Skip to main content

Training Days

On Monday I started three days of training. When my alarm went off earlier than usual I rubbed my bleary eyes, dragged myself into a shower, put on clothes, made quick oatmeal, and headed out the door. I got on the 174 by Blair. That was a mistake. Traffic was slow-moving and all of the lanes were packed. Eventually I reached my destination, which had a tight parking garage ramp as evidenced by the paint scrapings on the walls of the ramps.

Training consisted of applying some project management techniques I knew the theory of, but did not have experience applying. There were four of us from my company in the training, so we're hoping to be able to make some improvements at work.

We learned to schedule projects from the end date rather than the beginning. This leads to less missing of tasks and starting at the correct task. That's the first pass and it's done manually with post-its. On the second pass we go from the start to the end, load resources in, and adjust as necessary. This is a good time to enter the plan into MS Project or whatever scheduling tool you use. On the 3rd pass we take costs into consideration. This means the budget doesn't matter until this point because we can't know it all until this point anyway. It's a bit more complicated than all of this as discipline is involved to prevent the group from getting off track.

It was challenging thinking backwards to forwards as we've always done plans the opposite way, but the thing about that is that we've likely started projects on the wrong task because we've been doing arbitrary, non-logical relationships rather than necessary, logical ones. We also tend to try to optimize the plan as we're doing the first pass and that is bad practice.

On the second day, I took the scenic route and avoided the highway altogether. This was longer, but at least I was actually moving. For the most part, it was less stressful of a drive. For the third day, I waited to get onto the highway until Vanier, and that was the quickest.

The third day of training marked my two year anniversary of being a citizen of Ottawa. A lot has happened in such a short time and the future looks bright.

Ciao,
R~

Psst... One more sleep until Comiccon :D

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Under Siege

My city is under attack. I wish I was being facetious.  The so-called "freedom" convoy is here and so far this is what has transpired: 1. They parked on the war memorial. These people who call themselves patriots. This is where the Unknown Soldier rests. This is where Corporal Nathan Cirullo lost his life in October of 2014. The cars were towed, but who knows what actual repercussions they will face. 2. Later, when asked to move away from memorial, one stood and jumped on the tomb itself while others cheered.  3. Despite having port-a-potties provided for by the mayor, they've been defecating on Parliament Hill, in snowbanks, and on streets nearby.  4. Flags being flown include the Confederate flag of the United States, Trump flags, the Quebec equivalent to the Confederate flag, upside down Canada flags, regular Canada flags, Fuck Trudeau flags, libertarian flags, and ones adorned with swastikas. Yeah, this is totally about freedom rather than racism, white su

The Gauntlet That Was October

I had a lot of things happen in October. I watched Frankenstein in the cemetery with friends. I had tea with a friend. I started a new sport: curling. This is really fun and I'm enjoying the level of activity it provides and all the strategic elements. I'll do a separate post on it soon. Unfortunately, soon after my first game, I came down with Covid and so did the friend who I had tea with, so I think we both caught it at the place we went to. That wasn't fun. I already posted about that. I was fortunate to be free of it in time to attend Can-Con where I took in lots of panels, saw some of the wonderful writer community, bought many new books, and volunteered to help out in the rooms. The following weekend, I went to the livestream for Danielle Allard's new album release, followed by the in person release. As part of this, she has a 6 video series that releases every Sunday on her YouTube at 1:15 PM EDT. Video number 2, Falling Into Place, is one that I feel fortunate

December 2023 Holidays

The drive to North Bay was pretty smooth until I was 30 minutes away and ran out of windshield washer fluid. That was the first time that ever happened to me. Luckily, about 10-15 minutes later, there was one last gas station where I could fix that. Since it's my busy season, I worked the mornings and took the afternoons and evenings to spend with family and friends. My brother stopped by with a special gift, a new ornament for the tree. My mom loved ceramic Christmas trees, so it's a perfect way to keep her with us at Christmas. His friend, Fawn, helped him get it made. She has a YouTube channel you can check out here: https://youtube.com/@thethriftyfawn After that, I visited friends in the slightly rural part of Callander, Ontario. We were having a lovely time catching up and then the evening had a surprise in store. Someone in the area had hit a small deer with their vehicle. My friend's dad skinned and gutted it in around -20C (due to the windchill) weather.