Holiday Delivery

We've been doing a nice long string of 14+ hour days here to get this project pushed out before the Thanksgiving break.  Technically, it is not due until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, but nobody wants to come in over the holiday (nor to they want to pay us holiday overtime) so it has to be done tomorrow night.  It is looking pretty good right now.  It's always fun to being going 100 mph constantly handling problems and changes and finding things you missed and then.....hey we don't have anything to do, what happened?  That is usually a good feeling because it means you can go home before midnight.

When I was first starting with the supervising thing my friend Richard told me what another sup told him when he was first starting out.  He said "when you are a cg supervisor you are the one driving the bus".  For my first few jobs I felt like I was more pushing the bus and then occasionally running around to the front to make sure it was pointed in the right direction.  The more projects I do the more time I feel like I am spending at the front of the bus.

I heard that the Congressional superdeduperty committee couldn't come up with a plan to reduce the deficit.  What a shocker.  Word is it came down to the Republican pledge to not raise taxes.  My feeling was even if they had come up with some kind of compromise it would been bs.  The taxes would have been instant put into effect while the cuts would have been scheduled to happen sometime in 2013 and then later repealed.  That being said since the committee could not come up with a plan there is apparently 1.4 trillion in cuts that are going to happen very soon.  The pentagon is scrambling to try to save as much of the defense budget as possible.  I think they are in trouble.  Might have to build a few fewer stealth bombers this year.  The key things that I believe aren't on the chopping block are social security and medicare.  This is like me saying I am going to cut 30% from my monthly expenses but my credit card and mortgage are off limits.  Well gosh if I had a $3000 cell phone bill I that might make sense.  It all comes down to what I've said all along, you can't take stuff away from people.

Hey maybe now that the project appears to be on track I can find a way to go for a run at lunch.  That would be cool!

DD goes Public

There was a company wide email that I missed last Friday because I was buried in work.  Turns out the rumors that we've been hearing for the last 6 months about Digital Domain becoming a publicly traded company were true.  They went public today....and promptly dropped around 18%.  I was listening to Mad Money on CNBC last night and happened to hear somebody call in asking what Jim Cramer though about Digital Domain Media group.  He responded that he didn't know enough about the company and couldn't give an educated opinion.  Personally, I think the market is probably freaking out because DD is venturing into some new and exciting arena's but doesn't have a proven track record yet.  This company has been around a long time and has made it through some very tough times.  I think that the management team here must know what they are doing. 

Meanwhile, I've been working a fairly steady stream of 12-14 hour days this week.  It's ok though, we deliver this thing just after Thanksgiving so it'll be over soon.

Sydney seems to really like when I walk her to school instead of drive.  The only problem is that that means I leave for work about 20 minutes later than usual.  Right now with this crazy schedule I just can't do that too often.  After I deliver the show I'm definitely going to do that more often.

Starting to feel tired.  Think I'll go home soon.

Welcome to Playa

Sorry about the long pause between posts.  Things have been crazy at work for the last few weeks.  I am currently supervising a transformers video game commercial.  It is a rather short schedule which means that the the stress level can be rather high.  We have had lots of weird scheduling issues on this show which has not helped matters either.  What that means is that several members of my team have come on late or been scheduled to do other things at the same time that they are working on my show, etc.  On a short schedule stuff like that can really throw a wrench into the machine.  That being said, I am starting to feel lot more confident in my ability to supervise.  It is starting to feel more comfortable.  It helps that my team is very strong.  With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up we have to be pretty much done with the show by the end of the week.  It's going to be close.

It has been really tough to get out to run lately.  I did a 6 miler yesterday that didn't feel terrible so I guess I'm not totally out of shape yet.  I've been keeping up with the circuit workouts in the garage which pushes my cardio.  I feel like it's a different kind of cardio though.  aerobic vs anaerobic I think is how that works.  I've thought about getting up really early to go on runs at home, but I don't think that is a good idea for me.  Sleep is just too precious a commodity at this point.  I think I will get better results doing runs on my lunch break.  As a supervisor this may prove to be difficult but I've got to find a way.

I promise I'll try to get in writing on a more consistent basis.  Hope everybody is well.