de-I - IT Tech Support Professional

Yesterday we had an internet meltdown. 

First the ISP was down for about 3 hours. Of course I was in the middle of a call with #3. And then missed a scheduled meeting (and couldn't even tell the person why because I didn't have their phone number and my phone email connection wasn't working either). I managed to salvage a third meeting by doing it on WhatsApp using cellular data. Wife was unable to do any of her construction purchasing work.

Went it came back up, our modem crashed.This I discovered by working for over an hour with Xfinity 's (our ISP) automated customer service system where no matter the interface, calling, texting, using the internet, you will not get a real person. All you do is get shunted down the same menus again and again telling you to do the same things that have failed again and again. I finally ended up with a message that said, "Looks like you need a technician. We can get you scheduled for an appointment in 4 days. 

At this point I was ready to get another ISP.

But I remembered that Xfinity has a store in Albuquerque. It was 5pm by this time but it was open until 7pm. I ran out with the modem. There, I found real humans (if rather blah attitude humans) who swapped out the modem right away.

Then had to get it set up using their app which took a while. Right after I finally got it set up and working, THE ISP WENT DOWN AGAIN. Finally about 7 hours later everything was working.

And to end up a totally frustrating afternoon, I asked Wife if she would fill out a brief  survey giving me a high rating for my tech support services. 

She said, "I don't do customer service surveys."

And The Return Of Travel

Not only is our latest (and hopefully LAST) remodel project less than a week from start-up. We are back in the traveling business again! 

Until we got Wife's clean bill of health, we were not willing to commit to anything. Our scheduled March trip to Malaysia we canceled. But the moment we got the green light, we booked a short (for us) three-week trip to Gothenburg Sweden. It is the second largest city in Sweden and is only a couple of hours away from #3 and family.

We are both in need of the R&R that we only seem to get from travel. 

D-Day Announced! Purchasing Mama Already Deployed!

Received in an email today...

"We will start on Wednesday 3/5"

  ...from our contractor

In follow-up emails, he detailed an estimated schedule that will take us through the first week of April. If all goes well, we would expect the job to be finished by around April 7-9. We will be able to stay in the house through March 24 when the painting and flooring will be done. So we will only need to be out of the house for about 2-weeks.

And while this planning going on, our resident super heroine, Purchasing Mama (aka Wife) has been working to save us big time bucks by researching and purchasing the massive amount of plumbing hardware needed for the bathroom remodel.

After the years of studying options, starting and stopping, hitting walls, going down blind alleys, the remodel we've envisioned to allow us to stay in the house long-term is taking place. 

Breakthroughs! Progress On Many Fronts!

Suddenly A LOT is happening.

THE REMODEL

Money has been exchanging hands. Product is ordered. Dates for the construction commencement have been floated. Plans for how we are to are to live in the house during the construction have been finalized. We are hoping work will start in about three weeks. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 WIFE HEALTH

Wife went for her ultra-sound to see if the blood thinning medication was helping reduce her blood clot. Not only was it reduced. It was gone! In fact the vascular surgery people recommended she stop taking the blood thinner. Having watched Wife's energy and behavior over the last few weeks return to what it was before the blood clot incident, I can't say I was totally surprised. No, that's not honest. I saw the improvement and hoped it was a sign that the clot was diminishing. I can't say I expected her to get a 100% clean bill of health! We actually looked at the pictures of the current veins working versus what they were in November. It was dramatic.

TRAVEL

And the health news means travel is back on the table! We have put in motion a short (well short for us) three week trip to Sweden in May!

Woo Hoo!

BOOK SIX FINISHED!

OMG! After five years of on and off writing, it's done!

I did my first re-read over the last couple of weeks and I was amazed (pleasantly) that despite the herky-jerky process of writing it, all the stopping and starting, all the painful blocks in determining what the story line would actually be, it turned out pretty darn good. And as I commented in my last post related to it, there are a number of ideas and themes that can be used to create the next book or maybe even books. 

