Learning to Serve God by Serving Others

Doing service projects is an important part of who our family is, and one we are doing again this year is delivering food and gifts to families in need on Christmas Eve so they can have a Christmas dinner with their family.  A couple weeks ago we dropped off some food and other items requested by City Union Mission, and then their volunteers work to put together packages for each qualifying recipient.  Each one gets a turkey (it got cut off in the picture), a box of food, and some Christmas gifts.  So today we arrived at the Mission to collect the items to take to two different families.  Everything is already packaged, boxed, or wrapped, so we just need to deliver it to the families.  They gave us the addresses, and then we drove to each house to meet them and deliver everything.  We are welcome to stay as little or as long as is appropriate or desired, then say a prayer with the family if they are okay with it, and then we leave.  The first house was a Hispanic woman who had two little boys a little older than Joshua, and they had a new litter of adorable baby chihuahuas.  I was worried I was accidentally going to step on one and crush it, but I barely avoided causing that pre-Christmas heartbreak.  The second family had a baby who was a few months old, and they didn't have a car seat for him, so that's what the big box is in the picture.  They were another sweet family, and it was a pleasant experience.  This is somewhat of a stepping-out-in-faith service project for us, as we go into very poor neighborhoods and into houses of people we don't know (all recipients are heavily vetted by the Mission, so there is almost no actual risk to us), which can be uncomfortable since they are strangers, and sometimes the recipients feel ashamed of their houses or situations.  But we believe Christ calls us all to serve others, which is an important pillar of what Meghan and I want our family to be and do.  So it helps us to continue to teach our children that this is something we value and that is important to us and to God, and it also helps us grow in our own faith by stepping outside of our comfort zone to do it.

Shatto Tour

Today we had plans to go to the Shatto farm to take a tour with Alaina and Halie. This didn't exactly work out because when we got in the car, I realized Clara's car seat was so loose that I could take it half way out of the car, which is definitely not safe. Jason fixed it, but by the time we got there, we were about 30 min late. I thought we'd be okay because they said to allow two hours for the tour, but I found out that the tour lasted 30 min and the other 1.5 hours was to allow time in the gift shop. So I started out feeling really disappointed, but it actually ended up being pretty great. We started out tasting many milk flavors. They were all pretty great, though I wasn't a huge fan of French Vanilla.

We also tasted some cheese and butters. Hannah wasn't sure about this blue Royals cheese, but she ended up approving. She likes cheese far more than my other kids who are a bit iffy on it, so that was no surprise. We also bought milk shakes. For the kids I got it made with cotton candy milk and for me I chose root beer milk (that and coffee milk are my favorites). They were delish. I generally don't drink milk and don't like it. However, this milk tastes so good and fresh, I actually do really like it.

After tasting, we went out to the parking lot and had a tailgate picnic since the picnic area was super muddy from all the rain. 

Then we went back to the gift shop to buy some milk to bring home, including some Royals milk that we brought home to Jason. We had a super fun time even though we didn't get to see the cows. I think we'll try to go back some time to actually experience the full tour.

Pumpkin Carving Party

Our friends the Hansons have hosted a pumpkin carving party for years, always inviting us.  This year I decided Joshua was old enough to do it, so I took him and Clara. We stopped to get a pumpkin on the way (the selection was not ideal).  At the party there was a lot of great food, including a delicious pumpkin cheesecake that Clara couldn't stop eating, which is how you know it's really good.  Then we carved the pumpkin.  Our pumpkin had been commandeered by someone else, but Jason had an extra one that he lent to us.  I asked Joshua for his input on the design, but and chose various facial features from the other ones that had already been carved, and I dutifully drew the outlines on the pumpkin.  I then cut out the top, and removed the innards.  Joshua really enjoyed using his hand to dig out the goop and throw it in a pile.  It was disgustingly awesome to him.  I then cut out the face, and he helped me carve.  The resulting face looks more surprised than scary, but were happy with it.  Joshua also enjoyed exploring the premisis, where he found a helmet that he thought was a football helmet (it wasn't), and what he thought was a couple dog bones, which Jason informed him were actually deer antlers.  Joshua was really pumped about both findings, and especially about combining them into a single horned-helmet thing.  We had a great time, and we'll definitely plan to go back next year.

