There was no need for this issue to take such time. What it comes down to is no one wanted to take ownership and resolve the issue. That is what we have become. I see very little honest deep pride in the work people do. Why be prideful if you aren’t rewarded? I mean initialy you do it because it’s the right thing to do. However after years of seeing it never make a difference… why would an employee simply do what it right, jump through hoops to take care of the customer and make it right.

Maybe I am one of the last hold outs. I still believe that if you do the right thing you will be rewarded. Maybe not in cash, but people will say thank you and mean it. For me that’s enough. What happens when it’s not? The world is changing. Business is changing or it already has. Supposedly for the better… I’m not too sure anymore.

Here’s the situation. I am helping convert a company from a traditional PBX to a VOIP/SIP based PBX. It’s great experiance, and pretty fun. A whole new area of expertise to put under my belt. Due to the nature of the companies business, they have multiple companies with multuple accounts with a certain telephony provider let’s say… CBeyond.

So here’s the scenario. We needed to transfers some physical numbers between accounts. Sounds simple right? Well for some reason the person doing the transfer decided to remove the numbers from one account, and not add them to the other. So what does that mean? It means when you call in you are given a message that says the number has been disconnected. Not good.

As a customer, someone who would be calling this number what message it being delivered to me? I am being told a number I am calling, is out of business, they are no longer there, they skipped town. All because someone decided they didn’t want to complete the job when they were supposed to? What recourse do I have? Unfortuantely none.

In today’s business world it seems as ownership is something that people don’t want to take anymore. So far, all of the customer care folks I have spoken to last night and this morning, don’t understand the urgency. Could it be simply they don’t care, or could it be that a large company doesn’t enable the contact person to make the right decisions to resolve the issue. It’s hard to say, I think both apply. In this case, I think it’s an issue of many people saying it not my job and not willing to take the ownership and drive the issue to a resolution.

Where I work, I run into some of the same challenges. Over the past 13 years it has changed to where management says they are enabling the engineers to make decisions, but they really aren’t due to the amount of processes and procedures. If anything it slows the world down, and doesn’t help the customer. You know a process has gotten out of hand when you have to hire a person just to manage the “process”

Anyhow, I just got off the phone with CBeyond, and once again they are going to escalate the issue and get right on it. Time will tell. I am not betting on it.

In my case, I simply want to explore the thoughts of the day or what is currently floating around in my head. Simply explore the feelings of the moment, and go deeper into the moment through words. In my case I do have many things to talk about. Most of you would disagree, but they are still my thoughts and struggles. I have many ideas and many dreams. Many goals and many considerations.

I have many stories to tell, and things that need to be told. As I refocus many things in my life, my hope and dream is to begin to explore many of these ideas and thoughts. I am hoping to post something daily. Not tweets, just ideas or comments that contain substance.

I have the “Happiness Project”. I have SpamGoblin. I have the trip this summer. Many many irons in the fire that simply have been too cold for too long. Time to get them fired up and hot. It will take time, and it will take the help of others.

Thank you to those in my life who are still here, here along the journey and here helping the way. Today will be the first day of many, many more to come.

Time to head to the gym. That’s a whole other story.

Next week, I’ll be in Hawaii. It’s interesting how this story has evolved over time, and rest assured it will change again. That I am confident in.

The beard is coming along nicely, but not sure I am scaring children yet or if I will ever be able to. The mind isn’t working like it used to be, so maybe I will get to that point, at some point. Who knows.

What I do know is I need to change a few things and live every moment for it might be last. Continue to live without regrets and to focus on what is truly important, and as the saying goes… don’t sweat the small stuff.

More later.

So why am I writing this? Well about 1 year from now I will begin the second attempt at this trip. While on the first trip I did make it all to Prudhoe Bay which is the hardest part of the trip. The good news is that I now know what to expect. The bad part is, I will be doing the trip alone. I had some folks who were interested, but so far they all have backed out for some reason or another and we have a year of planning to go. I should be able to do it in 4 weeks and it will give me enough time to take it slow and not rush the trip.

Some questions are already starting to pop into my head. What do I want to see? Can I do it in 4 weeks, should I take one more? How long do I want to ride? Do I want to camp or hotel it? Which route? Do I want to visit people? Should I take the time to read some books? Should I finish my novel? So I want to focus on making a video of the trip? Lots and lots of thoughts are coming through my mind.

To do this type of trip you have to be in the right frame of mine. You have to be mentaly in the right place, and physically you have to be able to do it.

I used to have a trainer. I think she gave up on me. She stopped showing up. I did everything she said with lots of effort. Hard not to take that personally. Either way with that and a few other things I seemed to have slipped into a depression. So I went from 242 my lowest weight back up to 265. Not good. Especially to prep for the trip. I got to do something about that.

It seems like friends are dropping like flies. Lots of stories that, everyone says it’s not me… but I am starting to disagree.

After 16+ years, CCNet – www.christian-chat.net will go offline July 4th. It’s been time for a long time, but finally pulling the trigger to turn the site off. As you can see, many things are in flux.

Over the next year I will go ahead and post thoughts and status as to what is going on and what the plans are. As the name of the blog says, it’s called Unpacking Your Life. Maybe it’s time to unpack more and more and more. Time to get back to the basics and live life right. My Faith and my Family is the core and is and what will always be important.

A special thanks for everyone who is wrapping our family in prayer. Thanks to the true friends that are left and thank you to Pastor Scott for thinking of me and being a real person of integrity.

So now I am camped out by a power plug charging up everything for everyone. Fortuantely I bring powerstrips.

We’ll be home eventually, but everyone is safe so that is all that matters.

Currently we are camped out in a Airport shuttle bus, since it started raining. They won’t let us back into the terminal. It’s been a few hrs so hopefully we will be allowed in soon. Good news is, we still have a few hrs before our flight.

Here is a link to a new article.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42023385/ns/world_news-asiapacific/?gt1=43001