Matt’s Blog

Note: This was written last Friday, when I was traveling to Nashville. But since I didn’t have internet then, and had better things to do when I got to Nashville, I haven’t gotten around to posting it until today. Therefore: “today” = “last Friday”.

Today has not been the best day. It started out very early (3:30 am) getting up to get ready for a very early flight out of Seattle. Or, I should say, what was supposed to be a very early flight out of Seattle but ended up being a somewhat early flight out of Seattle due to mechanical problems. This of course meant that my rather loose connection in Minneapolis ended up being a very tight connection, actually too tight as I hustled up to the gate for my Nashville flight right as the door was closing.

Now those of you who have gotten up at such an early hour know how tolerant you are of even the smallest of problems. Yeah, so my limited patience was not really all that thrilled to have to deal with the missed flight. Add to that a headache from lack of sleep and I was not feeling particularly plesant, but the day was not done. Thankfully I was booked on another flight in the mid afternoon. Never mind that this flight was leaving Minneapolis when I was supposed to be arriving in Nashville, at least I had a flight out, right?

Well sort of. As the weather got worse my mid-afternoon flight quickly became a late afternoon flight, and then an early evening flight. The bottom line is that I’ll now be landing in Nashville 4 hours later than I had planned. And I’m certainly not any less tired.

Now you might argue, 4 hours? That’s nothing! And that’s kind of the point. In the wide world of things that could have gone wrong this is a relative non-issue. And that got me thinking. It’s very tempting to rant about all the incompetence of Delta Airlines maintenance or gate agents or whatever, or make baseless claims like, “that’s the last time I ever fly such-and-such airline.” But honestly, I don’t really feel any better afterwards, and it’s not likely anyone’s fault that the plane had mechanical problems, and it’s definitely no one’s fault that the weather wouldn’t cooperate. But that doesn’t mean that it’s any less frustrating to me, particularly when I’m tired and have a headache and don’t want to spend my day off in a weird airport instead of with my friends I only get to see every so often.

One reason this situation was so frustrating was that I had virtually no control and no options. I felt trapped. And as I thought about it (there was plenty of time for sitting and thinking) I realized that I, like the Delta employees, work for a company where our users are in mostly the same position. Many of our products are given to the employees of large companies where there is no option for other solutions, and by virtue of our market dominance in many segments users are forced to use our products, for better or worse, in their personal and professional lives.

We catch a lot of flak at The Empire© about our products, and most all of it is filled with frustration-infused vitriol. The internet is the great equalizer, only there can a trained journalist have the same exposure as the Apple fanboi (or, as I recently heard: ifanboi) commenting on the particle. But prodding aside, many of the complaints I read about The Empire© are strikingly similar to my, and my co-travelers, complaints about the airline industry today. Here are some examples I’ve heard recently where you could easily exchange “Microsoft” for “any particular airline”: “Microsoft employees are rigid, greedy, automatons working for a dying company that can’t innovate and just steals ideas from Apple and Google” or: “I’ve had enough of M$ and I’m switching to Linux/Apple/whatever…” or my personal favorite: “Windows 7 is just re-branded Vista.”

Now I would hope that most rational people would realize that these statements aren’t true. Creating software on any scale is an incredibly complex process, and there’s bound to be compromises that are going to leave people wanting something more, even at Apple (see: iPhone). But none of that really matters to the end users when they are forced to use something that’s frustrating and when they really don’t have any other options. So, while I can’t promise that the products produced at The Empire© will always satisfy, or even placate, our end users I can promise to understand that behind every vicious comment is a user who’s likely tired, with a headache, who just feels trapped in a system that seems illogical and very frustrating. And I promise that I, along with many of my co-workers, will be committed to doing everything that we can to make the experience a little better. If anything, today has taught me a great deal about what it means to be completely pissed at a major corporation.

