I got to watch my daughter play volleyball this past Saturday...
That's nothing new right?
Except this this time it was Hannah and not Beth.
Hannah had her first club volleyball tournament yesterday and it was one of the most exciting sporting events that I have ever seen. I know I'm a little prejudiced because I'm her father and all daddies think that their kids are amazing but there was more to it than that.
Hannah was nervous, very nervous. She had never played anything like volleyball before and was visibly nervous as we got ready to leave for the tournament. She had her spandex, jersey, court shoes and cover up on. She had her duffle bag packed and ready. She looked like a volleyball player but she was not confident that she could be a volleyball player.
We drove to Pelham High School where the tournament was going to be played and got there a little early. When we went in a couple of the other girls were already there and were milling around in the lobby. Hannah started to get ready to go with her team and warm up.
I guess I need to give a little background here.
Hannah is 11. If you think that's a little young to be playing club volleyball you would be right. Typically, the youngest team at most clubs is a 12 year old team. USAV has rules all the way down to 10 year old but there just aren't that many. Team Sting has had 12 year old teams for a while now but this year they decided to create an 11 year old team due to the number of younger girls who were trying out. Hannah was placed on 11 Black with 8 other girls who range in age from 8 - 11. Most of these girls are playing volleyball because they have a sister, a friend, a cousin or a mother that is playing or has played.
There aren't many clubs with 11 year old divisions so 11 Black was entered in a tournament with 9 other 12 year old teams. This doesn't sound like that big of a difference but in reality when you see the difference in 10 and 11 year old girls and 12 year old girls it is huge. Most of these girls were 4 - 6 inches taller than the girls on 11 Black.
Hannah's team was a year younger than the other girls in the group so they were seeded last in their pool which meant that they had to play first match. The girls took the court and it was obvious that they were all nervous and not sure of themselves or what was about to happen. They started practicing and warming up. Hannah served a few balls and very few of them went over the net. Hannah has been working on her overhand float serve and while she has a good serve she typically is a little short on power.
Finally, the time for the first match came and the girls lined up on the court and got ready to play. The other team served first and the game was started. In tournament pool play typically each team plays two matches against the each of the other teams. After all of the teams have in the pool have played each other the top teams in the pool advance to the elimination bracket and the lower teams in the pool are sent home at the end of pool play. In this tournament the top 4 teams would advance and the last place team would not. The first two matches went about like I expected. The girls played hard but lost convincingly. They were trying act as much like a volleyball player as they could but it very much looked like a team of 10 and 11 year olds playing a team of 12 year olds. The scores were respectable at 25-17, 25-14, etc but the outcome was never in question. Hannah made some digs and missed several as did most of the other girls. Hannah didn't hit any of her serves in the first two matches and most of the other girls serves didn't make it. What was surprising was that 11 Black didn't get discouraged or upset. They did a little cheer after every point just like they have seen the older girls do and kept right on playing. The second match was a little better than the first but basically had the same outcome.
There was a 3 game break after the second match and we noticed that 11 Black had disappeared. The team took the court for the third match and this time they had a new cheer that was original. They had gone out during the break between matches and made up an entirely new cheer. The first game was similar to the first two matches but the girls seemed to be responding better and getting more in tune with the speed of the game. The score was 25-18, their best showing of the day. The second game started and things were going fairly well. The score was 14-11 as Hannah came up to serve. I because nervous since Hannah to this point had not made a serve all day and the coach kept putting her into serve every rotation. I must admit that at this point I questioned why she kept putting her in when she apparently wasn't ready to serve. Hannah stood at the line and one of her other team mates, Grace, came up to her, patted her on the shoulder, and said "good luck, you can do it". The referee blew the whistle to signal Hannah that she could serve. Hannah took a deep breath, tossed the ball in the air and swung. The ball was a line drive serve right down the center of the court. It cleared the net by 12 inches. The ball hit one of the opposing players hands and shanked out of bounds. Ace. Hannah (and every other girl on the team) went nuts. They jumped up and down and screamed and congratulated each other. The mood and energy of the team changed from that point on. These were not the same little kids that played the first two matches. Hannah served two more serves and tied the match at 14-14. The match ended in a loss at 25-20 but something was different. These girls were no longer trying to imitate their mothers, friends and sisters. They had become a volleyball team.
