To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "Depend on it, sir, when a man knows the electronic expense report system is to be swapped out with a new one in a couple of days, losing all the credit card receipt records it has accumulated over the past six months, it concentrates his mind wonderfully on getting his old expense reports submitted."

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So the Boss Man is visiting around the turn of the month for a one-day conference in the office -- which will also see one of my direct reports (running the meeting) and one of my former direct reports (in a supporting role) (and, ironically, given our distributed organization, the first time I've met him in person).

Boss Man has a penchant for sushi (as demonstrated when we've done off-sites at his house), so I'm planning on dragging him off to Domo, along with Margie and Katherine, for a pleasant dinner the evening he arrives. I think he will like it.

Yet another thing to mark on the Busy Calendar Now Thru September.

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... just terribly, terribly busy ...

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If your engineering company is involved in the building of mine works at a central Colorado molybdenum site, you will probably, sooner or later, get a request from a rather sheepish engineering manager that you update the company spam filter to white-list the terms "erection" and "Climax."

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My next-wall neighbor has a radio. Though she keeps it down enough not to bother folks around her (it's a cubicle), it's stuck right against my office, and a faint, ever-so-faint drift of country music through the wall keeps drawing my attention ...

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Over the weekend, we got a big influx of folks from a field site into the office, moving into the wing I'm in. It's going to be interesting -- a much more boisterous group, a lot more field-oriented / blue collar (even when not) / rough-and-tumble jeans-wearing crew, coming into the office with their lunch boxes.

I've actually never quite been so close to the real "engineering" action this way. My office has usually been amongst the support groups -- Accounting, IT, etc. Even with my most recent move, the group I was among was estimators and project management types ... and the cube opposite my door was empty.

Now I have some guy sitting 12 feet from me, munching on peanuts and chit-chatting with his fellows about stuff.

Let's see how it goes. :-)

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Well, there's a mass immigration into my wing of the building coming up this weekend (an amusing story in and of itself), and as part of that, the long-absent Greg Potemkin's being bumped from his cube. Everything's cleaned off, even his name from the whiteboard. I tried putting it back up yesterday morning, but it's now been replaced by the (I assume) name of the person taking over the space.

I'll have to keep an eye open for someplace he can move to ... sooner or later.

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With my old Blackberry, I had P1 messages being signaled with a bell, so that whenever an e-mail came in from my boss, it would ring. I soon got to where I was dreading the "gong of doom."

So with my new one, I changed it to a sonar ping sound (it's a "ping," get it?). It seemed like a calmer sound, no Pavlovian twitch when the bell rang.

Only now I feel like I'm in Run Silent, Run Deep, trapped in a submarine below, hearing the destroyer criss-crossing above, searching for me on sonar, readying the depth charges ...

It's been a long week. :-)

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The vast majority of folks in our wing of the building moved to the new building today across the street, leaving behind cubicles, full trash cans, scattered bits of debris, and a dearth of office supplies.

It's very quiet, and a little depressing. Maybe I should put on some music.

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Okay, so I do a lengthy status report each week to my boss, compiling and distilling down submissions from my direct reports, max 3 pages. Each of my boss's directs also does such a report. We all CC each other, and usually CC our respective directs, too. So, in effect, my report goes to my boss, my four peer managers, and my four directs.

Last Friday, I included, two-thirds down, this little line item.

HOS - STATUS REPORT REVIEW: D Hill will buy a beer for anyone who sends him a private e-mail confirming they read this item by COB 3-APR. (D Hill)

HOS is the name for my group (Home Office Systems).

I got, on Monday, one claim for a beer from one of my peer managers.

This morning, in submitting this week's report, I drew attention to the previous week's entry. It's been very amusing to me seeing the reactions (and/or lack thereof) from the various recipients. Including my boss.

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