Several weeks ago our daughter Dawnmarie called me to arrange a surprise visit to Colorado Springs this week. My wife and I both have birthdays next week so this was to be our birthday present. Surprise visits are almost a hallmark in our family. Some examples include:

• Before we moved to Germany in 1972 we paid a surprise visit to Idaho to spend Christmas with my folks.
• Our oldest daughter announced over the phone from college that she was getting married, we drove from Ohio to Utah (straight through the night) to help get some wedding arrangements made. The daughter was astounded to wake up and find us in her apartment!

• While we were living in Japan, I arranged for our son and daughter to make a surprise visit to Japan for a week or so (the surprise on Nina’s face when these kids came up the stairs was priceless).
• There are numerous "local" surprise visits, just to make life interesting, such as last Thanksgiving when one of our sons showed up on the doorstep looking for a bite to eat.

So arranging for our daughter to come out for the week as a surprise visit is kind of a normal thing. The unusual part was that her husband, who is a real gem, was quite happy to spend the week at home watching the kids while our daughter came out. He teaches at a college and this week is Spring Break, so he didn’t have to take any extra vacation. However, with four very active kids under the age of seven, he definitely had his hands full. What a guy!

Dawnmarie and I made the arrangements. Rather than have her spend money on an airplane ticket, I used my frequent flier miles to get her here. That would allow her a little more financial freedom in the matter. We had a few other phone conversations getting things arranged and were quite happy with the impending surprise visit.

But, I forgot one important thing. Because I used my frequent flier miles, Northwest mailed a confirmation to my home address. Nina saw this strange thing from Northwest, stripped off the perforations, opened up the envelope, and saw the travel schedule. She tried to figure out how to glue the perforations back on the notice, had no luck at all, and finally gave up. She then told me that she knew Dawnmarie was coming out.

After some discussion, we decided to turn the tables. I wouldn’t say anything to Dawnmarie letting her continue to think that she was the "Surpriser" and that Nina was the "Surprisee." Rather than have Dawnmarie take a taxi from the airport and just walk into the house unexpectedly, I would pick her up at the airport. Nina would come with me, and while we were waiting at baggage claim, spring the reverse surprise.

It worked. Dawnmarie’s flight was to arrive on Sunday evening a little after 10 p.m. We got to the airport about 9:30 to find her flight was delayed by about 25 minutes. We waited until the airplane arrived and the passengers started coming off the plane. Nina went down by baggage claim and became inconspicuous. I met Dawnmarie at the security checkpoint and we went downstairs to baggage claim. She was so excited to be here and was looking forward to a very relaxing week. As the bags were coming out on the conveyor belt, Nina walked up behind Dawnmarie and tapped her on the shoulder. Her shriek of surprise was just delightful. They hugged and danced around the baggage claim area. The tables had been well turned.

Dawnmarie flies back home this afternoon. We’ve had a very nice week with her here. She got a lot of sewing done, some shopping completed, spent a day in Denver with Nina and Jared, took a couple of naps, and is ready to get back home with the husband and kids. It was indeed a very welcome visit.

Some time ago on one of our cruise vacations, I made it a goal to take a hundred pictures every day on my digital camera. This plan came from a couple of thoughts:

1. If I were to conciously take pictures at every available moment, one or two of them might just be reasonably interesting. It’s kind of like the idea that by throwing enough mud on a wall, eventually some of it sticks.
2. Taking pictures is like any other skill … good practice makes for better results. By taking lots of pictures, reviewing them, deciding which of them I liked, and then determining why I liked them, perhaps I’d get better at taking pictures that I liked. The mechanics of the digital camera would become easier to use. I’d better understand the relationship amongst several of the digital camera features, such as white balance, ISO, and sharpness.

For the next several vacation or cruise opportunities I did implement the plan and was able to take at least a hundred pictures every day on these trips. When we went to Maui I only took my digital camera with me and left the 35mm camera home. So what was the result?

I found that I did get better at using the camera, but also became much more frustrated at what the camera could not do that I could do with the 35mm film camera. From a mechanics perspective, the plan was indeed useful. Picture taking with a digital camera is very inexpensive. Once the camera is purchased, I can take as many pictures as my compact flash cards will allow with no other expense. I can download the pictures immediately to my laptop computer and make room on the camera for many more pictures. The only cost is time and wear and tear on rechargeable batteries.

