TAN #203: TANese New Year - Horsing Around (Page 10)

It is actually supposed to be over 35 degrees for the first time in a long time.  Feels like a heat wave to not be in the -25 to -35 wind chill numbers.  Working way too many hours and not enough time to accomplish anything.  Need to drop a hobby or 2, to possibly have spare time.  I left for work at 5:15 am yesterday and got back home at 8:35 last night.  It was for a good cause as we were playing acoustic music at a care facility, but makes for a very long day.

Did anyone else notice that one of the dancers looks a lot like Miley Cyrus?  Creepy.

In other Cyrus family news, my brother-in-law is a veterinarian in Flatwoods KY.  He used to treat the Billy Ray's father's dogs.  Pretty much a normal guy.  He was a state senator for a while.  

TW

Anybody know what is worse than a 6 hour conference call?

anybody???

a 6 hour VIDEO conference call!!!!!

Ouch.

I would have had a scissors "accident" less than 3 hours in.

Yes an 8 - 10 hour one back when Video conferencing was pretty new and it was on a Saturday for the corporation plant managers and I think engineering managers.  I was the only IT person in our building of 600 employees, so I was in the building all day, just in case there were technical issues.  So I had to be there for a half hour before to do all of the stupid connection tests that were done back then to verify we were working at the proper speeds.  I luckily was able to leave the conference room after 30 minutes into the meeting when they finally got everyone connected properly.  I had to be in the building, just for this call.  I did a lot of work that I normally couldn't get done, but the managers were just disgusted with burning up a day on the video conference to then find out that it didn't work as well as the leaders expected, so they all have to fly up in two weeks anyway.  :-)

that is one of the circles of hell.  you can't even get away with doing other stuff during that.

That was the longest day of my life yesterday!  So glad that is over.

So this morning, I get a webcam sent to me so my boss in ATL and I can videochat during statuses and reviews! Yeah!!!

What was the point of making the 6-hour call a video call? Was there something that needed to be shown live for 6 hours? Weird.

We have a new system called Lync (replaced all instant message and live meeting stuff)... it has video conferencing capability but I love it because you can call other parties on your phone, and share items on your desktop - without setting up an individual video conference call for the entirety. Or you can set up a 6-hour video conference if you want. You know, just to be a DB.

We had it at my old job - it was good for what it did. But they tried to get us to use it instead of the phone, because it was cheaper. That was no fun.

We use TeamViewer for that sort of thing.  I use it at home, too.

I just signed up for the new Challenge event, Challenge New Albany!  It used to be the Giant Eagle 5i50 race, so I've done the course before, but it's still fun to be getting in on an inaugural event.  I'm NOT going long, though.... just doing the Oly.

I have no idea why it had to be a video call honestly, but the Boss is the Boss!

We have Lync and that is what the webcam is attached to. Can Lync be used for anybody or is it setup just to be used for my work? I mean could I potentially lync with you and everyone else that has Lync?

Not sure about Lync with outside organizations - I think it's just an internal tool but I am no IT genius!

Work rant:
A certain organization consistently schedules meetings over the LUNCH HOUR. I think what they're doing is looking at everyone's calendar and seeing "oh! there is an hour where everyone is free! Book it!" when OF COURSE people don't schedule meetings over lunch. I really want to say something to them but don't want to be super negative. It has been mentioned by everyone in my group so it's not that they are doing it to just me. Grrrr.

I think your IT people have to give you access to Lync with anyone outside of your organization. 

You know what I like about a small company?

Skype and Google Chat.

my last company (medium sized - maybe 5k employees worldwide) sourced it's email functions to google so we had INTERNAL gchat (which has a video option!)

here we use lotus notes so we use their integrated conferencing service which sounds much like lync.

this is some boring tan talk!  who's got V-DAY PLANS?

everyone is videochatting instead of Tanning!

But hey, at least it is talk, this has been on the same page for awhile now!

Cheers TAN.  Everyone have a three day weekend or just me?

Working late, take-out, and getting ready to be the only crew member for my friend's 24 hour solo MTB race tomorrow. 

Best v-day ever?

Paddling into the intercoastal, tying off to other kayaks/canoes, passing around beer and sandwiches, and watching the demolition of a 30 story residental high-rise.

We have big V-Day plans! Making pizza at home and watching Olympics. We talked about going out to dinner or movie or what not, but we went out to dinner last night and had to wait an hour to be seated. No likey. Relaxing at home sounds so much more perfect.

for the president's day?  that's nice!  i don't, and just realized i will almost definitely be working over the weekend to attempt to catch up.  sigh.