Author Archives: Michael C. McGreevy

They Moved My Cheese

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Kanban board

Sharpies are important

When I decided to start this blog, my plan was to chronicle my experience as a member of middle management and my possible path further up the corporate ladder. I should have remembered that old saying about best-laid plans and what not, because a week after I created this blog and put up my first post my proverbial cheese got moved.

A lot.

Nothing bad, mind you. I didn’t lose my job or anything dramatic like that. I was asked to take on the role of Scrum Master/Agile Coach at my organization.

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All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

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QTQE_rrBe_g

It’s 6 AM on the day before Dragon Con here in Atlanta. I had a crappy night of sleep due to some poor dining choices I made yesterday, and I haven’t even finished my first cup of coffee yet, so there’s a very real possibility that this post is going to get a little cranky.

But the subject makes me cranky, so it might have gone that way regardless.

After doing a major pruning of my friends list I started using Facebook again about a month ago. For the most part? It’s been a pretty pleasant experience. I no longer have to skim through pages of updates and posts that I really didn’t give a crap about to see updates from people who I actually want to stay connected to. That’s cool. Thing is, I still see some things that get my blood boiling. One of those things can be summed up in the use of the #AllLivesMatter hashtag (or the general attitude that is represented by that hashtag, even if it isn’t being used).

I want to say I get it, and that I understand the frustration, but I simply don’t. I can’t see how, with the massive amount of information we as a a people we have available to us in the information age, it’s not possible to see how there are major issues in our country regarding race that simply can’t be wiped away by insisting that people “stop playing the race card.”

What really bugs me about this is that more often than not this quiet racism is cloaked in comments about (primarily) African-American and Latino culture here in the country. “Those people” would do so much better in their lives if they would just “pull their pants up”, “learn how to speak properly”, and “stop acting like thugs.”

So, in other words, they should act more like a proper white person.

Ironically, these same people never seem to make those kind of comments about other whites unless said caucasian acts “ghetto”. I mean, while there are certainly exceptions to the rule you don’t often see your typical trailer park redneck contribute much to the betterment of society. See a picture of a white guy holding an assault rifle and standing in front of his pick up truck? Many likes! Yay, America! See a picture of a black guy holding the same rifle in front of his BMW? OMG THUGS!!

It’s gross.

I guess I’m speaking up about this now, and in a very public way, because I’ve had a bit of a personal epiphany. Not too long ago I had a relative refer to an African-American woman who was in an old velvet painting as a “jungle bunny.” He did this in my house, within earshot of children, and I said nothing. I’ve been disgusted with myself ever since. I’ve put up with this kind of thing from people I know for far too long, and I simply can’t ignore it any more. Which means I’m likely to continue having some very awkward conversations with people who I genuinely care for if I continue using Facebook.

Or I’m just going to unfriend them…or leave the service altogether.

I frankly don’t know.

What I do know is that I can no longer sit by while the pigs take over the farm.

Take Me To Your Leader

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Image courtesy of Travis S. via flickr

Image courtesy of Travis S. via flickr

I have never wanted to be a leader. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to the contrary, I find myself in that position quite often. I distinctly recall the first time anyone ever accused me of actually holding sway over a group of people. I was very young at the time, probably around 12, and in they very stereotypical fashion of that particular age bracket my group of friends had decided that it was time to ostracize one of our own. I honestly could not tell you what it was that he did at the time. Frankly, I am not sure he actually did anything. I think it was just one of those situations where we were experimenting with social structure and power and he was the guinea pig of the moment.

At some point our friend must have told his parents about what was going on and how badly it was hurting him, because a few days into this whole experience I found myself sitting at my kitchen table with his Mother.

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This I Believe

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BillyJoel_AnInnocentMan

I wrote the following as one of my assignments in my Orientation to Graduate Studies class at the University of Maryland University College. The goal was to write an article in the style of the “This I Believe” series by Edward R. Murrow. Unfortunately after I finished my essay and turned it in I realized that the assignment had been to write something about our professional beliefs and not a personal one, so I had to scrap the assignment and write another one in about 10 minutes (which, for the record, I got a 98% on). I really liked what I wrote in my original essay, though, and I wanted to share it here.

Fair warning – It’s mushy.

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Tweet This Link

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Image courtesy of Bruce Sallan - http://www.brucesallan.com/2012/03/25/are-you-a-socialmedia-addict/

Image courtesy of Bruce Sallan – http://www.brucesallan.com/2012/03/25/are-you-a-socialmedia-addict/

The company I work for considers themselves to be a Gallup Strengths-Based organization. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, the long and the short of it is that the Gallup organization has a list of 34 traits that are apparently common in all people. These traits are referred to as strengths. When the company you work for decides that they want to become a strength-based organization (or you decide you want to find out what your strengths are on your own), you take a test and you get a list of the 34 strengths in in the order that they apply to you.

My number one strength is Input. What follows is a description of the type of person who has Input as one of their top strengths, according to the Gallup organization.