The fourth match started and 11 Black had to play the Team 205 12 year old team. 11 Black took the court again. The nervousness was gone. They were ready to play. 11 Black took the lead and never looked back. Hannah served several in the game and didn't miss any. There were several saves that she made that kept the other team from getting points. All of the parents were cheering for their kids and the girls who weren't playing were cheering their team mates on. Hannah came in to serve at 24-21. Game point. I have seen Beth in this same situation dozens of times but being a new player Hannah has never been in the position with the game on the line that she had to perform. Especially with her serving being a little questionable. She stepped to the line and again her team mates wished her luck. The whistle blew, Hannah tossed the ball and served. Right over the net to the middle of the other court. The other team got a quick dig on the ball and passed it back over the right, right to Hannah who had just gotten back to her position in the back court. She immediately dropped to a knee and passed the ball back up into the air. A quick hit from one of the other girls and the ball went back over the net. The girl on the other side of the court missed her pass and the ball shanked out of bounds. 11 Black had just won their first game. Everyone went nuts. The girls were high fiving each other and jumping and cheering. I will remember the look on Hannah's face. She was as happy as I can ever remember seeing her. The second game against Team 205 started. This time it wasn't the 10 and 11 year olds who looked worried, it was the 12 year olds. The second game went faster than the first and the match ended 25-17. 11 Black never trailed. They had swept Team 205 two game to zero. The wins against Team 205 gave 11 Black enough wins and enough points to place them into 4th in their pool and into the Silver Tournament Bracket.
There was a little time off between matches before the silver bracket match started and the girls sat in a circle with the coach and talked quietly. They were all very happy and proud of how far they had come in a short time. Once all of the pool play matches were finished they found out who was their opponent in the silver match. It was 12 Black. 12 Black is the Team Sting 12 Year Old Elite Team. This is the top rated 12 year old team team for the club. You wouldn't have known it from the faces on 11 Black. They looked like they were ready for anything. The girls warmed up and took the court. The first game started and went back and forth. 11 Black scored nearly point for point with 12 Black. After a few series the score was 11-11. 11 Black trailed by a point or two for most of the match and caught up to tie the score. 12 Black went on a run and made the score 14-11. Then Hannah and Grace went through service and the score was tied again at 15-15. 12 Blacks best server came up to serve and got on a roll. She was able to serve some difficult balls that 11 Black just couldnt field. The score went to 19-15. 11 Black got a point and made it 19-16 but 12 Black went on another run and the game ended at 25-17. I began to feel like maybe 11 Black had met their match.
The second game of the set started similarly to the first and after a few series the score was tied at 15-15 again. 11 Black was playing well and keeping up with 12 Black as best they could. It was as even as it could be between the two teams. Then Hannah came up to serve again. Ace. 16-15. Her next serve wasnt an Ace but it was returned by 11 Black for a point. 17-15. There was as much tension as I have ever felt at a volleyball game. Hannah served the ball but 11 Black failed to return it. 17-16. 12 Black went on a run and the score went to 20-16 in favor of 12 Black. Again it was looking like 12 Black was going to finish it but the 9, 10 and 11 year olds werent quite done yet. They rallied back and made the score 22-20. It was amazing to think that these little kids who had never played volleyball as a team before today were 3 points from beating an elite team that was 1 to 2 or more years older than them. My daughter, who had never stepped on the court to play a game of volleyball, and her friends were 3 points from what would be a huge win for them. They had accomplished an awful lot in a day. They went from being an inexperienced timid group of kids trying to learn a game to being an amazingly effective volleyball team that would make even the best player or coach proud. In the end 12 Black rallied and the game ended 25-23 and 11 Black just missed getting that big win but for their first tournament they accomplished more than anyone could have imagined.
I feel sorry for any 11 (or 12) year old team that they run up against, they wont be expecting 11 Black.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Firing People Sucks...
Im sure that sounds a bit obvious…
We had to let someone go this week. It has been a long time coming and was
totally justified from a business standpoint.
Matter of fact it was over due and we probably let things drag on a lot
longer than we should have. That doesn’t
make it any easier.
As a manager and business owner you often have to do things
that you don’t like. It seems pretty
simple in theory. You have a set of
rules that the company operates by and if an employee fails to observe those
rules you give them a warning, then you give them a more severe warning and
then if it still continues you terminate the employment. In practice it’s a whole lot harder than
that. It’s not black and white.
In this case the employee was fired for repeatedly being
late or missing work altogether without reason.
It has gone on for months and we have had meetings and talks and while
it would get better for a time the employee never complied with the rules of
the company. It was to the point that it
was affecting the other employees and as employers we really didn’t have any
right to reprimand or say anything to the other employees given the attendance
of the other one.
As an example this employee has missed or been late 17 times
since the beginning of the year and we are only half way through March. When you have as few people as we do everyone
is important and everyone is critical to the production of our projects. Engineering is a very deadline based
business. We work on projects and if
those key people working on that project just go missing for a few days in the
middle, it can put the entire project and even the rest of the office in a tail
spin when we have to scramble to cover all of the deadlines and reallocate
people to make sure everything gets done.
None of this makes any difference it still is hard. This is a person and you know that firing
them has ramifications beyond just our company.
You start to think about what you are doing to them and their lives. This person has a family and kids. Will they be able to find another job? Will they be able to get insurance? Will they lose their house and their car? What makes it even worse is that since we are
a small business with 12 (now 11 employees) we are a family. I know these people and care about them and
it hurts to have to let one of them go.
In the end the only consolation that I can offer is that they brought
this on themselves and that we did everything we could to help them and avoid
this.
It still sucks.
