Lookin like Blue Sky Ahead

Good morning. Maybe not a perfect morning though. It seems my Internet is down again. Not all the lights are flashing in the little box. Hmm. We’re going to handle this ok, right? Think is it signed on for a second, then it disconnected. But, I’d seen V. was on. So, now am feeling a little robbed for time. Shoot.

Ok, ok ... we’re going to handle this! ‘Cept for left my smokes down in the car. Shoot, shoot ... what kind of omen is all of this. Plus, my two kitties are sitting at close range giving me the silent treatment for forgetting to pick up more canned food. This doesn’t seem to be my morning.

Maybe it’s time to stack up some of the good stuff?

We had a nice dinner out with our friend last night. Ya you got it, Margaritas! *Sigh* There’s a beauty to that!

We had a necessary adjustment to do, because we had been in such a good mood and our friend was unusually down trodden. He went so far as to say, he NEEDED a drink. That’s not a good plan. The conversation was kind of baulky when we got there. I knew what he was going to complain about before he started. It is his major life problem. Basically, he says, "I don’t have enough time!"

We went the route of trying to offset his conversation with steady rounds of reason. I argued ... we all have the same 24 hours in a day. The same 524,160 minutes in a year. I tried saying even the biggest business executives and leaders of our country had no more time to spend.

Then we tried to argue his points of not enough time to relax by reminding him in his off hours, he fishes, and golfs, and plays poker, gardens, and reads, and has umm, mushy time, and his second job involves officiating football, basketball, and baseball. Did I miss anything? Pretty much he’s set up the kind of off-hour recreation that any red blooded male could look up to. All this while still working and being part of his family. I think, shoot ... lot’s to be appreciative of.

And then, we tried arguing the other side ... that of the life of the majority of the Center’s parents. Only, a small portion even own a computer, let alone know of its aid in life. Many of the parents skirt issues that are really hard and life wrenching. I said, don’t you realize the opportunities at your side due to his advanced ability to think, manage, and organize?

But, through all this, he wanted to be stubborn. We tried pleading, don’t you see? Without a prioritizing and acceptance of the available 24 hour day, he was going to work himself into a heart attack or ulcers. By this time, we were holding back the tears. He’s stuck in a rut of thinking the world is more unfair to him than to others. He wants to accomplish and be the best at what he was doing.

He then re-maneuvered and started the next complain that is very worn with him. He was claiming ... if only I had better employees. I told him. This doesn’t work! If you put all the weight on your employees, than because the locus of control is away from him, he puts himself in a position of no control. He can’t change anything, because it is out of his hands. He falls helpless at the whim of unforeseen forces.

I felt kinda bad, because I knew up-front, I wasn’t going to accept all these faulty arguments at him, so I backed up. I gave him a chance to vent without constriction the pure fact that he was feeling put under by the weight of his world. Here, we gained a little ground. We then took a sneakier path ... basically, it had been eight days since he’d umm released some pressure in the optimal free play of the night. AHA, we thought ... this is WORKING! We knew because he stopped arguing and in his shier sense found difficulty looking at us directly!

Well, to make a long story short. We nipped that problem in the bud! Wallah! Happy Boy!! YAYYYYYYYYY!!! Let us thank the good Lord for recovery!

Hehehe

Anyway, that was the night!

The reason I’d been in a good mood previous is that I’d been allowed to go to work. I was in true bliss! Plus, we came in 20 minutes early and had that much extra time. We dug in!

The first thing was to clear up that nasty stack that had accumulated. We brought our garbage nearer, opened those file drawers, and wrote out some work assignment cards. We proceeded in this fashion until there wasn’t a single paper left! AHA! The good life! We used our timer throughout the day and by the time of nine, we were ready to start accomplishing the work of the cards.

We had looked at every assignment and had dispersed it through the upcoming weeks in bite-size pieces. We went to our little file and said what is the first assignment to be done between 9:00 and 11:30? Then we just started knocking of tasks one at a time. It was kind of an executive spin the bottle! We couldn’t remember what was coming up, but we’d resolved whatever it was as long as we were in the right time zone, we would accomplish what came next and next. In no time at all, we were filing completed cards in their appropriate categories in the long card file box. YaHoo!!!

During the time toward lunch, we’d gotten a chance to play around a bit with the new Paper Tiger Program. This was intense, and fun, and what we live life for ... AHA! It’s just we love new systems and the learning of them is silly putty in our hands. *Giggle* We made some good progress, though we were far from adding much to the contents. We were still figuring out in our minds what would be happening to our 3 deep file drawers between the two desks.

Right on cue, as soon as the timer had gone off, we’d released ourselves to work on one of the big projects ... CARF. Since Sr. had said, that she’d like me to be working with the new DSP in the mornings, we gave the hours between noon and 2 to CARF. AND, since we’d scheduled 2:00-2:30 to be working with a DSP who couldn’t squeeze in that time, we had an extra half hour.

