dave's not here

random thoughts for the halfway point of 2007

So we’re halfway through 2007. Today is the last day of June and we’re now closer to the next Christmas season than we are to the most recent New Year.

My birthday is in six days. I’ve played exactly one round of golf this year, and that was at an executive course, so it’s like 2/3 of a round.

The world is on Facebook. I need a new barbecue. I could stand to drop about 25 pounds. I still can’t score in hockey (I’ve been snake bitten since January).

I feel like I’m getting my voice back. Maybe I’ll rock and roll again one day. One day. I cook a mean steak. I need to reorganize my home office.

My “dedication” to this blog has been better than in previous years. I’m still not writing anything of substance. I owe some people phone calls.

I’m drinking more red wine, which is supposed to be good for you. I haven’t reduced the beer intake though. I had fish for dinner.

I’m facing some personal challenges. My family is, collectively and individually, facing challenges. We will persevere.

Happy summer.

jamming

For the first time in years, I got to sing with a live “band” last weekend. Me and some guys from work spent four hours in a rehearsal space in North Van and I gotta say, it was a lot of fun. We’ve never played together and we’re all very rusty (particularly our drummer, who’s really a bassist), but we managed to get some good sounds going by the time we were done.

These videos were shot on my little Fujifilm camera which records up to one-minute videos. The sound and lighting are horrible, but they’re better than nothing

This is us after we’d been playing for a while. In between songs while everyone farts around a bit. I’d been trying to get a decent recording of us playing, but to no avail.
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Finally managed to capture a few bars of us actually playing a song.

A spontaneous rendition of Taking Care of Business, a jamband staple.
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dramatic chipmunk

This is freaking hilarious.

rediscovering bureaucracy

I’ve been working at a large, monolithic, post-secondary educational institution for about five years now. When I first started, it was a shock to the system. Coming from “industry” (as it’s called within the hallowed halls of post-secondary education), the pace of things left me somewhat non-plussed. This was education — how could there not be a sense of urgency?

Over the years, I have resigned myself to the fact that things will always move at a certain pace. Indeed, I have made jokes about how things move at a “glacial” rate of speed. You can endeavour to make small changes, but the Titanic doesn’t turn on a dime. I’ve watched as new hires come in with fire and energy, only to experience the same frustration and puzzlement with the operations of the Institute. Some have stayed, others have left for more fast-paced and challenging environs. I hardly blame them.

In the last year I’ve moved into management, accepting the opportunity to be in a better position to affect change. In recent months, however, I have had the pleasure to rediscover bureaucracy at new levels of absurdity. It seems that to accomplish what are, to me, simple administrative tasks (like hiring replacements for all the disillusioned and departed workers that have abandoned your team, leaving it riddled with vacancies) takes months of back-and-forth between multiple groups that hold varying and sometimes competing interpretations of the processes required. Each week brings a new challenge or obstacle to what I thought was a straight-forward process with a clearly-articulated objective: hire people! Even now, during some much needed days off, I continue to wrangle with people so as not to delay the process further.

I recently posted a status update to my profile on Facebook as follows:

“No matter how much I push the envelope, I recognize it will always be stationery.”

An old pun, but so appropriate to my working world these days.

How do you deal with bureaucracy?