Engineering for Dummies
Melinda took over the blogging about noah trachs and CCHS in general and she does a much better job at it than I ever have so I have decided to change the focus of my blog. Im going to focus on engineering and what I have learned running a business. This might not be as interesting as CCHS and Noah but its very relevant to me and what I do. So here goes Chris' Blog 2.0
Friday, April 13, 2012
Spike This (Part 4) - The Good, The Bad and the Swedish
After the middle school volleyball season ended Beth decided she wanted to play more volleyball. I thought volleyball might have been over for us but she really seemed to enjoy playing and wanted to continue. To continue playing in the off season you have to sign up for a club team. As I have learned this is an entirely different animal all together. Actually I have learned a lot of things since the school season ended, like that she just really scratched the surface of this volleyball stuff at school and there was a whole lot more to learn.
We began to investigate different club teams and narrowed our choices down to Alabama Juniors and Team Sting. Beth attended both tryouts and was accepted onto both teams. She decided that she liked Team Sting better, which was fine with me since the training facility was closer to the house. In November they started having workouts and preseason conditioning for the players. These were all held at D1 sports in homewood. Most of the workouts consisted of different exercises to strengthen and condition the players for volleyball.
Volleyball teams are divided into Divisions by age. Beth is 13 and turns 14 in august. This puts her in the 14 and under division. The team that she was placed on was the 14 Local team. We chose a local team this year so that we wouldnt have to do much if any traveling. Initially, she was placed on a team with 6 other girls. As the preseason workouts progressed we were notified that they were merging the 15 Local teams and the 14 local teams to create two 15 year old teams. This was due to the fact that beths team only had 7 players which is a couple short and the 15 local team had 12 players which is too many (did i mention that her school team had 18 players, yikes!!!) When they merged they created a team with 9 players and a team with 10 players which works much better. Beth was placed on the higher level team with mostly 15 year olds.
In December the practices started in earnest and Beth learned that everything she knew was wrong. She found out that she served wrong, she stood wrong and she moved wrong. the process of relearning how to play volleyball again had started. She attended practices twice a week and gradually she got her game back together. She learned how to serve correctly over hand, pass, block and spike.
Club volleyball is a tournament based sport. In beths teams case they practice all season for 4 tournaments. Originally, the first tournament was supposed to be played in February but as it turns out the tournament was overbooked and team sting had to reschedule a new tournament. The first tournament was chosen to be the gadsden volleyball tournament in march. the girls had been practicing for nearly 3 months without playing a real game and were ready to play someone else besides the other team sting teams.
the day of the tournament came...
Needless to say beth was nervous. She hadn't played a volleyball game since late September and had never played a game with team sting. The first tournament was in Gadsden so we got up early the morning of the tournament and got ready to go. The ride was pretty quiet (mainly because we were all still asleep, or wished that we were). We got to gadsden and started and went into the tournament. I ould tell that Beth really was a feeling very nervous. What she didn't know is that I had a surprise for her. Beth loves Swedish Fish. For those of you who don't know what they are, they are these little gummy fish. But they are very stiff, much more so than regular gummy bears. They are also not very sweet. Anyway, I secretly brought her some Swedish fish and I gave them to her before she wnet into the tournament. The effect was immediate, she calmed down and started to smile. She seemed to get her confidence back and went into the school. Beth met up with her coach and her team and they went to start stretching and getting set to play.
The pool play portion of this tournament consisted of four matches for each team. Stings opponents were NASA VBC, Gadsden VBC, Alabama Elite and Southwest Georgia VBC. They played their games well. In the end the team only won 2 of their 8 games but beth played well and went on several sustained serving runs. One of them was 9 consecutive serves and the other was 6. I was very proud of her. I have said before that I never pictured my daughter as the sporty type but she has repeatedly proven me wrong with that. She is one heck of a volleyball player and I am eager to see what she does next.
We began to investigate different club teams and narrowed our choices down to Alabama Juniors and Team Sting. Beth attended both tryouts and was accepted onto both teams. She decided that she liked Team Sting better, which was fine with me since the training facility was closer to the house. In November they started having workouts and preseason conditioning for the players. These were all held at D1 sports in homewood. Most of the workouts consisted of different exercises to strengthen and condition the players for volleyball.
Volleyball teams are divided into Divisions by age. Beth is 13 and turns 14 in august. This puts her in the 14 and under division. The team that she was placed on was the 14 Local team. We chose a local team this year so that we wouldnt have to do much if any traveling. Initially, she was placed on a team with 6 other girls. As the preseason workouts progressed we were notified that they were merging the 15 Local teams and the 14 local teams to create two 15 year old teams. This was due to the fact that beths team only had 7 players which is a couple short and the 15 local team had 12 players which is too many (did i mention that her school team had 18 players, yikes!!!) When they merged they created a team with 9 players and a team with 10 players which works much better. Beth was placed on the higher level team with mostly 15 year olds.
