At my day job, I often wonder where I am in the pecking order. I don't believe I'm that high up and I've said so to a few people who have worked with the company. Those people have rolled their eyes or laughed.

But lately I've noticed that I get special treatment without me directly asking for it. Proper requests that are ignored when most people ask, are immediatly answered if I do the same.

One of the guys that reports to me has been trying to take a course for a long time. This course has a long waiting list for it. The guy asked me if I knew how much longer he'd have to wait. He'd emailed the organizers but got no response. I wasn't sure either, so I emailed the same organizers and asked. The organizers immediately respond saying "Oh, since you asked, he can go to the next offering."

I kind of like this.

BeefInBriefs was over for dinner. It was good to see him again.

For the first time, probably in his life, he is getting his own apartment. BIB has always been a roommate. When I first met him, I was a room mate in a large house on Cap Hill. For the past six years he's been the roommate of a couple who lives a few miles from RO and I.

Now he's getting his own apartment. It will be easier for him to have dates over. It will be easier for him to cook for himself.

The Forbidden Zone... The Forbidden Zone... Who recommended that I watch the Forbidden Zone? Step forward and get your spanking.

As a movie, Forbidden Zone is bad. It succeeds as a musical, or as an act of unrestrained creativity. The music is very good. The screen is full of the bizarre and original. This is what happens when very talented, very creative people get together and make a movie with no budget and no script. As I watched Forbidden Zone, my jaw dropped and I constantly thought "What the Hell!" But, I never wanted to stop looking. It's endlessly inventive.

I finished watching the documentary about the Forbidden Zone. It makes a little more sense now. The Forbidden Zone is a series of musical numbers and performance art pieces. The plot was added afterwards.

RO and I saw the Forbidden Zone through Netflix which recommends movies based on your ratings. We couldn't decide what to rate Forbidden Zone. Should it be either one star, or five? Five stars because it is distinct, original and endlessly watchable. One star because it is a piece of crap. It's like watching an accident that doesn't end. You know that what you are watching isn't good, but you can't look away.

Roger Ebert likes to give great trash two and a half stars. The idea being that great movies come along so rarely that there must be room for great trash. In that spirit RO and I gave Forbidden Zone three stars.

Matt and Pat have moved out. They've been wanting to for a while-- as big as our house is, things were a bit crowded with the four of us-- but I didn't expect it to happen so suddenly. They found an apartment availble April 1 that had two months of free rent.

I'm amused and annoyed by RO.

RO has had a sore throat for a while. About a week ago he learnt that the sore throat was probably caused by an infected molar and that he needed the molar removed.

He made an appointment, but didn't tell me anything, not the cause of the sore throat, not that he was scheduled to have his molar removed.

This morning, while I'm at work, he called me and asked for some extra cash because he's going to the dentist and the dentist bills up front. We will be reimbursed by insurance later. I thought that was weird, but I gave him my credit card number over the phone.

Then, finally, when I talked to him this afternoon, he told me he just had his molar removed! I asked him point blank if he knew last week ago that his molar needed to be removed. He said yes. He said that he didn't tell me because he didn't want me worry about anything or go out of my way to take care of him.

I may have to set up house rules for Matt, Pat, RO and I. Lately we've been making katty comments to each other over who hasn't emptied the dishwasher lately, picked up their garbage, cleaned the kitchen or vacuumed. I was hoping a solution would appear with intervention, but so far no luck.

We still all get along fine, the the honeymoon over living with Matt and Pat is over and the realities of living with roommates has set in.

Today the mayor showed up for the official ribbon cutting ceremony at the new story. The ceremony was fast, but it was pleasant.

Matt's been cleaining up. Matt & Pat's rooms are starting to look nice.

And after a dry spell, the store has started having strong days. The last week of February and the first week of march were *very* scary. We had days with no sales. All that changed about mid last week. Whew. RO has been working his ass off to make good things happen. I have to figure out how to reward him with a little relaxation.

Tommy said "Ya'll are far more better friends to go the distance with the Poop!!!"

Yeah. We are not going that much farther with the dog. My mother mentioned, more than once, that if the dog was at her house, it would be living outside. And Pat dislikes the dog. He's started calling her "The Terrorist" and "Satan's Spawn" He'll say it in a very sweet voice while he's petting her.

Matt may be in a funk, or he may still be getting over tonsillitis. Either way he spends all day alone in his room watching TV. I'm going to try and have a chat with him about his motivation. I'll have to do so very carefully. He is smarter than the average bear. If he detects that I have an agenda, he'll say what I want to hear but he won't follow through.

The poop! The poop!

Matt's little dog occasionally has diarrhea problems.

A couple of weeks ago, Matt & Pat bought a nice new comforter for their bed. The first night they slept with it, the dog slept on top. In the middle of the night Pat rolled over. Then he wolk up, feeling wet. And it smelt. They turned on the light and there was doggie diarrhea all over the comforter. Pat said there was more diarreah than the volume of the dog.

Last weekend Matt noticed that his little dog had diarrhea. Rather than letting the dog roam during the night, he locked it in the bathroom. The dog, not used to being alone, whimpered and barked a lot.

The barking wolk me up, so I went to check on it. I opened the door a crack and the smell hit me. I didn't want to get involved so I closed the door and left.

