Bradley

Until this morning I worked with a guy that I thought was a fairly decent person - we'll call him Bradley, it reminds me of a song.

The heating and air company I work for/am part owner of is fairly small.  We have two full time installation crews, three service techs, and a few office people in varying support roles for a total of 12 people.

Just after Christmas this year Bradley started acting a little strange. Showing up late without calling, calling in sick 2 or 3 days in a row, missing work, etc. On one particular day when the office called him to see when he was going to get to his first call he told J that he was quitting. Winter time is fairly slow in the HVAC business in GA but we really liked this guy so we brought him into the office to see what was going on.

Bradley apparently wasn't getting enough hours and could barely afford his car payments, mortgage, and child support so he was heading off to greener pastures.

While he wasn't the best technician we'd ever seen, and it was slow enough that we could do without him until summer, we wanted to keep him around if we could. The Boss, the Fox Hunter, and I sat down to try to come up with a plan to help him out.  We guaranteed him a certain number of hours a week, some of which came out of my paycheck, and loaned him enough money to get caught up. He stayed.

Two weeks ago he rear ended a woman because someone cut her off and he was following a bit too close.  No one was hurt and he told us he was going to work out of his personal truck for the rest of the day. When J called to ask him when he'd be ready to roll, he sort of freaked out and went home. He stayed home the next day claiming that he was too sore to work - after a doctor released him to come back the day before. We didn't say a word about it. Wednesday came and Bradley stayed home again. The Boss told him that if he was hurt he needed to go back to the doctor and get checked out. Turns out he had pneumonia.

He stayed out through the weekend and came back to work last Tuesday or Wednesday. Everything seemed cool until yesterday. He didn't call in first thing and he wouldn't answer his work cell or his home phone. Naturally we were a bit concerned. By the end of the day we were pretty sure he was going to quit. Again.

This morning The Boss called Bradley at home and got him on the phone. According to J this is how the conversation went:

Boss: "How are you?"

Bradley: "Good. You?"

Boss: "I guess we're done then?"

Bradley: "Yup."

Boss: "Bring me your keys to the office, keys to the van, phone, and company credit card."

Bradley: "OK."

No call. No show today either.

This whole thing bothers me on two different levels, personal and professional. Here's a guy that was down on his luck, of his own doing in my opinion, and we bent over backwards to keep him employed when we didn't have to have him. Yet we loaned him money interest free and with no paperwork attached just like you would loan money to a close friend or family member. We guaranteed him a certain amount of money a week even though the company could suffer for it. And what do we get in return? Us having to call him to see if he was still working for us. It's crap.

I believe that no matter what your reason for quitting a job - don't like it, money, want to change careers - you owe it to yourself and the people you work for to have the stones to come in and quit face to face. I would rather an employee come to me and say "I hate this place, so I'm out of here" than to just lay out until we call and try to figure out what's going on.

We still don't know what Bradley's deal is, but I do know that there's only one word I can come up with to describe the way he handled this thing - Chickensh*t.

And speaking of signs

Who was the pretentious idiot who started naming businesses with _____ a restaurant or _________ a taqueria?  If someone can't figure out what your business is by the name, maybe it's time for a new name.  ___________'s Steakhouse, Jane's Bar and Grill(no E please), etc.

Jackassery

's

If there's one thing I really can't stand to see when I'm driving through town is a sign that is either spelled wrong or has an apostrophe where it doesn't belong.  I don't know why, but a misplaced apostrophe drives me mad enough to not patronize someone's business if I see their sign soon enough.  Take "Hot Wing's Cafe" for instance.  Is it possible that the owner is a very attractive Asian person named Wing?  Maybe.  Is it also possible that, being so beautiful, he or she has been nicknamed "Hot Wing"? Not likely, but possible.  If this is, in fact, the case then I humbly apologize to Wing.  Otherwise, change the sign! Those wings don't own anything, neither do those boiled peanuts for that matter.