My next task will be to re-read and capture all those ideas in written form so I can begin designing Book Seven.

BiL And SiL

That would be Brother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law, Wife's Brother and his Wife. 

Of all our family, I would say, over the decades, we have been closer with them than any others. Yet it had been a long time since we'd actually been together. They had taken the initiative and asked if they could come visit. We were truly happy they did. 

So what does one do for three days with your close relative that you've not seen for years?

TALK

It is hard maybe for some to understand that we spent an immense amount of time talking. Talking about all kinds of things. It was truly impressive. However, there is a sub-plot in this...the talking relationship between Wife and her Brother. Each evening they would start talking. Often it was about aspects of their life growing up on the farm in Windom, MN with their somewhat dysfunctional parents. After a couple of hours both SiL and I would bail, go to my Library and sit quiet reading while the two siblings went on and on. Honestly, I haven't seen Wife this animated, engaged, and energetic since the November blood clot issue.

COOK AND EAT

Seriously? You think de-I is going to have guests and not pull out the stops cooking and eating?

Our first day, Wife and I had our contractor in and out a couple of times as we have been trying to get the last parts of our remodel finalized. I opted for a simpler meal. I took out a number of last summer's smoked meats (ribs, pulled pork, brisket) from the freezer. I made my crispy not quite mashed potatoes, and slow roasted (a la #1) a butternut squash to crispy outside/soft inside perfection.

Day two was pasta making. I had the lust to make pasta from scratch. My BiL, the curious learner and engineer he is, wanted to watch and participate in the whole process. I had him rolling and cutting the pasta. I made a very meat centric sauce using some goulash I had in the freezer, pressure cooked with pork rib meat. The pasta turned out top notch!

Day three was Cambodian Fish/Shrimp Amok. I showed SiL how to make curry paste from scratch. Another top notch winner.

de-I DIY APPRENTICE

My BiL is an amazing engineer and notorious fix it person. SiL bemoans the fact that if they visit family in their homes, it always turns into a home improvement project. We had small need. Our on furnace humidifier needed its internal canister replaced. BiL was confident we could do this ourselves. I volunteered to be his student not realizing that BiL, being a great teacher, would have me do everything!

Yours truly throwing himself into the task

 Let me tell you how much FUN I'm having

 After we'd replaced the canister, BiL insisted that we open up. It was amazing the amount of mineral deposits on in and on it!

 

 

 Evidently there are a lot of minerals in our water. I am not sure if we should be concerned about the amount of minerals we are consuming in our water, OR if we should be bottling our local water as natural mineral spring water!

Humidifier Canister Replacement Success

Theodora/Ghana Trip Round-Up

I'm back in Albuquerque, back in the day-to-day saddle, and reflecting on the trip just completed to Ghana. A LOT was accomplished. 

• We kicked off open book management and got great involvement from the team as I related in my earlier post.
• We met with our Ghana board and advisors and believe we have renewed engagement from them.
• Met with two potential joint venture partners and have agreed to put together a test (more on this below).
• Purchased four badly needed new computers for the team.
• Put 'teeth' into the idea of 'participant management' with a set of definitive projects the team is to work on (more on this below).

JOINT VENTURES

During the last half of 2024, I met and had ongoing conversations with two other social impact organizations in Ghana dealing with the same problems related to disadvantaged & trafficked women. One, Muslim Family Counseling Services (MFCS), has an excellent track record meeting people 'where they are', and gaining trust. The other, Breaking The Chain Through Education (BTCTE), specializes in getting trafficking survivors and giving them education and skills training so they can build a better life. Both these organizations face the same challenge...they've been unable to come up with the means to provide solid employment for those they serve. Thus, when they learned about Theodora, they were both very intrigued.

This led to the local heads of both organizations coming to our office in Accra to see for themselves what has been accomplished. They met with our team, learned about their backgrounds, the challenges of transforming into those that could do our work, details of the actual work being done, and their feelings about their own future and the future of Theodora. Both commented on the magnitude that had been accomplished. And both have indicated they would like to see what we might do collaboratively. 