Going Back to the Pumpkin Patch

Today I took the kids to Faulkner's Pumpkin Farm, which is a pumpkin patch in Missouri.  We went there last year as a family, and it was a pretty good fit for our kids.  The first thing you see are the animals.   New this year was a zebra, replacing the camel from last year, though you couldn't pet him.  Most of the other ones were pettable, including the Brahma bull that Joshua really liked.

This poor alpaca was there last year too, and it seems he has not gotten any more attractive over the past year.  In addition to his embarrassing haircut, because of his teeth and the way he chews, he looks like possibly the dumbest animal that has ever lived.  He's probably not the dumbest ever, but I bet he's not the brightest animal on the farm either.

We then took a break for lunch.  There were a lot of bees flying around, and they were very interested in the Sprites with one sipping from the top and then falling inside the can.  We decided to abandon that one.

We then explored the different activities around the farm.  They pumped the water pumps to push some rubber duckies along a path, then went through a corn maze (where one of the rules was that you had to have your hands behind your back), and then posed at the obligatory display that they hope you take a picture of and share with your friends on Facebook so they want to come next year.

There was a small train pulled by a guy driving a tractor, and the kids really enjoyed riding around in it.

As we were about to leave, I realized I didn't have a good picture of the kids together.  I put them on a bench, but I guess it was facing the sun too much, because the picture didn't work out as I'd imagined.  It's like I ended up with Think No Evil, Be Crabby, See No Evil.  I then relocated us to the place where you can pick out pumpkins and plopped them on a hay bale.  As you can see, it wasn't much better.  They were so tired and so ready to go home, that getting a great picture was a lost cause.

So I decided maybe I would have them hold pumpins, and that would solve everything.  Instead, that solved nothing, as they were not interested in complying, but there were insterested in trying to lift up the pumpkins, cover their faces, and accidentally drop them on the ground.  Oh well.  We still had a very fun day overall and will definitely consider going back again next year.

The Golden Years

This will be a long post, and it's mostly for my own purposes to document this information somewhere, but maybe some people will find it interesting.

When I started in Customer Support, I just wanted to have a job that paid decently well and that I at least somewhat enjoyed doing every day, and I did.  The office was a great environment.  I really liked Brian, my manager, and later Keyur after I moved to an advanced team, though he wasn't in our office.  The team in Kansas was small, as most of the Support team was in California.  Initially, the team was just Dennis, Kiley, Steve, Drew, and me, and soon Kevin joined as well.  Steve, Drew, and Kevin became great friends and are still three of my closest friends even today.  Later others joined, including Connor, Mitch, Trevor, Phil, Derek, Patrick, Ryan, Jeffrey, Matthew, Bruce, Jesse, and others.  We had such a fun group of guys in the office, that it was always enjoyable to be there, because you knew you could strike up a fun and nerdy conversation at any time.

As far as the job itself, I liked working with the product.  Our product was a powerful software application that provided useful business functionality and was very configurable and extensible, which made it fun to work with, and fun to try to troubleshoot and reproduce issues.  I also really enjoyed working with our customers to help solve their problems.  Some were general questions, or maybe some small part of some report wasn't working quite right.  But some were critical production-down issues at major banks, where tens of thousands of dollars were being lost every hour during the downtime, and the bank's CTO was alerted to the problem, and it was up to me to, as quickly as possible, diagnose and resolve the issue (it should be noted that often the root cause of the problem was not with our software, but because our software was failing, we had to figure out what other product was actually the root cause).   There were often high-pressure situations, but I enjoyed them, as my even-keel, no-stress personality worked in my favor to allow me to quickly work through the issues despite the urgency and pressure of the situation.  I wasn't assigned to those high-profile cases at the beginning, but pretty early on in my career I was moved up to the team that took the toughest and most urgent cases and worked with the most sensitive customers.  At the end of my time in Support, I was the Platinum Support account manager, meaning I personally managed the accounts of the customers who paid the most money for the highest level of Support.  I really enjoyed that role, and I found that technical account management was something that I was skilled at and something that I found rewarding.

