“Well. Yeah. It can last that long if you want it to”  I said.

I tried not to steer him away from using it again. Primarily because I’m not too concerned (he’ll forget about it in a day or two) and it’s not worth fighting a six year old over a piece of paper. We usually have a battle about something small and inconsequential each evening. So I’ll leave the paper towel out on his chair to help keep the self driven angst to a minimum.

I. Summary

Office professional with experience in office management, corporate accounting, sales support, and purchasing

II. Work History

Sales Assistant, Midwest Sign and Screen printing Supply Co., October 2007 — June 2009

Sales Assistant to four outside sales representatives and Branch Sales and Marketing Manager. Created, submitted, and logged equipment proposals for customers. Reported and tracked sales calls by sales representative. Managed all outgoing and incoming customer and prospect correspondence. Planned, coordinated, and oversaw monthly open houses. Processed and responded to all marketing leads provided by vendors directly and through Corporate marketing department. Reported meeting minutes and other various information to Corporate office in St. Paul, MN. Managed correspondence to customers and prospects Copy-edited outgoing proposals. Reviewed all customer/prospect communication to ensure proper punctuation and maintain consistency with corporate image. Created price sheets Created sales spreadsheet template adopted company-wide Played a key role in creating focused proposal for a local printing chain Migrated sales calls from a antiquated dictation system to voice mail.

Financial Controls Specialist, Student Assistance Foundation, April 2004 — August 2007

Balanced outstanding payment suspense account daily. Reconciled F/C Remittance bank account against accounting register report monthly. Researched and worked borrower suspense items daily, applying or refunding payments. Verified outstanding potential refunds queue, applying payments to borrowers’ accounts or refunding payments to borrowers. Reviewed requests for reapplication of payments and made necessary adjustments to accounts. Created, designed, and implemented procedures for daily balancing. Assisted in preparing and monitoring items for permanent records management. A/R Reporting Specialist, Heritage Propane, August 2002 — April 2004 Managed and disbursed monthly accounts receivable reports to five regional districts covering more than 350 retail outlets. Established a process for generating ACH debit payments. Created and produced a wide variety of reports within Crystal Reports and Excel to show customer flow, company-wide accounts receivables figures and other statistics upon request to communicate relevant information timely and succinctly.

Patient Coordinator, Kirkland Dental Clinic, May 2001 — August 2002

Greeted patients and verified insurance eligibility, filed insurance claims, and tracked the status of slow paid claims. Typed narratives and any other correspondence for Dr. Kirkland. Entered data, including patient information and procedure transactions; posted payments. Sent out monthly statements. Ran daily and monthly reports. Processed all deposits and delivered to bank. Acted as backup receptionist, explained and priced out treatment plans, assisted in patient scheduling.

Production Plant Office Manager, Leggett & Platt Incorporated, June 1998 — May 2001

Hired, managed and evaluated eight financial specialists including accounts payable, payroll and personnel, billing, inventory and production. Cooperatively set annual budgets with the Branch and Division Offices. Worked with Capital Expenditures, G/L, balance sheets and financial statements. Responsible for reconciling month-end inventories of raw materials and finished goods and for reporting monthly, and for reporting monthly, quarterly and annual figures to Division and Corporate offices.

Accounting Assistant, Computer City, January 1998 — June 1998

Worked directly with Controller of Marketing reconciling co-op advertising reports against major distributors’ reports. Met with representatives of distributors for the purpose of reaching settlements. Accessories Sales Manager, Data-Stitch Inc., July 1995 — October 1997 Managed and coordinated day to day needs of inside and outside sales reps. Maintained accessory stock levels and provided sales leads. Sold and reported on the sales of machine embroidery accessories. Oversaw shipping and billing of all accessories.

Purchasing Manager, Petras, Inc., May 1993 — July 1995

Purchased parts for manufacturing of car audio speakers including packaging. Managed the supply chain of production parts and maintained the inventory levels of finished goods. Scheduled production runs according to sales projections. Negotiated with vendors to determine pricing and parts delivery contracts.

Office Manager, Petras, Inc., June 1988 — May 1993

Responsible for all accounting transactions, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, and payroll. Handled personnel related tasks, including credit union and life insurance issues. Calculated and distributed commissions for sales personnel. Created processes to record customer credit histories and determined credit lines. Manually maintained and reconciled three checking accounts and processed and delivered all bank deposits. Supervised Customer Service as well as the Shipping and Receiving Departments.

