raverX

5 guys sitting around playing Wii on a Friday night apparently!

Ok so Will was playing "wicky wicky" on the turntables and drinking rum, but the rest of us were playing Wii and downing the scotch! For a belated birthday BBQ planned at the last minute it was a great night.

I was drawn to the keyboard with the intention of posting up a bit of what's been going on lately and some of the thoughts swimming through my head, but when I started typing, the inspiration just wasn't there.

Things going on for me at the moment

- New office manager started 3 weeks ago - which should be a good thing, but after 3 weeks of training I feel like she's still struggling to grasp basic concepts. If she doesn't improve within the week I'm going to have to let her go.

- One of my engineers has resigned - he and his family can't afford to live on the Gold Coast so they're moving back home to Toowoomba. This means finding another engineer, which isn't an easy task.

- After stressing myself silly and putting in ridiculous hours trying to do the right thing for a client, he continued to point the blame at us so I decided it would be best to walk away from it. Of course this ended in a "debate" [coughs] where he ended up hanging up on me.

- Not a great image for an IT company, but on Monday I learnt that our own tape backup system wasn't working properly and as a result we lost 3 weeks worth of work - which we've spent the entire week rebuilding. Ironic that we are so meticulous with our clients site, but overlook our own.

- The Supra is still on jack stands - I'm waiting on a $6.60 "ring" to arrive from Japan so I can put the brakes back together.

- Somerset Dam Cruise was a major success. Apparenty no one wants my job [laffs] so I'm president again for another year ;)

- Mum, Emma and I will be going to the UK for Christmas and New Years. Emma's choice this year (which postpones my plan to go to Peru for another year). As it is I still haven't looked into learning Spanish - slack arse.

- I scored a helmet, which means I don't need to keep borrowing every other persons helmet when I go out to the track. And it also means I don't need to buy one, as I'm flat broke at the moment whilst I penny pinch to afford the next level of growth in the business.

- I've now had two really successful lunches with some of my clients. Getting out of the office and just talking shit with them has been a real eye opener for me and has even helped me identify new possibilities for the business (and myself). I will be trying to make this a regular occurrence, preferably one a week (or at the last one a fortnight)

- I am considering taking on junior engineers and training / mentoring them. I've taken Derek's resignation as an opportunity to go back and restructure the business in a way that will allow it to grow and prosper further. It's going to be a hell of a lot of work but I'm confident the result will be worthwhile.

- A few weeks ago I went to a business leadership forum and had an opportunity to sit down and talk about problems that other business owners and managers face. This was a powerful experience for me and even though I entered one debate quite aggressively (regarding Gen X + Y "employees"), I really learnt a lot. (And hopefully didn't come across two hot headed!)

- I go for my second on the 5th of September. Somehow I've lost the copy of the questions I had to learn and as a result of the hectic nature of the last month or so haven't had time to sit down with one of the senior members to learn them with them. oops :/

- I'm still quite up and down. I think it's a combination of many a late night either socialising or working and not enough relaxation and physical exercise. I had started jogging (and actually jogging for the first time in a few years since I pulled my achilles), but this has fallen to the way side again.

- The quality of movies and TV shows being released at the moment is appauling. I just sat through 1 1/2 hours of the B-grade acting and D-grade special effects, which is an improvement of the 10 minutes of Z-grade storyline I started watching before pulling the plug.