I also confirmed that digital picture taking is much more involved than just using the digital camera. Almost none of the images from the digital camera were complete by themselves. They all required cropping, work on color balance, contrast, and brightness. They all needed to be resized to fit the intended end application, such as displaying on a web site or printing as a 4×6 or 8×10 picture. So just learning how to use the camera wasn’t sufficient. I also needed to have good computer software and a good understanding about how best to use that software. The digital camera has has a much narrower dynamic range than a film camera, so a picture with lots of shadows and a lot of contrast doesn’t come out well. Getting a good picture under these circumstances means taking two pictures — one set up for the shadows and the other set up for the highlights, overlaying the two pictures, blending them, and then collapsing the two layers into one image that brings out the detail in the shadows while not blowing out the highlights. That’s not straight-forward, out-of-the-box utilization of technology (meaning it’s not for the faint hearted) and requires some pretty expensive computer software.

I also found by taking all these pictures I was still "timelining" rather than picture taking. That is, I took a lot of pictures, but most of them were more like a travelogue rather than taking a lot of pictures of one item of interest from a dozen different angles, lighting, and exposures. I ended up with pictures of every few minutes during the day. That meant the screening and decisionmaking about what pictures to keep and which to throw away didn’t have much to do with whether or not I liked the picture, but whether I wanted to keep the documentation of that particular point in time. Rather than having a few pictures taken at various times during the day, I had dozens of pictures taken at different times during the day.

As a result, picture taking has reached another dilemna. The 35mm film camera inherently takes better pictures. The pictures from the film camera are quite expensive. If I also want the pictures scanned onto digital media, such as a CD-ROM, that further increases the expense. I could buy a film scanner and reduce the expense of getting film to digital media, but I need to calculate the cross-over cost. How many pictures do I have to take and have scanned for me before I would pay for a good, high-quality scanner? I tend to take more pictures of specific events or objects with a film camera for some reason.

The net result is that I’m going to put my digital camera into the point-and-shoot category or when I’m taking film specifically for my web pages. Otherwise, I’ll shoot 35mm film and try to get much more proficient with that capability.

Now, what does all this have to do with Blogging? Since putting this capability on my web site, I’ve tended to put an entry into the blog every once-in-a-while. I think I need to make sure that I make an entry more often than that and at least once a week on Monday. So the goal from here forward is to make an entry every Monday. Beyond that, if I some up with an thought needing some expression, that’ll get blogged as well. I’ve also no idea if anyone reads these things, and actually don’t really care very much. I write for me as the primary audience. This system has the capability of allowing folks to make comments and reply to these missives. Perhaps it’s time to turn some of that capability on as well.

It’s Monday and now I’ve BLOG’d!

We’re in that time of year foisted by corporations upon their employees: The Annual Review. Most of the time at the company where I work, the review period is followed by salary adjustments or merit increases. Not this year. For the second year in a row, there will be no merit increases and that policy won’t be reviewed until sometime no earlier than the third quarter. However, whether form should follow function or not, we are in the annual review season. Everyone must be classified into one of three categories: an outstanding performer (no more than 15% of the population can be in this category), successful performers, and those requiring development (5% of the population must fall into this category). The unfortunate in the latter class either have to clean up their act or get managed out of the company.

The timetable requires employees to write a self assessment by the end of December. The manager then has to write a review by the end of January. Then there’s a few weeks of jockeying around to meet the quotas. The Human Resource Department has to give their OK on the ratings and bless the reviews being given to those requiring development. Finally around the end of February, we have the Annual Employee Review which is a one-on-one meeting with the employee’s manager.

I’ve yet to figure out how this process really works to anyone’s benefit other than keeping the Human Resource people gainfully employed. In the employee’s eyes it becomes even almost a joke. Further, in an era of "Shut Up, Sit Down, and Be Happy You Still Have a Paycheck," it’s no wonder that cynicism reigns.

