Entry tags:
Surprise!
My boss tells me that the Registrar told him that I am smart. Apparently I made some interesting and helpful remarks at our last meeting. He's only just noticing me now because we never interacted before. Surprise!
Part of me is used to this. People (co-workers) often come up to me long after we first meet and tell me things they just learned about me. Usually it's, "I never knew you could talk" or "I never knew you had a sense of humor."
But part of me wants to tell him that there are a lot of smart people he hasn't interacted with. Just because you're not a bigwig (or a programmer) doesn't mean you don't have a brain or don't know anything. Which is the whole point in involving us in issues like those at the meeting we just had.
The reason we never interacted before is that when I have an issue I go through channels. I talk to my boss, and if he can't help, I send an e-mail to the helping group, which consists of me, my boss, and our programmers, but not the Registrar and not the head of the programmers (our Registrar's old job). This is just the way it happens. Sometimes I have to talk to people outside the Registrar's Office.
Am I doing something wrong? Are all good employees supposed to approach the biggest bigwig in their area often enough that they get to know each other? Don't those guys not have time for all that?
My boss tells me I can be expected to be invited to more committee meetings or something now. Great.
In other news, the Registrar has made it known that he would like to clean up our pending problems before promising to do new things. And he asked for lists of these issues! So maybe all of my dreams are about to come true. (My boss alone gave him a list of 39 issues. Oh, yes, he did.) Surprise!
And there's a rumor that the programmer who was our first programmer (before the guy who was the programmer before our current guy) has been added back to the team. He's retired and now working half time, but he's still around.
Meanwhile, this job still has very odd psychological effects on me. There's an issue which I asked my boss about, then someone in Records, then someone in Admissions, then someone else in Admissions, then a third person in Admissions. That person contacted his programmer, who, in turn contacted my (most recent) old programmer (who now works in Admissions). I just had a question about why one thing didn't match another thing. The answer is that part of the process was broken, so my old programmer fixed it. That messed with my head. We bother that old programmer all the time because he's the most knowledgeable about our system, but this wasn't supposed to be something I bothered him about!)
Then I'm trying to clarify what I mean when I say that the processing order of DF rules is whole courses first. Now, in rules that look for required courses, it means it counts 3-hour courses first. In rules that toss some, but not all, of a certain kind of course, it means it tosses 3-hour courses first. But a DF rule makes sure than any college courses used to take care of a high school deficiency do not count toward the degree (although they are still required because there is a deficiency). So I decided that if many courses could be used to satisfy the deficiency, the system would select and then toss the 3-hour courses first. It seems so clear now, but at the time, it messed with my head.
I have been half asleep all afternoon--very little physical or mental energy at all. Even at lunch. And now there's a headache. With two ibuprofen it should be gone by 5:00, right?
I want to be like the new Treasurer of an organization I'm in. She said, "Man, this job is hard! But I can do it!"
Journal Entry of the Day - Stop Buying Crap #16 - Pets, subtitled "Annoying Little Dogs That Cost More Than Your Mortgage Payment." This one cracks me up. "Pets are hardly crap, but if you're buying them as a spur of the moment 'please forgive me and come back to me' gift to your ex-girlfriend, please tell me where you live so I can go kick your ass (or if you're bigger than me, lecture you from afar)."
My favorite comment (so far): "Uh, if you don't buy the dog, then what good is the Louis Vuitton bag?
"Duh."
A Girl Named Lucky just wrote a (nonpublic) post on the same topic with a link to an interesting and powerful (but not at all funny) web page on everything you never wanted to know about cockatoos.
Other Link of the Day - "Are Crunches the Wrong Move?" by Martica Heaner, M.A., M.Ed., for MSN Health & Fitness - A good article about belly exercise, from which I actually learned something. What I learned is that belly exercises that bend or twist your back are more dangerous for your back than exercises that don't. The main example they give of an exercise that doesn't require bending or twisting your back is the plank. This is where you act like you're about to do a push-up but then you just stay there. This is harder than it sounds after not very long at all. Actual push-ups are fine, too. And there's a side plank where you get off your toes and onto the sides of your feet and then let go with one of your arms.
