Adventures in Texas... Part 2

Here we are into our 2nd week here. We are getting quite settled and feel like we've been here a while! The apartment is so comfortable. The kids and I are enjoying our routine of lounging around and going to the pool every day. Rebekah is really becoming a great swimmer.

One of the funny parts of being down here is seeing people that we know and have known from Washington. We were able to visit with our good friends, the Dinsmoors, as Holly is moving down to Houston and they stopped in San Antonio. We had dinner this past week with someone that Doug went to high school with and the kids and I can't wait to hang out with them this summer. We also have been hanging out with the Holders, who we knew from Fort Lewis and tomorrow I get to see our friend Jen VanderWerff with her daughter and mom. So crazy:-)

One thing we have decided is that we want to experience and see as much of Texas as we can while we are down here. After all, we may never get down here again. With that in mind, Doug found a great little town for us to visit this past Saturday. We went to Gruene, TX (pronounced Green). It is a great old cotton farming town that was started back in the 1870's. A lot of the original buildings are there. We enjoyed touring the shops and walking along the Guadalupe River. I don't know where this week will take us, but I am looking forward to it.

Again we miss all of you and hope you are all having a wonderful summer.

San Antonio Summer Camp

We’ve been consistently over 100 degrees every day here in San Antonio, but now it’s starting to get hot.

The main part of this last week for me has been about gathering content from the different sources. I am going to each area and sitting down with them about what is on their website currently, what is not on their website currently, and what should be on their website in the future. I’m getting a good overview of how all these headquarters pieces work together to form one unit. There’s a lot of responsibility shifting between the directorates that comes out as they define their mission/vision to be published on a website. To a certain extent I feel like a referee in a cage match – I didn’t start the fight nor am I a part of it, but I do need to bring both parties to a decision.

From a technical standpoint, the web content manager they are using could be better. You can only create/edit the web pages in a proprietary editor that runs inside a browser. The only options are notepad-style HTML editing or a WYSIWYG editor that isn’t always what you saw in the editor. I have brushed off the dust off the old HTML skillset and I am editing that way. Also, the cascading style sheets (CSS) don’t seem to inherit down correctly, thus completely defeating the idea of “cascading” style sheets.

My family got down here last week and my work days have settled into a nice 0700-1530 schedule. The traffic getting into work is horrendous. My commute in Washington is in much better shape traffic wise than here in Texas. I’m working inside the San Antonio city limits close to downtown. Without traffic, I can be at my office building in less than 20 minutes. Every morning, I leave by 0610 to be here by 0700. Next week, I’m playing in the HQ Golf Tournament!

When we got to work yesterday, the AC had gone off again over the weekend – second time in 3 weeks. It was 85 in the office. The AC repair guys were called every name in the book around here til lunchtime.

Adventures in Texas

Well, everyone was right! Texas is hot! Definitely not too unbearable for this former southern girl, though. The weather here is pretty comparable to a summer in the Carolinas, so it's just like being a kid again.

Our adventure actually began with Doug leaving 2 weeks before us. He came down here where he set up home at a wonderful furnished 2 bedroom apartment. In the mean time the 2 oldest kids went to camp, we went to visit Doug's mom and step dad in Kennewick and then we spent 3 days in Spokane. It was nice to get down here and be able to unpack. I really don't like living out of a suitcase.

The kids and I arrived down here this past Wednesday, July 20th. After gathering our very heavy luggage and loading it into the very small rental car, we headed to the apartment. Our first stop on the way....Chick fil A:-) I love Chick fil A and I got a very large sweet tea!!! Our first full day here was full of laundry, unpacking and getting completely settled. Of course there was the afternoon by the pool too! That has been a daily occurance. The pool here is so wonderful. The water is only 3 1/2 ft deep the whole way, with one shallow area, so all the kids can swim and play to their hearts content. The 2nd day was an adventure for me as I looked up directions and drove to the mall in San Antonio. The roads here are kind of crazy, but I was very proud of myself that we made it there and back without any major mishaps. Bethany got her ears pierced at the mall and is doing a wonderful job of taking care of them.

