So for those of you that know me, you know that I do a lot of work surrounding compensation. As a theory and design, as opposed to paying people.

We’re having a gathering of Great Minds at the end of next week around this, and I came up with this catchy latin phrase as a slogan– ex pensitationis, vitae

It appeals to the geek in me on several levels:

1. It’s latin.
2. The literal translation is, “From compensation, life.”
3. Buuut….there are layers here, because pensitationis also translates as, “something valuable/precious,” and, “pension.”
4. The final pun is that vitae also translates to, “career.”

Need I say more? Have a good day, all.  –A

I got this from my friend Laura’s blog; check it out.

OK, so I’ve read 63 of these books and loved a lot of them–some of them I loved a lot, too. I am still gasping over the fact that “Atlas Shrugged” (which I loved) isn’t there. I read once that it was the number one “claimed to have been read” book, and in addition, “claimed to have been loved.” Huh.

Anyway, just for the record (mine or the great auditors in the sky, who knows), I had to do this in a spreadsheet and then write a simple “if” statement to calculate the number of exes. Blame my job! –A

Instructions: Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read and a * after those you loved.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen -X*
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien -X*
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte- X
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling -X***
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee- X*
6 The Bible- X – I was a good Presbyterian and a bad Catholic back in the day
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte- X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell- X*
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens-X*
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott-X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy-
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – X***
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - yeah, right, the complete works? <– seconding Laura’s comment, and I was a Will FREAK when I was younger. I am giving myself a lowercase “x” and ***
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien-X*
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk-X*
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger- X*
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger-X***
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot – X
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell-X
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – X**
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams- X**
26 The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner-X*
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck- X
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll- X**********
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame-X
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy- X  I so wanted to like this, but Ijust couldn’t. Maybe I was too young or something.
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis -X* they were so good up to when it became all god-y on your ass. who needs it when you’re 10?!
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis-X*  Can anyone say duplication here, peeps?
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini-X**
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden-X
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne- X
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell- X*
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown-X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving – X**
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery-X*
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood -X*
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding- X*
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan-X*
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel-X*
52 Dune – Frank Herbert-X****** omg the first book I read with it’s own GLOSSARY.  Adore this book!!
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen-X*
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth-X*
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon – X**
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens- X
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley- X*
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon- X*
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck-X*
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov-X*  yes, I originally picked this up at the library so I could understand the lyrics
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold-X*
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas-X
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac-X
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy  no wonder…I’ve never heard of this book, talk about obscure
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding-X
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie-X**
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville–just perusing this at the library gave me a headache. I liked the comic book classic though. the art was phenom!
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker-X
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett-X**
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson-X***  All American expats living in England should read this!!
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante – X* I got a lot of mileage out of those cantos in my sketch journal back in the day; the dark imagery suited my “The Crow” type style
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White- X*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – X*
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery-X
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks-X*
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams- X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas-X** which is why I originally bought The Dumas Club in an airport all those years ago!
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare- X*
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- X*
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I read this poem today, and loved it, so I had to share it with everyone.

Recipe for a Salad
by Sydney Smith

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boil’d eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half-suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault
To add a double quantity of salt;
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procur’d from town;
And lastly, o’er the flavour’d compound toss
A magic soupçon of anchovy sauce.
Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat!
‘Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he’d turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad-bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
“Fate cannot harm me, I have dined today.”

“If there’s one quality of successful people, they’re unreasonable in their expectations of themselves, not so much other people, but themselves. Unreasonable in what they expect, unreasonable in the demands they make, unreasonable in how much they give. He’s [Nelson Mandela] completely unreasonable. And those are the people that rule the world.”

– Anthony Robbins

Last week I spent time in Culver City visiting a client. Who knew that we would wind up getting parking lot wisdom in such an hilarious scenario?

So, first day at the site, we are told to pull the car around to a valet and he’ll park the car, take the keys–usual valet drill. Second day, we try to follow the same drill, and a guy that sounds pretty darn Russian comes running over and asks, “Hey! How long are you going to be here?”

“All day.”

“You can’t park there then.”

“But, we are dropping the car for the valet.”

“What??” [looks at us as if we are absolutely mental] “There’s no valet here.”

