It's all good so far

Enjoying a third cup while Sandra is out calling the inlaws. We have enjoyed another Saturday breakfast and have been searching Yelp to determine our dining plans for our anniversary trip to Napa. (Suggestions welcome).

The Michelin star filter does not seem to work well with the Yelp search engine. There are still a lot of reviews to wade through after you eliminate tire stores.

The French Laundry is booked on our anniversary so we have opted for Bouchon as the alternative. We have four more nights to plan and have to consider two dinners will be after winery tours.

While this is a blow the stops out once in a lifetime, where we plan to scorch Amex points, accumulated mileage reimbursement, and bonus residuum, I am also contemplating if one can find similar, local, and fiscally sustainable experiences.

I am halfway through my fifties, the Hill Country beckons.

It has been a while. This is the first entry with the iPad. Took the opportunity to do an upgrade for the IPad 3 with Retina Display and more memory. It is much quicker and cleaner than the 2.0 but the wifi seems quirkier. I can see a repeater in every bookcase in every room or a move to the apple wireless router in the future.

The iTunes Store just doesn’t move quickly on downloads even when the MacBook is plugged into the current modem with the thunderbolt to adapter. Not first world problems, more like first world irritant.

Things are going well. Job feedback has been very good and progress is getting made. There are still some starts and stops, and the hurry up and waits, with the occasional – we probably need to be doing that – why don’t you take care of its.

There are new explorations into excel functions as I try to achieve an if this drop down is selected, then a specific value is sought, found, and entered. This has the old dog scanning the net for new tricks. It is a good challenge.

Survive the stress test, and the cardiologist said that things were functioning the way the should. Just that with the weight the risk remains. I have been able to get more exercise in. I am not just carrying the work out gear as I travel, I am using it. The gap is during the weekend. I need to think long and hard about buying a home treadmill.

Diet discipline is always going to be a challenge. I found calorie acceptable lunch dining near the office. I do need to fight the free snacks offered in the break room. Food on the road will depend on location and time. It will be a long term battle. The goal is to have myself in the shape I want to be in before I retire. The timeframe is shorter now that I am halfway through my 50’s.

Doubling up on entries today. Getting last weeks draft out first then thinking about the second one. I have been watching things going out in that world. It is still apparently a crime to be a public figure that was born and raised in the South instead of one of the upper border states.

We continue to live in two different countries. One with its population dense packed into urban areas that are dependent on the other with its ability to extract and produce goods and materials. The second is wide spread, self sufficient.

One has the media and banking stationed within it. Does this influence the reporting and development? How can it not.

One has decided to live with post Judeo-Christian – secular world, consistently rejecting historic values and beliefs. The other living with feeling that their right to maintain traditional belief based system of values is under attack.

How does one reconcile something that is perceived as a right by some and a sin by others? Civil discourse is unlikely when it is in the interest of the media to fan controversy and fuel sales.

Can a reasonable balance be achieved? It is not likely when political moderates have become an endangered species and the extremes of the parties control their own rank and file.

We used to have the option of immigrating, going somewhere else and setting up a system according to your beliefs, unfortunately we have run out of new places to go. We now have the ability to reach out and meddle with the internal affairs and rights of others in other places.

The ability to continue to communicate and cooperate is essential for civilized survival. Otherwise we will continue to divide and diverge tongue point we have diluted our national strength and end up wobbling into insignificance.

Starting this one while compressed in an airline seat in route to Pittsburg. While I have been in the job a little more than two months, I am still not to the point of routine. There is a lot of travel to be done. I need to see each of the facilities so that I can understand the issues, practices, and level of care given/needed at each.

I have been given the policy and the charge to assist the facilities in implementing it successfully. I am designing the infrastructure with both tools and procedures. Letting folks know what we need to do, and giving them a means of doing it. Getting feedback from them so we can prioritize issues and training.

Building tools that are accessible and scalable, tools that can grow as the company grows. I also need to be sure the tools make compliance easier for the facilities and I need the tools to provide the data I need to measure progress.

The first challenge is getting the data in. I need to know what we have and how we are currently handling it. I do already know that we have four accounting systems and I am getting cooperation from accounting that will help get vendors, volumes, and costs. It will also get me access to third party records.

I also need facility data, the who does what and how. I am looking of commonalities. The more uniform the issues, the easier it is to build documentation. Where one size may not fit all, we will still find that it will fit most. Build the core then address the outliers.

I am learning that it is not going to be a quick process. Others have different priorities, so we have to work forward or move to the next component while the delegated data gathering is dependent on others. So in the interim, I put out the occasional fire and do the needed travel.

The support and cooperation that I have received has been great. Compensation has not been shabby either.