For most of you reading this, all 3 of you, this isn't such a big deal.  But it drives me absolutely crazy to see such a failed grasp of one of the easiest punctuation rules in the English language.  Does it own something? Yes. Apostrophe.  Is it a contraction? Yes. Apostrophe.  That pretty much boils it down right there. Or, if you will, that pretty much boil's it down right they're. 

Greetings from Maine

Well, the trip to Boston for the game was a blast. My day started at 5:00 AM. It was actually a little brutal - At the airport at 7:00, land in Boston at 11:15, wait for luggage till noon. Then to the rental car place for a bit of a cluster then straight to TDBanknorth Garden to watch the Thrashers win the game with 18.7 seconds left. Then back to the car for a drive north to Augusta to see grampy. Check into the hotel at 8:00 then off to dinner. It was definitely a whirlwind day that was worth every minute of stress and exhaustion.

A minute about the fans in Boston. Several people talked to us on our way out of the arena. All of them were absolutely awesome. Even though their team just lost to ours, they were all asking us about our trip and wishing us a good stay in Boston. Class acts.

And then there was this guy. Last year when we went to see a game at Madison Square Garden we ran into another Thrashers fan. He was from Atlanta but going to school in Boston so he decided to come up to the Garden. When we got home we went to a game at Phillips and saw him again. It was a little strange, but understandable since he was on spring break. So here we were sitting in the Boston Garden and guess who plops down next to me to say hi. 15,000 people in the arena and he's sitting two sections over from us. Freaked me out just a little bit.

So now it's Sunday morning and the day is looking beautiful out the window. Highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s. Gonna go see grampy for lunch and then take in some sights.

Spatters gets a little culture

Classical music is something I know very little about.  It was never played in our house when I was growing up and we never really had any exposure to it at all.  Then I married one of the members of the ASO chorus.

Over the last few years I've been to a handful of symphony concerts to see my wife perform.  Usually on a Thursday or Friday night because Saturdays were sold out.  Except for one show, I was by myself every time.  So there I was, tired from a long day at work, sitting alone and listening to music that I had never heard before.  It's not hard to imagine me maybe nodding off a time or two.

Then along comes John Adams and his violin concerto with the lead violin played my Midori.  Once again I was alone, since no one would go with me, and sitting in row K of the orchestra pit - horrible place to sit.  This piece of music rocked my world.  I sat there fascinated for 35 minutes.  If you want to hear a sample of it you can find it at Adams' website earbox.  Just search through his works and click on Violin Concerto(1993).

During the intermission I hooked up with a friend who was there and we snagged some seats in the loge for the second set. Once again I was floored by the music. I may not have enjoyed the second and third pieces quite as much if I had been alone.  Sitting next to a true music fan helps a little sometimes.

So finally, after 3 years of going to the symphony, I have been truly moved by a piece of music.  There were other concerts I enjoyed, but nothing that had me up at 8:30 on a Sunday morning looking for sound bytes of that first piece so I could remember being there.

A little late in life, but I may just be starting to get it.

That Red Dress

Last night my wife and I went to a black tie fundraiser for our local hockey team's charity foundation.  After 45 minutes of panic, but no fighting, about no being able to find the tickets we started to get ready to go.  The problem with wearing a black tuxedo in our house is that it suddenly becomes a challenge to get out the door without being covered in white cat hair. 

While I was meandering about the house trying to kill a little time, my wife put on her dress.  The red dress she was wearing when we got married.  After I helped her zip up I started getting myself ready to go.  I walked back into the bedroom and saw her again.  That's when all the memories of our wedding came flooding back to me.

I know it's only been two and a half years since the wedding, but seeing that dress brought it back like it was my wedding day: The happiness, the craziness, trying to hold back a tear and a cheese eating grin at the same time while saying "I do" and "I will" in all the right places.

That day was the most special and happy day of my life and sometimes it only takes a little thing to bring it all back.

The Block

When I decided to start this thing I had so many things I wanted to write about. But now I'm just drawing a blank. It seemed like a great idea at the time - an outlet for all my ideas and thoughts and blah, blah, blah. Blank.

So I guess I'll have to tell you a story.