A while ago my grad school advisor was telling me as story about a meeting he had with some government agency. As a student in a civil engineering program nearly all the projects that we were involved with dealt with the government in some form either directly as a client, or as a stakeholder. This meant that not only did we have to meet with various government agencies frequently, but often times the forward progress or even continued existence of our projects relied heavily on the outcome of those meetings.

Now back to the story, my advisor explained that in this case he was meeting with a representative of some state department of transportation for several hours discussing some aspect of a project they were working on. Remarkably, for the entire duration of the several-hour meeting one of the representative’s co-workers sat nearby at his immaculately organized desk doing nothing save reading the paper. The representative my advisor was meeting with remarked, from behind his rather cluttered desk, that most of his fellow civil servants spent their days in pursuits similar to that of his paper-reading colleague.

Based on this my advisor made a rather valuable observation: If you want to get anything done in a large organization (governmental or otherwise) you need to find the person with the messiest desk. In my, admittedly limited, experience I’ve found this observation to be quite true. I call this phenomenon the concept of the “messiest desk.”

Although I would add at this point that having the “messiest desk” does not always mean that your desk is particularly disorganized. For example, I am the kind of person who is pretty obsessive about cleanliness so my desk isn’t always messy, but it’s rarely clear. As the important priorities pile up there’s a lot of ongoing work, some of which has to be shelved temporarily while I focus on more critical tasks.

Not to say that organization isn’t important. I think every successful person with a “messy desk” would say that they could easily find any particular item on demand if needed. Clearly if your desk is so messy that you can’t find anything effectively then you aren’t being productive. In addition, this doesn’t apply to people who have a lot of useless kitsch in their workspace. The “mess” does not consist of stupid crap, but the elements of ongoing work.

The theory also applies if you don’t even have a desk to begin with. It could cover online or electronic workspaces, or physical workspaces like workbenches, garages or shop floors. Having a “messy desk” indicates that you have a lot of irons in the fire, and that fulfilling important priorities is more important than having your workspace perfectly organized. Rarely do you have time to do both.

So here’s what I look for in a messy desk (you could call them the “traits of the messy desk”) which indicate that a person within a given organization is a good contact to have:

• It isn’t just a mess, there’s at least some sense of organization.
• The mess does not impact productivity.
• The mess is predominately composed of work items (tools, files, reports).
• The elements of the mess are not only work items but current work items, not archived dead project files from 20 years ago.
• The mess is the result of ongoing work using the latest technology feasible, not the result of a refusal to join the 21st century.
• The mess does not smell, that’s just gross.

So what are your thoughts? Do you have a messy desk? If so, what do you look for in a mess that indicates that it’s more than just a mess? If not, then what do you look for as a sign of value in a workspace?

This: http://www.readwriteweb.com/readwritehire/2008/12/microsoft-project-team.php

Made me laugh this morning. Although it is all true, I find it funny that anyone would care that much about me moving to work for Microsoft. That, and being quoted on a news site is cool, but also strangely creepy.

The past few weeks at Mars Hill they’ve been in this series called “It’s All About Jesus” which, as I’m confident you can clearly see, is all about Jesus. The overall theme is that God is authoring a story (or script) for all of His creation. Most recently Pastor Bill Clem, filling in for Mark, was talking about the idea that we are all part of that story and that the scope of our view the story depends on our understanding of our role in relation to God. Sadly for many, both Christian and non-Christian, the story is only about one’s personal journey. Because of our fallen nature we often reject supporting roles in the grand production that is God’s story opting instead for leading roles in small side-shows of our own. One analogy presented was that of a few acting students scraping together their meager resources for a production of their own script in what is basically a warehouse versus a young actress auditioning for, and landing, a minor supporting role in a major Broadway production. On this point Bill stated that those of us who take a narrow, personally focused, view of our stories will interpret the theme of our ”movie script” in light of our present circumstances. When we are blessed with success we see our life as a heroic action/adventure, when we find a special relationship a romance, and when we are plagued by pain or struggle we see life as a drama or perhaps even a horror film.