“Buuutttt….yesterday there was.”

“That was yesterday. Today is today, yesterday is yesterday.”

Talk about some hilarious wisdom and humor, ay? I shan’t be forgetting about this one anytime in the near future, and I doubt my colleagues will either. –A

OK. So a big part of my job is to administer all kinds of status reports and timesheets, not to mention expense reports. These things are HUGELY important to ensure that when invoicing is done, it can be done quickly and efficiently, and then if there are questions about the time, it is obvious what was done. Good Point. Well. I am an administrative nightmare. I have good intentions, but I quite simply SUCK at it. And it only gets worse because many of the tools I have to use are complicated and redundant.

Let me share something with you: I have to record my time in no less than THREE places every single week. I also have to record what I actually DID for all my time in three different places every week. In order to achieve this colossal amount of redundant administration, I have to record it all YET AGAIN as I’m doing stuff into my own personal administrative tool that tracks everything in one place so that with luck and a following wind I can get it all into the various tools for everyone else.

In addition to that, the easiest tool I have of all these different ones is…you guessed it! My own. It’s a pencil and a piece of paper for god’s sake. I never thought I would BEG for the return of the old days when all I had to do was get a client to sign a damn timesheet each week and then fax it all over god’s green earth. But here I am:  PLEASE  PLEASE Someone save me from all these horrid “efficiency” tools. There is so much technology around that SURELY I can record this stuff ONCE and then they can all talk to one-another somehow?? If I actually do my administration “right” and “well” (which honestly, is my preference! I swear!) then I spend HOURS and HOURS on it each week. Why is this? It’s absolutely ludicrous and in turn leaves me feeling like an incompetent fuck wit when I just cannot make the time to sort it out. I’m also underbilling because it’s so frickin’ hard to track my time.

I already work 60-70 hours per week. My administration doesn’t reflect this accurately, but my actual time in the office does. How can I get this working correctly? What the HELL?

>sigh<  [long hard look in the mirror]

Self-discipline. Yup, you heard me. Self-friggin-discipline. It’s the only answer. If you really want to get good at the crappy jobs, then it means self-discipline and maybe even a good ol’ fashioned perspective shift. Unfortunately, those crappy jobs are what allow you to get paid, and if you want to do all the cool stuff you either have to have staff to do the crappy stuff for you, or you have to do all the crappy stuff too. Bummer deal.

[subconscious speaking up]  Can’t I just be self-righteous about all the administration that someone else is making me do?

Well, yeah…duh…but you still have to do it.

[subconscious again]  Yeah, but…!

No no no…you still have to do it, and you can try to make it easier. Look at all the people out there that are actually organized and get all the admin done on time. Amy. If your job depended upon you being a quality administrator (oh WAIT…ummmm)….then you’d have that British woman going, “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”

Fall back on self-talks with peppy little numbers like, “But you LOVE doing  good job! Make this one of those things that you love doing a good job at.”

Well folks, I have news for you: self-help is hard work and I’ve been self-helping the hell out of myself recently just trying to get over some old personal demons, so there hasn’t been a lot of space for the standard, “New Year’s Resolutions” type stuff. I mean, it’s on the list, but I’ve just been focusing elsewhere as I stumble along that path paved with good intentions. And like a good little A-Type, I just feel guilty about not getting to those other things. Or is that from the Catholic side? Anyway, you get my drift.

Time to dust off the copy of 7 Habits? Yikes. I think so….maybe even some good ol’ ZZ (no, not my brother Zeffren) to get the motivational juices flowing. In these days of economic doom and gloom, I better get good at those types of things before I piss off someone who is sick of chasing me down. If I think the A-Type Catholic in me is feeling guilty over the administration, imagine the self-lashing that I could get into if I lost my job over it….[shudder]  Better get to it!  –A

Workday was voted the best company to work for in the Bay Area this week. For those of us that used to work at PeopleSoft, the fact that Workday is now the #1 place to work in the Bay is no surprise, and in fact it likely would have been more surprising if it wasn’t. Dave Duffield has a knack for creating a fabulous atmosphere to work within, empowering staff and inspiring them to work for long hours on projects they believe in.

