two kingdoms, hundreds of thousands of miles
An observation:
When I was at the company office in Calgary, almost everyone was issued a BlackBerry, and I only remember one person who had an additional, personal phone. She had one because she wanted a phone with a US number.
When I was in a HAL office in Pennsylvania, the company-issued iPhones were everywhere, and almost everyone in my classes had also purchased a personal phone.
AT&T and Verizon have to be loving this.
This trip to Canada while long has been good. It was cool to see some areas where we are doing a really good job, and it was useful to see some things where we are just getting by. I had the privilege yesterday of giving a report in Calgary of what’s being done and where we are headed.
One of the things that I as a trainer have to react to in service to my corporate neighbor is the kludge — a computer software term, but I’ll redefine it to be that temporary fix that gets the job out the door but often has adverse long-term implications. We think we get away with the kludge because the result of our behavior isn’t communicated back to us in a timely fashion. Those affected by the kludge decide it’s not worth the effort to communicate what went wrong. That’s a mindset that I get to break.
…has been a lot of work and some fun.
My co-worker Fernando and I have been up here all week teaching our Canadian proposal writers how to use our new proposal system. Moving from one system to another has its initial detractions, but the new system does so much more not just for them but for others who depend on them.
The deployment has shown us a little bit about our application and shown them a little bit about themselves. Going to the new system has shown the proposal writers how much they assumed in doing the next design. Often when we go to work it feels like we’re the guys ripping off old, nasty bandages and putting medicine and new bandages on.
Our application has had minor issues dealing with the metric system up here, but we can get them fixed. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end of this deployment I could write a proposal using m3 instead of bbl, MPa instead of psi, and kg instead of lbm.
Monday AppleInsider reported on last Thursday’s internal letter From the President of my employer, Halliburton Company. We are moving from BlackBerry phones to Apple devices.
Apple may be a hardware business, but in my opinion this is a purely software issue. BlackBerry developers are in a bit of a mess. Current phones are running a Java-based operating system that is on its last legs. The new BlackBerry 10 QNX-based operating system is coming late, and more importantly, it will not support applications written for the current BlackBerry operating system. Who would want to contribute resources to developing programs that will go away in a year or so? Not Big Red, apparently. I understand the move.
2011 was a pretty cool year. If I recall correctly, I was in Houston; Alice, TX; and Calgary. Houston is great; it’s my home away from home, and the church knows my name there. Calgary was definitely the most fun and unique, despite spending most of it in negative degrees Celsius. 
Unlike some past years, I got to spend a lot of time at home as well, and that was good.
So far this year the company looks to send me back to Alberta. Halliburton has camps in Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and Grande Prairie. Grande Prairie is out there; we may wander over into British Columbia.
Last year I dropped 40 lbs. through a food diary and 45 mins. of exercise a day; I won’t be dropping another 40 this year. It sounds kind of cool to say I dropped almost three stones. I switched from the Lose It! app on iOS to LiveStrong on the BlackBerry, primarily because the kids now monopolize the iPods.
The podcast has been doing well. After our second pass through the Popular Commentary of Dr. Paul E. Kretzmann, I’m thinking about discussing the background of the hymns we sing: the scripture they reference and the conditions they were written in. Wouldn’t it be sweet if I could get an interview with the likes of LSB composers Pr. Stephen P. Starke or Stephen R. Johnson?
We made two hymn videos. I wish I could have synchronized the video of me singing with the audio a bit better on “What Child is This,” but CyberLink’s PowerDirector was very erratic with that. Video shooting and editing is a process where experience is a slow and demanding teacher, and I would really like to work with someone more experienced on any future projects.
I am quite excited that we are getting new accompaniment from Sam Mussman of Champaign, IL, and the notorious organist of Higher Things, Chris Loemker. Sam will kick off the new year of Time Out on Thursday with CL taking the next three. Jake Weber should also be with us in February. Our frequent guest vocalist Anna Baseley will be more involved when I work out the schedule for the next three months. We are still looking for more; we have no max on our guest list.
The house is now pretty much gluten-free. The market is starting to produce better gluten-free substitutes for normal bread goods, and while they continue to be more expensive, the prices are coming down. Udi’s loaves regularly can be found for under $5. Celebrate Local at the Easton Towne Center has had some good GF cookies that would be hard to discern from typical.
Wishing you and yours a prosperous 2012; keep working hard and forgiving others, as in Christ you are forgiven. Peace.
I’ve been a trainer in corporate workflow software for 13 of my nearly 15 years at Halliburton. It’s been tough and rewarding, but I thank God that He has placed me in my position.
My customers, people who use the software that the IT department writes, face an interesting dilemma when it comes to learning the latest and greatest. Sometimes trial-and-error by people familiar with the current version is unacceptable when learning the new version. Trainers must be employed, but the dilemma is when?
Markets have cycles of good and bad times, therefore businesses have cycles of good and bad times. John Maynard Keynes knew this and even tried to stop it, but all that did was push debt on to future generations. Our company has good times, generally right after the price of oil and gas come up, and poor times, such as when oil was $9/bbl in 1999. The size of our company expands and contracts with the amount of work that people want to do at a certain oil price.
