Work Related

Just wanted to give a heads up that I’ll be missing in action for a few days. I have a project with a deadline that is killing me. Hopefully by the weekend I’ll be back to blogging and reading my favorite blogs. It completely sucks when I don’t even have time to read blogs. Hmmmph!

Be good, and if you can’t be good then be sure to blog about it. 

Even though I changed departments four months ago, I still sit at the same desk. I'm still surrounded by the same folks that have surrounded me for a good long time. My ex-manager is now simply my train buddy and we like to poke at each other now and then.

He was standing in our area listening to my work neighbor complain about how the leader of a class she wanted to take assumed that everyone has laptops. She has a desktop, but since I work from home three days a week I have a laptop. I piped in, "Well, all the cool people have laptops."

My ex-manager (now train buddy) quickly replied, "then what are YOU doing with a laptop?"

I popped out of my chair and ran over to him and told him that was the best smack-down I've had in a long time and made him give me a high five.

He seemed awfully proud of himself after I gave him props, and quite frankly I was kind of proud of him too. I love a good smack-down every now and then.

Hmmmm... that could explain why I like FTS and Stew so much.

Why can't people just do their job, do it well and go home at the end of the day? Why do people have to point fingers, gossip and say things that could potentially harm other people? I just don't get it.

I am going to make a generalization here, and I apologize if I offend. But most of the people who seem to like creating drama are women. It shames me sometimes. I've been told that I act like a guy, and in this case I hope so.

I can't say too much about what's going on to cause this entry because I have co-workers (who are NOT involved in any way in this drama!) who read my blog. I don't want to be part of the mess, or make it bigger.

I'll admit that when I was much younger, I used to hop on that gossip bandwagon. I've not always been such an angel. But I know for certain that I never set out to hurt people and I've always tried to stay away from negative people. Now that I'm older, if someone tries to pull me into the mire I flat out tell them that I make it a policy to not gossip or say negative things about my co-workers. I'm sure that sounds snotty and some people get huffy about that but I don't care because I'm getting too damned old for this crap.

It's amazing to me how one person can come into an office and create a whirlwind of drama from the moment they get to the office until they go home. It must be exhausting. I know that I'm exhausted just witnessing it. I'm just trying to stay out of the path of destruction and I'm doing my best to protect the innocent.

Days like this make me really glad that I work from home three days a week. I was even happier when I worked from home 100% of the time. My dogs NEVER said a mean word about anyone.

Now if you'll excuse me, Mommy needs a bloody mary.

I got some really bad news last week about a tool we've been using for web-based training. I've always thought it was a really lame tool, but I understand why our company uses it. It's because it's extremely user friendly when it comes to creating training. My company (even the training department) is not comprised of computer geeks like me. I'd be willing to bet that 95% of the people creating training are folks that used to be on the front line and they're learning how to create training materials by trial and error.

This tool allows you to create training in PowerPoint and then in converts it to a big flash-like file. The only benefit to using this, rather than just allowing people to view your materials in PowerPoint is the quizzing function. I'll give it that.

My training materials are fun and FUNNY. Even 'boring' subjects like regulations. I throw in animated graphics (most of which I create myself) to illustrate what I'm trying to explain in the materials.

I wasn't in this department last year, but they borrowed me to help them design 5 courses. I didn't have this lame software on my company laptop then, so I handed it over to someone else to put it in the required format once I was done. I never saw it after it was converted and just ASSUMED that everything was fine, especially since it was very well received by the end users. People thought it was great.

I'm in the department this year and now have that software on my computer. I'd already created three ANIMATED training pieces and submitted them to the other department prior to getting the software, by the time I found out that this stupid program does not animate my animations! WHAAAAAT??? That's like the biggest piece of my design and nobody bothered to tell me.

I started learning the software as soon as I got it last week and was hopping mad when I found this out. The slide still looks colorful, but it's not animating and the gif may be 'stuck' in a place that looks stupid. To illustrate my point, try to imagine yourself in a photograph where the photographer took the picture when you had your eyes closed and your mouth hanging open.

Yeah- it's like that.

These animations take me anywhere from 10 minutes (if I'm editing one that has already been made) to two or more hours to do. Multiply that by 30-50 pages times three modules that I've already created. Waste.Of.Time.

I went to the software forum and made sure there wasn't some sort of plug-in I needed or something, and there wasn't. It just won't work with animated gifs.

So, back to the drawing board. I looked at what the software CAN do and decided to work backward. I saw that you can insert Flash. Then, I learned that you can turn animated gifs into Flash. I just needed to learn Flash.

So, that's what I did this weekend. I learned Flash and I've solved the problem. Yay me!

The software is still going to make this difficult though. For example, I don't always want my animation to show up when the page loads. Sometimes the animation is supposed to show up 5-10 seconds later. The goofy software doesn't provide for that, so I'm going to have to put a white (or whatever color my slide background is) box over the top of my Flash file until I want it to show. It's STOOPID.

But, now I feel better because all that time I spent working on graphics won't go to waste. And if the end users liked the materials before, boy are they going to be WOWed!

BJ went on an errand this weekend and when he got home I told him that I was learning Flash. I asked him if he wanted to see what I'd learned. Being the supportive husband he is, he was very enthusiastic about it. Guess what I did?

Yup. I flashed him. Muah ha ha ha ha ha

Today's lunch:

Sliced tomatoes with sliced onions and blue cheese dressing.



No co-workers to complain about my smelly breath.

'nuff said.