As Christians we’re all raised with the message that we must constantly give praise to God in the midst of our blessings. Whether we apply it or not, there’s definitely a sense (or at least an intellectual assent) that the blessings of health, friends, job, marriage, children, and so on are a part of God’s greater plan. We know well the risk of forgetting God in our success. But for me, and I would suspect for others as well, it’s not the times that I see success that I feel disconnected from the story of God, but rather the times of struggle. Although in times of difficulty the emotional connection to God may seem stronger, I think that the temptation is to look at the circumstances of life and introspectively label my story as one of woe and misery (a film of dramatic struggle against all odds) regardless of my emotional “spiritual high” or outward expressions of dependence on God. This gives rise to the questions like “how can a loving God allow so much pain” or “why do bad things happen to good people?” I replace God ‘s script with a much smaller one of my own design in my mind and heart. The film analogy can be extended in this sense by considering the difference in tone if an action/adventure script featured the victims as the protagonist instead of the rescuing hero.

Luckily I am not the protagonist of the story. I’ve been reading in Job (one of my favorite books) and I’m always struck by the way that God responds to Job starting in verse 38:1 and continuing throughout the rest of the book:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Job 38:1-7

I love this passage for multiple reasons. First because God uses sarcasm to righteously mock that unreasonable belief in Job (and in us) that there is any other story but God’s. Not only do we see that sarcasm has a justifiable place in the Kingdom, but it’s used to highlight the ridiculousness of our belief in anything other than the grand story of God. Second, God basically tells Job to put on a cup because he is about to be kicked up the middle in a theological sense. The tone of speech in consideration of the audience is as often important as the content of the message itself, and here God demonstrates that when speaking to men a direct, harsh application of the truth will have the greatest benefit. And finally, (back on topic) we see God not so gently remind Job that He is the author of the story, and that Job is merely a supporting character. He asks Job if he thinks that he has the power or the desire to author a story as grand as the one unfolding in the hands of the Creator to which Job gives the only logical reply:

Then Job answered the Lord and said: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job 42:1-6

The difference to me is significant. When I remind myself that I am only a small supporting role in a much, much larger script I can keep both suffering and success in proper perspective. Like catching the game-winning home run at a baseball game, no one cares that you caught the ball. They are rightly caught up in celebrating the much greater victory. And you should be to, whether you caught the game winning ball or not.

So after all that what then is the theme of the story of God? I’m going to have to go with Mark’s assertion that the story presented in the Bible is a comedy (albeit a dark comedy) but that’s a post for another time.

Normally I frown upon people who post blog entries that talk about the frequency (or lack thereof) of their blog posts… generally a post of that type assumes that people actually read your blog and care if you post or not. An assumption that I find rather comical in general given the average readership of most blogs (mine included), and quite outrageous in this particular case given that my last post was over two months ago and by now the few followers I had have undoubtedly moved on to richer reading pastures. So, on that count there’s no reason to apologize for the lack of posts recently. Furthermore, far be it from me that my site would become just another tombstone in the vast graveyard of dead blogs filled with posts lamenting the lack of time for proper writing.

Anyways, that said, it’s been a wild couple of months. I left Atlanta on the 29th of June, Seattle bound. After a long cross-country trip with a brief stop in Colorado I arrived in Seattle on the 6th of July. There hasn’t been one aspect of my life that has not changed at least a little, and most areas have changed so significantly that I have yet to fully grasp the magnitude of the difference.

