Matching Tracksuits

Home alone. Chhavi left for Tennessee Monday, and I’ve basically been alone since then. It’s been strangely nice, strangely empty. As I told her last night, I don’t really miss her during the day because I never really see her during the day. But at night, it’s a little different. I really don’t find I miss her, though, until it’s time to go to bed. I guess that’s just indicative of the lifestyle we’ve been living for several months now: we come home and then basically do our own things, alone, until it’s time for dinner, then again until it’s time for bed.

So the big DLI news this week: Tuesday we went out for lunch with Kali — Sweet Chili’s in Arligton — and as we were sitting down, Beth said something to me under her breath: “Did you know Val’s leaving?” I thought she was joking at first, but she had known well enough about Kali, so I took it as being probably true. Then Kali told us all. “Val’s leaving. Today is his last day.” So we went to Carberry’s and got a cake for him, then to Buck-a-Book and bought a card for him.

This means that the whole production-side mid/upper level management is now gone. Well, that’s not quite true since Natalie has her new position. Still, a whole level of the hierarchy has been taken out (i.e., vice president of production). Natalie will report straight to Layne now, as will Adam I suppose. I don’t honestly see that this will be much of a problem. If Val was incompetent as Peter always said, then it will actually be a good thing.

It’s interesting — six months after Rob quit and about three months after Peter quit, everyone they had problems with quit as well: Celina, Val, and Kali. Of course Rob would figure out someone else to have issues with. He seemed to latch onto hating Dale for the hell of it, so maybe someone else would get his dander up. And of course not everyone who annoyed him has left — Ron Smith (who, I admit, is fairly annoying) is still there. What the hell he’s doing, I’ve no idea.

How many people does that leave that were at DLI when I arrived? Bob, of course, and maybe a handful of others. I think Ellen Dixon was there before me, as were a few of the graphics folks and Kiki. Otherwise, I’m probably in the top ten as far as longevity goes.

Now for the big news. Yesterday I was talking to Natalie to see if there was anything she needed me to do, and she said, “No, but I wanted to talk to you.” Off we went to her cube, where she explained that Layne (!?) had asked her whether she would be willing to give me up to tech. Basically, the COO has noticed my work on the tech side of things and talked to my superior about getting me to change departments. Of course I said I was interested, and we then went over to meet with Kevin, the new CTO.

He’s a fairly mellow guy, I think, at least as far as his personality goes. I foresee him being a good guy to work with, though. I think he’ll expect a hell of a lot out of the people under him, but at the same time I think he’ll provide all the support we would need to get the job done.

We talked about the Big Dig that’s coming for the DLI site. Basically, we’re going to reconstruct the site while keeping the existing site going — hence the Big Dig metaphor. I’ve been thinking for a while that we could reduce the whole site down to ASP and SQL and have each page dynamically generated for each user. “That would entail creating a new linking tool,” I thought, “As well as completely re-doing the site. And that’s a huge expense that I don’t think DLI is interested in incurring.” Well, guess what we’re doing — something very similar. No ASP, though. Instead, it’ll all be XML with a Unix base and an Oracle DB. Three things I know nothing about. When Kevin explained the use of Unix and Oracle, I said, “There’s two things I know absolutely nothing about.” His response was quite encouraging: “So that’s two things you’ll have to learn.” Or something along those lines.

One of the things he mentioned was something else I’d never head of — digital dashboards. It turns out that we’re only using a small percentage of the Exchange server and Outlook’s capabilities. These two things can be used to provide massive amounts of information to in-house (and probably outside) employees, but we simply haven’t made the most of it. That’s one thing that Kevin wants us to do, and that makes me, in turn, very excited. I love the idea of being able to make stuff that directly impacts others’ lives and makes their work easier.

Speaking of that, one thing I haven’t written about but that I’m very happy about is the impact my silly macros (I must admit, I’m really sick of that word.) have had on others. Stephen Cebik told me that my macros have cut a process that used to take him upwards of five days down to a day and a half. That’s a major time savings. And of course part of me wants to say, “Hey, why don’t you tell Layne and Jay that. Maybe they’ll send a bit of those hundreds of dollars I’ve saved the company back my way.”

Back to my meeting with Kevin. He told me that I should think during the Christmas break about what kinds of things I’d like to do, then added with a laugh, “And then I’ll have you doing something entirely different.” I think that’s what I’ll do now — a list of things I’d love to do at DLI.

I’d like to be able to work with people a lot. That’s why this digital dashboard stuff seems so exciting to me. It would be like making macros in that I would be creating things that helped people in the here and now. So I think that would be a great thing to get started on — creating these dashboards, working with people to find out what then want/need in such a tool, teaching people how to use the tools (both the old and the new tools), and so on.

I think I could be most useful as something of a liaison between the editors and the software developers as it comes time to begin planning and coding the new tools necessitated by the site’s renovation. I know how editors work; I know how editors use the tools they already have; I know the problems editors have with the existing software. Who better to help plan the production-side tools?

I finally got a letter from someone in Poland — Halina sent me a letter with a Christmas gift — a tape called Śpiewają Gwiazdy Polskiej Estrady Najpięniejsze Kolędy, which I haven’t listened to. She told me about how things at school are going. Recently the liceum celebrated its fifth anniversary — I don’t really wish I could have been there for that, though. A bunch of speeches? No thanks. Of course there would have been some student recitals and singing, which was always nice. Anyway, it was nice to hear from her, though I wish she’d written sooner.

I found recently a new site dealing with the WCG and it’s spliters — including some I’d never heard of. It’s at: http://www.apollo.spaceports.com/~truth/index.html. Anyway, here’s something fascinating:

William F. Dankenbring now believes that the Israelites ignored Moses’ instruction to stay in their houses all night and that the Passover was on the fifteenth day of the first month, rather than on the fourteenth as taught by Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA). John D. Keyser, one of William’s associates for the past ten years, has gone even further, breaking away from Triumph Prophetic Ministries to start his own splinter group called Hope of Israel Ministries. Ignoring the Genesis account, John Keyser has now started to teach that the week has a pagan origin, and that the weekly Sabbath changes each month due to the new moon and can fall on any day of the week.

I just found the website, so I’m going to explore for a while now.