As a Workday employee by proxy, I get the privilege of working in the Workday office most days, and being a part of the growing organization’s vibe. I even ran into Dave himself in the lift yesterday, and was gratified when he greeted me…Even after 15 years of this, it still makes me feel special. Dave is just that type of guy. Many moons ago a VP got in a bit of a bind because he said in an interview that we’d all “drink Kool-Aid for Dave.” Staff didn’t like the idea of the company as a cult, and although I see their point now and saw it then…quite frankly, as a member of that particular cult–I mean company–I know I drank the Kool-Aid back in the day. Part of the joy of working for the company was that we felt we were special. Elite. The phrase used was, “star-amongst-stars.”  I have no idea who coined that phrase, but man…it was cool. I mean, how could it not be–an employee said it. And he or she was in fact, a star amongst stars! That means we’re all stars! Holy crap! It’s like the GATE class for grown-ups. Rock-on!

Well. Fast forward a decade or two (depending on when you started at the company…the Employee ID was a truly important number back then. I mean, conversations would actually START with, “Oh, what number are you?” And people wondered why the cult comparison occurred?!) and here we are. Older, but stoked on the idea of being part of that upper atmosphere again. Let’s get the bagels out folks, and don’t forget the Peet’s coffee and free soda.

So I’m curious: What kind of questions are asked to ascertain whether a company is cool to work for? I mean, I just spent like an hour trying to find out exactly, but could only find press releases for the different companies. Please send me links if you know, as I honestly don’t believe that Workday is the place for everyone–just like PeopleSoft wasn’t. The sacharine sweetness isn’t for everyone, and neither is the “I work AAALLL the time” type attitude. 

Personally, I love a culture that allows me to work with extremely bright (haha no pun intended, honestly, I’m not trying to take the stars thing too far, I just am!!) folks that have really good ideas, and that are in a learning spiral that is truly non-stop. It seems like working with people with brains the size of small planets sparks something in me, too…so that I start wanting to do more and more myself. It’s like do-something-cool-osmosis. I now not only focus on my actual work, which is implementing the Workday product for clients, but on ways to do that work in really really clever ways. “Hey, did you know you can write a formula to do that?” or maybe, “look what happens if you link THIS with THAT…Cool, huh?”  

Then there’s all the geeking out that we get to do. What some people don’t know is that geeking out is not only for techies–although in some circles my colleagues and I would be considered techie, we’re really not. We get to geek out on corporate services. LOL  Yup, that’s right. One of our unifying forces is that we actually LOVE what we do, and so our work is kinda our hobby at the same time. I know, we’re dorks. We probably all were in the GATE program when we were in school. It’s pretty entertaining when we are trying to do things like, “Hey, have you managed to get a public private key pair to work across multiple platforms when it’s produced by PuttyGen?” And there’s truly no business reason. It’s like, hey. That would be kinda cool. Or what about when you start discussing compensation planning and employee reviews configuration as if you just solved the problem of world peace? Yes, I know. They should probably start a 12-step program for the likes of us…but y’know, we wouldn’t go because we are too busy working.

So that brings me to the other point: I love working in an environment where it isn’t strange that I love working in my chosen field. I know that I am truly lucky that I get paid to do something I love as opposed to loathe, and it’s nice to be surrounded by people in the same situation instead of a bunch of people that would really rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else. It’s an automatic buzz kill, know what I mean? Don’t get me wrong here–I don’t think that work should be life–I don’t consider us all a bunch of one-dimensional workaholics by any stretch of the imagination. And I am certain that we have our moments as individuals when it’s arrrg get me out of here…but that is not the status quo and that makes for a great place to work.

Maybe that is one of the keys to any successful corporate culture: recruit people that really want to be there, and you’re golden. Dave Duffield (and Aneel–I’m not discounting his amazing vision) has provided a dream/goal that a lot of very enthusiastic people can see as worth working for and applying their not inconsiderable brainpower to.

Hmm. Y’know—As far as I am concerned….[glug-glug] Kool-Aid is drunk. Ahhhhh.  –A

Ahhh…growing up. Do you remember back when you were first starting out as an Adult that there seemed to be different things that actually made you feel grown up? Maybe it was checking your own mail and EVERYTHING was for you. Paying your bills each month….wearing a suit to work….all those things that now, 17 years on, I personally try to avoid.  Like meetings.

