The DieDie Blog

So yes, as the title clearly states it’s been a while since I’ve last blogged. Honestly, I don’t have a reason as to why I stopped other than life got busy and writing was the last thing I wanted to do.

To update everyone, I’m now working at Netflix in customer service. I’ve passed the 2 week training period and am now currently in the midst of the 45 day trial run. I think I’m doing good, but who knows. One thing I can say for sure is that I friggen love talking to Netflix customers. 99% of the people that are calling in aren’t pissed off. Yes, there is always that remaining percentage but compared to the rest of the day, it’s a breeze. I do miss working from home though especially since the hours at work right now are tough to deal with. But that’s changing here soon as well.

Other than the new work thing, the family and I have been trying to find places to live in the Beaverton area. Close to my work and to most of our friends/family. So far we haven’t had much luck. Hardly any place has A/C out here. We’ve seen a few places we’ve liked, but haven’t been able to land one that’s a downstairs with a washer/dryer and a 3 bedroom. Everyone seems to have 2 bedrooms though. And we need the 3rd bedroom so Dustin has his own work space since he’s now working from home. But blarg enough about house searching.

For those of you that may have missed it, Amelia turned 1 on July 20th! Here’s the link to the photo gallery of that day: Amelia’s first birthday. She shared her party with her friend Jeffy who was born 4 days before her. They had an awesome time! Jeffy’s Grandma Kathy set the whole thing up and even made the train cakes herself. I can’t express how grateful I am for Kathy taking care of everything. There was much cake and hyperactive babies for all!

Amelia also has had some pretty awesome developments. She has about 10-12 teeth now, the backs ones have all started to come through. She’s beginning to repeat words. Dustin was telling me the other day how she repeated the word bumble bee back to him while he was reading to her, so super excited about that. She’s still running around like crazy and of course is still super cute. At her 1 year old check up we found out she’s still underweight at a measly 17.5lbs. Our new doctor is having us put her on more formula to try and beef her up, but I don’t know. She’s eating, she’s developing, she’s almost talking for goodness sakes, so I don’t know why we have to keep her on the formula still. Our previous doctor was telling us that this is about the time you start to ween your kid off of milk. So ugh, I don’t know who to believe. We’ve increased her milk intake, but I honestly doubt it’ll have any effect with as much as she runs around and burns off calories. We go back in a few weeks though, so we’ll see if she’s packed on any pounds.

Man, it’s 2:24am already. Guess it’s time to shut down the ole compy and head to bed. Hopefully, this time I can get some uninterrupted sleep lol.

A few months ago a friend of mine and I were talking about the role of companies in the social networking world. He’d told me that his employer had instated policies in regards to blogging, Facebook status updates, and video journals. They summed up to one thing, you can no longer talk about your job on these mediums and doing so will bring repercussions, such as getting fired. This news inflamed me. Why? Because I don’t believe corporations have a right to control what you can and can not do on your non company paid time.

Let’s put this into perspective. I do believe companies should protect their proprietary products, services, trade secrets, and the like. It’s important to keep a lid on that information and not have some idiot post a Facebook status declaring the breakthrough company invention of a bald cure. I get that. But where I draw the line is when an employers policies seem to indicate that you can’t write about a bad work day in your online public blog. Somewhere it’s inferred that you have to pretend like you are at work and not say anything you wouldn’t say if you were on company time. But wait… I’m not on company time therefore the company should have no baring on what I do or not write about.

For instance, if I have a particularly frustrating day where I have had a disagreement with a co-worker and I write about it, though not using names or giving away company secrets or consumer information, should the employer then have a right to fire me over such a discussion? I don’t believe they do. When does a frustrated status update such as “Omg my job sucks right now!” turn into company policing situation? Clearly, there are times where you hate what you’re doing, but more often than not it’s a fleeting and stress filled reaction. As soon as the irritant has passed you’re back to what you love. And with such vague policies in place, what’s to stop an employer from canning you just because of something trivial like this? It’s putting a lid on the way people act and in my opinion is going to create a more disgruntled work force.

