Time out for a random rant: One day, I was looking at my phone, and thought the little voicemail icon was odd. The other icons made sense: an envelope for mail or text messages, a little battery for the battery, a tower for signal strength, etc. Then it dawned on me: it’s the ribbon in a cassette tape! A CASSETTE TAPE? Really? Who’s genius idea was that? I haven’t seen one since junior high when I tried desperately over and over to record my favorite song on the radio but was always unsatisfied because I never got the timing quite right or the annoying DJ was talking over it. As phones are getting fancier, so are the voice mail icons and many make more sense, like a little speaker over an envelope. Alright I’m done.
I haven’t posted in a while, mostly because I have been in San Diego for all of February. I decided this blog doesn’t just have to be about my travels, especially because things happen here, too. This blog is named after a line of lyrics in Evanescence’s The Only One. I think the song is about reassuring someone that they aren’t alone, but I’m taking it out of context and giving it a new meaning. Read on…
In the first week of February, we had the Pre/Post-sales consultants mini-convention. Two days of showing cool stuff we’ve done in the app (well, I haven’t done anything cool…yet) and sharing bugs or enhancement requests with development. It was a blast; I finally met a bunch of people I’d either only heard about or talked to on the phone. We had a poker tournament the first night and one of the guys went to the bar across the street and raced a goldfish. On the second night, several of us went to dinner at a wine bar called 3rd Corner in Encinitas. The food was DELICIOUS and the wine was really good too. Then we all returned to the office and played Rockband down in the playroom.
Goldfish Racing
Rockband – John
Rockband – Ian
Mini Convention
The second week was pretty uneventful, just a lot of conference calls and working on finishing up the mini projects I had been assigned. I was also assigned my first three clients as the primary consultant.
In the third week, we had two clients, one of them mine, come in early in the week to do kick-off meetings, and then later in the week, many more clients came in for the Admin 101 training. I like assisting in the training classes; I like being able to give an answer to a question that the trainer might not have been thinking about or help the trainer prepare instances. Plus, I always learn new things or am reminded of things I forget.
The sour note for the week was that apparently my client, who came in early, apparently didn’t really like me or the Engagement Manager. There were some disagreements on implementation strategies, someone thought I wasn’t experienced enough, and some other bad timing coincidences that could not be avoided that led to him asking for a new consultant and EM. Anyway, my boss didn’t reassign us…he always has our back, but I guess he did make some small compromise to help the client get over it. I’m not going to let it bother me, though; my other clients seem perfectly happy with me, and if this particular one can’t be, it must be something else that’s bugging them, or they have unreal expectations. I’m going to continue to be nice to them as always, you know, kill ’em with kindness. Like the title implies, they aren’t the only ones that I’m responsible to and I can’t expect every client to be fun and easy to work with. In fact, when I was the customer I don’t know that I was any better. Haha, it always makes a difference to have the tables turned on you. This will really help me build up my diplomacy skills and patience.