III. Summary of Qualifications

Accounting

• Accounts Receivable: 11 years
• Account Reconciliation: 10 years
• Accounts Payable, Payroll: 8 years
• Processing and Making Deposits: 6 years
• Inventories and Reporting: 5 years
• Budgets, Capital Expenditures, G/L, Balance Sheets and Financial Statements: 3 years
• ACH Processing: 1 year

Office Management

• Office/Accounting/Human Resources: 8 years
• Shipping & Receiving: 6 years
• Sales, Purchasing: 2 years

IV. EDUCATION AND TRAINING

• Texas Massage Institute – Graduated with Honors and licensed to practice, Fort Worth, TX
• Tarrant County Junior College – Various Classes, Fort Worth, TX
• Associates Applied Science Degree in Commercial Art, Casper College, Casper, WY
• The Mosaic Leadership Development Process – Series: “Leading in Place”, Helena, MT
• Montana Manufacturing Extension Center – “Lean Manufacturing Workshop & Simulation “, Helena, MT
• Rockhurst University Continuing Education Center – Powerful Communication Skills, Helena, MT
• Student Assistance Foundation – Various Continuing Education Classes, Helena, MT

V. COMPUTER AND OFFICE EQUIPMENT

MS Office Suite: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Windows, 10 key by touch (13,800 ksph), typewriter (70 wpm), Dictaphone, phone systems, copiers, fax machines, postage meters

Earlier I came into the kitchen and noticed our neighbors pointing up into the sky. At first I wondered if they were looking at a rainbow. Then the my Midwestern past came jumping out from the back of my mind and made me worry that it was something more. So out the front door I went and found a big orange and white billowing cloud. I have never seen a cloud grow up and out so fast (it looked like an inflating balloon). The sun was warming the top of the storm as the bottom was cooling in the shade provided by the distant mountains (distant being some 15 miles).

For twenty minutes or so it puffed up and started to blow in out direction. But as the sun started to sink the cloud fell apart and floated to the East. As I look out toward the East, I can see the storm with flashing from the inside, top to bottom.

Like in Texas, the storms here can form fast and move quick. The Denver area is the breeding ground for the giant fronts that sweep the plain states. We see them form and rush to the the East where the pound the miles of wheat and corn.

As I see them go I remember the times in Indiana where we hid in the hallway with a blanket over our heads. The police radio was blaring away with reports of down power lines and houses set on fire by lightening. In my small mind it felt like Armageddon. I felt scared and saw the worry in my parents faces. I probably would have felt okay, but seeing that made me worry that much more.

Looking back I realize that the look on my parents faces taught me that life is dangerous. So in the end, that probably did me some good since I tend to worry about storms now and make sure that we (the family) are safe.  Which is just now producing the mental reminder to find the flashlight.

I can’t help but think that this makes me happier in some ways but in others I wonder if it makes me pine for the old days where I did not have a worry and my biggest joy was running through the soft grass in front of my parents house. Yeah. Responsibilities have a way of aging you.

I age most on those days where the toddler is especially inventive at trying new dangerous daring-do’s. He is pushing the boundaries of the world to learn about it and I am pushing those boundaries back so I don’t have to fix a broken finger or take him to the emergency room. I feel his every hurt like they are mine and that takes more energy than it probably should (I just saw him shove a full uncooked waffle into his mouth).

I do have to state that I am aging less now that I did when he was a baby. Those first eight months were a long slog through sleepless nights punctuated by hours of gas pain induced ear-piercing screams. So these times are good compared to those. At least now, I don’t have that sinking feeling in the back of my mind that we were going to die from lack of sleep (and I am convinced that it can happen, there were several times where I felt like I was heading toward some sort of light).

So times are good and the discoveries go on.

At one point we had some twenty plus people in the house. It was a bit crowded with all the wife’s family and friends enjoying themselves. The big hit was of course the big screen HDTV. This was set to a basketball game which attracted all the guys like a month to a light bulb. Which was a good separation since the women crowded into the dining room to laugh about things that I normally don’t find funny.

I have learned to stay out of that room. The moment I go in the “Oh. Here’s one of those dumb guys” ridicule starts in. So I just wander back to the living room to see if any of the guys need a beer or if the chip bowl needs to be refreshed.