Herman was a ladybug. Not very lady-like, I know, but Herman wasn't your ordinary ladybug. He was terrified of flying because whenever he was off the ground he got airsick. Airsick? It's the damndest thing I'd ever heard too, but I'll tell you I've seen it for myself.

When he was just a little pupa, he had a horrible experience. A bird got hold of the leaf he was cringing on afraid he was about to get eaten. But the bird wasn't looking for a quick snack, she was grabbing leaves and twigs to make her nest. She took him so high in the air and over a lake that he was sure he was going to fall in the water and be devoured by a hungry fish. When he got stuffed safely into the nest he vowed to never leave the ground again.

The problem with Herman's promise is that ladybugs fly. A lot. It's pretty much their only means of transportation and, as he found out, walking from plant to plant takes an awful long time. He would stay on the plants hunting aphids long after all his friends had moved on to better pastures in the garden.

And oh how his friends mocked him. "Don't stand under Hurlin' Herman when he takes off! You'll get a faceful of aphid." "Here comes Heavin' Herman again!"

It was the worst shame he'd ever felt in his short life. It only took him a few weeks of ridicule before he came to see me about his fear of heights. We talked through his phobias until we were blue in the face, but I couldn't get him to leave the ground for anything. I finally decided that I'd get my friend the Paul the Praying Mantis to jump at him from behind the doorway to scare him into flight. It worked like a charm.

When he'd been up in the air for several seconds I yelled "Hey Herman, you're flying!"

He looked at me, looked at the ground, and promptly threw up on my carpet. It looked something like this:

*

Safety first.

I do heating and air conditioning for a living and one of the primary objectives of my job is customer safety. In my opinion this comes before customer comfort. If we find equipment that is unsafe, we're required to inform the customer of the situation and then, if they want to leave the equipment operational, they are required to sign a release form saying that they know it's not safe to operate but are willing to do it anyway.

Last week one of the technicians I work with went to a commercial property and found a furnace with a bad high temperature safety cutout and two large holes in the heat exchanger. The high temp cutout is designed to turn of a furnace if the temperature gets too high. As he was supposed to, he informed the manager and turned off power and gas to the unit until the owner could decide what he was going to do. Today we get a call from the owner saying that another company came out and said that the heat exchanger was fine and the unit only needed a new temperature switch.

So I just got back from the frigid roof - 35 degrees and high winds - trying to confirm a hole in the heat exchanger. The two holes were pretty hard to miss if you actually took out three screws, removed a cover and looked. When I looked at the burner section I was rather surprised to find this:

If you can't read small yellow text: Left arrow - "Hole where high temp limit should be" Right Arrow - "Wires that are spliced together to bypass safety." Sorry, camera phone.

The company who came out to give a second opinion bypassed one of the most important safeties on this furnace. If, for some reason, either the blower fails or the gas valve sticks open there is now nothing to keep this unit from overheating and possibly causing a fire. It makes me wonder how this guy sleeps at night.

Next came the joy of telling the store manager what was going on and giving him the option of shutting it off or signing the release form I had in my hand. His main concern was for his customers, but when the release form came out he did the smart thing.

I know this one is particularly long, but I have to just say that I take great pride in what I do and stuff like this just really pisses me off. Someone was willing to take a dangerous shortcut with other people's safety to either gain a customer or prove another company wrong. Looking like the good guy isn't worth all that to me.

Testing, testing

Sometimes I just don't want to log on to firefox and go through the steps of opening up my blog account if I've got something to put down before it flies out of my brain.  So I've decided to try Windows Live Writer to create offline and upload whenever I feel like it.  We'll see if this one shows up.

 

Edit: I guess it works. Rather well too I might add.  I have to give props to MS on their new "Live" line of products.  To find this one follow the LINK.

My God, the local news

So I'm sitting here reading the news online and the local news is on the TV, which is rare because the TV is hardly ever on in this house, and they keep teasing a story that I don't really care about. Ever since 5 after 10, or whenever they go to their first break, they've been saying "Coming up next, a story on how close people are to identity theft", or some such crap. I turned it off at 10 till 11 and they were still saying the same thing. I know they're hard up for viewers, but damn that stuff drives me nuts.