In December the practices started in earnest and Beth learned that everything she knew was wrong. She found out that she served wrong, she stood wrong and she moved wrong. the process of relearning how to play volleyball again had started. She attended practices twice a week and gradually she got her game back together. She learned how to serve correctly over hand, pass, block and spike.
Club volleyball is a tournament based sport. In beths teams case they practice all season for 4 tournaments. Originally, the first tournament was supposed to be played in February but as it turns out the tournament was overbooked and team sting had to reschedule a new tournament. The first tournament was chosen to be the gadsden volleyball tournament in march. the girls had been practicing for nearly 3 months without playing a real game and were ready to play someone else besides the other team sting teams.
the day of the tournament came...
Needless to say beth was nervous. She hadn't played a volleyball game since late September and had never played a game with team sting. The first tournament was in Gadsden so we got up early the morning of the tournament and got ready to go. The ride was pretty quiet (mainly because we were all still asleep, or wished that we were). We got to gadsden and started and went into the tournament. I ould tell that Beth really was a feeling very nervous. What she didn't know is that I had a surprise for her. Beth loves Swedish Fish. For those of you who don't know what they are, they are these little gummy fish. But they are very stiff, much more so than regular gummy bears. They are also not very sweet. Anyway, I secretly brought her some Swedish fish and I gave them to her before she wnet into the tournament. The effect was immediate, she calmed down and started to smile. She seemed to get her confidence back and went into the school. Beth met up with her coach and her team and they went to start stretching and getting set to play.
The pool play portion of this tournament consisted of four matches for each team. Stings opponents were NASA VBC, Gadsden VBC, Alabama Elite and Southwest Georgia VBC. They played their games well. In the end the team only won 2 of their 8 games but beth played well and went on several sustained serving runs. One of them was 9 consecutive serves and the other was 6. I was very proud of her. I have said before that I never pictured my daughter as the sporty type but she has repeatedly proven me wrong with that. She is one heck of a volleyball player and I am eager to see what she does next.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Mediate This...
I was involved in a mediation this past week. That in itself is not that interesting. I mean the process is interesting from a legal stand point. Rather than going to a court like a lawsuit or having a panel of arbitrators and hearing evidence you sit in two different rooms and a mediator goes back and forth trying to negotiate the differences and come to a solution. It reminds me a lot of buying a car. You make an offer to the mediator (your salesman) and he goes to the other party (the sales manager) and tries to get them to accept the deal. When they don't he comes back with a counter offer and so on until one of two things happen; you settle on a deal or you get so tired and pissed that you walk out and decide to take the other party to court. But like i said, that wasn't the interesting part just the setting...
Lets go back in time a little bit...
When I was in high school and college we went to East Lake United Methodist Church. During that time I decided that I was going into engineering for my career and we had a pretty big group of youth that were graduating and going to college around the same time. One of the ministries that developed in the church was a mentoring ministry where an someone in the church would "adopt" one of the college students and help guide them as they went through school. Ideally, the mentor would be in a similar career field to the student so that they could provide relevant experience and advice and possibly even help with contacts and getting a job once you got out of school.
My mentor was Jim Smith (the names have been changed to protect those involved). He was the president of Smith and Jones Engineering which was a local consulting engineering firm that did electrical and mechanical engineering. Mr. Smith and I kept in touch pretty regularly since I was going to school in town and was at church most every weekend. He also made a point of telling me to let him know when I was close to graduating and he would see what we could work out about some sort of job. At the time the economy was not great and the job market for engineers was slow. Finding a job was not easy for newly graduated engineers.
I entered my Junior Year of college and I began to look for a co-op job. In engineering school you are encouraged to take a co-op position in the last couple of years to expand your experience and help get you ready for the "real world". Quite often these co-op positions become permanent positions with many firms like Southern Company, BE&K and Rust (I'm dating myself since most of these companies have changed names). I thought this was the ideal chance to go ahead and let Mr. Smith know that I was getting close to graduation and looking for a co-op job since he had made a point to tell me to get with him when the time was right. I talked to him and explained my desire for a co-op job and he said that they were looking for a couple of co-op positions. I went to their office (by now they had changed their name to BQR Engineering) and met with Mr. Smith. He passed me off to one of the engineers that worked in the mechanical department. I got an interview and a tour of the building. I thought I was on my way. A week went by and I didn't hear anything so I checked with Mr. Smith at church and he said that he would see what was going on. Another week went by and I didn't hear anything. I called him and he told me that they had filled the positions. He said that he was sorry but that it was the mechanical engineers decision and he had chosen someone else. He then told me not to worrry that he would "take care of me" next time and make sure that didnt happen again. I was disappointed but I felt like I still would have a job in a year or so when I got out of school. In the mean time I got a co-op position with the City of Birmingham Engineering Department. We didn't really do that much but I got to do a lot of home work.