I only know enough about sports to carry on simple conversations. Anything beyond the simple identification of teams and cities starts to get me lost. I don’t watch enough sports (outside of my insane interest in auto racing) to really carry on a conversation. But I make do by including tiny tidbits of my sporting past as quickly as possible.

For now I am glad the weekend is over. It takes quite a bit of energy to keep both grownups and a toddler entertained. Going back to work was restful. Of course that feeling will go away once I apply myself.

Finally got the munch kin down. It is not a surprise that he is as much of a night owl as his father and mother. Both of us have a tendency to whittle away the late night hours on odd projects only to be begrudgingly awoken in the morning. What a rude awakening.

When I was an independent consultant one of the freedoms was being able to work at odd hours of the night. That was a good thing when I had the ability to get sleep every so often. I thought it would also be a good trait to have when I had a kid. “Well” I thought to myself, “at least I am used to being awake at night.”

It turns out that my late night tendencies did nothing soften the blow of only getting three or four hours a night. I would just lay down and as I was getting into a deep sleep would hear that small squeaky cry which quickly turned into a shrill scream (for milk).

Told you so!

A few years back I broke out of a partnership I had with three other people in Helena Montana. I broke away because of some disagreements I had over the direction of the company. Primarily, I felt like they were taking advantage of their one client and were doing nothing to improve the relationship (they, actually took the relationship for granted like it would always be available to them). There was one member of that “Partnership” who felt like he needed to control the whole company (i.e. a control freak). Which would have been fine had he any practical business knowledge and/or any kind of usable leadership skills (both, for this weak soul, are in short supply).

I left that partnership and was immediately hired away by the (previous) consulting firms one client. From there, the relationship to the one client deteriorated badly as the client now had the ability to resolve issues without being forced to use the consulting firm. That was before the IT leadership of the client changed due to a large merger.

The new IT leader showed up and interviewed my old consulting firm. Instead of jumping at the chance to resolve any upcoming issues and work with the new guy, they followed the path of self-indulgence and decided they could play coy thinking that he would go away. Unfortunate for them, the new guy stayed and needless to say the relationship with the client worsened.

Helena is a small town. On a good day there might be some 30,000 plus people in the area. So there are very few employers in town and no big company presence. The client was part of a big company (the one billion dollar propane division of a 10 billion dollar natural gas company). So, this was about the best gig in town to have when it came to IT consulting. Any IT consulting firm (slash “partnership”) of sound mind and sound business practices would have done anything to ensure that the relationship with such a lucrative client stayed solid. But not this one.

I mention all of these because today it I found out that the company is liquidating the equipment within its office. Out goes the servers, the monitors, and the fancy white-boards that they put together by hand. All of this wonderful stuff is being sold and all of the people once employed are all now gone looking for new work.

It is pathetic, really. That one man could bring down an entire company simply because he could not grow the company away from his own personality. What really happened is he felt threatened and would not consider ideas outside of his own. As time went on his attitude got worse and it started to pull apart the relationship with the client (and blinded him from being able to improve the relationship).

I feel somewhat sorry for the people that stayed with the company. But what a bunch of suckers, really. They could have seen this failure coming and either gone out on their own or been emboldened enough to stand up to this guy. But I guess blindly following somebody is easier than trying to think through finding new business and making the most of current opportunities. Which is what I did and I am now more successful than ever.

I know one thing. I have a job and they don’t. When I come home and feed my young son and sit down to read a book, I know that having that job is one of the most important things in the world. My dedication to myself is how I partly give a better world to my son.

I just finished mowing the lawn and once again I am wondering why we try to grow grass up here in the high country (we are over 5,300 feet above sea level). If there was some big calamity and all the people left the area, the first thing that would die is the grass. It would turn hard like straw and would blow away into nearby Nebraska (where sales of claritin would probably skyrocket).

Why do we spend all this money to grow something flat and green? Since all the fancy irrigation systems are already setup, why don’t we just grow something we can eat or at least feed somebody (or turn into bio-diesel like all the farmers tried to do with corn and sugar beets)? I’ll just save these ideas as food for thought and maybe some food for those hungry Australians (who at some point with this new drought are going to start eating kangaroos).

I just put the kid to bed. We still have to lay down with him for a half hour or so before he just conks out and goes to sleep. Until that point he wiggles and turns and pokes at me and generally keeps himself from going to sleep. To slow the wiggle down process I lay my arm on top of him and start pretending that I am asleep. Some nights this works pretty quick but tonight it took almost an hour for him to settle down.

