You Think You Know Me, But You Have No Idea

I fielded another solicitation phone call from a training vendor today. Since we don't have a true training department or training manager or anyone who has a clue about training our employees, I get to wear that hat along with the multiple others my boss keeps on my head. So, this guy is blah-blah-blahing through his pitch, and I'm half listening. (Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, by the way, I notice my annoying habit of nervous laughter is popping up constantly during the phone call. Now... I didn't even know I had a nervous laughter problem... but evidently, it's pretty evident. Why didn't y'all TELL me? It's actually EVEN on my performance review this year. Gosh... I hope my boss isn't reading my blog. Mary, I love you, if you are... but yes, I sneaked (or is it snuck?) a peek at my review before I was supposed to. She still hasn't met with me about it yet, so I'm not supposed to know. But one of my other hats is SysAdmin for the eAppraisal site... so, being the little inquisitive person who can't wait to KNOW, I did it. I opened my appraisal & looked at it prematurely. But I have been very good about not telling on myself. Over and over again in our management meeting in DC a few weeks ago, I caught myself on the verge of saying something that I could only know if I had looked... and I held my tongue. Imagine that, me. Holding my tongue. Anyway... I digress.)

The salesperson on the phone is giving me his sales pitch. You have to understand that I field lots of these calls. They all pretty much have the same products & offerings. But this guy happened to mention something that caught my attention & I let him set me up with a free preview. Now, our employees are stubborn and backwards. Sorry, guys, but YOU ARE! I have been successful in obtaining (literally) thousands of dollars in grant money to pay for training programs for our employees. And when I announce a new program to people, they're like woohoo! And then months pass by without anyone lifting a finger to participate in anything I've set up (much less actually assist with setting it all up!). In one case, I got us all this free web-based training. The only caveat was that each employee who signed up had to promise to take three courses. THREE. In something like a year. Oh, and some of the courses were seriously 30 minutes long. That's a commitment of an hour and a half. Over the course of A YEAR. At the end of that grant, I was pretending to be over 50 employees, trying my damnedest to get all that training done. And gosh... I hope no one from the grant office or the state is reading this either! Anyway, so point being... our employees just won't do it. They bitch & complain about not having any money to spend on training... but when I go & get the money, set up the system, hand them their usernames and passwords... they don't log in to the courses. Wow... how do I get off on these tangents?

ANYWAY, the salesperson was trying to sell me web-based training, their LMS (learning management system), etc., etc. And then he mentioned that they have an online library of books that they sell. You know how engineers and IT people like to use books as resources? (If you don't know, they do.) Well, all for the low price of (whatever... see? I really wasn't listening), you can have this library of books that they can access at any time, on the web, as often as they want, etc. So, I let him send me a free trial username & password. ALL OF THAT to actually get to what I wanted to say tonight: I found this book in their system about "the living web". And I got so interested that I read quite a bit of it while I was supposed to be doing a million other things. But given that it's about blogging (among other things), I thought it was appropriate to share with you here. And, believe me, if I would've known that it would take me this long (and this much SPACE) to get to the point, I might not've even started! But now I've put all this time & energy into it, so I'm not gonna erase it all!

The book is called The Power of Many: How the Living Web Is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life. Author: Christian Crumlish. The background of this quote (b/c you KNOW I've got to give you the background!!) is that he (Christian) is a Grateful Dead fan and has just discovered an Internet group, chat room, discussion board (or what have you) about the Dead. One of his "buddies" has sent him a cassette tape of Dead music.

It was great to be able to connect to people all over the world who shared my interests and to ask questions and share information that otherwise would have maundered unaired in the back of our minds or on someone’s shelves. But what truly amazed me was the first time I opened my mailbox to find a package containing cassette tapes. The tapes featured a recording of my first Dead concert—a show in Saratoga, New York in 1984. As I stood there with a physical artifact in my hand, it dawned on me that throughout this Internet cloud—sitting in front of their own computers and typing messages to the same forums—were in fact real flesh-and-blood people. It took something happening in the real world, an actual object being sent through the so-called snail mail, and my chance to hear once again music that I’d heard for the first time twenty years ago to bring this point home to me. I immediately got online and posted something silly to the effect of “Wow, I just found out you all are real!”

I guess that's kind of funny to me because I always kind of semi consider you guys real. I mean, I know who a few of you are... and sometimes "shout out" to you in one way or another. But, I think there are a few unknowns lurking out there too. Anyway, you're all welcome... real or not! :)

Christian also has a web site, and his book lists a number of other sites that may be of interest to the reader. I checked out a few of them and ended up thoroughly enjoying a ilst of "rules for blogging". (Okay, so it's officially titled "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web", but don't get so technical... if I want to call it "rules for blogging", I'll call it "rules for blogging". Get off my back already.) I thought you other bloggers out there might also enjoy the structure that we may or may not follow. Who are we kidding? I fly in the face of "rules for blogging". I think I've broken at least three of them in this post alone! Write for a reason. Ha. Bite me. And my reason.

So, is that enough belligerence for you today? You want some cute Coop & Kona pictures to end your time with me here in Pawpads land on a good note? Why can't you just say it already?! The 411 on the pics: 1) Cooper caught in mid-bark/howl, 2) Kona being her Cheese Dog self, 3) The Creamsicle... or Cooper on a Stick... or I. Just. Can't. Stay. Awake, and 4) The obligatory embarassing pic of the afternoon siesta (another one!).

So, Haley... is it wrong that I sat there and sang the whole GG theme song with your MySpace comment? LOL!!! Thanks for that... and "thank you for being a friend"! X's & O's, folks... g'night.