If we were to develop a collaborative effort, these organizations would fill two big gaps in Theodora's potential growth plan...the recruitment of new candidates (MFCS), and providing the basic training fir new participants (BTCTE). We've agreed that an initial concept test would be the next step. We are hoping to have the design of this test for our respective Boards by this summer.

OWNERSHIP ATTITUDE CHALLENGE

There is a saying, be careful of what you ask for, you might get it. In the case of my Theodora participants, I would rephrase that to, be careful of what you question your CEO's decisions, you might get the task to resolve it. Thus on my last day in Ghana, I handed out the following to the team.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PLAN (Mary F) – This has been mostly built out. Mary needs to move it into implementation and provide a results tracking system.

 

FUNDRAISING (Ann & Mary M.) – You have your system built. I need you to BLAST OUT the new content and talking points I’ve given you.

 

AI STRATEGY & TACTICS (Miriam w/Mary M & Benedicta) – We want something we can be implementing by the second half of the year.

 

OPEN BOOK MANAGEMENT (All) – Start ‘really’ studying the financial information. Ask questions!

 

TIME WORKING IN VS. OUT OF OFFICE POLICY (Open) – I’d like to see something by the end of February.

 

CLIENT’S PAYING VA BONUS POLICY (Open) – We should have something approved and out to our clients by the end of February.

 

PAYROLL, COMPANYWIDE SYSTEM  (Open) – This will be a hard one. I’d like to see some preliminary ideas no later than the end of April.

 

ROTARY FOLLOW-UP (Benedicta) – We need to be going to at least one meeting per month & make sure all are comfortable with and can use the talking points. We need to start collecting names of contacts we make at these meetings.

 

PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN (Miriam) – Establish list of PR contacts by the end of February. Begin sending press releases by March.

This should keep everyone engaged for a while!

Jet Lag Management - The Bear Hibernation Technique

There are two primary options for flying between the United States and Ghana - through Washington Dulles on United or NYC JFK on Delta. I have no particular favorite. There are pluses and minuses to both routes. I usually make my decision based on price. 

However, recently, within the last year, Delta made a major time schedule change which makes it much more difficult for people west of the Central time zone to connect without a very long layover somewhere along the way. So my last two trips prior to this were on United. But when I made my reservation for the trip I just concluded, the price differential was so great (Delta being much lower) that even with a couple of hotels for those long layovers, I was saving big bucks. 

One side effect, of the new Delta schedule is it now leaves Ghana in the morning local time and arrives in NYC mid-afternoon local time. This is just like most of the return flights from Europe to the U.S. If you are stopping in NYC that's fine. However, if you are going on, it is on it creates a jet lag management challenge.

When flying these long routes (8 hours and longer), the ideal time as a business class flier is to have them go overnight so you can sleep. That's the way it has been in the past. But if you have an 11 hour flight going through daylight hour, what do you do? Your body won't be ready for sleep. 

I use what I call the 'modified hibernation technique'. I don't want to have my body stimulated and feeling it is awake because then my body clock will be screaming at me to sleep when I arrive in the U.S. with many hours of daylight ahead. So I basically just lie down with eye shades on, listen to music and do nothing. I try to make my brain and body functions as slow as I can. If I was staying on the East Coast, I would only do this for half the flight to get on the local time. In this case, I still had 9 more hours of travel after my arrival until I got to Atlanta, my overnight location. I pushed the hibernation then for as long as I could on Ghana to U.S. flight. 

I was feeling really tired during my layover in NYC but was able to grab a shower which made a world of difference in terms of keeping me awake. I was able to get a pretty good night's sleep in Atlanta as I did not have to get up early for my last flight to Albuquerque. 

I'm feeling reasonable this morning. I did wake up a little earlier than I would have liked but that is normal for this kind of time zone change.