Of course, some of this rant comes because of my own review. It is less than sterling … despite a very, very good year. To read the review you would get the opinion that I’m barely one step away from being managed out of the company. I shouldn’t let it bother me very much — the man I work for is just that way. I don’t think he is capable of writing a review in any other tone. It’s impossible to do any job and have it done correctly from his viewpoint. He would have done it differently. And, of course, doing the job isn’t sufficient, it has to be done precisely in the way he would have done it.

So, what kind of job did I do last year? In January, faced with a very bad financial picture, the company determined to reduce headcount by 20%. In the Information Technology Department, we went one better reducing staffing by just over 30%. The cuts were deep and painful. It left me one person deep at every skill position. If anyone were to quit, go on disability, or even go on a vacation, we would be very short staffed. Beyond that, I was to decrease my spending by another 15%. With that backdrop, we aggressively re-negotiated contracts taking advantage of our supplier’s equally difficult positions. We reduced maintenance coverage. We stopped travelling and put all training on hold. We achieved a 19% percent reduction when the target was 15%.

A major concern was staff burnout coupled with judgment errors since there wasn’t any ability any more to do peer reviews on proposed work (the peers were all gone!), much of the staff were on call every night and weekend, and the workload didn’t decrease even though the staffing had been reduced by a third. I personally felt that the company had to plan for one major system outage each quarter that would last eight hours or longer and so informed management.

To counter that, I implemented plans to recognize the good things that my staff did. We still had a small amount of discretionary money for small awards, such as a dinner for two, or a check for $500 or $1000 (before taxes, of course). Good work and good thinking would be seen by their management and appropriately recognized. We took a hard look at the on-call policies and shifted the workload around as much as possible to have as few people as possible chained to the office. A Microsoft systems adminstrator could be the first line of defense for both Microsoft and Unix systems and vice versa. We encouraged people to take their vacations and release workplace stress. The results were excellent. We had one system outage in SAP that lasted for a half hour and that was due to a hardware failure. The Oracle ERP system had two short outages in the year, both due to hardware. Uptime and reliability improved significantly over the previous year. No one quit, no one went "postal," and no one switched over to apathy mode. We have some personnel issues, but nothing beyond what would be expected in any normal IT shop.

We also accomplished several other very important projects despite severely constrained spending. We implemented wireless access inside all our major locations (which has been very well received) and had an outside firm audit it to verify its security. We built a disaster recovery site for both SAP and Oracle ERP using available hardware and did two successful failover tests. We put in place the ability for employees to access their e-mail and calendars through any internet-connected web browser. We brought up almost twenty new servers in the data center supporting collaboration, intranet search (the "Google" of the company, content management, product line management, and an employee portal. We acquired two more small companies and integrated them into our infrastructure. And we revamped our entire data network as part of renegotiating contracts to take advantage of the latest in wide area network capability.

All of that was well and good — I guess it was what was expected. However, according to my review, my fuse is sometimes too short. I don’t check the information given to me by my staff thoroughly enough before giving it to my boss. There are a couple of other things equally as dastardly.

So, I’ve been reviewed and found, well, somewhat wanting. At least I know that I haven’t reached perfection, yet. I have yet another year to work on it. I also got something to rant about…! But pardon me for a few minutes while I go be a bit cynical about The Reviewing Season.

Today I turned in all the reviews for all the folks who work for me as well as the folks that work for them. The employee one-on-one meetings have all been held. The season is over for another year. Something else to be thankful for, me thinks.

We’ve got about seven or eight inches of snow outside and it’s supposed to snow the rest of the night. This is the first snow of any significance in almost two years. It is very beautiful outside. I think I’ll try to do some camera work tomorrow morning and see what develops. There will be no shortage of subjects, particularly if it’s at all bright or sunny. The drive back from the Denver Temple was slow tonight, with lots of traffic most of the way. The Interstate was fairly slick and slush covered most of the way. I’m quite happy to be home, in my sweats, and able to take it very easy for the rest of the night.

Thursday was a difficult day. It started with a visit to the dentist which was punctuated with three or four telephone calls while the hygenist was trying to clean my teeth. In fact, I didn’t even make it in the door before the phone calls started. The company I work for was doing a "small reorganization" which was resulting in more than two hundred people loosing their job. My department is responsible for turning off remote access, forwarding phones and e-mail, and doing other cleanup work in the aftermath. As I was in the chair going through all of this, the hygenist remarked that this time in her chair just might be the highlight of the day. Now that was a very distressing thought!