Blogging is the new private journal that your sibling steals and reads. Except we of course put our thoughts out into the great wide web in an effort to connect to others with similar ideas. Putting limits on these communications will only increase the stress felt at the workplace. If you now have to worry about your personal domains being scrutinized by your employer even when you aren’t at work, how is that going to effect the way you perform your job? Sure, you have the means to vent to friends and family about the situation, but you shouldn’t have to seek out secondary alternatives just because you are afraid of corporate repercussions.

My time is my own and provided that what I write isn’t illegal or spilling company secrets, no one should have the right to tell me what I can or can not blog about. I have opinions about people, situations, and yes the occasional conflict at work. Being employed shouldn’t mean I have to muzzle those feelings when I am not at work. But if that’s the case then I propose a censorship wage to be applied for employees personal hours to justify the social networking policies put into place. If you want me to act like I’m at work… then pay me like I’m at work as well.

Oh and these opinions are my own and in no way reflect those of the company I work for.

Muzzled by Army Brass.

How to tell a graphic designer their site needs work.

Let me preface this with a disclaimer: This is a humorous post. Don’t get mad as the references I am making are most likely about you. =p

“Check out my awesome site!” Says one graphic designer to another. All a flutter with expectation the second designer takes a look and with a few simple words creates the feud of a century. “What the fuck is that?” Lines are suddenly drawn in the cubical isles. The air crackles with heated glares until finally the graphic designer war begins. “Simple and clean!” Yells the first. “Shiny and futuristic!” Screams the second. And then off in the corner a well meaning but completely clueless designer jumps up and declares, “STAR BURSTS!!!” A hush falls over the combatants and all eyes turn to that lone soul who now quivers with fear. Ah yes, it’s 8am on a Monday morning. Do you know where your designers are?

While not all graphic designer conflicts can be as cool as ours, it does pose that interesting question of how do you tell someone you don’t like their site? Especially if you are both designers? Clearly everyone has their own personal styles and it can be pretty hard to take advice. But it’s also equally hard to give advice and not feel as though you are stepping on everyone’s toes. So here’s a couple of tips I like to use myself.

The Butter Up
Not everything has to be a conflict or an automatic dislike. The site could have a lot of merit but just lack a few key items that might make it pop. The key here is to mention the artists previous designs and why you may have liked them more than this current endeavor. Using the word “spoiled” is also highly recommended. IE: “To be honest, I liked your last site better. It had an amazing wow factor! I guess you’ve just spoiled me with that one.” Instant butter makes everything smooth.

Lets Just Tweak It
The goal of “Lets just tweak it” is to slowly nick-pick away at things until it’s what you wanted it to be in the first place. Sometimes this creates an entirely different end product than the original. This is known as the Behind The Back Tweaksies. Very dangerous if left in the wrong hands. IE: “You know, what if we moved this phrase here and then moved that image over to the left a bit. Good good. Now lets just flip this over here and that right there and bam! Look at that beautiful BMW site.” Original Designer, ” Wait, what? My site was about Narwhals!!”

Friggen Leave It Alone
This is one of the greatest tools yet often the least used. It’s not your design so friggen leave it alone! Sometimes you just have to back off and realize that not everyone can be as awesome as you and therefore must be left to fend for themselves. There are hundreds even thousands of websites out there and chances are there will always be ones that will make you cringe and attempt to suppress the inevitable gag reflex. Chances are also that you probably aren’t looking at one of those, you nick picking, smart mouthed graphic designer nerf herder! Yeah I said it.

So that’s my insider view on how to handle these types of situations. Sometimes you might need some good ole butter, other days you may need the tweaksies, but more than likely you should always use the leave it alone card.

Since giving birth I’ve been out on maternity leave for about 12 weeks. Having originally requested 8, the extra few weeks were both a bonus and a burden. On the one hand it was awesome to have more time to spend with my daughter and get her into a semi schedule. But the downside was my FMLA only covered 8 weeks, so for 4 extra weeks I was on my own money wise. Needless to say things got a bit tight. But now it’s back to work and back to making money. Goodbye Law & Order: Special Victims Unit! Goodbye Xena Warrior Princess! Hello web design and print ads!