Since I left Atlanta:

• I’ve gone from living in a double-occupancy room in a fraternity house to living in an apartment alone to living in a three-story townhouse with a friend from GA.
• I have not eaten at Jason’s Deli, not even once.
• I’ve left my church home at Buckhead Church where the music was like a rock concert and Andy reiterated everything three times for 30 minutes tops and started attending Mars Hill Church where the music is indie-ish and Mark Driscoll yells at us for at least an hour every Sunday.
• I’ve gone from being a poor grad student to working for the largest software company on the planet although, in contrast, my wardrobe has remained relatively constant.
• I’ve gone from working out at the GT Rec Center with a bunch of college aged guys and one girl to working out at what amounts to the Microsoft Rec Center with a bunch of 40 year-old guys and no girls
• I’ve gone from walking 5-10 minutes to and from class/work to a 30 minute minimum drive from home to work. I now take the bus almost every day.
• I can pretty much afford to eat out whenever I want, but I no longer have nearly as many friends to take with me.
• I’ve gone from living in the middle of constant activity to living in a quiet neighborhood and working alone at a desk for most of the day.
• I’ve gone from near constant involvement at Theta Xi to nearly none outside of observing the e-mail lists.
• I’ve gone from anticipating the GT football season with great excitement to mere indifference.
• I used to sweat just looking outside, now I wear a polar fleece jacket nearly every morning, and often throughout the entire day.
• I’ve gone from having to pay for each load of laundry in washers and dryers with two clothing settings: Maul and Destroy to having a washer and dryer with more settings than a mid-sized aircraft.
• I’ve gone from having basically everything I own in one room to having to go to Ikea to get stuff to fill up all the extra rooms in the house.
• There hasn’t been a day, or really even an hour, that I haven’t missed all of my great friends back in Georgia in one way or another.
• I’ve been blessed with the seeds of new friendships here in Seattle.
• I’ve struggled as God has moved me across the country and away from all my connections, comforts and familiarity to the place He wants me to be. And I’ve been amazed as He has given me grace to persevere in the face of what can often be overwhelming sadness and frustration.

And that’s just a few of the things going on now. When people ask how the move has gone I usually tell them that it’s like a roller coaster; there are up days and there are down days but in the end the entire thing is an exhilarating ride. It’s been a very exciting period in my life, but as I get settled in the swings become less frequent, and less severe. As I move forward I always try to recall the feeling of awesome opportunity that I had in anticipation of the move when I was still in Georgia.

And, if all else fails, I just book a ticket “home” for the weekend

It’s hard for me to imagine now why I didn’t want to rush as a freshman. I even remember stopping by the house my first week at Tech and somehow thinking that I would never, ever “Go Greek”. Now I don’t know what I would have done without it. Even though I officially graduated from Theta Xi two years ago when I completed my undergraduate work, I still feel a part of the house. Probably because I was too cheap to move out . Almost every significant relationship I’ve developed at Tech has come from the fraternity, and there are so many good memories that I’m sure I’ve forgotten more than I can remember. Here I will present a semi-exhaustive list of everything associated with Theta Xi that brings a smile to my face that I can think of:

• Formals
• Semi-formals
• Greek Week
• Greek Sing
• Homecoming
• Mock Rock
• “The Hovercraft”
• Diet Coke Sandwiches
• Kitchen Chores
• Unicorn Power
• Intramurals (Even though I have yet to go to a game)
• Catapult (For more reasons than are immediately apparent)
• Football Block Seating
• Halo in Fox and Jones’ room
• DOW With Fox and Jones
• Croakies
• 24 (I learned of Jack Bauer here)
• Scrubs
• Tug
• Front Porch Swing
• Broomball
• The Malibu Mixer
• Steak and Shake (Preferably very late at night and with girls… erm that doesn’t sound right)
• Taco Mac
• Good Beer
• Not-so-Good Beer (“Diet Coors”)
• Rainbows
• Matt Wertz, Jon McLaughlin, Dave Barnes, Anberlin, Cartel, Augustana, Country Music, Diana Krall…
• Front Lawn (Particularly the use of a skid-steer)
• TX Golf
• Monster Golf
• Date Nights
• “Announcements”
• Chapter Meeting Secrets (Some funny, some lame, but all secret)
• The “Make-Out Spot”
• Initiations (Locations and Experiences)
• Moustache Week
• The GTG’s
• Getting the Pig for Rush
• Rush Bingo
• Breaking Femurs
• Rage in the Cage
• Cooking Mealplan
• Re-Tiling The Kitchen
• Road Trips

Honestly, I could keep going for a while, but I have to stop somewhere.

