The Launch is no longer The Event

Posted August 25, 2005 at 10:07 AM | Tagged as: Meeeeeeee, Work | Comments Off

Back when I worked at AOL, it was all about The Launch. As it got closer, people got tense. If the team worked well together, the pieces were ready, the plans were made, and you were in wait mode; on the other hand, you could be working up to the last minute, biting your nails, twitching from the caffeine that was keeping you alive. In either case, The Launch is no longer important to me, because I’m not involved in it any longer. For me, The Launch is no longer The Event.

In my new life as a contractor/consultant, The Event that I’m concerned about is The Delivery. So far The Delivery has been by far less stressful for me, because I have no one else to rely on but me. I determine my schedule, so I don’t overload myself with work. I get requirements and give delivery dates based on what I know I can meet (and so far not once have I been told that my estimated delivery dates were too far out). I ask questions up front and wait for answers before beginning work, so I don’t stress over having to rework code zillions of times due to lack of detail. And change requests haven’t even been a huge problem. So I do my work and I deliver my work, and other than questions that might pop up later, I’m done!

So yay for me, for reducing my stress levels. And hooray for the teams that actually did all of the stressing to launch two of the sites that I’ve worked on over the past few months: the Ruckus Network team and the AOL Find a Job team.

I’m The Philadelphian

Posted June 6, 2005 at 11:32 PM | Tagged as: Books, Meeeeeeee, Philly, Quotations | Comments Off

From The Philadelphian by Richard Powell, 1956:

They even took one weekend trip to Washington, D.C., which was where they had moved the national government after Philadelphia had started it going properly between 1790 and 1800. A lot of people from all over the country were taking history trips that summer. Some of them certainly didn’t know much about Philadelphia.

Like the woman who came up to them outside the Capitol in Washington and said, “Hello, folks. I’m from Ohio. I see by your license that you folks are from Pennsylvania.”

Anthothy said quickly, before his grandmother or mother could reply, “Oh no, we’re from Philadelphia.”

The woman looked puzzled and said, “They haven’t moved it from Pennsylvania, have they?”

His mother and grandmother laughed politely, so the woman wouldn’t feel badly about being ignorant, because of course Philadelphia was in Pennsylvania, but you weren’t from Pennsylvania, you were from Philadelphia. He guessed maybe out in Ohio there were no important places to be from, so you have to be from Ohio.

The book dedication reads: For Marian, who didn’t understand Philadelphia.