When I was 18 years old, I relished those weekly staff meetings. They made me feel important and I thought that merely being in the same room as all those Senior people made me more adult and professional. I thought to myself, “Wow, while I do all this work all day long, these Senior people live on their Ideas and the Meetings are a symbol of that.” I still remember the first time I realized that I was being paid to Think and not just Produce. It was a bit of a shock, actually.

Well, by the standard of my 18 year old self, I am Senior indeed. I live in meetings. I have meetings jam-packed into my calendar. There are days when I am back-to-back meetings from 7am until 6pm. I have sheafs of notes for all these meetings. Organization methods to assist me in tracking action items, debates and results. Negotiating skills come to the fore when I am in some of these meetings. I am an Ideas Woman, Thinking for a Living. Cool.

Except that I am also expected to Produce. I am not one of those folks that manages a bunch of Producers and is just allowed to essentially manage my resources and then carry on Thinking. “Make it so Number One,” is a phrase I dream of saying to some guy that can be my key Producer. Jean Luc was so damn lucky I can hardly stand it. I come out of all these myriad meetings with a large number of Actions that need to be done by my own personal Number One: Me.

The last few weeks I’ve noticed that my meetings are out of control. So many folks want a piece of me I find myself wishing that I could just donate an organ and be done with it. “Here ya go! Here’s a piece of me you can just keep on your desk and refer to at will.”

I have been informally polling the Universe at random since last night, as the solution I think I’m leaning toward is a Meeting Free Day. This day will be one measly day per week that is blocked out 100% purely for Work. Production. Deliverables, for God’s sake! I know it must seem like fundamental time management skills that need to be brought into play here, but believe me: I have historically been Awesome at time management… and yet somehow this state of affairs has sneaked up on me.

I am actually writing this from within a meeting that I am forced to attend although not contribute to; what in the world?! I am going to actively begin scheduling my Production time because otherwise, I am going to be like a Meeting Junkie that can’t do anything because I’m too numb from all the Idea Candy that I’ve been ingesting at these meetings.

Movin’ on up indeed….Let’s see if I can get a better grip on my own time and energy, folks. –A

Last night I had several beers, one of which was a double bastard…It was YUMMY. Thank you to the Husband for purchasing it, I enjoyed every sip. It was fun and I’m not paying in the form of a headache or anything this morning, so that’s all good.  

Waiting on a meeting that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, so I figure I’ll go ahead and pack up the machine and take my happy self into the office today. One hangover (hahaha) from last night is that I am hankerin’ after a Peet’s latte instead of just regular coffee. Maybe it’s the sugar.

I listened to an interesting podcast in the background yesterday (thanks, Jeff–I hadn’t listened to 43F lately, and it was an excellent way to head back into Merlin’s world). If you aren’t familiar with Merlin’s work, you can find him here. The podcast is John Gruber and Merlin Mann discussing (masquerading as presenting-haha) Time, Attention, and Creativity. It’s a great listen, full of advice and four letter words sprinkled judiciously throughout. I’m not convinced that what they say is actually novel (if I missed the point, tell me, but it seems the summary is “be passionate about what you do!”), but their manner certainly is. Merlin and John play off one-another well, and there were a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments for me (for various reasons, I loved it when John and Merlin were debating whether or not the TechCrunch guy is an asshole or not).

Then, after you have had your fill of inspiring podcast, go straight for the jocularity contest winner and listen to Merlin’s rant in “A Phone Made of Human Ass.” You’ll thank me, honest. –A

This week is a big one; one of my clients is going live on the software we’ve been implementing for the last six months, and we’re excited and nervous all at the same time.

I’ve got several other things that need my attention this week too–trying to remain focused in the midst of all the back-burner stress is my challenge for the week. My aim is to get decent amounts of sleep all week just so that I am not adding fatigue to the already stressful times; of course in times like this, it’s often hardest to get those blissful Zs. The Husband says that  last night I was an Olympic sleeper. That is, I was tossing and turning and making all sorts of fabulous noise indicative of a nightmarish sleep. Who needs a gym run, ay?!

It’s tempting to focus on my personal issues right now instead of my work ones, but seriously, do BOTH of us have to stop getting paid for me to focus properly? LOL  Back to the grind, kids…–A