On Saturday we decided to go to six flags for our first visit on our seaon passes. Lets just say that we must be spoiled by Disney World because we were not overly impressed. It will be a fun place to take the kids, but we will definitely just go during the week. A Saturday was CRAZY!!

We found a wonderful church to call home for the next 6 weeks. It's called Crosspoint Fellowship Church. The children's ministry is AMAZING. They have entire buildings dedicated to their children. They are only a church of about 400.....so Crossroads....it's doable!!! It is so inviting and welcoming for the kids, they felt right at home there. The older 2 are going to go to an evening VBS there this week and are really looking forward to it.

Doug and I were able to go on a date this past Friday night, thanks to some friends that live down here with teenagers. We went down to the Riverwalk. It is definitely beautiful.

I think that is about it for now. I will definitely try to keep you updated as we go along on this adventure. I am really excited about the bonding time we are having down here. Life back home gets so busy sometimes that this is such a nice break. Doug's job is a lot slower down here than back at home. I keep reminding him to enjoy that while it lasts:-) We love and miss you all!!!!

NKOTB

I’ve been here a week. I’m like an old pro.

It is cubicle land to the extreme. This is a huge 3-story building and all the windows are pretty much taken up by all the offices for the big wigs – of which there are plenty at headquarters. I think there may be a conspiracy against me being near a window as a government employee. This is the kinda of place that makes Dilbert no longer funny because it hits too close to home. All the conference rooms are in the center of the building making them the coolest, quietest, darkest (with the lights off) rooms - great for meetings and presentations.

Hearing lots of interesting stuff over cubicle walls. I can’t share most of it, I don’t think. All the press releases and media contacts for all the are within earshot. I am working with the web team responsible for the content/design of public websites. Outside of this new building, the working environment at my regular job is much better overall.

Much of the site I’m working on hasn’t been updated in a few years. Many of the contact info is out date, even listing phone numbers from two buildings ago. The organization I’m working with is fairly young by gov’t standards and the structure of the organization still seems to be changing rapidly. There is constant talk about restructuring. Because of this, the website is poorly constructed to reflect the current organization. A big part of my job right now is to track down a point of contact for each major area that will be responsible for their section’s web content.

This is kind of a pain because no one really wants to raise their hand and volunteer. But, it’s mostly a good thing because I am working through the entire headquarters. I had a meeting with some people on Thursday to discuss their portion of the website. Friday I met with an executive officer. Previously I met with civilians, officers, and embedded contractors. I hope to have a professional contact with someone in all the major offices by the end my assignment. That’s a primary goal of mine.

Until next week!

Mighty Mighty Headquarters

I’ve been assigned to a headquarters unit in San Antonio, Texas, for two months. This is the first of a few notes I plan on writing about it.

Just some interesting things that happened since I got here.

The headquarters was just moving into a new building this last week. I was setting up my workstation along with most people that work here normally. I am working on public websites so I am working in Public Affairs Office. In the move to this building there was an apparent free-for-all for monitors and people tried to grab dual monitors for themselves. There is a pretty strict policy against dual monitors here in HQ. Even the computer techie guys don’t get them. Yet, here I show up with dual 24" screens and a laptop to boot. My temporary supervisor here didn't care, but I got a few dirty looks. Especially from those that were shorted even one monitor.

Somebody screwed up a timer or something and the building's AC went off at midnight Saturday night. In the office this morning, it was 87 degrees. They got the AC working a couple hours ago. Public Works saves the day again! It's now down to 78 and the person across the cube from me just put on her sweater.

My office is near the commanders’ suite. As I put my lunch in the fridge in the break room this morning, a one-star general was grabbing some ice water and putting his own lunch away. We compared salads. He said to me that some people think working at HQ is hell and that the temperature in here confirmed it.

I'm going to be doing a lot of content updates to their public website. I will hopefully get to meet every director in HQ. The webmaster and I laid out a pretty good plan to get the content management system (they are currently using Knowledge Dispatch) looking/functioning as it should. I think I should be done by mid to late August. Just the perfect timeframe. I will try to write you guys some notes along the way.