Going to Beantown

Last year I think we started what I hope will be a continuing tradition. While we were in New York we caught a Thrashers game a Madison Square Garden. We were going to NY to see an Atlanta Symphony concert at Carnegie Hall and the Thrashers just happened to be in town at the same time.

This year we were planning a trip to Maine to visit grampy and my very astute wife realized that the Thrashers are playing in Boston the weekend we were thinking about going. Through some creative Travelocity manipulation she was able to get us a flight into Boston, tickets to the game, a rental car at Logan International, and a hotel in Maine for about $500 per person. I think that's a pretty good deal. Kudos to B for being persistent!

So in what I hope is year 2 in a long tradition of watching our home team playing in an out of town arena, we'll be proudly wearing the colors of Blueland in Beantown.

The Deal Addiction

Over the past year or so I've found out about some very cool, and some not so good, deals sites. Some of them have adopted the woot! style of one item per day until it's gone style and others are compilations of great deals around the web.

I got started with this while looking at I hacked, a pretty cool site dedicated to making things work better. And a few things that could get you into trouble if someone saw you do it. While cruising around their site I found a link to what is now my favorite deal page around slickdeals.net, a forum page dedicated to online and offline deals around the country. Most of the people that post here are linking to technology deals, but you can find everything from restaurant coupons to kids' toys. Some of the items are even free after rebates and price matching to other stores. It all depends on how far you're willing to go to get something free, cheap, or even get money back. So far I've managed a free hard drive and a free coffee maker. Along the lines of slickdeals are two other pretty good sites: Fatwallet and gottadeal.

Now for the addiction part. Every morning I get up, make coffee, and sit down at the computer. The first page I visit is Woot! and if there's nothing of interest I have a bookmark for about 10 other one item/ one day sites that I check out. Then if I have time I'll cruise around slickdeals for a little while and see if there is anything I just have to have.

THE DANGER

Eventually you're going to find something you don't really need but it's such a good deal that you have to buy one and find a use for it. Like the hard drive and the coffee maker. Or worse, one of the one item per day sites will have a mystery bag for $5.00 and you order one on the chance that you're the one who gets the x-box 360 or the LCD tv. What you end up getting is crap most of the time. They don't lie, though, when they say that whatever comes will be worth at least what you pay for it. You just wind up with crap worth $5.00.

So beware. Once you start in on the deal hunting it gets very time consuming. All the rebate forms to mail and keep track of, trying to find deals to post on the sites for other people to find, and staring at forum after forum can take up hours at the blink of an eye. Other than that it's pretty fun.

Ahhh, Hockey!

Hockey is arguably the best live sport in the world. People complain that it's too hard to follow and boring on tv, but once they've been to a game their opinion of the sport usually changes. I grew up watching hockey on television because my parents weren't fans and we never went to a game. I moved to Atlanta after the Flames went to Calgary so I was hockey starved for many years. I was reduced to going to sports bars to watch the playoffs and going to preseason exhibition games whenever they came through town.

Now it's different. Atlanta has a first rate hockey club and, thanks to fate and good fortune, my wife and I have season tickets. I say fate because that's how we met. A friend of mine from high school was dating her sister and they are also big fans of the game. They started inviting us, him asking me and his girlfriend asking her sister, to games with them. Over the course of a season we progressed from being hockey friends to a married couple. It's much easier to convince your spouse that you need season tickets when she is as big a fan as you.

My love for the game started with awe at how players could be skating at full speed, get knocked down, then stand up while sliding across the ice and keep going. I was 5 at the time and the Flyers were winning their second Stanley Cup. After 30 plus years of watching it still fascinates me. As I've matured as a fan I have started to watch more of the players that don't have the puck to see exactly what they are doing to keep the play going. Because of the speed of the game this is something you can only do while watching in person.

Over the last season and a half my wife and I have brought at least twenty different people to games and most of them have either come back for more games or expressed interest in coming again. One of them even bought season tickets next to us. That's the power of live hockey.

