Today 13Dec2023: Third Last Wednesday 2023

Welcoming the 2024 early, Rocket Mortgage celebrated by sending me my 1098 early. Yipee!

Today was also the Nike SEC Project’s (my project I often mention as a “project” in the blog) Holiday Party with a Ugly Sweater and a trivia contest. There was finger food, and wine, and beer. Also, a photo booth and fluffy snowball-like items that we threw at each other. That was really fun, and I gave as I got. Leadership was not afraid to defend themselves! It is only a rumor that I threw the first one.

And while all of this eating, drinking, and tomfoolery was ongoing, Nike stock did break $121 a share. So, a good day, indeed.

Before the storm of fluffy snowball-like items, I spent the day in Zoom status and process meetings and discussing data. Another boring day which is excellent at this point of the project. We did get an emergency ticket issue at 4ish, a process mishap–the Service Now ticket was accidentally closed on an emergency change to production. Oh my. We had to do sudden re-approvals on a new replacement ticket–yes, more like watching paint dry–but we do make the paint. The rituals of replacement were followed without any future intervention of the dreaded internal audit expected.

Aside: I use funny language, but it is serious business when tickets go off the track.

I drove home in the darkening skies, but dry. Once home, I considered doing something but then crawled into bed. I managed to sleep until almost 8PM! I feel much better!

Before this, I had lunch at Swift, finding a conference room for my weekly lunch meeting with Scott. He is going on holiday break soon and was getting things on auto-pilot before heading out. We had a nice chat, and we both look forward to getting the next version of our software running this holiday.

The morning was filled entirely with Zoom meetings. I was even talking to the dread internal audit folks, and we agreed that involving the internal audit folks before we had completed anything in a sandbox was premature. I did cover some issues I believe we will have, but first, we have to have them and then find a resolution before we ask the internal audit to agree to the process. The proverbial horse was before the cart. It happens.

We did the usual Zoom meeting on how to go live, what the processes are, and most importantly, how we get out of 7/24 support–my favorite topic today. It is a shared PowerPoint and various linked documents. At least they did not read every word on the slides to us. But, despite the didactic process, we are excited to finally reach this point. There were over 400 people on that Zoom meeting! Excellent.

The early morning was the usual question, “Why?” Why am I getting up at 6AM, and why can’t I sleep more. I rolled over and finally slept a few minutes before my alarm, only to be awake again. My slippers and robe were found and applied to my still-numb body. No breakfast was made as I would consume what is offered at Swift as my colon and nausea were under control. I found the office with just a cup of coffee and started my day. Somehow, I read the emails, Slack updates, and news to stuff my head with what is happening today.

With only one cup of coffee imbibed–risky, I performed the usual shower and dressing tasks. I thought of a Christmas present (inbound Kramers!) and spent extra time ordering some to be delivered. I grabbed my Nike laptop, climbed into Air Volvo, and headed to the Nike WHQ Swift building, running late.

I arrived on time (wondering if I had used the TARDIS controls) and had time to acquire breakfast from the buffet. I do wonder some days what IT would do without catering. There seems to be a cosmic connection between testing and fixing software and bacon, at least at Nike SAP-based systems.

Pelting my fellow project and Core ERP folks with snowball-like fluffies was enjoyable. They had little fires (carefully watched by the catering folks) to make smores. I kept mine to just toasted. A nice party!

Thanks for reading.