Luckily, my employer was cool enough to allow me to work from home and after having looked at daycare prices I’m certainly glad they did. It’s ridiculous how expensive that is. I’m so relieved that I don’t have to worry about finding a daycare, getting the courage up to leave Amelia alone with strangers, and shelling out a paycheck a month to pay for it. But of course taking care of your kid while you work from home is no picnic either. So I’m going to relay my experiences of my first day back to work.

First of all let me state that I am not a morning person. I can get the perfect amount of sleep and yet still feel absolutely wrecked at 7 in the morning. Usually Dustin takes the morning shift and lets me sleep in until it’s time for him to leave for work. He comes in, gives me a kiss goodbye and the rundown of Amelia’s morning activities. Diapers been changed, what time she was fed, and that she’s sound asleep. That last part is always funny as no matter how passed out she is, the moment Dustin closes the front door she’s instantly awake and ready to play. I think she does that on purpose just to mess with me. It’s like I’m a drug addict chasing the dragon except my dragon is a few extra hours of sleep. And it never happens. So you can imagine how I was feeling at 7 am this morning, an hour earlier than when I’m usually awake. Zombeh DieDie was in full effect. But luckily a shower and some tea was all I needed to wake up.

I got the morning stuff all taken care of and signed in to work via Log Me In a pretty sweet website that allows you to sign into your work computer remotely. It’s 7:40am and so far everything’s a breeze. I went through my email and let the HR department know I was back so that they could reactivate my time card. I get a reply back that it’s been put in the system yet I won’t be able to clock in til tomorrow. Now considering I had spoken with them on Friday letting them know I was back Monday, I was a little peeved. Sure they had told me to email them on Monday when I was in, but couldn’t they have set this up on Friday so that I could at least clock in for my first day back? Apparently not. I then informed my boss so that there would be no question as to the status of my hours. So all good there.

I’m steadily plucking away when I hear the stirrings of Amelia. She let me work til 9 am and greeted me with the biggest smile. A good start to my work week. I fed her, changed her, and played with her til she started getting cranky. This is always a sure sign she’s sleepy and usually her morning nap is about 4 to 5 hours. I set her down and bam! She’s out like a light. Back to work I go.

Getting back into the habit of things turned out to be much easier than I expected. So far not a lot has changed at work. I took back my project management files and did some tweaking to get them up to speed. Granted I had a helper at work to take care of them while I was away, but everyone does things differently. So it’s never quite the same as your own order. I guess that’s the reason our department decided to “organize our filing system” on our own computers. I still have a ways to go on that project. All in all it was a very productive 3 hours. Around 1 o’clock Amelia woke up.

We ate lunch together, watched an episode of Law & Order and played with her toys. She’s friggen adorable when she’s bubbly and happy. But she took a shorter morning nap then usual and I could already tell by her yawns that another nap was soon to come. Sure enough at around 3 pm she passed out. So I was free to go back to the main computer. I say main as I also have a laptop to monitor my emails for when I’m out in the living room just in case any emergency projects/emails need my attention. I wasn’t really expecting any for my first day back, but you never know. Plus it’s always good to be prepared and to have a plan in place for those crazy days.

Overall Amelia showed me what an optimal day at work could be like with her. Now I just have to see what a bad day will be like. Hopefully, this good streak will continue. I already have some projects to work on and I’m feeling pretty good about them. Granted I’m probably a little rusty with eblasts and I hear there’s a newer procedure to go with them, but that’s the fun of work. I’m certainly glad to be back.

So how am I feeling now that my first day is over? Tired. I don’t think I’ve spent this many consecutive hours in front of the computer in my past 2 months off. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to as not only do I need to take care of the clients at work, but also the little client at home. I’m not doing this on my own though. I have a fantastic mate that makes sure I have the time to do the things I want to do. Plus if Amelia gets too unruly during the day, Dustin has promised to watch her when he comes home and allow me the time to focus on my work projects. Teamwork. That’s what it’s all about. Oh and ice cream! You can never go wrong with a little bribery.