The afternoon had some unexpected occurrences. I got a telephone call from someone telling me that Bob Frankston and I were going to receive an honor next year (can't announce which, but I don't think most of my readers would know it offhand) and he wanted to know if I could show up for it. A call out of the blue like this was a surprise and very humbling. Of course, as often happens, it's for creating VisiCalc 20+ years ago. I remembered to pick up the camera during the call and point it at my face:
Getting good news on the phone
Buzz, our Chief Software Architect, came in for a discussion about something. In the middle of our talk, Julie Ann, our receptionist, came in with an unexpected package that had just arrived. I opened the box as Buzz snapped away. It was a gift basket from one of our Trellix Web Express partners that was about to go live. I carried it into CEO Don Bulens' office and saw he had one, too. We decided we'd give them both to people on the team that actually directly led the effort to make the partnership successful. Sharon, whom I talked with first thing in the morning, got mine later that night.
Surprise gift basket from happy corporate partner to celebrate opening their private label installation of Trellix Web Express to the public
I went over to meet with Pavel, who's working on a special research project with me about a product capability we can use to add functionality to Trellix Web Express.
Pavel showing me his latest
My emails with Garret Vreeland about BTC got me to thinking. I was recommending creating web photojournals with lots of cropped, sized pictures. I could recommend that because it was real easy for me to create web sites that way due to the features of Trellix Web, our Windows product. Others, using other weblog-oriented tools, might not have as easy a time. Why not let others who signed up for BTC, who don't have it, use Trellix Web if they want? Well, a minor issue. Many webloggers who could use Trellix Web would need our $69 "publish to any web hoster" version, since their web sites were not on hosters we had deals with such that we normally provide free copies. I needed to get permission from marketing to offer the free copies (and free shipping), then let Garret know about it so he could let others know (if he felt it was worth doing).
This reason meant it was time to do one of my daily trips to the other offices Trellix has in the building. Administration, marketing, sales, and support, among others, are up there (we have about 120 people total). Unfortunately, it's down the hall past the cafeteria, up the stairs, and over a bit further, so it takes a few minutes. Walk, walk, walk.
Up the stairs to the second floor
Here is our main entrance. One of our " Tell the World"-TV boxes sits outside the door ready for Fedex.
Main entrance from outside, Julie Ann at her desk
Here's one of our conference rooms upstairs, the big one:
A conference room
I stopped by to say hi to Barbara, the first person I hired when the venture capitalists initially said "yes" to us and gave Trellix a small loan. She runs all the office stuff for us. I also talked to Patrick, our "Emperor of Enlightenment" (head of PR) and other marketing people for permission for the offer. (I also talked about other things, of course.) Finally, I talked to Janel for details about logistics. She told me how to work it out with Julie Ann who'd do the fulfillment. (Janel's was a "hold camera behind the back" picture. You can see my shirt on the left.)
Barbara, Patrick, and Janel
Here's a picture of one of the boxes with the CDs we'd ship under Janel's desk, and Julie Ann's desk in the reception area:
Trellix Web disks, reception
Now it was time to go back downstairs to write up the offer and send Garret mail. He posted a link to my page about it.
Looking down the first floor hall towards our offices
Back upstairs to a staff meeting. You can learn about these people on the Trellix corporate web site " Management Team" page. (There are links to individual pages with humorous photos there, and links to their personal web sites.)
Steve, Myron, Peter, Eric, Buzz, Don, Bob, and me at a staff meeting
Meeting over. Back downstairs. Time to sync my Palm, and make some calls.
Syncing Palm, using the phone
As I did some work, I decided to get a picture of me at my computer so you could have an image of what I look like when I work on my web sites. I used the self-timer. This first one is my favorite (so I reproduce it here at full resolution):
Me at work
I tried another angle by placing the camera on a box on my desk:
Finally, at almost exactly 24 hours after I started, I took a picture of me responding to an email that just came in. It was a letter from a coworker of one of the people I shared a panel with recently. She wanted some more details about the panel. As an aside, it turns out she is a close relative of a well-known person in the computer industry. From my personal web site she saw that I had worked on the same project as he did many years ago. She asked whether I had seen him since. I responded with more information about the panel and that I had run into him a lot. Small world.
Emailing at the 24-hour mark
That's it! 67 pictures to show you what my day is like. While it's not the most interesting thing, I'm glad I did it so I have a record. Now when a friend or relative asks "What's your typical day like?", I can just say "See it on my web site".
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