A while later RO did the same thing. RO said there was shit everywhere. It was like someone finger painted with shit over every square inch of the tile floor.

The next morning whan RO at Pat talked about the dog, Pat said that while the floor may have looked like finger paitings at first, by the morning there was an even coat of shit everywhere.

Matt spent two hours scouring the bathroom.

I understand a little more why my Director was happy I joined the new team. Apparently, I'm the only manager on the team who can fire people.

My Director has never fired anyone. My new boss (who reports to my director) prefers to shuffle problem employees off to the side. My peer managers include a nice new guy who has never been a manager before and a very bright and experienced manager who took the job on the condition that he wouldn't have to immediatly manage out any of his new employeees-- including one who is having performance problems.

That leaves me. I don't enjoy firing people, but I have done so and I can do so. I have to make sure that this doesn't become my job function. I want to run an A-list team, not the team where problem employees go to be managed out.

Mom is flying in tonight. She's spending 10 days here. She's flying into Vancouver instead of Seattle. I hope the Olympics don't make picking her up a nightmare.

Other than that, the stores offical Grande Opening is this Saturday. It will be an exciting day.

Yesterday afternoon RO had a customer with a design emergency. A company hired him to decorate and furnish some rooms for a very important event. But, it had to be done by 8am the next morning

We suspected trouble-- in the past people in similar circumstances buy a lot and then return everything the next day. We told them there would be a 15% restocking fee. They were uncomfortable with that, but agreed.

10pm that night they purchased and picked up $8000.00 in furniture and art.

By 10am the next morning they returned $4000.00 of their purchase.

I work with an Asian Indian who has a repetitive stress injury. She can't properly type now. To get by dictating documents and emails, she uses voice recognition software.

The voice recognition program doesn't recognize her Indian accent so she has switched to a fake Boston accent. It's great fun listening to her. She is getting very good at it.

I'm used to her speaking in refined British-Indian English. When she says something with a sloppy, nasal, Boston accent, everyone within ear shot smiles.

I have accepted a job-- it's the move to the smaller, very smart org that's focused on infrastructure.

I heard through the grape vine, that even though my director was very grumpy today, he was slightly less grumpy when he learnt of my choice.

Funny. I just realized that even though this my job and my choice, the feelings that I wrote down first were about my director's indirect approval. I completly skipped my feelings and desires.

Today I walked into Matt & Pat's bathroom. It's right next to the laundry room and I was doing laundry.

The sink was surrounded by dildo's and butt plugs, all washed off and air drying.

Thank you for reading this.

This re-org is an interesting dance. Another position was offered to me today. I talk with that manager next week.

I'm not the only lead that these positions are available to. The longer I wait, the more leads they will make offers to. This creates a game of musical chairs. I don't know who I'm playing against, but with each passing day an offer could be snapped up by someone else. I think I have till Wednesday for two of the jobs. The third could vanish shortly.


Is it respectful that I am taking a week for this? Will someone interpret me not making a snap decision as lake of passion for the offer? I had a chat with one of higher-ups about my career. He is very smart and it did help, but I also felt a like I was under the microscope. At one point he said "I hear you talk more about managmenent than about leadership... let's dig into that."

I am learning more about my career choices. My first choice, to stay where I am, isn't as open as I thought.

First, some explanation. My organization is going through a big re-org. I am a lead-- the lowest level of boss at this company. People report to me. Above leads are managers- leads report to managers. Above the managers are directors.

For a variety of reasons, mostly personality conflicts, my current manager was recently assigned a new lead. This means my manager will have more leads than any other manager. With this new lead, my manager probably doesn't have enough head count to fully staff his leads.

On top of that, some of the other managers are short staffed and looking hard for new leads.

That's how my name came up. I have worked for the product for years and am familiar with much of the the people and technology. They think I'm more likely to succeed in a new position than most of my peers.

My manager made it clear that if I wanted to stay, he would find a way to load balance the work. But that if I found one of the other offers interesting, I should feel free to pursue it and not feel obligated to him.

At least that's what they tell me. I do believe them-- if my director didn't trust me, then I wouldn't have a job.

I'm sifting through my career choices...

First choice, I stay where I am. I will be the most senior and experienced. The business around this area is better understood, though not that glamorous. My two manager don't have that much experience in this area, so I will really have a chance to shine, or fail spectacularly. I'm a little worried that my two managers are not that strong. I won't have the most learn here, but I will have the chance to make a big contribution to a profitable, but boring organization.

Second choice. I move to a very sharp org. I will working with very strong engineers and very smart management. We will work on infrastructure. I will be judged more on my engineering acumen than my business skills. This is a smaller org, but very visible and important.

Third choice. I move to an exciting, dynamic, Web 2.0, we-don't-know-what-we-are-doing-yet org. We have a chance to really make something big here. We could also end up making some kind of pie-in-the-sky, freaky Facebook/Twitter ripoff that no one uses. The engineers are fairly smart, though not as smart as my second choice. My managers are smart, though one is rather irritating-- people avoid working with him. This will be the nosiest and most frustrating org, but the opportunity could be the greatest.

Something strange is happening at work today. I know a large re-org is in the works. I don't know all the details. However today, within twenty minutes of each other, two managers asked me if I'd consider being a lead under them. Hmmm.