I had an interesting experience today. I had the work equivalent of having Facebook ell you that you had too many friends.  Our internal messaging system (Sametime) told me that I had more than 500 chat friends and it stopped working for me.. Now.. don’t get the wrong idea.. i don’t regularly talk to 500 people, but these names tend to accumulate over the years, I had to do something to start clearing them out…I started the task a little apprehensively as It’s the internal equivalent of ‘unfreinding’ someone.. though they never know it happens.

I was surprised, releived and bummed out all at the same time when I found that mostly what I had to do was to remove friends from the list that were no longer working at IBM..

as I scrolled through the hundreds of names I clicked off the ones who had left. some had retired, some had moved on to other careers, some had been laid off.. some had died… As I  clicked ‘remove’ i tried to remember the last interaction I had with that person.  what had we worked on together ? how did I know them ? . i pictured their face.. and tried to conjure up where they were now.. and what had happened that made them ‘elsewhere now.  It was a reverse history of my last 15 years or so at work..

it brought back soem great memories..a  few sad ones.. and many ‘where are they now’ questions. n the end this was a much more spiritual and emotional exercise than it was a maintenance exercise..

it reminded me that working, like life,  is about relationships and about love.. .. it was nice to be  reminded

ntite all, nite sam

-me

I woke this morning and , as always. one of the first things I did was roll over and check my email on my phone.. I hadn’t received a single email since midnight the night before. That’s odd, I thought.. even on a Sunday night I’d expect to get some email.. By about 8AM.. I was perplexed.. surly, someone wanted something from me today.. Monday’s are notoriously  bad for email.. especially Mondays after having been traveling.. but.. nothing, nada, bupkis… .. not even a line of junk mail.. By 9 I realized something must be wrong.. I average about 130 real emails a day.. that doesn’t include junk mail.. or email I send..

I called our help desk..a smiley voice from across the world answered me.. She walked me through the steps I already knew. about mail file full problems.. . I waited patiently for her to finish .. She was doing her job.. I then explained that somehow , my mailfile was full.. but at the same time it was telling me that it was only 15% used..

We both poked and prodded at my mail file .. then she agreed ‘something was wrong’.. She put in a repair ticket and told  me that my problem should be resolved within 8 hours.. 8 Hours ?!!> Nothing more she could do, she assured me. she was very nice, so I took her workd for it. I wnet to work … still emailless..

I had a hard day in the sense that i was on several tough calls… nothing seemed to be going well at work. .   Still.. my email was clogged.. I imagined a giant hairball somewhere in the either..   Pretty soon people started sending me instant messages….. I learned that email was getting returned with a ‘john’s email is full, try again later’ message.. not only was I not getting email… I was looking like an idiot ads I wasn’t getting it…

One more call to the help guys.. I told them my email database told me it was only 15% full.. they told me they were working on it.. and had sent the problem to ‘the server guys’ ..

midday.. still no email.. I was getting philosophical by that point.. based on the phone calls and instant messages I was gettign.. I suspected little of the email I was missing would be good news… ‘So what,” I wanondered.. if all that bad news went to the bit bucket..

By around 4 I realized I was enjoying the lack of interruption.. I no longer felt compelled to multitask..   My day wasn’t goig well.. but I knew that the email break only was helping…

by 6 I called the help folks again.. it had been 9 hours.. Once again I was told how to do what I’d already done.. again I waited.. Finally I was told that my request was still waiting with ‘the server guys’ .. and wouldn’t you know they’d gone home for the day..   I was told my problem would have to wait until tomorrow..

I’m sitting on the couch at the time I normally start my second work day.. and I have no frustrating emails to read, write .. or respond to..

bliss…..

I think I’ll go hang out with my wife 🙂

don’t try to email me…

nite all, nite sam

-me