The Shift Coordinator for our Saturday afternoon shift at the temple is either working or out of town today and the next two or three weeks. That makes me the Acting Shift Coordinator. The job isn’t particularly difficult, just needs reasonable amount of experience working at the Temple. The job involves the following:

• Somewhere around Thursday having the temple fax me the ordinance schedules for Saturday along with any family file work planned. The ordinance schedule includes weddings, sealings, and own endowments, the time that these events are scheduled, and any other parameters surrounding the events. The family file schedule indicates those people bringing family file work into the temple for baptisms or initiatory ordinances.
• Thursday night calling all the irregular temple workers to determine if they’ll be at the Temple on Saturday afternoon. We have about fifteen ordinance workers who are at the temple every week and another twenty-five workers that are scheduled one or two Saturdays a month. Based on these phone calls, I then know pretty well who will be available on Saturday.
• On Friday I make up the preliminary schedule. We conduct seven endowment sessions on Saturday afternoon and each session needs one or two brethren assigned depending on whether or not an own endowment is planned for that session. We also conduct two initiatory sessions and four brethren are assigned to each session. The rest of the brethren act as Own Endowment or Sealing Guides, and as presenters or receivers at the veil.
• On Friday evening I send a copy of the schedule to the Veil Coordinator for my shift. From that he makes up the veil plans.
• On Saturday morning I have the Temple fax me the latest revisions to their schedules. From that I make up the final schedule, make enough photo copies for each of the brethren on the shift, and the head for the temple.
• The day at the temple starts with a prayer meeting at 12:05 p.m. in the chapel. This meeting needs an opening prayer and a person to give a short spiritual talk. On some Saturdays, I assign these activities. On other Saturdays, the Sister Coordinator assigns sister ordinance workers.
• Following the prayer meeting we have a short training meeting followed by a look at the schedule. I then hand out the work schedule to all the brothers present (after making changes for people who didn’t show up and for people who were there unexpectedly).
• The rest of the day is spent handling scheduling and other issues that occur during the shift. Today we had plenty of help and a very light patron load, so there weren’t many issues and none of any import.
• Finally, I close up the back end of the temple, turn off the lights, check the closets and ordinance rooms, and make sure that everyone has left the back part of the temple. Then it’s off to home.

By then, I’m plenty tired and my feet are very happy for me to be sitting in the car for the hour’s drive home. Bradica (the dog) is also very happy to see us when we finally arrive home, but mostly so she can get outside to do her business and then get something to eat.

So that’s my end of the week. A downer day on Thursday, cleanup from that on Friday, followed by a very pleasant afternoon in the Denver Temple. The day was capped by coming home to find more than seven inches of snow! Only bad part is, because of the snow I’ll have to be at Church at 7:15 a.m. to help shovel the sidewalks. Ugh.

Today I received the following e-mail from World Gym in response to my rant about yet another number to have to remember and use. The e-mail has been edited somewhat to protect privacy of the sender and other information:

Dear Mr. Smith,

Thank you so much for your letter today explaining your frustrations with
the World Gym check in procedure. On June 1, 2002 all World Gym locations
in the Colorado Springs area were acquired by Excel Fitness Colorado, LLC
and now operate under new ownership. All your records and membership
information has been transfered from the previous ownership into the Excel
Fitness Colorado database. Unfortunately one of the drawbacks to our system
is that if you try to utilize a location other than the one that you joined
at, your membership info cannot be found without utilizing the membership
number. (Each membership number is coded to be club specific) We know that
change is difficult, so we have been gradually changing the check in
procedure over the last 8 months and posted those changes at each location.
I apologize for any inconvienance the new program causes you, I assure you
that was never our intent. We appreciate your business and thank you for
your continued support. To show my appreciation, I have lowered your
monthly dues to $(deleted) per month, which will be reflected on your March
statement. Excel Fitness Colorado LLC has been a leader in the fitness
industry for over 15 years, operating the largest World Gym franchise in the
nation. We have many exciting things planned for the Colorado Springs area
and hope that you will stick with us during some of these difficult changes.
Thank you again for your comments. Should any additional issues arise in
the future that you would like to comment on, please don’t hesitate to
contact me directly. I will do what ever I can to rectify the situation.

