Not a very interesting day today. Poor sleep in the train, again, led me to only do the 1-mile walk. I need to stop with the excuses for that.
Office at 7:30, and my first order of business was to try to get Eric for the Blackberry server install on Wednesday. I found out later that he can't do it until next week; and I'm not that sad about disappointing Steve. Also on the IT front, I downloaded and installed AutoCAD, thus completing the W7 installation on my desktop. I'm very happy with that so far. I also spent intermittent time over the first few hours wrangling printer troubles.
Then I moved into Calyon, getting ready for my 10:00 meeting. After taking the time (and energy and paper) to print copies of what I thought were the final documents, I arrived at the meeting (Mike in tow, for once) to be handed newer revisions. The only interesting thing to come from that meeting is that I will be allowed to turn the French translations into better English. This was not something that Isabelle wanted me to do when it was one-on-one, but Philippe agreed that it was a good idea and she went along. Subway rides in both directions were spent discussing prospects and upcoming meals with Mike.
Back at the office, my first order was to nail down the site visits for tomorrow. Now I'm going to NJ tomorrow, but it should be a slightly shorter day; so that's not too bad. Equinix in the morning and NetAccess in the afternoon.
Then I spent some time on H&K, approving some submittals (and requiring still more clarification) and also nailing down a future bulletin. The final thing for them was a proposal for additional services in the telecom arena. Always a good thing to get more money.
The hour after that was not terribly productive, full of distractions and annoyances. But that's really OK.
Then I went down to 200 5th for the C&W meeting where I spent a lot of time dealing with other H&K bullshit on my phone. This guy is pulling an email from July against an in person meeting in September. But I did the political thing and we'll make it right. My ears were open enough to answer intelligently all questions put to me.
Now I'm in the train, and I'm not done working. I have to at least start writing a Barclays proposal for Atlanta, and I've been writing this while waiting for the VPN to link up. The first pain in the ass of this will be finding a good document on which to base the proposal.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
11/24/09
Today was a good way to end a short week.
I got in at 7:30 and started getting ready to wipe my computer and install 7. I spent some time speaking with Joerg, who is a weird dude with a weird name and weird lineage. Then Mike came in and we chatted for a while; and then I had my 8:30 call. It wasn't bad, but I was trying to not stick our nose into things which Mike kept on expanding.
That took me to 9:00, and I spent some time on H&K figuring out their carrier stuff, while also continuing to install enough software on my laptop that I could wipe my desktop. I got that ready and the install on my desktop went quite smoothly.
Then I had my 11:00 call with Isabelle, who wanted to go line by line through a 20 page document and a 200-row Excel file. But we got through it in an hour and I was able to keep up with the not doing too much. I kept going on my desktop, struggling with Firefox for a while, and generally dicking around. Then I finished what I needed to for Calyon and got some C&W and TNS mails done.
That's actually about it. I said goodbye to people for about 20 minutes, and now I'm done until Monday. Seriously, hooray.
I got in at 7:30 and started getting ready to wipe my computer and install 7. I spent some time speaking with Joerg, who is a weird dude with a weird name and weird lineage. Then Mike came in and we chatted for a while; and then I had my 8:30 call. It wasn't bad, but I was trying to not stick our nose into things which Mike kept on expanding.
That took me to 9:00, and I spent some time on H&K figuring out their carrier stuff, while also continuing to install enough software on my laptop that I could wipe my desktop. I got that ready and the install on my desktop went quite smoothly.
Then I had my 11:00 call with Isabelle, who wanted to go line by line through a 20 page document and a 200-row Excel file. But we got through it in an hour and I was able to keep up with the not doing too much. I kept going on my desktop, struggling with Firefox for a while, and generally dicking around. Then I finished what I needed to for Calyon and got some C&W and TNS mails done.
That's actually about it. I said goodbye to people for about 20 minutes, and now I'm done until Monday. Seriously, hooray.
Monday, November 23, 2009
11/23
Today was a pretty average day. On site, following up on the last move for Grey, I was told by the client that everything went fine over the weekend; and that Craig performed admirably. While the latter part of that sentence appears to be correct, the former could have been adjusted: They kept the guys on site three hours late on Saturday and four hours late on Sunday. Aside from the fact that that's over a grand of additional cost, it makes me look bad to not have known about it in the first place.
