doesn’t really seem to matter with a lot of us at work.

kristina – very little interaction with kristina. she tends to go through mick jr. instead of coming directly to lauren or me.

lauren – she’s been so good at training me. every time I had a question this past week she’d walk me through it over the phone; she called to check up on me several times, and was very helpful. her confidence in me has been tremendously encouraging. in fact I don’t think I have any complaints about lauren.

liz – not really under my command. I don’t know what she’ll be doing now that daryll is taking over qc. if she’s free, though, I can put her on indexing either pscu or pec. liz isn’t much older than me — only about 6 months, I think — but she’s so much more confident and outgoing that I tend to think of her as being 24 or 25. I do like her, though, and I guess I’m just intimidated by her.

matt – lots of experience with scanning. the problem is usually that he forgets one or two important settings… like scanning images as bmps instead of tifs, or naming erros. they’re fixable, of course, but it’s time-consuming. matt was planning to propose to his girlfriend yesterday, so he should announce his engagement at work tomorrow. that means he’ll only be working with us until the end of the semester. he (unintentionally, I’m sure) helps me realize my inadeqacies by asking questions that I have no answers to. this past week while I assumed the role of production manager, he was scanning el dorado dot; I’ve never made so many quick and uninformed decisions in my life as I did with that project. he kept coming in with folders that didn’t have permit #s or that had four permit #s, wanting to know how he should name the files. I hope I didn’t give him answers that will cause me a lot of grief in the next two weeks. (or ever.)

matti – it’s so weird being in charge of someone from my ward. and who’s a generation older than me. I have to admit, though, that he’s done a stellar job so far. I gave him a target hourly rate and he exceeded it, and I’m very impressed. I’ll probably keep him on indexing for as long as I can. he asks a lot of questions, which is good, except that most of them have to do with certain levels of incompetency on his part. he doesn’t really look at the full file name and location, he just makes assumptions based off a quick glance. oh well. he’ll learn.

mick jr – it will be extremely strange to be on an “equal” level with him as a manager. he’s the one who hired me back in may. apparently he’s changed a lot since then; it will be interesting to see how he adjusts to married life. mick is quite a character, but has a few more points in his favor than against.

mike – big no. he seems to be a decent employee, but I dislike him very much as a person. why? good question. perhaps because he always smells like he’s been using drugs of some sort. (c’mon, I have no experience distinguishing between what different illegal drugs smell like!) I honestly don’t think he’ll do well with indexing, so I’d like to put him on the sample stuff I picked up from chris fisher on saturday. if he’s in the office tomorrow, that is. adam will probably keep him down at pscu until they’re finished, though.

mindy – never met. lauren trusts her, but then again, I trust my mom, too…

patricia – I’d feel completely awkward giving her work to do, since she’s been working at mha for so much longer than I have. that’s a big problem I have with this new position — I don’t feel like I really have the authority to be managing people like veronica and patricia and soli. that’s probably compounded by the fact that none of the people I most definitely have authority over (think matti) go to lauren when they have a question. I’m the manager, people, I’m the manager! I’m in charge of you! oh well. so that’s the deal with patricia. she’s changed a lot since this summer; all of a sudden she started wearing fishnet stockings and knee-high boots and skirts so short they hardly count as clothes. and everything is always black. I haven’t yet figured it out. maybe she’s trying to not seem as old as she is — and I don’t mean that 30 is old at all, it’s just that she has 3 kids, and she acts more like a teenager than an adult who has children. hmm. beats me.

sean – I’ve felt stupid around him ever since the mixup with whether he was going to pscu or not. it was my very first day being data manager without lauren around to help, and I had been told sean would be staying in the office and I could use him for indexing; but no one told sean. technically I could have told him then “you’re staying here today,” but like I said, it was my first day, and I didn’t have the confidence to do that. it was kinda embarrassing, just because all the other pscu folks were standing around when I asked, and I looked awfully incompetent. I’ve post-prepped his pec work, and it was pretty good, but I don’t know about anything else. I’ve never worked with him on any other jobs.

soli – somehow he makes me feel a little more comfortable with my new position. he’s one of the most experienced employees we have, but maybe he isn’t enough of a leader to be a manager. I can’t say that I entirely like soli as a person. he’s good to have at mha, though, and I can put him on just about any job I need him for.

teresa – one of the best indexers we have. I’m sorry to lose her for a while, but hey, if I was about to have a baby, I can’t say that I’d be feeling too bad about having to stop indexing. teresa is really good about keeping in touch and giving me updates.

veronica – she became a production manager while I was in utah. and she’s definitely competent. as I was talking with mick on friday he said there’s a language barrier problem with both veronica and irma that is holding them back from further positions in the company. I think that’s bull. veronica is just lacking confidence; she speaks english fluently, and I don’t know where she comes off saying that language is a problem. irma has never acted like it’s an issue. anyway, aside from that, veronica is a good manager. sometimes she and I will have a long conversation about all sorts of random stuff, but for the most part we’re both pretty reserved. I’m glad she and irma are good friends, or else they might both be silent at work.

then there’s andy, and tim, and mick; oh, and gloria. but they seem to me to be on another level of the hierarchy, so I won’t go into any detail about them. besides, I have to leave some observations for another day.

I ought to get to bed, but I’d like to talk to ryan before then. and he may not call for another hour. of course, he may not call at all, but chances are he will.

I wish jarom were coming home sooner. well, at the moment I do. tomorrow I may be glad it’s still another 4 months. to tell you the truth I’m superbly nervous about seeing him again, after so long. but I think things will go well… hope so…

more later.