Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Here's hoping everyone had a wonderful Christmas....and that everyone is looking forward to a happy new year!

Color Fading from: http://www.vex.net/~x/xfade/advanced.html

Saturday, December 10, 2005

MY BLOGGING STATUS/WHEREABOUTS


1).
I'm protesting over there:
http://journals.aol.com/viviansullinwank/NwanyiomasJournal/

2).
I'm doing new posts over here:
http://journals.aol.co.uk/viviansullinwank/NwanyiomasInternationalJournal/

3).
I'm sort of simul-posting over here:
http://thebspotfornwanyioma.blogspot.com/

4). Now I'm a member of a team that is joint-blogging over here:
http://teemland.blogspot.com/

I guess this is my cyber-equivalent of having a summer home, a winter home and a secret hideaway. I'm not sure if I'm trying to either find a comfort zone or leave my comfort zone....but please bear with me while I experiment and try to enjoy blogging again....the fun was truly taken out of it for a while! Thanks so much to everyone who has helped me get acclimated!

Testing Testing 1 2 3 Testing Testing 1 2 3


Merry Christmas! GoldWreath

This is just an experiment to see if Blogger will allow a Marquee. AOL used to, until they learned we discovered how to do it, then they took the ability away. Some people think they're too distracting.....so I'm not even sure I'll incorporate Marquees into my journal.....I'm just experimenting (I should be decorating the trees in my formal living room and my den instead of playing around here in J-Land)!

Things Are Really Different With This New Man In My Life

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Today I've been longing for 'YesterYear' :)



We're having quite the winter storm here today. We don't get a lot of real winter weather here in North Texas...so this mixture of sleet, rain, snow, ice..,etc us really causing a lot of problems. It was expected today but things started deteriorating much sooner than expected....and it's expected to continue throughout the night. We may not get more than a couple of inches of accumulation....but since we don't have this kind of weather often, we really don't have the equipment to deal with it.

Well, because of the weather I decided not to go into the office today. I can remember 'back in the day' when the weather was so bad that you couldn't drive to the office, it meant that you didn't have to work....BUT....now that my job is all about online travel products, well...my work environment can be wherever there's a computer....and of course I have one at home....in addition to the company issued laptop which I bring home every day......so guess who had to work today anyway!

But the good thing about it is that I was able to work in my jammies....I didn't have to comb my hair (you can tell Mark is on the road and not having to see me looking this un-lovely)....and I could have a bowl of ice cream with Kaluha poured all over it during my lunch break! So, I guess it's not totally bad!

http://journals.aol.com/hhdecor2/HomeLifeDecoratingBlog/entries/343



I'm excited to have been featured on Betty's decorating journal. I thought looking at pictures of my Christmas decorations from last year might inspire me to get a move on this year! So far, my tree looks like the graphic....it's pre lit and standing in the living roomwaiting for the decorationsto just gravitate towards it like (magnetic) magic! LOL. Oh well, if the bad weather keeps going as promised and we're not able to get out and about tomorrow, I'll have Ikenna do some tree decorating! I can't put things up exactly as they were last year, because we've got more rooms and different configurations and color schemes :)


Tuesday, December 06, 2005

I'm not sure what I should title this entry.....

It should either be:

'I got my panties all in a wad quite unjustifiably'

or

'Boy did I need a major attitude adjustment....good thing I don't know any mind readers!'



I spend a great deal of my work life in meetings...meetings with my work group (weekly), meetings with project teams (a minimum of 3 times a week), meetings with our department VP (about once every 6 weeks), meetings with our division's executive VP(about once a quarter), town hall meetings with our CEO (also about once a quarter). Monday was one of those meetings with our department VP. It's usually a two hour meeting. Those of us who are local attend the meeting in person in a conference room. Our team members in Europe call in to a conference/bridge number and connect to a web meeting so that they can view any presentations that are given.

