Another Day...

Chris Says:

Today, things went very well as far as my actual work tasks/activities go. Internet good, stable, fast. I am not quite done with everything that needs to be done, but I will sign on later tonight (just like I did in the States) and finish up some things. I am frustrated and probably more nervous about the last facet of my job that I feel I truly need to prove out will work internationally, ON-CALL. I am trying to be positive - its my nature (thank you friends and family who influenced me when I was younger). I do tend to get frustrated though when things don't just happen like I hope and expect they will.

Paging (getting notified any time of day by some electronic device) is a necessary part of my current position with Principal Financial Group. Right now, it is proving to be a little tricky in one way or another. The fact is that the paging in and of itself can happen - and will. The frustrating parts are: 1- time and 2 - a lot options to choose from, none of them are a complete slam dunk. A slam dunk would be guaranteed delivery at no (or no additional cost) to PFG or myself. However, each one of the 4 or 5 options available to me have their own unique positives and negatives. In addition, I am supposed to be on-call next week, and I'm disappointed in myself that it won't happen. I have to rely on my awesome team - and I feel like I've already relied upon them for so much already while I've been out of the office working to set things up down here. I dislike - immensely - being an inconvenience to people....or by doing something - making someone else's life more difficult. (By the way, all of my team mates - I hope you're reading this - and you guys...and gal are AWESOME)

As I am sitting here, re-reading this post....I am realizing a couple of things about my current situation:
*Things aren't ever as bad, or as good as they may seem.
*I am a lucky guy,..........When my biggest frustration of the day is what is the best option to get paged when on-call.....I have had (or made) it a GREAT day. It's actually sort of petty (if that's the right word), I now live in one of the poorest countries in the world (or so I've been told). But, I have my health, my family and friends, plenty of food and water, a beautiful place to live in, etc....there are kids 50 feet from our front door living in an orphanage.

I can't say I've gone to meet the kids in the orphanage yet, but I think I'll do that this weekend. Maybe I can help them with something and they can help me with Spanish!

Alright - that's enough for now. I think this blog thing - at least today is helping me to relax and reflect....which is part of why I wanted to have this blog - to reflect about life in Honduras.

I don't want to get all mushy on you readers....but feel free to take a second to comment about what was frustrating for you today....if you think about it for a second and write it down, you may find maybe your world isn't so frustrating. Think about it.

What a difference!

Chris says:

Wow, what a difference a day makes! Work today was great. Internet, VOIP and TV (not that I needed it for work) was completely stable. I even contacted the folks at Cable Color to get signed up for a dedicated link with guaranteed upload and download speeds. I'm hopeful the upload speeds will help improve video conferencing capabilities with PFG. I don't have any great words of wisdom or lessons learned today....stay tuned for more details about the on-going adventure! :)

On a non-work related note, Pip is scheduled to get down here next week. We finally got him scheduled on Delta, gave up on Continental. Thanks Delta!

1st day of working remotely

Chris Says:

.....and oh what a day.....

Many more like this and I don't think I'll be working remotely.

Got up early - 5:30 Tegus time so that I could be working by 6 (7 Iowa time). Successfully logged in by 7 and started on email. I had some 'sporadic network failures' until about 10:30. All in all, Got though all of last week's email and figured out what I needed to do for the rest of the week. A fairly successful morning. However, the afternoon started with badness :( It seems Cable Color (my communications provider for VOIP, Internet and Digital TV) was having significant problems today. To rub salt into the wound, this is the 1st time I've experienced this instability since I've been here - go figure, my first day back to work and I can't get a freakin' stable connection. To make matters worse, this afternoon there was an application problem, and I was needed to help resolve......grrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I called into Cable Color and they indicated they had been having issues for the past few days......I hope they are getting all the kinks worked out because many more like today and I'll be talking to a different provider and/or we won't be spending much more time in Tegus :(

In hindsight, it wasn't horrible - just VERY frustrating. Usually, sporadic network connectivity issues won't be a total catastrophe until I'm on-call.....and if it happens then......that will really not be good :(

Should be getting our Crack Berries tomorrow - I've been told they have international data service (meaning they can be texted from the US - not email...SMS). I'm keeping my fingers crossed the plan actually has that and it won't be an uphill battle to get it.

Alright, that wasn't a nice 5 sentence paragraph...it was more of a ramble for my 1st day - I'll work on getting better tomorrow.

Remote Working Lesson Learned: Today, I learned that I need to have a backup connectivity solution. I'll be working on getting a cellular card in case Cable Color continues to have issues :(

Yo soy un hombre!

12/28/09 Chris says:

....or un gringo!

After work, some holiday returns/shopping and an hour of Rosetta Stone - I'm pooped. I don't know how to say that in spanish (un espanol). Yet one more thing I'll have to learn is where all the accent letters are on my qwerty keyboard - notice I didn't have the accent mark on the 'n' in espanol. I don't know if the Hondurans have a different keyboard than Americans (okay united states-ians, since in fact, Hondurans are Americans too says my wife) or the British do or not???? Let's do some searching....

<sorry for the run-on sentence above, my english teachers in junior high and high school would have put a big 'RO' next to my very poor sentence/paragraph structure above....and below for that matter>

Our trusty friend Wikipedia (sorry Rebecca) indicates that in fact for Latin texts, there are many versions of the QWERTY keyboard. I guess you learn something everyday!

Wikipedia article on Spanish (Latin America) Keyboard layout

That's all for now I suppose.....time for bed (being over a quarter century old really takes its toll). But, maybe I'll read first - who knows.