Now for a little stupid trivia because, well, I can. If a player takes a slapshot from 45 feet away from the net and his shot travels at 90 mph, the goalie has less than .4 seconds to get a piece of his body in front of the puck. Since I wasn't a physics major and I don't feel like looking up acceleration tables this example doesn't take into account that the puck has to gain speed from a dead stop.

Come to a hockey game with someone who knows the game and will explain it to you and I guarantee that you'll have a good time.

Traffic in Atlanta

What else is there to say about the traffic around here besides that it sucks?

Over the last 10 years I've been driving a service van around town and have gotten to observe just how thoughtless people in Atlanta really are once they get into a vehicle. Traffic in any major city is going to be rough around rush hour, but here it's something quite different. Once they get in their cars people tend to forget how to be polite. It instantly becomes a challenge to get where they need to go without heeding to the niceties of society.

If they were in a mall or on a busy sidewalk they wouldn't cut right in front of someone, turn around and say f___ you. Yet that's exactly what they do in cars. In the car they're invincible and can act however they want without recourse because no one is physically standing there to hold them accountable.

The real question is not how to fix traffic volume because nothing is going to quell the sheer numbers of people who hit the roads every day in this city. Our public transportation wasn't built to handle large numbers of people and the outlying counties won't allow MARTA in. The answer is to address how people drive and what they are doing in the car other than paying attention to the road.

Let's take a trip backwards in time. We don't even have to go back that far really. Distractions in the vehicle can be argued back to the installation of radios in cars in the 1950s, but the real problem started with two things in my opinion:

1. Long commutes - As we get older and more committed to things in our lives we find ourselves with not enough time in the day to do everything we need to do. Add to that 40 plus mile drives through traffic and you'll find that people are using their commute times to do things that normal people do at home in the morning. Here is a list of things I've actually seen people doing in the car during morning commutes. I used to write them down, but it got fairly tiresome and I've since lost the list: shaving, makeup, reading the newspaper, reading a book, eating a bowl of cereal while talking on the phone and driving a 5 speed, watching tv, working on a laptop. The list is as endless as it is scary. I once saw a man on I285 playing an acoustic guitar and driving with his knees! If your life has driven you to perform routine maintenance on yourself while driving it may be time to consider A: Moving a little closer to town or B: Getting up earlier in the morning and doing these things at home.

2. Cell phones - I admit that cell phones are a great convenience, but at the same time they can be a hazard to those around you. My wife can tell when there is a lot going on around me on the road because I usually either stop talking/listening or start yelling at the idiots in front of me. It's at that point that either she tells me it's time to start concentrating on the road or I tell her that I have to get off the phone. There was a time in most of our lives - within the last 15 years or so, I don't feel like doing the research on the exact date - when we weren't available by phone 100% of the time. My point is that if a phone conversation is so important that you can't pay attention to what you are doing then pull off to the side of the road to finish your phone call.

What can we do about it?

The governor has announced recently that he's going to recommend a crackdown on speeders to make our roads safer. I'm going to have to call BS on that one. When was the last time someone going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit caused a serious accident? The real problem is the people who are driving agressively and/or not paying attention to what's going on around them.

I'll have to digress a little here to make my point. About 15 years ago a friend of mine pulled up to a stop light on his motorcycle. After he was stopped, he kept his foot on the rear brake pedal and took off his gloves to wipe his hands off. The police officer behind him flashed his blue lights, pulled him over, and gave him a ticket for not being in control of his vehicle at all times. Sounds sort of unreasonable doesn't it? He went to court to fight it and lost. At the time this was a real traffic law on the books.

If this law still exists, what if the governor had the stones to announce that he was going to call for a crackdown on people who weren't paying attention to the road? People would be screaming about their rights to do what they want in their cars even though, as i was taught as a teenager, that driving in Georgia is a privilege. If people had to think about what they were about to do in the car for fear of getting a ticket they might actually do something that most Atlantans don't do: pay attention to what's going on around them.