Another couple of years passed and graduation was getting close. My co-op job with the City was just a co-op and would end when I graduated so I had to start looking for a "real" job. I remembered what Mr. Smith had told me and called him again thinking that this time would be different and I would have a job that would become a career and I would be able to take care of my new wife and provide for her and the family that we wanted to have. He asked me to come down and talk to him so I did. I went to his office and we had a nice talk and at the end he told me that he didn't have anything right now but that he would call me as soon as a position was available. I told him that was great and that I was willing to do anything to get started. He said that he understood. I left, again thinking that a job was a sure thing and that I would be hired soon. Weeks turned into months and no job ever materialized. Finally, the time was approaching for my wedding to Melinda and i knew that I had to find some job that I would be able to have insurance for us so I finally went to work at Randy's Computers selling computers. In over 2-1/2 years I was unable to get a job doing anything at BQR after virtually being promised a job. The rest is history; I finally got a job at Miller and Weaver and from there joined BBG&S Engineering as a partner.
Back to 2012...
So the week before the mediation the attorney for the side that I was assisting called me to go over the process and told me that the way mediation works is that your party sits on one room and the other party sits in the other room and you rarely if ever see each other and the mediator goes between them negotiating the dispute. This put me at ease a little since the engineering firm that is in the dispute is the one where I tried to get a job and Mr. Smith was the president. Now we work with them on some projects so I have to interact with them on a regular basis. Well of course the first thing that the mediator does is put us in the same room to start. And to make matters worse the president of the company is the one that came to represent them in the mediation. Did I mention that he is the son of the guy that didn't give me a job on two occasions???
Wait...
Why am I upset?
Dont I want to stick it to them a little?
No, thats not the way I am, thats not how I roll.
Well ok I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that enjoyed it a little.
Anyway, it was more awkward than anything. I just didn't like being in the room with them and having to tell them all of the things that their firm screwed up on this project. Its a first for me and I don't hope to repeat the process either as a member of the prosecution or defense.
What I really thought about most of the time was how all of this might have been different if they had given me that job so many years ago. Would I have been the engineer on that project? Would I have been able to make a difference and keep them out of the court proceeding? Would I have been the one making the huge mistakes and costing the company thousands of dollars in legal fees and settlement costs? How would my life and my career been different? How would the reputation of that company been different? These are all interesting questions that I have no answers to?
I just find it very ironic that I was the one who was calling them out on their mistakes and that my testimony is the one that prevented them from getting out of the case and forced them to have to go to mediation and settle. I guess the moral of the story is that you should beware of even making what appear to be small mistakes in life because you never know which ones are going to come back in a big way and bite you in the ass later down the road.
Lets go back in time a little bit...
When I was in high school and college we went to East Lake United Methodist Church. During that time I decided that I was going into engineering for my career and we had a pretty big group of youth that were graduating and going to college around the same time. One of the ministries that developed in the church was a mentoring ministry where an someone in the church would "adopt" one of the college students and help guide them as they went through school. Ideally, the mentor would be in a similar career field to the student so that they could provide relevant experience and advice and possibly even help with contacts and getting a job once you got out of school.
My mentor was Jim Smith (the names have been changed to protect those involved). He was the president of Smith and Jones Engineering which was a local consulting engineering firm that did electrical and mechanical engineering. Mr. Smith and I kept in touch pretty regularly since I was going to school in town and was at church most every weekend. He also made a point of telling me to let him know when I was close to graduating and he would see what we could work out about some sort of job. At the time the economy was not great and the job market for engineers was slow. Finding a job was not easy for newly graduated engineers.
I entered my Junior Year of college and I began to look for a co-op job. In engineering school you are encouraged to take a co-op position in the last couple of years to expand your experience and help get you ready for the "real world". Quite often these co-op positions become permanent positions with many firms like Southern Company, BE&K and Rust (I'm dating myself since most of these companies have changed names). I thought this was the ideal chance to go ahead and let Mr. Smith know that I was getting close to graduation and looking for a co-op job since he had made a point to tell me to get with him when the time was right. I talked to him and explained my desire for a co-op job and he said that they were looking for a couple of co-op positions. I went to their office (by now they had changed their name to BQR Engineering) and met with Mr. Smith. He passed me off to one of the engineers that worked in the mechanical department. I got an interview and a tour of the building. I thought I was on my way. A week went by and I didn't hear anything so I checked with Mr. Smith at church and he said that he would see what was going on. Another week went by and I didn't hear anything. I called him and he told me that they had filled the positions. He said that he was sorry but that it was the mechanical engineers decision and he had chosen someone else. He then told me not to worrry that he would "take care of me" next time and make sure that didnt happen again. I was disappointed but I felt like I still would have a job in a year or so when I got out of school. In the mean time I got a co-op position with the City of Birmingham Engineering Department. We didn't really do that much but I got to do a lot of home work.