I can’t explain well enough now what happened next, but in our minds the conclusion was that we’d taken two great big projects and in their souls married them together in a quite unexpected turn of events. WALAH!! Life is good! The two projects were CARF and the Paper Tiger. I can’t say why with all this planning for the new program, we hadn’t seen the benefit, but oh my G. Here it was before us in all our glory!

You see ... CARF although a few slim four letters of a name is really about the whole entirety of our Center’s business. It is an structured course of standards (98, I believe) that weaves together all the intricacies of the work, both seen and unseen. What we and our Sister site have done is to categorize all of the year’s events in a series of numbered books. There are about 15 books and they are each 2-3" full of papers diagraming out each nuance of our program.

I’m sure there are other organizations who put together like books, although I would think for the larger organizations it would be a near impossible feat, since all the pieces of the company would be spread in funny unknown corners of their building. How many executives know of every piece of paper and concept flowing through their doors? St. Rose only serves 50 clients and has 10 staff, so it is a very neat compact size business.

Pshwoo ... break, break ... went down for the smokes. Soon as I catch my break (three floors), we are going to need more coffee and some ice water. Kitties are delighted though, cuz we left open the back door. I could see them scurrying in front of me on my return, but they were tickled to sneak down a few stairs. Heheh. Yes, they live a limited life!

Anyway... Ok, where were we?

Let’s see ... maybe I should explain this Paper Tiger once more, very simply ... It is just like the Internet, in that, after all the information is put into it, you can write in an browser type bar about any business word you might think of and it will display for you all the locations the word appears. So, I can make each of those 15 CARF books a location, and I can list each set of documents 1 through gazillion, and I can give each one a title and a set of keywords which is usually part of the document’s outline. I can also write notes about each and give each a category name and "hot action" date which is the day I would like to recall a set of papers.

See with the Paper Tiger, it’s not all about just filing information away, but it’s about its retrieval. They claim that this program can find every single document in under 5 seconds. It’s just amazing. I played and played with it yesterday and it’s a beauty! It also gives you reports of the information in a variety of ways so that you can collect all sorts of things. Like you can put in the word 2004 and it will spill out anything from that year, or you can put in the word, "revised" and all the documents with a revised date will appear in a list ordered of course by entry or alphabetical. Or, I can bring to recall all of the policies and procedures, or I can ask for all the reports I need to or the secretary needs to do over on the first of January each year. Plus, soooo, much more!

The ramifications are simply too wonderful to capture in my simple brain. But, I know this is very big! The first year for CARF, I tried something like this, but it was very limited. I wrote an Index for all the documents. But, it was one dimensional and limited to just titles. It was one "resource book" where I could find information. At the time it was very good, but it had been too much to do for the next year. There wasn’t enough time to type in the whole thing over again and it was something very hard for my peers or boss to use. I’m no better off in the thought that they could use a new system any better, but we’re all that much more advanced.

For $200 each computer the system can be networked so that the Administration Team (four of us) and the Secretary could all be on thesame system. So, I could enter to my heart content and everyone who would use the system could. Any of us could potentially find the documents the others were looking for. AND, we could put on the same system, the State book we keep. This is a four inch binder that lists critical elements that are found in the CARF book. Since, we have to go through both these sets of document every year to update, we would be at a tremendous advantage.

I’m still working with the addition of the next year’s documents. Some would directly replace doc 303, new revision 07.2005. I would have to read the book as for there suggestion in fitting in the New Year’s material. I’m sure there is a handy dandy way, I have not thought of. But, if legal books, libraries, and encyclopedias can add new revisions, I’m sure we could too.

I figure that it is going to take quite a bit of time for me to enter all of the data, but like I said in the first year we did just that. AND, since I have to go by hand anyway to look individually at each sheet, what would be the difference if I took an electronic note? This whole thing makes me so gosh darn handy. It’s just something tremendous. Last night, I left a note on my bosses desk asking her to come by when she gets a free moment to look at it. If she decides it’s too expensive to put on everyone’s desk, than that’s ok too. The one-person version I’ve already paid for and since I’m the ONE responsible for CARF, I can maintain my own version and pull them necessary documents whenever asked. Just no losing here!

*Sigh* So, ok ... breathe in here somewhere!

I’ll find if today she is interested in more than the one copy I own. If she is not, I think I will add CARF to all the other documents that I’d planned to put in the program in the first place. That would include the things, I am working on other than CARF, like my temporary and permanent action files and it would eventually include my business library. I suppose I could do that anyway, I’m just a little concerned for the business if I were to leave.

Of course, if I keyword the library as library, I could pull those references if I were to leave WITH my library. Hmm, this seems like a good idea. I would like to keep all my work together. The network thing though ... I’m not so sure I would want the other Q reading my work, but it would be a tremendous advantage to the sister if she knew where we were to leave off. Eh, better merge them.

Shoot, shoot, time is just speeding by. It’s already after 5 am. YAYYYY, we made it to Thursday. It’s Dr. M’s Day!!! And, CHINESE!!! High five V! Another day, where we are raring to go to work! Sure wish I could get on-line. Oh man, oh man ... We’re up!!!