God was so good, giving me a whole house full of brothers to entertain me, help me, grow me, and hold me accountable. When I was a little kid I used to come across my dad’s old fraternity memorabilia in boxes and drawers in the house. I never understood what it was all about.

I understand now.

Disclaimer: For the most part I’ve never had any problems with Bank of America and find most of their basic services to be more than adequate.

Yesterday I received the replacement for my American Express as there was a potential that my personal information had been stolen and Bank of America (the bank through which I got the card) decided it needed to be replaced. All well and good, and that meant that I needed to call in to get my new card activated.

When I call the number I receive a greeting that says something about how activating my card will only take a couple minutes during which I’ll have the “opportunity” to take advantage of “exclusive” offers for “our valued Bank of America” customers. Sigh. Anyways, I proceed through the process which I swear used to always be completely automated, but at the end I’m transferred to a customer service representative who collects the important personal identification information and then proceeds to “initiate the process of activating my card.”

Then comes, you guessed it, the sales pitch. “Can I interest you in our ‘credit-protection-ultra-plus-super-protection’ plan. For only $0.95 a month per $100 of balance on your card we will pay your balance for a few months in the event that you lose your job or encounter some medical emergencies.” I thanked him for the offer but stated that I wasn’t interested. Mostly because I don’t carry a balance on my card and I wouldn’t ever need them to “cover my payment” whatever that means. But then it got better. He responds “Well based on your credit card usage this is a great value for you and I’d like to go ahead and get this setup on your account. There’s no charge for 30 days.”

Now usually I don’t take financial advice from customer service representatives… but this one comes with a 30-day trial… NO

I could not believe this. First, I have to call in to get my new card activated and instead of it being automated like nearly EVERY OTHER PROCESS I’ve done over the phone I have to talk to this idiot. Second, the correct answer to my initial rejection of the offer was:

“Thank you, is there anything else that I can do for you sir?”

Not:

“Oh, well you are clearly too stupid to realize that you need this so let me go ahead and set it up for you anyways.”

No, Mr. BoA Representative, I am too smart to fall for all the silly “credit protection” programs that only cost $12.99 a month and provide NOTHING. Even if they have a (laughable) 30 day free period. Unfortunately I was too aghast at the insulting tone of the customer representative to respond with anything other than a firm “No Thank You” which finally made him shut up.

How pathetic is this. Bank of America resorting to the use of people’s fears that they might lose their job or encounter medical problems to shill some crappy $10-a-month “protection” program.
Shame on you.

Sunday I met with the small group leaders at Buckhead Church for the last time. Typically we have these lunch meetings once a month throughout the course of the semester. The objective is to get together to discuss everything that is going on in our groups, and share methods and ideas with each other. Last Sunday was the last meeting of this semester and, for me, the last one I will attend.

As this is the last week of class, and next week is finals week, it’s inevitable that there are going to be a lot of these “lasts”.

It’s difficult for me to write about this because I really don’t know how to feel. There’s definitely excitement, but there’s also a great deal of fear and uncertainty. Imagine looking around at everything you can see or experience and being afraid to like it because it will be a 7-hour airplane ride away in a couple months. Not that Seattle is a bad place, quite the opposite in fact. The quick glimpses that I’ve gotten through my visits there and by listening to Mark’s podcasts are promising. It’s just that I’ve done this whole move-across-the-county thing before when I came to Georgia from Colorado, so now I’m burdened with the knowledge of what that move will do.