I stole a bagel from there, and then left around 8:45 (got there at 7:30). Craig begged off of covering for me because of work, and that's true enough. Again, I was told that it would be no problem and that they'd call the office with issues. Instead, seven more corrections were made in the field. It's unlikely that I'll see anything about them; but at this point, with these people I just don't care.
Another interesting thing that happened at Grey this morning was one of the other client guys, Richard, complaining about the lack of preparedness of one of the other companies who will be sharing the office and LAN. For anyone in that organization to have anything negative to say about another person's homework completion is just so ridiculous I don't even know what to do. That said, I am extremely proud of myself for keeping my face straight and appearing to commiserate without saying anything like, "Sorry... aren't you the company who's known about the move for two years and yet I get server move information THREE DAYS BEFORE?" So good job, me.
When I got back uptown I got some housekeeping done and answered questions that Craig should have been able to figure out on his own. I also made further changes to a C&W debacle where STUDIOS didn't give us a bubbled background, and changes from sketches to full sheets. Then Ed Jaram called to talk about TNS, which is now, "WPP TNS, Kantar Health, The Futures Company, and Lightspeed." After some back-and-forth about the requirements ("Are you *sure* you've gathered things from every IT group?" "No, but I'm as confident as I can be.") Ed gave me another person to call and then proceeded to go through our latest scope document in some detail.
Aside from the name change (which ended up being changed to "the clients" for the sake of brevity) he got into some details which were silly, and some which were substantial. The reason for his fastidious commentary is Jesus (yes, an actual person). Jesus was a big problem the last time we had to deal with him, going so far as to point out typos and say how that makes us unprepared to deal with him. Ed wanted me to break out more about what was going to be left by the current tenant vs. what was being bought, and to set deliverables with dates for the client so that he can hold them to something as well. This is a very good thing.
Then he gave me some (fairly good-natured) crap about some of the qualifications that I built in to the document. Specifically, I want to limit the number of bulletins and patch schedules so I have some justification for an extra on our end; and he's questioning if that conflicts with the master agreement between PTS and WPP. John is supposed to investigate that; and I hope to get an answer in the next to minutes, but I'm not holding my breath. This whole thing with the qualifications comes from a general need for us to improve our proposals to protect against going over budget. On Grey there were 22 bulletins and we're fighting to get more money.
Shortly after that, I made my way up to Calyon to discuss their RFP. I met the new Calyon PM, Isabelle, who is nice but certainly has the potential to be a pain in my ass if I don't stay in front of her desires. We talked at length about the power and space requirements for their data center and then we discussed the language of the RFP. She wants to pull a lot of our questions out into a matrix-type format, giving each bidder the exact same format to follow. I have no problem with that; but I don't know that they'll actually do it. We then spent a few minutes one-on-one to get our acts together. I have a bunch of crap to review before calling her at 11 tomorrow.
Back to the office around noon. I got lunch from a different hallal truck, with a slightly different (and slightly less-sodium-y tasting) product. I ate half, so that $5 lunch will get me through two days. As I was sitting down Craig sent Chris from Barclays' call over to my phone, and we spent about 20 minutes on the phone discussing Atlanta and how his deal is changing. (Then I got a mail from him later, so I'm not sure if it actually did; but I also really don't care.) I pulled out an old CAD file for the TNS project to give the engineers an idea of the state of the equipment room; and I read something on the AV club that had caught my eye since when I couldn't sleep in the train this morning. I was sure to get everything lined up for C&W to start printing their security badges before leaving at 2 for their project meeting. ADT has been a real pain in the ass about this, so it was a good thing to be able to report.
I got to spend a nice few minutes before the meeting chatting with Lindsey, who I'm glad to say I didn't offend when she, Dervla, and I went out for drinks last week. I spent most of the next hour trying not to look like I was trying to stay awake, contributing to maybe 10 minutes of the actual discussion. Then I gave Lindsey my personal email address, and she was able to decipher my handwriting. After that, 15 minutes with Eric talking about a security camera and an outlet that will be a bitch of a pull; but I'm confident that he can convince can't-do-Larry to make it happen.
Walk back to Grand Central, and my phone is not connecting to the Internet. That's why I've had 20 minutes to do this; and yes I would like to be doing them more regularly. Hopefully it will behave better when we're out of the tunnel.