Part of me is used to this. People (co-workers) often come up to me long after we first meet and tell me things they just learned about me. Usually it's, "I never knew you could talk" or "I never knew you had a sense of humor."
But part of me wants to tell him that there are a lot of smart people he hasn't interacted with. Just because you're not a bigwig (or a programmer) doesn't mean you don't have a brain or don't know anything. Which is the whole point in involving us in issues like those at the meeting we just had.
The reason we never interacted before is that when I have an issue I go through channels. I talk to my boss, and if he can't help, I send an e-mail to the helping group, which consists of me, my boss, and our programmers, but not the Registrar and not the head of the programmers (our Registrar's old job). This is just the way it happens. Sometimes I have to talk to people outside the Registrar's Office.
Am I doing something wrong? Are all good employees supposed to approach the biggest bigwig in their area often enough that they get to know each other? Don't those guys not have time for all that?
My boss tells me I can be expected to be invited to more committee meetings or something now. Great.
In other news, the Registrar has made it known that he would like to clean up our pending problems before promising to do new things. And he asked for lists of these issues! So maybe all of my dreams are about to come true. (My boss alone gave him a list of 39 issues. Oh, yes, he did.) Surprise!
And there's a rumor that the programmer who was our first programmer (before the guy who was the programmer before our current guy) has been added back to the team. He's retired and now working half time, but he's still around.
Meanwhile, this job still has very odd psychological effects on me. There's an issue which I asked my boss about, then someone in Records, then someone in Admissions, then someone else in Admissions, then a third person in Admissions. That person contacted his programmer, who, in turn contacted my (most recent) old programmer (who now works in Admissions). I just had a question about why one thing didn't match another thing. The answer is that part of the process was broken, so my old programmer fixed it. That messed with my head. We bother that old programmer all the time because he's the most knowledgeable about our system, but this wasn't supposed to be something I bothered him about!)
Then I'm trying to clarify what I mean when I say that the processing order of DF rules is whole courses first. Now, in rules that look for required courses, it means it counts 3-hour courses first. In rules that toss some, but not all, of a certain kind of course, it means it tosses 3-hour courses first. But a DF rule makes sure than any college courses used to take care of a high school deficiency do not count toward the degree (although they are still required because there is a deficiency). So I decided that if many courses could be used to satisfy the deficiency, the system would select and then toss the 3-hour courses first. It seems so clear now, but at the time, it messed with my head.
I have been half asleep all afternoon--very little physical or mental energy at all. Even at lunch. And now there's a headache. With two ibuprofen it should be gone by 5:00, right?
I want to be like the new Treasurer of an organization I'm in. She said, "Man, this job is hard! But I can do it!"
Journal Entry of the Day - Stop Buying Crap #16 - Pets, subtitled "Annoying Little Dogs That Cost More Than Your Mortgage Payment." This one cracks me up. "Pets are hardly crap, but if you're buying them as a spur of the moment 'please forgive me and come back to me' gift to your ex-girlfriend, please tell me where you live so I can go kick your ass (or if you're bigger than me, lecture you from afar)."
My favorite comment (so far): "Uh, if you don't buy the dog, then what good is the Louis Vuitton bag?
"Duh."
A Girl Named Lucky just wrote a (nonpublic) post on the same topic with a link to an interesting and powerful (but not at all funny) web page on everything you never wanted to know about cockatoos.
Other Link of the Day - "Are Crunches the Wrong Move?" by Martica Heaner, M.A., M.Ed., for MSN Health & Fitness - A good article about belly exercise, from which I actually learned something. What I learned is that belly exercises that bend or twist your back are more dangerous for your back than exercises that don't. The main example they give of an exercise that doesn't require bending or twisting your back is the plank. This is where you act like you're about to do a push-up but then you just stay there. This is harder than it sounds after not very long at all. Actual push-ups are fine, too. And there's a side plank where you get off your toes and onto the sides of your feet and then let go with one of your arms.