Thanks Again,

(name deleted)

VP / Operations

My Response:

Dear (Name Deleted):

Thanks for your response and particularly the change in dues! I really don’t have a huge problem with using a membership number, but hopefully you understood the real intent of the letter….

In my day job I’m the responsible for Information Technology for a large semiconductor manufacturer. One of the major problems we have in business is the overwhelming number of ways that our employees and customers (the politically correct phrase these days is “business partners” rather than customers) are identified. It seems that literally every computer system requires it’s own unique method of identifying and authenticating the system user. Getting that under control has been a major project at my company. The rule has become: Use a method of identification that the system user already knows or has. About a year ago we instituted a policy that we will not deploy any computer system that does not make use of our standard, already-in-place identification and authentication process. We have standardized on either the user’s name or an ID of their own choosing. We do have system users with the same name, but the identification system is required to handle that issue through the authentication process.

While this is probably more detail than you’re interested in, the point is to make it "falling off a log" easy for people to do business with us and interface with our computer systems, kind of like Amazon.com’s 1-click buying process.

Please feel free to pass this along to those who are responsible for your computer systems. With only a little effort, they can do the same thing for Excel Fitness Colorado LLC!

Meanwhile, thanks again for your response. Many companies either ignore letters like the one I sent to you, or don’t have the sense to put in place a process to promptly respond. I’m impressed. I’ve also put your response (with some editing to protect pricing and your privacy) on the web at https://www.rnsmith.com/

Thanks!

Roland Smith

Yesterday morning when I went to the World Gym for the daily ritual, the guy at the front desk (a less-than-2%-Body-Fat kind of a guy) looked me up on their computer and then gave me a card with a membership number. I’m now supposed to give them the number when I come in each morning rather than my name!

Yet another number to identify me. I’ve got a social security number, a drivers license number, several bank account numbers, pin numbers, user ids and passwords for computer programs, license plate numbers, frequent flier numbers, Safeway Savings Card number, Avis Wizard Number…. In fact, there are so many of these numbers that I have most of them entered into my PalmPilot PDA that I carry with me almost everywhere so that I can remember the number I’m supposed to use for each situation.

I asked the guy at the desk why I now needed a number. I’ve been going to this gym for more than three years and until Thursday, my name was sufficient. He told me it was so they could "be more efficient."

Now that’s a not-so-novel concept: Inconvenience the paying customer so that the goods and services provider is slightly less inconvenienced! I’m sure this makes the Dale Carnagie How to Win Friends and Influence People top ten list. But even more intriguing is why World Gym needs to have a different identifier for me than my name. I’m certainly not the only Roland K. Smith in the world. In fact, there are probably a couple hundred other people in the U.S. who use the name Roland K. Smith. Despite that situation, however, the Post Office manages every day to deliver the mail destined for me to my house and has never yet in my almost-sixty-years of living, sent some other Roland K. Smith’s mail to me. There aren’t any other Roland K. Smiths in Colorado Springs. In fact, there aren’t any other Roland Smiths in the city, either. So uniqueness in a somewhat common name can’t be the driving issue for the gym.

Sometimes I think that computers assign numbers as primary identification just because it’s so much easier for the person writing the computer program. Programmers like numbers. They work better in the computer than letters. Comparing two numbers, for instance, is much easier than comparing two names. The computer can easily determine that 140 is different than 2500. But the computer just as easily decides that "Smith" is different than " Smith" unless the programmer goes to a bunch of extra effort to write a comparison routine that accommodates spaces in names as well as the length of names.

Although my name is fairly common — particularly when using just the first initial and last name — I do like it and would prefer to be identified by my name. I suspect that the computer didn’t agonize over my number like my mother did over my name. It probably took the computer a few nanoseconds to assign the number unlike me coming home from the hospital unnamed because just exactly the right name hadn’t been decided, yet (compounded by the fact that I was supposed to be a girl and just the right girl’s name had already been picked, but surprise, I was not a girl and so a new, more gender appropriate name, had to be chosen).