Our department is a developmental group...we do programming and quality assurance and deliver/release various software products to our internal and external customers. We had two guests at this weeks meeting who are from the marketing division. At the end of the guest presentations and after our VP did her presentation, several people were being recognized for various things. As I looked at the slides I was starting to get boiling mad that my team wasn't being recognized. We've worked very hard and put in a lot of extra hours recently and I was incensed that we were being overlooked.

I couldn't even bring myself to clap as the names/accomplishments were read (even though I knew several of the people). I was actually considering walking out when a new slide came up. In anger I scanned it to feed my anger when much to my surprise my name was in the middle of the new page. And it wasn't there as a part of any group being recognized, I'd been singled out for my contributions to three facets of the long term project I'd been working on.

Boy did I feel foolish for the walk out/protest I was planning! At the end of the meeting my new boss came up to me and gave me a hug. That was a feel good moment since I don't feel like I've established a rapport with her yet since I was moved into her group on August 1st when our division underwent a manor reorganization! It really did feel good to finally get some personal recognition after being on this project for the past two years !

The meeting was followed by a departmental holiday potluck...our VP's administrative assistant had beautifully decorated the atrium hallway on our floor....the company provided ham and turkey and had lots of good food brought in by my peers! So the first 4 hours of my day yesterday were pretty darn good! I had an hour to recover before my next (and last) meeting of the day and then I went home early! :)

Sunday, December 04, 2005

'Departees' - thanks to Ayn, Vince and their team (updates pending)

THIS IS JUST A TEST ENTRY


I'd like to see if I can change the backgrounds at an entry level. The learning curve shouldn't be as big as I've made it out to be since I had learned the basics of HTML over at J-Land.

We'll see how this goes. I want my bSpotting home to be as decorative/visually versatile at my J-Land homes were. And after all...'tis the season to be jolly!'

A change of attitude, an expression of gratitude and a good time had by all.

a change of attitude, an expression of gratitude and a good time had by all. When all of this ad banner mess started, I was feeling like our community had been destroyed. I was angry and hurt.   I'm still very upset about how the ad banners were implemented but I'm starting to understand that the community hasn't been destroyed it has just changed.  Before our community was like a (cyber) housing development with just one builder - AOL.  Now I think of the community as having expanded...there are more builders now like  Blogspot, Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace.com, BraveJournal and the international flavor of AOL.   I think a community looks better with a variety of builders (in cyber space and in the  real world).

Oh, we've certainly had some 'construction issues' with our (cyber) moves, but we're getting settled in and let's face it, the people are just the same....many are just in new houses (and some are in multiple houses....their summer homes, winter homes, etc. LOL)

I would like to say thank you to everyone who has taken the leadership roles to let AOL and the outside AOL world know that customers want and deserve some respect. Many voices and pens have been busy standing up to AOL and letting them know the error(s) of their ways! It's been like (cyber) David facing/fighting (cyber) Goliath....and AOL as the (cyber) giant is getting lots of stones flung at it by the (cyber) David(s) who sprung up out of J-Land!

You can effect a change in the environment AOL, but you can't change the people. Many friendships have been born here! I had the pleasure yesterday of spending a few hours at my home with three remarkable women. I would never have met them if I had not been a member of J-Land. We all live in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex and plan to keep the momentum going! The album below has the few pictures I took yesterday (some of which are blurry)Donna is in the black printed top, Judith is in the red sweater and her identical twin, Julie, is in the pink cardigan.  Ladies you really brought the holiday spirit into my home yesterday (I apologize again for not having my decorations done). I thoroughly enjoyed our visit and look forward to the next one!

http://pictures.aol.com/ap/viewShare.do?shareInfo=esv4e+9w77nW6F5wgcRAK8KPVX6X0r/3vLmsZiiHaOZWGd+BXiXp6w== viviansullinwank is presenting 'Enjoying the holiday with blogging friends' (7 pictures) http://pictures.aol.com/ap/viewShare.do?shareInfo=esv4e+9w77nW6F5wgcRAK8KPVX6X0r/3vLmsZiiHaOZWGd+BXiXp6w==