Blom Blog

Gotta love summer! Thursday night was a great example of how I love spending an evening. Went to Dearborn and had a few drinks on top of Chelli's. great time with lots of laughs. I wish I could do that every day.

Right now I am getting ready to head over to a going away party. Big house, with an inground pool and lots of cocktails. Might have a headache tomorrow, but it will be worth it.

Since I appear to be writing this for myself (since nobody ever reads these or adds comments anyway) I think I'll just stop it here.

If you did read this I wish you a wonderful afternoon, weekend and SUMMER!

I'll be off here for a while enjoying my vacation....

I work in a pretty large building so we have a store down on the first floor. This store is run by an older woman and every time I go in there I think I am in the middle of a Saturday Night Live skit.
She is slower than anyone I have ever met and her demeanor is fairly close to the famed "Soup Nazi" from Sienfield. She sits in a chair behind the cash register and slowly looks at each persons order, then ever so slowly she reaches and reaches for the register keypad. Finally she is ready for her money. You know this because she pivots her head and glares at you while she slowly reaches out her hand. Her arms are very like a Tyrannosaurus Rex so the "orderer" is required to stretch across the counter and place the money in her hand.

I always try to come prepared with exact change so things can move along a little faster.

I once tried to joke with her about why a Coke or Pepsi ($1.25) would cost less than a water ($1.35) when they are the same size AND water has less ingredients! (Namely ONE- WATER!) The next day the price of water was reduced to $1.05. I guess I won one for the little guy!

My desk at work sits in front a large window overlooking a very busy freeway and one of the busier flight paths to Detroit Metro. (I can usually see 2 to 3 airplanes at any given moment from here).
This can be very distracting at times, but is usually just another mild diversion while I listen to yet another long, boring, pointless conference call about this thing or that.

At the moment I can also see a Michigan State cop with someone pulled over for speeding. It is very possible that cop is the little boy I babysat from down the street where I grew up in the U.P. outside of Marquette. Brian Y. is now a State cop in the Detroit area posted very near my office. I should probably look him up sometime.

I have seen the Presidential motorcade drive by here twice, once with Bill Clinton and once with G.W. Bush. It is wild to see all of the traffic suddenly disappear for a few moments, then a long stream of cop cars, motorcycles and limo's come streaming by. Then they open the on-ramps again and here comes the endless stream of traffic again.

Well, it is back to work. I need to write a few announcements (with the proper marketing spin), work out a new launch plan of yet another Internet solution we will be offering and a long list of other Misc. items.

i have had Wide Open West (WOW) for my Cable TV and Cable Internet for one month now. the TV signal was never very good and now my Internet connection is down and won't be fixed for 5 days! i doubt they will be able to fix it either since my signal is sooooo low.

I am switching to Direct TV for Television and back to Comcast for the Internet.

I posted long ago about how divided this country is. Read through some of Rall's blog (complete with hate mail).
Search and Destroy
The great thing about this country and the Internet as that I can have an opinion about anything and express it freely. I totally disagree with Rall and his antics, but he does have the right to say and do what he does. However, he is just another example of how abominable people have become in this country. I also don't agree with the hate mail Rall received. It is equally tasteless.
I fear for our country and I feel something terrible is about to happen. The far Left and the far Right are growing in numbers, and growing on their beliefs that only they are right. I truly hope the average American is somewhere in the middle like myself.

I do not agree with Bush and I think Kerry is a joke. The polls will reflect this opinion in November when we have the worse turn-out in history.

One endless, pointless meeting after another. Something you might think would take one meeting invariably takes 3 or 4 and are scheduled over weeks, not days. I'm sure the auto industry is not alone. It is most likely a side effect of being a huge corporation. Understanding this does not make it any easier to deal with. I spend countless hours ever month sitting on phone calls where nothing actually happens. For example, I am doing that right now. We have spent the last 2 hours going through a list of Open issues we have with a new SAP system we would like to launch to our dealers in the US and Canada. Essentially we have only confirmed that these issues are indeed OPEN! This is in preparation for our next meeting next week where we will do a "deep dive" into the issues. A meeting to prepare for a meeting. Gotta love it!

Now I get to miss lunch to attend another meeting.

Now I just need the swings and the slide... 

Day 2...now we are getting somewhere. It is starting to resemble something. 

Day 1...working on the swingset. Here it is all laid out in the garage. (it rained for 3 days so it sat there...) 

I have been traveling all over the place for work again. I shouldn't complain too much since it is usually very nice places with some great people and wonderful meals. It is nice to work for the auto industry some times.