The Other End

We're emerging from the other end of a week that soon, thankfully, will have been. And like other things that emerge from the other end, it's best left where it lays.

When it's all said and done, making things work right is about communication. When they work well, that was good communication. (Heh, heh, that last bit reminds me of an old bridge game for the Mac. Every so often Omar Sharif's voice would say, "That was good play!" Cheesy, but worth playing for that simple thrill.) Logic, then, dictates that if things did not go so well, less than stellar communication was involved. (And here, Omar would say, "Ah. Poor luck.") And I would agree--with the communication thing. The jury is still out on the luck thing.

A tip for other aspiring Great Communicators. If you release a template to a user audience that does not necessarily work well in Word, let alone in templates, ratchet your hopes down a notch or two to avoid disappointment.

Add, to the minor tactical error just mentioned, a flaw in the template. Now multiply times two reports due simultaneously. Since we're in a word problem (make that a Word problem, thank you), let's just multiply that times the twelve reporters we served during this cycle. The flawed template now becomes an annoying bit of fun we get to redress several times over. And half of the reports were submitted in the old template (end of that contract year), while the second half were in the new template (first report cycle of this new contract year). If you're any good at math (don't look at me), or you've spent any time in a kitchen (now you're talkin'), you can see, depending on your perspective, that this is either a problem (maybe that's it. they called them "problems" and I dislike any kind of conflict), or it is a recipe for disaster. And so it was.

Thankfully, we are at the end of the week. And so it was.

It's all just stuff. Things. And now I have another thing coming.

(Honestly, Jen. I thought "think" was the play on words, not "thing." Folks, check tactfullyblunt.typepad.com to follow that little thread)