White Death 2007 v2.0

Round two began this morning. We got about 2 inches of snow overnight. I can sum up the school closing announcement in three words: All schools closed. In the western end of the state. Including major metropolitan areas. I don't get it. The wind wasn't blowing or anything.

I left the house about 7:25am, instead of my usual 7:35-7:40am. By that time the snow on the driveway was already melting away. I didn't even bother with shoveling. Knowing that my opportunity was limited, I took the time to do a couple of donuts with my car in the cul-de-sac in front of the house. The guy half a block down the street looked at me funny when I drove by. I think he was outside scraping his car during the "donut exercise" and the sound of a sliding car probably got his attention. Oh well.... they've already seen me up on the roof three times and doing yardwork in the middle of the day in summer, so they know I'm crazy. I waved when I drove past and he waved back.

The roads were snowy, but not particularly slick. I did restrict my speed to a bit under the speed limit since the roads were completely unplowed and unsalted. I was making good time until a pickup truck got on to the road ahead of me. A full-sized, 4x4 pick-up truck. Which went TEN MPH in to town, even when the roads were clear. A deputy sheriff pulled up behind me and was probably quite annoyed by having to go so slowly, judging by his acceleration rate once we got to the 4-lane section of the road. I didn't see any cars off in the ditch, but I saw only two cars on the road out in the county besides mine and city traffic was very reduced.















By mid-morning, the sun was coming out and all the clouds cleared off. The roads were nearly dry by lunch time. There were more people at work today than there were yesterday though school was still out.


And, by the time I got home? This was the state of the snow. Well, at least it didn't stick around long enough to get gray and icky looking. The snow here apparently stays pretty clean since it doesn't last longer than a day.



Returning to my Calm, Cheerful Demeanor....
Late yesterday at work I was informed by the office director that a central office person was coming to visit us and talk to us about one of our investigations. We spent most of the afternoon scrambling to produce a written summary of our activities for the past month on this project and to compile the most recent figures for the "pre-briefing" with the regional director, to bring the director up to speed. The pre-meeting goes well, but we're all a bit puzzled by what would bring the central office person to our office just before quitting time (a 2.5 hour drive one-way) and in inclement weather. You may be able to guess where this went....

Yep, back to the amazing software which doesn't run. Once again we were asked to commit to using the software and told how wonderful and amazing this piece of software is. We went round and round in circles on this subject again. Our director even asked why we can't just share our data with the central office and the central office can do whatever they want with it in a parallel system using the new software. This apparently was unheard/ignored. At one point we were labelled as simply refusing to change our system. Right about that time I apparently hit my limit for the central office not listening to us say "No, thank you. Not right now, but yes we'll use it next time out in the future."

I asked permission to be blunt and received it. So I explained it bluntly. I neither swore, nor shouted, but I believe I got the point across firmly and unquestionably. I pointed out that we had agreed repeatedly to use this software in the future but that we would not be using at the moment because the software was not functional at the present time. Furthermore, I stated had serious reservations that this was a "simple" package to learn since the basic introductory training to the software was scheduled to be 20 hours long. Given that the purpose of this investigation is to control disease transmission and not to test out the new software, unless there is something dramatically wrong with the investigation we are doing (and we have had repeated indications from multiple sources that this is not the case) that we are not going to be changing our methodology in the middle of the investigation, particularly since the new software is non-functioning. Lastly, given that the issue of data entry only being done by a single person has been brought up repeatedly, I felt compelled to point out that I had now spent 2 1/2 days dicking around with the issue of using this software now and that had I been allowed to do the job I was hired to do, all that data entry would have been done by now. With the regard to that data entry the only data which remained to be entered are the negative skin test results from the largest facility. I stated that I knew what the test results were (negative) and that the only information which wasn't "known" for each individual at this time was the date the test was planted and read. The rest of the information was already known and that the positive test results or other abnormal/suspicious results had already been entered, reviewed and discussed. Finally, I stated that I had fears that continued debate on this subject with subsequent loss of productivity would in fact soon begin to compromise the quality of the investigation we were conducting. After all that, it seemed as though our point of view was finally heard and the meeting ended.

I was congratulated by everybody else at the meeting for at professionally, yet firmly expressing the sentiment of the entire room. Our director is still confused why non-functioning software is being repeatedly pushed on us as being the way to go. It was clear to all of us that there is an agenda here which is not being shared with us. I strongly suspect that someone committed us to using the software before making sure that it worked and now they're in a sticky spot since we aren't using it/cannot use it.

The Local Impact?
I have been congratulated and told that I am upholding the reputation of the our office. Apparently there are a number of independent, determined and confident individuals there who don't much care to have things foisted on them which neither work nor make sense. I was still kinda wound up by the end of the afternoon. I'm still trying to get calmed down again now.

Oh, and I have been advised that I may be asked to help explain a few things to other rather obtuse individuals since I can do such an effective job of explaining things in no uncertain terms. :o)

Weekend Plans
I need to exchange my BlueTooth headset. The one I got bundled with the new SmartPhone apparently makes it sound like I'm talking from the inside of a very large shipping container. As in ocean-going ship-sized shipping container. So I'll take the expensive bundled headset back and get the cheap one instead (for use as a spare), then order the headset I really want via the Internet. I may pick up a new cookbook from the bookstore too and hit the veggie store, just for the heck of it. I think my library books are due soon. And I *have* to mail Mitch's cookies. I've been driving them around town for the past two days, but haven't yet been able to get to the post office at lunch time or before they close at 5pm.

There's that football game to watch on Sunday. You know, the one with the really cool commercials. I brought home most of the data entry stuff to work on during the game. (Last night, in an hour and a half of uninterrupted computer work, I got more done than I had done in the previous 4 days, thanks to the stupid software fiasco. And I did it all while watching CSI.) Other than that, I am hoping it will be a relaxing sort of weekend because I really need to unwind after this past week.