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information — words, facts, books, and quotations — or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don’t feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It’s interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

I, without a doubt, fall into the former category of collectors. I collect information. I used to collect things, but I had a change of heart about that a few years ago and really try to live my life amassing as little stuff as possible. But information? Oh, I collect information. I want to know…well, everything. I ask questions constantly. In many ways, I’m like a child. I constantly want to know why.

I’m still not entirely sure why Gallup considers this a “strength.”

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History

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Every once in a while I think about deleting all of the posts on my blog.

It’s not a matter of being embarrassed about the content here or anything like that. I’ve written before about how I’m not a fan of people who try to ret-con their online lives, and I still feel that way. There are posts out there that I’ve removed for professional reasons, but for the most part if you were really inclined you could use this site to look back over the last 15 years of my life and, I’m sure, get a kick out of how stupid much of it has been.

No, if I’m being honest the reason I think about deleting the history here is because I’m lazy. See, the fact is that many of the older posts here were written on my now-inactive LiveJournal blog. They are improperly formatted, contain broken images, are untagged, and generally a complete mess.

This fact bugs me, you see, because those posts aren’t pretty.

Yes, I’m vain. I like the way my blog looks. Those old posts are an eyesore, and the amount of work required to fix them is pretty damned extensive. The easiest solution would be to simply eradicated any content that existed prior to me switching to WordPress.

The conundrum, of course, is that I’m under some kind of illusion that some of that content is actually good, and I won’t know that until I’ve finished going through it all.

So, no. I won’t be deleting all those old posts.

But damn, is it tempting.

 

 

[Insert Title Here]

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I’d love to say I have some kind of well thought out, eloquent post in me. I do not. My sad, neglected blog is likely to remain just that for the foreseeable future, and this post won’t break that trend. This is just a thought dump. A “what’s going on with me” that most of you will likely gloss over if you even bother to read it in the first place.

Man, that sure sounded emo.

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A Tribute To My Netbook

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Shortly after I started the final push for my Bachelor’s Degree back in 2011, I purchased an Asus Eee PC so that I would have something portable to do my school work on. It cost me about $400 at the time. I upgraded the RAM in it to the maximum that it could possibly hold, and I threw a SD memory card in it to run ReadyBoost as well. In the years that have followed, I have installed tons of software on it that I have needed to complete my assignments. IDE’s, Server software (IIS AND Tomcat), database programs, the MS Office suite, you name it.

In all the time I have been using this netbook, the only thing I have had to do to it to keep it running was buy a new battery.

As I approach the final 5 weeks of my scholastic career, my little netbook is struggling. It has never been reformatted. The amount of time I’d have to spend re-installing all the software I need just hasn’t made it worth pursuing. What used to be a zippy little machine is now sluggish and frustrating to use.

But it still works.

Once school is done my netbook is probably going into retirement. I may reformat it first and see how it performs after that, but I’ve got my eye on more powerful machines as I move on to the next phase of my life and career. Regardless of that, it will be somewhat painful to let this little engine that could go. It has performed well beyond my expectations, and was worth every penny I spent on it. When I do decide to finally shut it off for the last time, I know I’ll feel more than a little sad.

“That will do, Netbook. That will do.”

It’s Not About Respect

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I recently asked a male relative of mine if he would send his nephews to a rape defense class. This was part of a larger discussion on rape culture, misogyny, and the general state of affairs in our society that have been brought into sharp focus due to the recent events in California. My relative replied to my question by stating that he would hope his nephews “would respect women.”

Now ignoring the fact that he dodged my very direct question almost completely, what he said was still somewhat interesting to me. In the next few days,  I saw similar comments from other men I knew along the same lines. More often than not, I see them offered up as part of a thinly veiled “Not All Men” defense. “I was raised to respect women,” the argument goes, “so clearly I am not part of this ‘rape culture’ you speak of.”

This defense is not only irrelevant and distracting, it’s also inherently flawed…and it proves exactly what it is trying to deny.

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Tampa Bound

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Image shameless yanked from http://www.autostraddle.com/tag/travel-guide/

Image shameless yanked from http://www.autostraddle.com/tag/travel-guide/

When I originally bought the house in St. Petersburg that I am currently living in, back in 1999, it was pretty much perfect in every way. It was big enough to accommodate my family, it was within a few miles of both my Sister and my Mother (who were helping us raise our son), it was near great schools, and it was safe. What it wasn’t, by any means, was close to my job. I was working in Clearwater at that point, at the Staples up on Sunset Road. My daily commute, distance-wise, wasn’t horrible…but it wasn’t great either (especially considering the fact that, at that point, very little of the construction that has improved traffic on U.S. 19 had been completed).

My next job after Staples was my first job working for a software company, and the office was located in Tampa near the airport. The commute wasn’t horrible, because I was able to get off of the interstate right at the airport exit and miss the traffic going through the downtown area, but it wasn’t great either. It was around this time that I started acting professionally, and with the exception of one show in the entire time I’ve been acting all of them have been in Tampa. I briefly worked for a company that had an office that was right off of the airport exit from 275, but it was still in Tampa.

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