Cruel experience

I came to office at usual time 9:10am. I recognized the SUV in the parking lot .. it belonged to my manager. I made notes of the things I wanted to discuss with him today. We usually discussed about pending issues first thing in the morning since we got caught up in meetings almost all day long.
My manager sat in the cubicle next to mine. As I entered my cubicle, I saw my manager's manager by his cubicle. She stood there waiting for something.... perhaps a print out she wanted from him I thought and quietly entered my cubicle. As I settled, I heard some noises of desk/chair being pulled, wires untangled, coins being emptied from lockers etc ... "He must be really searching hard for those print outs" I thought. Someone from the neighboring cubicle even joked "Hey, you seem to have a lot of money" and he said "Yes, I have".
Within 5 minutes or so, everyone seemed settled ... no more voices heard, noises disappeared ... "Back to work" I said to myself and continued to read through the mails in my inbox.
As I was reading through the mails, my manager's manager stopped by my desk and said "Can I see you in my office for a few minutes?" I was surprised at first but nonetheless followed her to her office. We settled into the chairs around the small round table in her office. She started "There has been some changes in our team which might have an impact on you. Today is the last day of your manager in this company". I froze ... didn't I discuss a million things over the past few days with my manager and in none of those discussions was there a hint of his quitting ... didn't he mention even last evening about the slides we needed to include in design sessions to be played early April? Didn't he schedule a meeting only last evening? Was this something he knew about ? Why didn't we have any Knowledge Transfer sessions arranged considering he alone was handling some important stuff? - Many other questions buzzed in my head within a fraction of a second.
My manager's manager continued "I would like you to take on all his responsibilities until we find a suitable replacement". I nodded ... language/words chose to abandon me ... I couldn't speak ... "I'll set aside 1 on 1 time with you on monday to discuss specifics" I mumbled and walked out of her office.
I HAD to talk to my manager to understand what had transpired between last evening and this morning. I went straight to his cube ... but he had left. I hoped to talk to him during the day ... but he never showed up again in office.

Today was my first hand experience of seeing someone being laid off. What's more, he was my reporting manager. The experience was quite chilling to say the least.

Relax ...take it easy

What do you do when your senior in the company comes to you and says ... "You need to slow down ... take it easy. You are progressing way ahead of the rest of the team!"

Software enlightenment

Have you made any presentations in your work place? What have you used for your presentations ?
Well... so far I had done presentation using only Microsoft Power point. Some time back I used, Pages, a tool within iWork from Apple. I was bowled over by the various elements of this. I mean, there were ready templates available in different formats from Summer Party Invitations to Daycare Notice to Surf School program to Yard Sale. The template had relevant pictures for the different occasions as if words were hardly required. I was confident, if I made presentation to a huge crowd, I could their attention effortlessly with my wonderful templates.
That was until I saw KeyNotes today. WOW ... thats the first word that comes to my mind after having explored some of its features. I mean, here is a tool which will help me build presentations using such lovely templates and formatting capability .. I am in awe. There is this "Smart Build" feature which will help build my presentation just the way I want ... I can set my presentation text to appear like sparkles in the color I chose and have my images spin and swap whenever I need them to. And the icing to the cake ... well the audio / video feature. Yup, you can play a pleasant violin tune when you want to make presentation to students about violins and play a video demo of a tool you want to encourage users to use. Awesome or what ????

You tell me if you are awestruck by any particular application !!

Office rambling - 1

As much as I have been reading other people’s blogs, I am not writing as much.
The reason being the mental block … perhaps my creativity on what I should blog is gone for a toss amidst all the work pressure.
There are countless occasions when I have read someone’s blog and said I could write my take on this in my blog .. but that rarely has happened.
This saddens me … I need to write … and I know I am a happier person when I write … just that I am not prioritizing blogging !

Today my work began on a high note … there was this long pending task, which was not taken up by anyone until I volunteered to steer it.
This happened about 15 days back. I spent about 2-3 days just analyzing the information gathered thus far and wondered how such a critical module had taken a backseat.
To my luck, I was able to get time and commitment from the required folks to move ahead on this piece and we achieved quite some progress over the last week.

Coming back to my high spirits this morning … the client, higher management within my company have sent out appreciation emails on the tasks accomplished last week.
It sure feels good to be appreciated !!

New project - 1st week

The new project is very interesting ... its a re-engineering project. I get to learn a new Business and a new technology. Well the business and technology are old by themselves... new to me.
In that sense its an exciting project. But couple of cribs:
12hrs of my day is gone in meetings ... yes, got that right. My ear hurts and my head stops functioning after a while. And my worst problem, my home phone battery does not last as long and I am forced to use personal cell minutes ... boo boo ....
The people on-board the project have been working in the team for the past 6-8 months ... but not much progress has been made. Most of the knowledge these folks have obtained is not documented. There is no time for Knowledge transfer session given the strict timelines drawn.
OK ... let me stop here ... there are many more positives and negatives about the project though. Its just been one week and I can already come up with a list ... amazing uh ? Thanks to my parents, a lot of things gets done at home. The only thing I do in my free time is run around my little daughter and have fun with her.
How would I manage if my parents were not here with me at this time ?? I cannot begin to imagine the situation ....