Sometimes I feel like my life is not that much different from his. I get frustrated easily. I try to complete simple tasks and get caught up in the emotion of simple failures. Come to think of it, all of us are not that different from when we were toddlers. Some people explode in anger, others just start crying when they reach a tough situation. Maybe we just learn to soften our reaction to things as we get older.

Unfortunately, as we get older we lose that zest to learn new things. I look at my son and see someone whose enthusiasm for learning out paces mine. Alex reads books, he absorbs shows that teach the alphabet, he watches us and learns how to interact with others. I find this refreshing and renewing. This makes me realize that I need to re-learn how to discover parts of the world. I need to get off the couch and wander around armed with that ‘teach me’ spirit. Yeah. I need to re-up my zest for learning. Time for more books and for using the opportunity to teach my son as an opportunity to teach myself.

Potty Training

We, like most parents with toddlers are now going through the steps of training our child to use the potty. For months this has been a futile effort of showing my son books and videos that try to describe the benefits. None of these had any effect. Alex just didn’t care that bigger kids do it nor care that he was wearing a soiled diaper that felt icky (this it seems, interfered with his agenda of learning mentioned above).

A few weeks ago I noticed one of his friends at day care was using the potty. So I started mentioning it to Alex. A few days later we got an update from daycare that he had ‘asked’ to sit on the toilet. Wow. Where did that come from? Was it peer pressure from his two older friends in the class? Geez. I hope so. That is about the only leverage we have had so far in this extended prodding exercise.

So for now Alex is only using the potty once or twice a day. So we are actively talking about the potty more than ever. We talked about pull-ups and the need to take them down when he needed to go. And we setup the bathroom downstairs so he can just walk in and sit down. So far, his habits have not changed so we might have prod him a bit more often. But we shall see since he seems to be as steadfast in not using it as his parents are in trying to get him to using it.

Social Networking

Okay. I have sent out a bunch of requests for old friends and family to join me on a series of social networking sites. And so far I have managed to collect a grand total of one person. So, what gives? Are normal users not attracted to all the wonderful relationship building qualities of social networking sites? I can’t imaging they are too busy. Do they not understand the power of these sites?

Magic Moments in SAP Usage

There is always that moment in SAP where something breaks and gives off that weak ‘bleap.’ Then some small text appears at the bottom mentioning giving me the false hope that the issue can immediately be resolved from that same egg-faced screen. And, with all the hope in the world I sheepishly click that text hoping that sometime, somewhere (probably in a parallel universe) there will be some useful bit of information to help solve the issue. *Click* Drat! Wrong again. It just another screen that repeats that patronizing bit of text. Foiled again like Charlie Brown trying to kick that ball from under Lucy’s zip fast grasp. When will I ever learn?

Mentoring

I overheard a phone conversation where it was mentioned that I would help mentor another junior Basis Admin to take over a consulting role at a local company. Which is fine, actually. I have done this about four times and it gets a bit easier each time. I just pull out the standard lists of tasks and describe what to do and what to look for until their eyes glaze over. If they have not used SAP before then this takes about ten minutes. If they have logged in and are familiar with databases, then this takes about 20 minutes.

I have stopped requiring people to write down what I say. Instead, I just hand them my notes and hope that they will review them at least once before using it as a reference during an emergency panic. Which is wishful thinking on my part since they are likely to loose the paper and just call me when things get bad. Oh well. At least I tried and at least the hours were billable.

Wildfires in the western United States are amazing. Last Summer, I watched a 200 foot high wall of flames shoot up into the air in Central Montana. To see this I was watching from a windows from my house in Helena to a location 30 miles to the North.

Every time I see fires that large I get a twinge in my stomach. I just think, “God, I hope nobody gets in the way or gets trapped. And, that was the third storm I have witnessed where the storm cloud was so large that it created a thunderstorm. In broad daylight, I could see lightening streaming through the cloud (I was too far away to hear the thunder).

Fighting fires feels like war. Helicopters swoop around beating the air with their fat blades while carrying buckets of water and large bombers rumble through the sky shaking the whole town as they fly slowly off into the distance to drop more retardant. In the distance you see these machines as tiny specs highlighted against a huge black cloud. You can realize in one moment how insignificant we and our fancy machines are when compared to nature.