Another couple of years passed and graduation was getting close. My co-op job with the City was just a co-op and would end when I graduated so I had to start looking for a "real" job. I remembered what Mr. Smith had told me and called him again thinking that this time would be different and I would have a job that would become a career and I would be able to take care of my new wife and provide for her and the family that we wanted to have. He asked me to come down and talk to him so I did. I went to his office and we had a nice talk and at the end he told me that he didn't have anything right now but that he would call me as soon as a position was available. I told him that was great and that I was willing to do anything to get started. He said that he understood. I left, again thinking that a job was a sure thing and that I would be hired soon. Weeks turned into months and no job ever materialized. Finally, the time was approaching for my wedding to Melinda and i knew that I had to find some job that I would be able to have insurance for us so I finally went to work at Randy's Computers selling computers. In over 2-1/2 years I was unable to get a job doing anything at BQR after virtually being promised a job. The rest is history; I finally got a job at Miller and Weaver and from there joined BBG&S Engineering as a partner.
Back to 2012...
So the week before the mediation the attorney for the side that I was assisting called me to go over the process and told me that the way mediation works is that your party sits on one room and the other party sits in the other room and you rarely if ever see each other and the mediator goes between them negotiating the dispute. This put me at ease a little since the engineering firm that is in the dispute is the one where I tried to get a job and Mr. Smith was the president. Now we work with them on some projects so I have to interact with them on a regular basis. Well of course the first thing that the mediator does is put us in the same room to start. And to make matters worse the president of the company is the one that came to represent them in the mediation. Did I mention that he is the son of the guy that didn't give me a job on two occasions???
Wait...
Why am I upset?
Dont I want to stick it to them a little?
No, thats not the way I am, thats not how I roll.
Well ok I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that enjoyed it a little.
Anyway, it was more awkward than anything. I just didn't like being in the room with them and having to tell them all of the things that their firm screwed up on this project. Its a first for me and I don't hope to repeat the process either as a member of the prosecution or defense.
What I really thought about most of the time was how all of this might have been different if they had given me that job so many years ago. Would I have been the engineer on that project? Would I have been able to make a difference and keep them out of the court proceeding? Would I have been the one making the huge mistakes and costing the company thousands of dollars in legal fees and settlement costs? How would my life and my career been different? How would the reputation of that company been different? These are all interesting questions that I have no answers to?
I just find it very ironic that I was the one who was calling them out on their mistakes and that my testimony is the one that prevented them from getting out of the case and forced them to have to go to mediation and settle. I guess the moral of the story is that you should beware of even making what appear to be small mistakes in life because you never know which ones are going to come back in a big way and bite you in the ass later down the road.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
2011 A Golden Retrospective
2011 was a very eventful year. I think that it will be remembered by the Golden family as a good year. If you havent been there for the blow by blow this is a recap of the highlights.
Noah: At the beginning of 2011 Noah was getting over the flu and his 3 day hospital stay. From that point on to the end of this year he has been awesome. He hasnt had to have oxygen at all this year and we have controlled his CCHS with nothing more than adjustments to his ventilation rate. For my Non-CCHS friends that is a huge achievement. He has had colds and minor illnesses but we have managed them and due in a large part to a correctly functioning CO2 monitor we are able to accurately measure his CO2 and make the appropritate changes to his ventilator.
Noah has transitioned from using an HME (artifical nose) to a Passy Muir valve and then to a full cap over the course of this year. We now wear the cap on a daily basis. As documented in prvious blog posts, the use of the cap has helped his speech and breathing tremendously. He now knows most of his alphabet and all of his colors. His speech is getting more distinct. This has caused us to lose most of our therapists and for them to declare him on track developmentally with a normal 2 year old. Again that is truly amazing considering where he started from.
On the developmental side Noah has learned to walk and then to run. He is now working on the daunting task of going up and down stairs. My hard headed son has tried to escape from his bed by diving out and learned that this is not the best way to get up in the morning. Noah is also en expert at using an Iphone. He can find it, unlock it and change screens to find his favorite games.
We were once told by one of the doctors that they couldn't say that they felt good about Noah and his prognosis. I'd love to see how he feels about him now.
Hannah: 2011 has been a good year for Hannah too. She has started to transition from a child to a young lady. She has the biggest heart of anyone that I have ever met. She continues to get better at piano and did exceptionally well at the first recital with her new piano teacher. In school, she was evaluated for the RLC (gifted program) program and accepted. She now goes to RLC every Monday and is really enjoying it too. She also is the best big sister that a little brother could have.
Beth: What can I say about Beth... 2011 has been the year of volleyball plain and simple. The year started with Beth deciding that she wanted to play on the school team and then practicing like a mad woman to make the team. Then once the school season was over she decided that she wanted to play on a club team and she went out for that and made it too. So as I write this we are in the beginning of the club season. It will be interesting to see if her new love of volleyball will be something that remains through 2012 and beyond. She has also developed from a young lady into a young woman and is preparing for high school. She is also working on her application for Jefferson County International Baccalaureate high school. She continues to amaze and impress me with her determination.