In 2006, one of the CSEs left Support to join the Sales team as a Sales Engineer.  He told me about how it was to be in that role, and I decided I wanted to do that as the next phase of my career.  It's hard to get into Sales if you have no Sales experience, but I had a natural "in", because I knew everything about the product that I would be selling.  Sales Engineering management knew of me, and they were very excited that I wanted to be an SE, so the hiring/transfer process was very quick, and in February 2007 I became a Sales Engineer.  My main responsibility was to work with a Sales Rep (who did the pure sales part of the process) to support them from the technical side.  Companies aren't going to spend 5, 6, or even 7 figures on a software product unless they are convinced of its technical merits, and Sales Reps are not equipped to do that, but the SEs are.  So that's what I did.  I worked with the Sales Reps to move opportunities through the sales cycle by doing anything that required technical skills, whether it was a product demo, a proof of concept, or just a technical conversation.  And the stakes were high, as most of these opportunities were for $100k to $300k, and some were upwards of a million dollars.  For a small-ish company like ours, that's a lot of money.

I've loved this job.  First, it's exciting.  It's thrilling to be part of the sales process, strategically determining the proper way to position the product from a technical standpoint to convince the customer that we were the right solution.  And because our product is really, really good, I don't have to make things up.  Our product is awesome, so it's been my job to ensure they realize this and that it's a better solution than our competitors.  That also feeds into one of my innate loves: competition and winning.  I get to compete against others (other companies and specifically other technical sales teams at those companies) in order to win.  And I love winning.  Every time we win a deal, especially when it's mostly because of the technical capabilities of the product, it's a thrilling, satisfying feeling.  It's also been nice to have an increase over what Support pays, which is probably less than it should be, and to get commission.  I don't get paid anywhere near what the Sales Reps make in terms of commission, but I get something, and that's always a nice feeling to have money come in that was unexpected and not budgeted for, as opposed to Support where you know your paycheck down to the penny, as it never changes.

I've gotten to go places and see things that I otherwise never would have seen.  On business trips I got to go to New York City multiple times, I finally saw a Cubs game in Wrigley Field, I got to see my first NBA game, and I got to see a ton of MLB games.  I spent most of my time in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, and Milwaukee, but I got to go all over the country.  I spent a lot of time in Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Indiana, but I also occasionally got to go places outside my normal territory like Vancouver, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Lake Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Arkansas, Fargo, Toronto, Baltimore, and Connecticut.  I've basically been able to travel the country for free, seeing tons of different things and different places, eating great food, meeting interesting people, and experiencing different cultures.  People always ask me why I enjoy traveling for work, and that's a big part of it.  I'm really very thankful that I've been able to have these experiences.

Meghan and I have also gotten some great trips out of it.  When the Sales Reps I work with make their quota, we both get invited to President's Club.  So Meghan and I got to go to the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island, Bahamas in 2008, the Red Rock Resort and Casino in 2011, and Maui this year.  All of them were all-expenses-paid trips.  Free vacations are always nice.  And we even had a partially-paid vacation to San Diego.

