Time is running out and pressure is mounting. With 7 of my projects still not completed my time management has become my most valuable asset. Before I came here my time management skills were non-existant... However as soon as the truth of the old adage "time is money" hit home, my time management has definitely improved. With everyone on deadlines and closing dates you cant afford to be late in completion of your work or late to meetings. Only actual valid reasons can be accepted as excuses. There is no "the dog ate my homework" in business (although has anyone actually ever used that excuse, even at school?!) While quite a few of my projects will be reaching completion soon, there are still others which are going to take a whole load of work to get finished.

Last week as part of my project with making a business case for two competing suppliers I had to draft up a confidentiality agreement. I have no real experience in Law...  however with the help of the legal team here I was able to come up with (hopefully) a water-tight contract. The need for the contract is due to samples I've managed to get the two companies to agree to provide, to create these samples they require IBM to provide confidential information.  Which could be damaging if IBM's competitors get a hold of it...

For the joint project Graham and I are working on we were in the number-crunching stage. To evaluate how energy star products compare in efficiency to non-rated ones we are having to run quite a lot of formulas as well as developing our own. As this is of relatively new importance to the market there isn't a great deal of information which we can use or build on. However we are on schedule so hopefully everything will run smoothly.

So hoping everyone gets the Terry Tibbs reference in title... Negotiations have started heating up, I am hoping to have closed most of them by my second last week!  My other project for the Marketing & Communications counsel is also steaming ahead. I believe its quite useful for me to be developing the education package for them, as an outsider you can sometimes have a better perspective on the best way to get up to scratch on a new counsel. It's taken me quite a bit of time to find all the information, processes and overview so that I can gain a better understanding of Marcomm but I believe I am now in a great position to develop this package.

Heeeanyway... Social life - Last weekend we met an IBMer who co-owned a bar in Brooklyn and invited us down there. Although I was expecting something similar to  Possilpark it ended up more like the West end of Glasgow... After an... interesting night we spent all of the following day in Central Park. Its amazing to be in the middle of such a metropolis and still be able to 'play ball' in a park more beautiful and clean than even the grounds further upstate.

Update: Graham and I have managed to find a further 9 holes of crazy golf here, so a new championship has begun... Graham's odds of winning: slim