As a family we went to Disney World this year. We went before in 2008 and had a blast and we all decided that it was time to go back. We were concerned with how Noah would hold up to the heat and the walking required since Disney World is part amusement park and part marathon. He did excellent. Our only gripe was that we had to push the trip back couple of weeks and it turned out to be a hot week. Next time we go we are thinking that we will try for a Thanksgiving trip rather than a summer trip. The family is already talking about the "next" visit.
I hope that 2012 will be as healthy and fun as 2011 was. I look forward to finding out. So we say goodbye to 2011 but we will always have the 12,223 pictures that Melinda (and I) took during the course of the year to remember it by. Here's to a happy and prosperous 2012.
Noah: At the beginning of 2011 Noah was getting over the flu and his 3 day hospital stay. From that point on to the end of this year he has been awesome. He hasnt had to have oxygen at all this year and we have controlled his CCHS with nothing more than adjustments to his ventilation rate. For my Non-CCHS friends that is a huge achievement. He has had colds and minor illnesses but we have managed them and due in a large part to a correctly functioning CO2 monitor we are able to accurately measure his CO2 and make the appropritate changes to his ventilator.
Noah has transitioned from using an HME (artifical nose) to a Passy Muir valve and then to a full cap over the course of this year. We now wear the cap on a daily basis. As documented in prvious blog posts, the use of the cap has helped his speech and breathing tremendously. He now knows most of his alphabet and all of his colors. His speech is getting more distinct. This has caused us to lose most of our therapists and for them to declare him on track developmentally with a normal 2 year old. Again that is truly amazing considering where he started from.
On the developmental side Noah has learned to walk and then to run. He is now working on the daunting task of going up and down stairs. My hard headed son has tried to escape from his bed by diving out and learned that this is not the best way to get up in the morning. Noah is also en expert at using an Iphone. He can find it, unlock it and change screens to find his favorite games.
We were once told by one of the doctors that they couldn't say that they felt good about Noah and his prognosis. I'd love to see how he feels about him now.
Hannah: 2011 has been a good year for Hannah too. She has started to transition from a child to a young lady. She has the biggest heart of anyone that I have ever met. She continues to get better at piano and did exceptionally well at the first recital with her new piano teacher. In school, she was evaluated for the RLC (gifted program) program and accepted. She now goes to RLC every Monday and is really enjoying it too. She also is the best big sister that a little brother could have.
Beth: What can I say about Beth... 2011 has been the year of volleyball plain and simple. The year started with Beth deciding that she wanted to play on the school team and then practicing like a mad woman to make the team. Then once the school season was over she decided that she wanted to play on a club team and she went out for that and made it too. So as I write this we are in the beginning of the club season. It will be interesting to see if her new love of volleyball will be something that remains through 2012 and beyond. She has also developed from a young lady into a young woman and is preparing for high school. She is also working on her application for Jefferson County International Baccalaureate high school. She continues to amaze and impress me with her determination.
As a family we went to Disney World this year. We went before in 2008 and had a blast and we all decided that it was time to go back. We were concerned with how Noah would hold up to the heat and the walking required since Disney World is part amusement park and part marathon. He did excellent. Our only gripe was that we had to push the trip back couple of weeks and it turned out to be a hot week. Next time we go we are thinking that we will try for a Thanksgiving trip rather than a summer trip. The family is already talking about the "next" visit.
I hope that 2012 will be as healthy and fun as 2011 was. I look forward to finding out. So we say goodbye to 2011 but we will always have the 12,223 pictures that Melinda (and I) took during the course of the year to remember it by. Here's to a happy and prosperous 2012.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
All I want for Christmas is a Toothpaste Cap...
Its amazing how the simplest things can be what gives you the greatest pleasure.
Think about small children at Christmas and Birthdays. What do they always play with the most? Its not the fancy clothes or the new trendy toys with the kung fu grip. Its the wrapping paper and the ribbons that most kids play with and enjoy the most.
The same is true with Noah and his progress.
We have been working for the past couple of years to get him to wear his speaking valve and we thought for a while that it would never happen. Finally over this past summer, literally overnight, he decides that it is something he wants to do and he starts wearing it. His speech improved remarkably over a matter of just a few weeks. It improved so remarkably that one of his speech therapists declared that he was caught up and another reduced his sessions to one a month. This in itself is a huge accomplishment.
However, Noah's tenure with the speaking valve didn't last very long.
When Noah went back for his October clinic visit they were so impressed with how well he was wearing the speaking valve that they decided to try giving him a full cap.
For my non-trach and vent friends the speaking valve is a plastic cap that goes on the end of the trach and has a small flap of plastic in it. it will allow air in but not out. So since speaking is a process of exhaling (try talking while breathing in) it allows him to speak nearly normally but he doesn't breathe through his mouth and nose. The cap is just a small plastic cap that covers the trach entirely and closes it off so that all breathing (in and out) is through the mouth and nose (like normal). It looks like the cap to a tube of Crest Toothpaste.
We tried to get the doctors to let us try a cap on Noah in previous clinic visits since he wasnt tolerating the speaking valve. They were not in favor and even though they humored us once and let him try it, they were quick to deem it "unsuccessful" and sent us away capless.