I stole a bagel from there, and then left around 8:45 (got there at 7:30). Craig begged off of covering for me because of work, and that's true enough. Again, I was told that it would be no problem and that they'd call the office with issues. Instead, seven more corrections were made in the field. It's unlikely that I'll see anything about them; but at this point, with these people I just don't care.
Another interesting thing that happened at Grey this morning was one of the other client guys, Richard, complaining about the lack of preparedness of one of the other companies who will be sharing the office and LAN. For anyone in that organization to have anything negative to say about another person's homework completion is just so ridiculous I don't even know what to do. That said, I am extremely proud of myself for keeping my face straight and appearing to commiserate without saying anything like, "Sorry... aren't you the company who's known about the move for two years and yet I get server move information THREE DAYS BEFORE?" So good job, me.
When I got back uptown I got some housekeeping done and answered questions that Craig should have been able to figure out on his own. I also made further changes to a C&W debacle where STUDIOS didn't give us a bubbled background, and changes from sketches to full sheets. Then Ed Jaram called to talk about TNS, which is now, "WPP TNS, Kantar Health, The Futures Company, and Lightspeed." After some back-and-forth about the requirements ("Are you *sure* you've gathered things from every IT group?" "No, but I'm as confident as I can be.") Ed gave me another person to call and then proceeded to go through our latest scope document in some detail.
Aside from the name change (which ended up being changed to "the clients" for the sake of brevity) he got into some details which were silly, and some which were substantial. The reason for his fastidious commentary is Jesus (yes, an actual person). Jesus was a big problem the last time we had to deal with him, going so far as to point out typos and say how that makes us unprepared to deal with him. Ed wanted me to break out more about what was going to be left by the current tenant vs. what was being bought, and to set deliverables with dates for the client so that he can hold them to something as well. This is a very good thing.
Then he gave me some (fairly good-natured) crap about some of the qualifications that I built in to the document. Specifically, I want to limit the number of bulletins and patch schedules so I have some justification for an extra on our end; and he's questioning if that conflicts with the master agreement between PTS and WPP. John is supposed to investigate that; and I hope to get an answer in the next to minutes, but I'm not holding my breath. This whole thing with the qualifications comes from a general need for us to improve our proposals to protect against going over budget. On Grey there were 22 bulletins and we're fighting to get more money.
Shortly after that, I made my way up to Calyon to discuss their RFP. I met the new Calyon PM, Isabelle, who is nice but certainly has the potential to be a pain in my ass if I don't stay in front of her desires. We talked at length about the power and space requirements for their data center and then we discussed the language of the RFP. She wants to pull a lot of our questions out into a matrix-type format, giving each bidder the exact same format to follow. I have no problem with that; but I don't know that they'll actually do it. We then spent a few minutes one-on-one to get our acts together. I have a bunch of crap to review before calling her at 11 tomorrow.
Back to the office around noon. I got lunch from a different hallal truck, with a slightly different (and slightly less-sodium-y tasting) product. I ate half, so that $5 lunch will get me through two days. As I was sitting down Craig sent Chris from Barclays' call over to my phone, and we spent about 20 minutes on the phone discussing Atlanta and how his deal is changing. (Then I got a mail from him later, so I'm not sure if it actually did; but I also really don't care.) I pulled out an old CAD file for the TNS project to give the engineers an idea of the state of the equipment room; and I read something on the AV club that had caught my eye since when I couldn't sleep in the train this morning. I was sure to get everything lined up for C&W to start printing their security badges before leaving at 2 for their project meeting. ADT has been a real pain in the ass about this, so it was a good thing to be able to report.
I got to spend a nice few minutes before the meeting chatting with Lindsey, who I'm glad to say I didn't offend when she, Dervla, and I went out for drinks last week. I spent most of the next hour trying not to look like I was trying to stay awake, contributing to maybe 10 minutes of the actual discussion. Then I gave Lindsey my personal email address, and she was able to decipher my handwriting. After that, 15 minutes with Eric talking about a security camera and an outlet that will be a bitch of a pull; but I'm confident that he can convince can't-do-Larry to make it happen.
Walk back to Grand Central, and my phone is not connecting to the Internet. That's why I've had 20 minutes to do this; and yes I would like to be doing them more regularly. Hopefully it will behave better when we're out of the tunnel.
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