Casa Insomnia

[Back2Good]

Woke up at 2:00AM, struggled for 20 minutes to get back to sleep, then this scene came to mind:

Al's right.   There comes a time when it is your turn to give some back.

Given I have nothing to do today, even though it *is* 2:35AM, I'm going to chase 45mg Temazepam down my throat with a Miller High Life - If that doesn't get me back to sleep, well, it should make for a fine viewing of "Unforgiven" on Netflix.

Just been that sort of week, I suppose.

Sleep well, my friends,

- b2g

[Back2Good]

Well, 45mg of Temazepam chased down with the Champagne of Beers did nothing but make for a very interesting viewing of "Unforgiven"  - I don't think I've seen the film in quite that light before, and when you haven't a care in the world (the Temazepam took care of those), you really notice Eastwood's mastery of directing films.  Oh, I've noted it before, in"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "Gran Torino", but the way he frames and lights scenes, not to mention the perfection of every detail of every set, and the huge number of "takes" it must have taken to get it all to come together - Not just for the key scenes, but for the entire film, is really something to behold.  Now I'm going to have to have myself a Clint Eastwood Marathon today, since it is rainy and nasty out anyhow...Of course I'll need a Red Bull to kick things off, then a few pots of coffee...Sitting in my recliner for most of the night killed my back, and the first thing I did when I gave up on sleeping at 7AM was to pop a couple of Hydro 5/325's, which may put me to sleep after all.

Anyways, fine job Mr. Eastwood...When I watched you as "Rowdy Yates" or as "The mysterious man with the gun" in all of those Sergio Leone "Spaghetti Westerns" in the 70's, I never imagined you'd become a fine director as well as an all-time classic actor.

[Back2Good]

So it's to be a "can't get to sleep" night rather than an "awaken at 3AM and can't get back to sleep night", of the two I think I prefer the former, as even if I'm unable to sleep at all tonight, here lately my conference calls don't start until 1PM EDT or after, so there are times I can catch a quick 9AM - 12:30PM nap if I take a 1mg Xanax - And that 1mg Xanax keeps me on an even keel until it's time for my 2PM Xanax, after which coffee and Red Bull get me through the rest of the day.

I'm honestly curious, with only 30 days to go before transfer to my new position with the firm, to see if I begin to sleep better at that time - Every job has its own stress factors, but the ones  I'm dealing with now come from incompetent managers, lazy resources, sales reps selling deals with timelines that are impossible to meet, and the resulting attrition - I'm the second program manager to transfer out, and our senior technical architect announced Friday that he was turning in his two weeks notice, so the short staffing isn't going to get better, it is only going to get worse.  The sad thing is, this division ran like clockwork from DEC '07 - SEP '15 - Then our VP hired a guy to come in and build out a Project Management Office, and things started going to hell.  It i impossible to fit PMI's principles on EVERY project, some variance has to be allowed...And since none of the resources that work on our projects actually report to the project managers (the loose matrix organization from hell), resource management is a black box for those guys, and I'm not going to jump in their arses for it - I've explained the problem numerous times to every level of management, and the answer is always "well, we don't have time for a re-organization, there's work to do."

Guess what, fellows?  When you hired a 32-year old Amherst MBA with no experience whatsoever in this field, but a cute little "Project Management Professional" certificate (I held one of those myself from 2005 - 2009, but my workload made it impossible to attend the training required to get the PDU's to maintain it, so it expired in '09), you just kicked off a re-organization.  Everything from portfolio management applications to project artifacts (WBS, RACI, Project Schedule Template, Weekly Report Status Template, Communications Plan Template, Issue Management Template, Change Log, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Minutes) were changed overnight to use a set of templates Mr. Amherst was too stupid to remove the watermarks on the softcopy documents on - I looked up the firm, and all he did was spend $700 out of his own pocket to download these new templates, he's still trying desperately to unlock the Excel formulas in some of them.

That was enough for me - I told my project managers to clean up their resumes, try to find an position in the firm they could do a lateral transfer to, but if not, to shop those resumes all over LinkedIn, and I spent a week writing a LinkedIn recommendation for each them.  I had put in my own application for a transfer to Corporate (away from Cloud Services) soon after Mr. Amherst explained his "vision of how things should work, and I suppose my two gods, the Infantry god and the Lord of Hosts, looked kindly upon my having set up my staff to get the hell out of there as soon as possible, and saw to it that I was selected for the job at Corporate, out of an applicant pool of 118 people.

Ah, enough about that - I'll no doubt write more about the new job as I master it

Tomorrow (today!) and Tuesday will be tough, as the Ritalin I ordered in mid-April hasn't arrived yet, but I'm sure I have a couple of Phentermine stashed somewhere, and I have my appointment on Wednesday to get my Xanax, Temazepam, and Ritalin refilled, so hopefully the week will look up by then.

I hope you are all sleeping soundly - Sadly, I think I will be here at the Casa tonight and tomorrow night.

Sweet dreams,

- b2g