This time the doctor covered Noahs trach and he fussed about it but she decided to let Melinda try it and Noah was perfectly happy. They gave us a few caps (that I am sure they got from toothpaste tubes that they had lying around and just sterilized and then sold for $300 each) and sent us home.
If we were impressed with the progress Noah made with the speaking valve that was nothing compared to the explosion of speech and new behaviors and unexpected helpful side effects that came from using the cap.
His speech has gotten remarkably better. Words that he learned to say while wearing the speaking valve have become clearer and much more understandable and he now uses many two word phrases. He is still a picky eater but he is getting much better and eating much more that he used to. We are really starting to push the table food now. The most entertaining benefit is that he has learned how to yell. I mean really yell. His favorite thing to yell is "DIE!!!!". I'm not sure why or where he picked that up from. We don't frequently scream "DIE" in our house, well we didn't use to. Now we do because its fun to get him going. I'm sure we will regret that later.
The benefits of the cap arent just developmental either. We usually had to suction his trach once or twice a day (which isnt that much) but now we will go days without suctioning him since he is wearing the cap. Also, his oxygen saturation and CO2 levels are much higher when he sleeps. Typically when he sleeps his saturation would dip to the mid to low 90s at times (anything below 90 is bad) and his CO2 levels would drift up into the 40s (anything higher than 50 is bad). Now when he wears the cap most of the day his saturation stays 98-100 most all of the time and his CO2 stays in the mid 30's, both of which are excellent. I dont know the medical reason that the body works better when you breathe the way that God intended but it seems that he did know a thing or two about how to build a human.
So this year we have gotten our Christmas present early. It wasn't big and fancy. It was a tiny little (toothpaste) cap that came with a huge amount of progress.
Think about small children at Christmas and Birthdays. What do they always play with the most? Its not the fancy clothes or the new trendy toys with the kung fu grip. Its the wrapping paper and the ribbons that most kids play with and enjoy the most.
The same is true with Noah and his progress.
We have been working for the past couple of years to get him to wear his speaking valve and we thought for a while that it would never happen. Finally over this past summer, literally overnight, he decides that it is something he wants to do and he starts wearing it. His speech improved remarkably over a matter of just a few weeks. It improved so remarkably that one of his speech therapists declared that he was caught up and another reduced his sessions to one a month. This in itself is a huge accomplishment.
However, Noah's tenure with the speaking valve didn't last very long.
When Noah went back for his October clinic visit they were so impressed with how well he was wearing the speaking valve that they decided to try giving him a full cap.
For my non-trach and vent friends the speaking valve is a plastic cap that goes on the end of the trach and has a small flap of plastic in it. it will allow air in but not out. So since speaking is a process of exhaling (try talking while breathing in) it allows him to speak nearly normally but he doesn't breathe through his mouth and nose. The cap is just a small plastic cap that covers the trach entirely and closes it off so that all breathing (in and out) is through the mouth and nose (like normal). It looks like the cap to a tube of Crest Toothpaste.
We tried to get the doctors to let us try a cap on Noah in previous clinic visits since he wasnt tolerating the speaking valve. They were not in favor and even though they humored us once and let him try it, they were quick to deem it "unsuccessful" and sent us away capless.
This time the doctor covered Noahs trach and he fussed about it but she decided to let Melinda try it and Noah was perfectly happy. They gave us a few caps (that I am sure they got from toothpaste tubes that they had lying around and just sterilized and then sold for $300 each) and sent us home.
If we were impressed with the progress Noah made with the speaking valve that was nothing compared to the explosion of speech and new behaviors and unexpected helpful side effects that came from using the cap.
His speech has gotten remarkably better. Words that he learned to say while wearing the speaking valve have become clearer and much more understandable and he now uses many two word phrases. He is still a picky eater but he is getting much better and eating much more that he used to. We are really starting to push the table food now. The most entertaining benefit is that he has learned how to yell. I mean really yell. His favorite thing to yell is "DIE!!!!". I'm not sure why or where he picked that up from. We don't frequently scream "DIE" in our house, well we didn't use to. Now we do because its fun to get him going. I'm sure we will regret that later.
The benefits of the cap arent just developmental either. We usually had to suction his trach once or twice a day (which isnt that much) but now we will go days without suctioning him since he is wearing the cap. Also, his oxygen saturation and CO2 levels are much higher when he sleeps. Typically when he sleeps his saturation would dip to the mid to low 90s at times (anything below 90 is bad) and his CO2 levels would drift up into the 40s (anything higher than 50 is bad). Now when he wears the cap most of the day his saturation stays 98-100 most all of the time and his CO2 stays in the mid 30's, both of which are excellent. I dont know the medical reason that the body works better when you breathe the way that God intended but it seems that he did know a thing or two about how to build a human.
So this year we have gotten our Christmas present early. It wasn't big and fancy. It was a tiny little (toothpaste) cap that came with a huge amount of progress.
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