And then there is the people and the culture.  We're a California-based company, which typically means things are more casual and more fun.  Our CEO made some business decisions at times that weren't ideal, but he did maintain a fun culture that we all loved.  He even spent much of an event one time carrying around baby Joshua.  We have a Sales and Marketing Kickoff every year, which is so much fun for me.  We learn a lot, but there are always fun events and parties and chances to hang out with my friends.  We also have technical trainings, which can be grueling, but I still love them due to all the time I get to spend with my colleagues, many of whom are friends.  I have colleagues from the Sales, Marketing, and Professional Services side that I always enjoy seeing at these events, including Rob, Mica, Pierre, another Pierre, Michelle, Steve, another Steve, Mark, Aamir, Marnie, and others.  This is in additional to all the Sales Reps I work with regularly, including Ben and Aaron, Jay, Jim, and others.  And on top of that, I've even really liked my management.  My direct manager while I've been an SE (until this February), Dylan, has been a friend, despite actually being my supervisor.  We got along so well together and spent so much time hanging out, even going to baseball games together by ourselves when on the road, separate from company events.  He has even hosted events at his cabin for our team.  His boss and my VP, David, has always been great.  He supports all of us and has our back for everything.  He does a great job running our organization.  The whole SE organization is great.  We have a super talented team, and we all work well together, and we all have fun together.

So I've been so thankful to have been at Actuate for these past 12.5 years.  And the 8.5 years that I've been an SE has been so much fun and so rewarding and so instrumental in the development of my professional skills, that it's hard to imagine a better experience that I could have had.

Happy Birthday to Me!

 Today was my birthday. We started the celebration in the afternoon when we did gifts. I got a few things, but the thing I was really excited about was this bag. I go to the library a lot and I check out a lot of books and videos. For the kids mainly. I am more of a kindle girl. But because I get so many all the time, I really need a bag and I was using a reusable shopping bag that was getting torn from the heavy books. So I am super excited to have this tote, mainly for the library, but also because I think a bag this size will come in handy for various things with the kids as well.

After gifts, we had cake. I had told Jason I wanted caked from "Nothing Bundt Cakes" again, just like last year. I didn't remember which flavors I liked best, unfortunately, but Jason got an assortment. I am documenting here that lemon is the winner, but all of them were good.

After cake, Halie came and Jason and I went to dinner at Capital Grille, because I like a good steak on my birthday. We really enjoyed the meal and the date night. Since it was my birthday, the waiter took a picture of us. Unfortunately I could not keep my eyes open at all and, after about five takes, this was the best we could get and I have a really weird look on my face from the strain of forcing my eyes open. It was a fun birthday.

J and A at the K

 Mom and Ron had tickets to the Royals game today that they couldn't use.  The offered them to me and Andrew to go to the game.  We're two Royals fans who love going to games at the K, but who are really busy and hardly ever get the opportunity, so we were really grateful to have the opportunity.

Andrew and I are great at making up games out of nothing.  We decided to use our tailgating time to do just that.  So we brought a bunch of different things with us, knowing we could make something up on the fly.  We had beanbags, frisbees, cardboard boxes, wastebaskets, flower pots, etc.  Basically we just wanted some things to throw, and a wide variety of things to throw them into.  After parking, we quickly devised a game using all of the supplies we had.  It was a point-based tossing game, with different points for different targets based on difficulty based on size, shape, and distance.  We had so much fun doing it, that we actually spent the first couple innings of the game continuing to play before making our way into the game.

The weather was great, and we had some good food, including the Cheesy Corn Brisket-Acho that I had which was great.  Kris Medlen did not have a good night, and the Royals ended up losing to the Indians, unfortunately.  But they already have the division wrapped up, so now they are just battling the Blue Jays for home field advantage in the playoffs, which after tonight's loss, it's not looking good for the Royals to secure that, but it's still possible.

After the game, we went back to Andrew's house, and we modified our game and created new variations, include a HORSE-based one, which works in almost any situation.  The driveway looked either like the remants of a pretty great party, or like a place that someone was storing their useless trash, but it worked great for us, and everything had a purpose.

We had a really great evening and night.  I feel really blessed to have the step-brothers and brothers-in-law that I do, as I really like every one of them.  Andrew and I get along so well and always have fun together, so it was awesome to be able to spend that much time hanging out together and getting to go to a game to see the team we both love.  We are both super busy, but we resolved to go to at least one Royals game together per season going forward, and to really make an effort to get together more often throughout the year.