Burial at sea

According to USAID "Multiple human activities—including poorly planned or sited coastal development, destructive fishing, overharvesting, and the runoff of sediments and nutrients—have caused the loss of over 25 percent of the world’s coral reefs, and severely threaten close to 60 percent of the remaining reefs." Some of the benefits of reefs include:

• home and nursery for almost a million fish and other species, many that we rely on for food;


• some of the earth's most diverse living ecosystems;


• important protection for coastal communities from storms, wave damage and erosion;


• full of new and undiscovered biomedical resources that we've only just begun to explore.

(The above was borrowed from http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog100/CoralReef.htm)

If you are an ocean lover, and weren't wedded to burial in a traditional cemetery, you may be interested in The Neptune Memorial Reef. Located in open waters 3 1/4 miles off the coast of Key Biscayne and 45 feet beneath the ocean surface, this man made reef could eventually span sixteen acres and be home to 125,000 remains.

According to the AP article I read on Yahoo, "The ashes [of the deceased] are mixed with cement designed for underwater use and fitted into a mold, which a diver then places and secures into the reef. A copper and bronze plaque is installed with the person's name, date of birth and death. There is also a line for a message." The materials used are environmentally neutral and could actually improve the surrounding ocean by providing a home to plants and animals.

The reef is laid out like an underwater park of sorts, with gates, pathways, plaques, benches and statuary. It is ironic that the project was initially named Atlantis. From the pictures of the site, one could well imagine future underwater enthusiasts stumbling on the site and wondering if it were the remains of a lost civilization.

I doubt that I will sign up, but I still think its a pretty interesting concept.

Day by Day

By most people's definitions, I am an Atheist. On a charitable day, some may classify me as an Agnostic. However, I really like the song "Day by Day" from Godspell. I also REALLY love church architecture. Go figure.

One of the first tasks I set myself today at work was to review the job postings. I saw a couple that I could probably qualify for. However, I am not so desperate to escape The Project from Hell to jump at anything, just yet. I actually have another group in mind, and I'm just waiting for the right position to open up over there.

My current unit team lead is a great woman. Personally, I really like her. Sadly, she has no spine, lacks skill in succinct communication, is habitually late, and is very disorganized. In my line of work, a lot of that is HIGHLY undesirable. Since she seems willing to live with me being imprisoned in this Project for however long it takes, I've decided that she is not the best manager for me. I need someone who is going to look out for the interests of her organizational unit and the overall benefit of her people as individuals. Having me continuing to lead The Project From Hell serves neither of those defined goods. Therefore, I think I need to find another manager to work for sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, I think I need to take my work life: "Day by Day"

Today didn't suck. On a scale of 1 to 10 it was, at best, a 6; at worse, it was a 5. I guess most days have to fall in the 4 to 7 range.

Here's looking towards tomorrow!

Go see Iron Man

Great flick! And ... hang out for the extra time past the impressively long list of credits. It's worth it if your are a Marvel fan in any way, shape, or form. (Oh, and of COURSE Stan Lee is in the movie. Keep your eyes open.)

I think this is the best role I've seen Robert Downey Junior in, in a very long time. I think he had a lot of fun with it. (Though I really liked him in Charlie Bartlett.) And, boy was he buff!

Jeff Bridges did really well with his role, particularly towards the end of the movie. If I told you any more, I'd have to issue a spoiler alert.

No first day .... just yet

Apparently, yesterday's post was premature.

I had my meeting with the CIO today. Everything went pretty well. We will probably restart the project with a formal requirements period, followed by a market study of available technologies (with the help of an experienced consulting group).

However, there are a few things that the CIO wants me to do in relation to the project in the interim. Also, when I requested that the renewed project be led by someone else, he listened to and agreed with my reasoning. But then, he said that he might not have anyone else appropriate to lead the project so that I may still be his best choice.

Fabulous. (grrrrr.....) I spent nine months leading a project that was completely screwed from the beginning by poor requirements and a 'team' that did not feel accountable for the success of the project. Virtually everything that 'we' accomplished was done by me or by much cajoling by me. The people who were slated to support the product after deployment couldn't be bothered to get involved with resolving any issues before deployment. They expected to be handed a perfectly configured and functioning product, that they had no hand in configuring. So, um, how did they think they would know how to troubleshoot any issues? ... Right.

My CIO assured me that everyone would be held accountable this time around and that I wouldn't be left holding the bag on my own.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. I've worked pretty closely with this cast of characters over the last year. I don't see how he expects tigers to change their stripes.

My unit team lead was in the meeting with the CIO this morning. She tried to give me her Pollyanna viewpoint afterwards. She thinks that after I take care of these final little tasks, that I'll at least have a few months to regroup and take care of some other things before the project renews. Also, she was very optimistic about the CIO's perception that he would make it clear to everyone that they would be held accountable for the success of the project. Sadly, she's very Pollyanna-like over a lot of crap that just ain't so.

Hopefully, the several month respite will eventually occur. During that period of time, I plan to keep my eyes on the internal job board. I work in a HUGE organization. There are a lot of IT-related jobs that are not actually in IT. Maybe I'll get lucky and find a way out before I get the albatross hung back around my neck.

The first day of the rest of my career

So, I have a big meeting with our CIO tomorrow to give him a status and recommendations on 'the project that flushed itself'. He kind of knows it's coming, so it won't be a complete shocker. I'm sure he'll say all the right things and give us our marching orders for reinitiating the project under better conditions once FY09 rolls in.

Everyone has done a great job of convincing me that this fiasco was not my fault. I'm also starting to realize that I'll be getting about 50% of my time back from this project to do all sorts of tasks that I had previously relegated to the back burner, things that really are important but I've had to ignore.

We'll probably have to do a post mortem on the project. We'll talk about 'lessons learned' and recommendations going forward.

I took today off to do some stuff with my son and to start regrouping my brain. I'm also taking off tomorrow afternoon. Come Monday, maybe I'll remember what my job was supposed to be before I spent nine months drowning in the project from Hell.