2015
- Buy a custom door that would cost over $300 and probably take a couple of weeks until I would get it back or
- Buy a standard door and cut it down to size
At the races tonight the kids had fun riding on the back of the car again
The Big kids were so excited to use their scooters again on our walk tonight.
10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings
I am working on a couple other posts but this one I have had in my draft folder for some time and I am not sure why I never posted it. Maybe I was waiting for the perfect day or say a day where I would have a bunch of meetings at work like today. Either way it is still funny and I feel like I know a couple people that do these tricks in meetings (they must have read it when it first came out). Does this remind you of anyone at your work or volunteer events? If you do now you know their secret.
Image Credit: The Cooper Review by Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr)
Stephen Colbert and Jerry Seinfeld
I am a big fan of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, it probably is because I am a fan of Jerry Seinfeld from way back in my younger days. However, it doesn’t hurt that they show some really cool cars and well drink coffee which I enjoy as well.
This episode with Stephen Colbert is really good and I just had to share. Unfortunately, you can’t actually embed any of the videos from the site so you will have to click on the link below to watch it. Don’t worry it is well worth it.
I found this cool trailer for the whole Season 6 of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee that is actually pretty good and seems like there is some other takes here that weren’t in the actual final cut. If you have some time to spare I would actually suggest watching the whole Season if you haven’t already.
How long do you help out a previous employer?
At what point is it unreasonable for a previous employer to continue asking questions of you? I was gone for over 4 months and I still receive questions.
I feel as though I am a reasonable person and tried to everything right by my previous employer. In fact I even gave them over a months notice that I would be leaving the company. In all the time I was a manager people only gave me a couple of weeks notice and then I had to scramble to back-fill that individual. Also, I never remember calling anyone after they left the company to ask how something was done, that was what I had to figure out before the individual left.
In the end though, I always try to exceed people’s expectations and I did continue to provide answers to some of their questions as time allowed in the evenings. Mostly because it is in my nature to be helpful and I didn’t really see any reason to burn bridges of the people I worked with for 7 years over a couple of questions here and there (I can say all of this now as I haven’t had a question for 3 months).
For a longer read, I will give you more of the back-story as I have not really talked about why I ended up looking for a new job. It isn’t that I have anything bad to say about my previous employer and in fact I enjoyed everyone I worked with and had a great time learning along the way.
Over a year ago the company I used to work for announced it was going to be merging with another company. It was an exciting time for the company but also left a lot of people worried about what was going to happen. Honestly, I was never really that worried, I figured I would get an offer to stay at the company doing what I was doing or I would go somewhere else. In the meantime, before the deal could close there was going to be a lot of work done as I worked in Finance and needed to assist all 3 companies involved. Budget models needed to be created and vetted out before too long so it wouldn’t be done last-minute.
Information was very slow to come from our company about what the future was as far as Corporate location and the big unknown… Jobs.
As I suspected, I was offered a similar position to what I had with increased responsibilities but that would require me to move out-of-state and away from my family that lives here in the Midwest (this happened about 3 months after the announcement). I didn’t really like that option and at the time that was the only option they had available for me. I was completely up front with them and said at this time I did not want to move but I realized that my job would no longer be in Minnesota after the company merged. At that point I made sure they knew I was going to start reaching out to other companies and told them I would continue to be open and honest about what I was thinking. They confirmed my thoughts on my current position by saying they are sorry I wouldn’t take the offer. Also, they wanted me to know that my job wasn’t going away on day one and they would try to find something else before then.
About 4 months after the offer I went back to the same individuals and told them that I had found another job and was giving them my month notice with a couple of conditions attached. The reason for the conditions was mostly because I knew it would be helpful to them if I stayed until January and in turn that could help me so I could spend a week watching my 2 young girls and working here and there that week.
Looking back how the whole process went, I think the lack of communication was the biggest downfall from what I could observe. There was too much unknown for people and some of the people willing to stick it out were asked to leave at a later day due to synergies. It didn’t help that on top of that a good handful of the upper management were not sticking with the merged company (where most people were going) and were either retiring or going with the new company.
Another question for anyone that has made it this far… Have you had an experience with a company merging of equal size and or spinning off a portion of a company, if so how did it go?
All house projects are not created equal - Replacing interior Doors
Replacing interior doors in your house should not be a hard task to accomplish. Just measure the rough opening, purchase a new door that should fit in the rough opening, and then install the new door in a matter of minutes. However, if your house is like mine and you had previous owners like me you will understand why there is nothing “easy” or “standard” when it comes to house projects.
To spare you the long story I will jump right in that I needed to replace the downstairs bathroom door and jam (frame). Should be an easy task right? Think again. I quickly realized after taking the door and molding off that the rough opening of the door was not even close to a standard size but yet they somehow took a standard door and shoved it into the opening they had. Very classic for my house and I really shouldn’t have expected anything less. So that left me with two decisions:
*Perfect fit*
Once the frame nice and snug in the rough opening it was time to cut the door down to size as of course it was too tall. Now this is not as tough of a task but since I was using hollow core doors it added to the challenge as I was taking more than 2 inches off the bottom. Which means that the bottom of the door would have been left open as I would be cutting the entire filling piece off. Since this had already happened to me before for some closet doors I replaced I already had a solution.
In order to make a nice cut and not chip your wood up to much I would suggest putting a line of painters tap on both sides. You will probably still have some chipping but it will help reduce it. After you make the cut you will want to clean out the spacing foam/cardboard to make room for a new cap.
*Inside of the Hollow-Core door*
If you have the right materials around you can cut a new piece of wood for the filler. If that is the case make sure you are measuring from the outside edges and not the center of the hole. Otherwise, another option in a pinch is to use the old filler from the part you cut. However, it takes a little bit of work pealing the outside paneling away without breaking the cap. Either way works as I have done both before. Finally, to secure it in place I would suggest using glue and then tack it with a brad nailer.
Here is the finished product which tuned out nice after spending about 2 hrs more than I had hoped to.
Follow-up: So after writing all of this I decided to see if anyone had a video of a similar process that I took of cutting the hollow-core door. I was in luck as Rick Arnold published a video on FineHomeBuilding that is pretty much identical to what I did.
Made some more progress on the deck today.
Time for some coffee this morning before flying. Hotel was pretty cool too.
Might be 4k miles away but can still joke around with the kids…
The view from the hotel not to bad at all. Makes you feel like you are way out in the country.
Everyone appears to be excited as they head out at 7am this morning.
Check out this excited Junior Pilot from our flight last night.
Baby Girl checking out the scenery on the flight home
Who let this baby crawl all over the back of my seat…
Waiting to fly home and taking over the PHX airport.
Brother and sister picture before our “Big” hike.
Cheers to Vacation!
Little Girl having some Ice Cream with Papa.. Thanks Great Grandma!
Afternoon root beer float to share.. #vacation
Lazy day starting off with a late pancake breakfast