United Airlines knows me by my name, even though one of the numbers I have assigned to me is a United Airlines Frequent Flier Number, which I’m supposed to hold confidential and only use in appropriate places. When I call United Airlines and say something like, "Hello, my name is Roland Smith and I’m flying from Colorado Springs to San Jose next Thursday…." The nice person at United Airlines invariably answers, "I’ve got your record, Mr. Smith. How can I help you today?" Even though the record that the reservation agent is looking at is filed in the computer under a record locator number, and my travel agent sends me the flight itinerary in e-mail with the record locator number as the prominent information on the page, United Airlines never asks for that number. It’s almost like the locator number is an inconvenience for them. All they want is my name and any flight information I may have. They’ve even found the necessary data by just using my name. Now that’s a system where the programmer did the complete job. On the other hand, United Airlines is currently having lots of trouble with numbers, in particular the revenue versus expense numbers. Perhaps that’s why they prefer using names instead than numbers?

The guy behind the counter at World Gym said this morning when I came in, "Good Morning, Mr. Smith. Have a good workout." I told him I was now supposed to give him my membership number and not my name, even though I hadn’t said anything to him yet. He allowed as how he was supposed to ask for the membership number, but that since he knew who I was he didn’t need for me to give him my number, as long as his lady boss wasn’t there!She’s apparently the enforcer!

"Well," I told him, "I’ll still just use my name. It’s too early in the morning to try and remember yet another number." As I started my forty-minute-treadmill jaunt, I was watching CNN and the latest news from Iraq and the impending war and thought about how we’re living in a place that we fairly reverently call the home of the free where people have names and convicts have numbers. I think that I’m much more than a number and I plan to somehow forget my new World Gym Membership Number.

By the way, I took several hundred digital pictures in Maui. Slowly but surely the best of the crop (but close to a couple hundred pictures) are being posted on the web. Click on the pictures link to left, select Maui, and enjoy the pictures.

Turns out that someone (or maybe someones) are actually reading this journal from time to time. So, I need to become much more diligent about actually clicking on this link, logging in, and writing. The previous post came while we were still in Maui, several weeks ago.

We’ve finally had some snow. Not much, just about four inches, but enough to be called snow. The weather has also turned quite cold as well. The front walk needs to be shoveled — even though it’s a south-facing sidewalk, the sun hasn’t become warm enough to melt the snow. City ordinance says we have twenty-four hours after the end of the storm to shovel the walks. I’m in violation!

Maui was a great experience. I’d highly recommend a week or two on the island for anyone. Don’t plan on it being a relaxing vacation, however. There’s so much to do that one week isn’t enough. Next trip we’ll put Sunday in the middle of the trip so we can have an automatically slower day to rest up from the previous few days. I’ve thought about what I liked most about Maui. The sights were beautiful, the weather was lovely, the ocean was pleasant. But, overall I think it was that Maui was much different than I had expected. I was thinking we’d be in a jungle, kind of like the Philippines, that it’d be hot, and that the mosquitos and bugs would be out in abundance. None of those preconceptions were valid. I don’t think the weather got about 85 degrees while we were there, and there was always a breeze to keep things cool. The air was not very humid. The western side of the island, where we spent most of our time, was actually quite arid — no jungle here! And finally, we had a great time. We’ll definitely return. I’d be quite happy to spend a fair amount of time on Maui.

In the meantime, after returning from Maui, I made a quick trip to California on business. I convened all of my managers as well as their managers and supervisors in California for a planning / goal setting / motivational meeting. The economic climate is not improving with any speed, so the next six to twelve months will continue to be very tight. Helping them to understand how tight things really are was an important part of the offsite. To emphasize that, we didn’t even go offsite for the offsite meeting! It was held in a conference room at the facility in Milpitas, California. We had a good time, however, and the time together seemed to be very well spent. Best part of that trip, however, is that I’m staying home for all of February! No travelling anywhere in February. While that doesn’t help rack up frequent flier miles or flight segments, I’m quite happy to spend a month at home.