I’ve had a really good time here. That’s what is clearly apparent in the “lasts”. If I hadn’t had a good time, then there wouldn’t be any “lasts” worth experiencing. As I reflect back on the time I’ve spent here I’m amazed at all the great things I have to remember. But as I began writing about them I realized that if I put them all in one post it would be close to a mile long. So instead, I’m going to parcel them out over the course of a few days/weeks starting with this one:

Small Group

I started my small group experience at Theta Xi before I was even a brother. Charlie Wright, who would eventually become my big brother, invited me to join a group my sophomore year at Tech. As I was really struggling for Christian guy community at the time; I joined. Eventually my involvement in the group led to my pledging at Theta Xi, but that’s another story. The next couple years I led groups of various size and effectiveness through the house. When I entered graduate school, however, things really took off. I decided that I wanted to join a group (not lead) through Buckhead Church to branch out beyond the fraternity. I didn’t want to lead, because I didn’t feel that I had the proper experience or knowledge to adequately lead. Apparently God thought differently. He brought a group of young guys to me, and for the next two years they asked me to lead them as we all “did life” together.

The last two years have been some of the most exciting years of my life in small group. I’m so amazed at the growth and maturity that each of the members of our group has experienced, myself included. It’s hard to remember all the things that we have done together outside of the regular meetings; going to Kenya, mini-golfing, feeding the homeless, and generally just hanging out. When we first all met I think there was a significant doubt that we would even work together, but now I can safely say that if I get married I know a couple guys who will be standing with me at the altar.

So after a marathon effort over the weekend and early into Monday morning, I have finally finished my thesis!

The following policies governing work are going into immediate effect:

• I am no longer working past 6 PM in the evening.
• I will no longer work on Sundays (or Saturdays… probably).
• I will no longer stay up working until 4, 6, or 7 AM and only get 3-4 hours of sleep.
• I will no longer be completely mentally and physically exhausted.

I can confidently say that the completion of my thesis represents the most effort that I have ever put into a single task that I can ever remember. While the data collection effort and experimentation started two years ago, the bulk of the written work was carried out this semester. I started creating bits and pieces at the start of this semester, but it wasn’t until spring break that writing began in earnest. I spent the vast majority of that week (3/16-3/20) tied to my computer hammering out section after section. I constructed the initial draft the following week and got it into the hands of my advisor for initial comments. While he was looking at it I continued work, adding sections and additional analysis, up through Thursday (3/26) when I sent out the “final” draft for comments to my advisor and to the proof-reading committee I had drafted conscripted asked nicely to help out.

What amazed me through the latter part of the effort was the shear size of the work. When I had combined all the individual sections into one the document was nearly 200 pages long and contained close to 35,000 words. This made some things interesting. For example, the process of going through the document with spellcheck could take several minutes to complete.

I didn’t get comments back from my advisor until Saturday night, and only for the first two-thirds of the paper. Combined with the changes I was getting from my proof-reading committee at times it felt like I was completely re-writing entire pages of the document. Work continued through Sunday, something I usually try to avoid, and after a late-afternoon meeting I had the final comments in hand to respond to. Those corrections, and the miscellaneous clean-up tasks to get the document formatted for submission (no small task given the size of the document) kept me up until 4 AM Monday morning (4/6). The next morning, after gathering signatures and submitting the approval form and the thesis itself, I was done.

The arrival at “done” is, frankly, rather abrupt. It’s as if I’ve gone from working at 100 miles per hour to 8. This will take a while to sink in, the idea that I can go home after class or working in the lab, or even *gasp* take an entire day off to do nothing. Actually, after months of nagging concern that I need to be working on some aspect of the thesis I seem to have developed a bit of a habit. It will take a while for me to be able to look at a calendar and not try to figure out how many more days I have to work until my thesis is due.

I still do have things to do, but nothing even close to the magnitude of what I’ve been doing for the past several weeks. I hope to get the rest of my outstanding class work done this week actually, and the Cobb County report can easily be handled during normal working hours.

Anyways, it’s done. I keep saying that to myself, it just sounds so… wonderful. Once it gets posted to oscar I’m going to Taco Mac for drinks. But now, I’m just ready to start feeling human again.