While “what happens in Frisco STAYS in Frisco” I will share the following sequence of Wednesday night texts from a good friend and colleague of almost five years, unedited:

ME: Did we lose you?
HIM: Jiffy saute g’day HDTV
HIM: No
HIM: Sarah heftier jiggly
HIM: Fuck
HIM: Tree grey hoots
HIM: Fucjir I can’t tyie
ME: Where the HELL are you man??? That looks like a serious good time in progress!!!

I’m not going to lie, “Sarah heftier jiggly” became something of a theme and a mantra for the rest of that night. Was this a person, a place, an event? I won’t tell you the answer, but I will say it’s none of those things and all of them. And maybe the best auto-correct fail I’ve ever been a party to.

Enigmatic tales of late night adventures aside, it was a very productive meeting and it managed to have a bit of a theme. On the flight out for the east coast team we saw the movie “Moneyball” staring Brad Pitt and written by Aaron Sorkin based on a book by financial writer Michael Lewis. It’s the story of Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane trying to change the way the game of baseball is played from the foundation up. Surprisingly, for a movie about baseball, it’s not a “baseball movie.” It’s a business movie. A very VERY good business movie, and if I was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences I’d be voting for Best Picture and Best Actor without a moment’s hesitation.

While I won’t give any of the specific details away, I will share the finer points that a group of consultants in the financial industry took away from a viewing. This was the theme of our regional kickoff session, and I imagine these lessons are going to be very much in my mind as I move forward for the coming year:

1. The goal shouldn’t be to buy players, the goal should be to buy wins. In order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.
2. In order to score a run, we have to get on base. Do we care how we get on base? No, we do not.
3. We get paid to get on first, we do not get paid to get thrown out stealing second.
4. Sometimes we have to learn to play a new position. That’s not hard, it’s INCREDIBLY HARD.
5. They aren’t paying us because of the player we were or the player we could be, they’re paying us for the kind of player we are today.
6. The first guy through the wall always gets kicked in the teeth, always gets bloody. Always.
7. Losing is NEVER fun. We hate losing more than we love winning.
8. No one will remember setting records or great games or even a winning season if you don’t win the last game of the season.
9. How can you not get romantic about the game?

I don’t play baseball, but I do play the business equivalent of a full-contact sport at a professional level. I feel very good about my team this year, and I think there’s a very good chance we’ll win the last game of this season.

The other thing I did in my down time last week, was try to edit the first chapter I posted up in my last two posts. Editing is hard. Tracking your changes and writing up WHY you changed things is BRUTALLY hard.

I’ve gotten about the first third of the first half done. It only took me the better part of four hours. I’m 100% committed to getting this post done, but I recognize it’s going to take longer than I had initially expected. I’m guessing that it’s going to take the rest of the week and I also want to actually continue writing the next chapters too. So, to accomplish that I’ve decided to re-invest the rest of my writing time this week to finishing up the next two chapters and THEN going back and finishing the edits on Chapter One. It’s not how I thought I’d go through it, but I’m afraid of running out of steam if I don’t actually commit to more chapter writing and less poking at the one I already have on paper.

So, expect at least two more chapter posts this week, and hopefully the edit post will go up before (or during) the weekend. One of my “emails but doesn’t comment” readers asked if it was a romance novel like my mom wrote, and the answer is no. There are romantic moments in the first third, but they are counter-balanced by some very unromantic moments, and a theme that is not about how everything works out in the end.

After the third chapter I’ll post the synopsis of the book and the cover letter I stick on it before shipping it off to a slush pile somewhere. As a bit of social experience, I’ll post up the rejection letters and my reactions to them. I have a different perspective on rejection letters than many aspiring writers, and I think actually talking about the nature of rejection and how it may not actually be a personal attack on the author is worth putting into its own post one of these days. I figure I’ll wait until I have a specific example to work from. Shouldn’t take much more than six to nine months after I send it off, which at the rate I write should be just enough time for me to get it written.

[Word Count: 1055]

I will say that organizational awards, like any peer award, carry a certain amount of politics. I will also say that there were others in attendance who deserved the award just as much as I did. I will ALSO say that it felt DAMN nice to receive. Oh, and I had absolutely NO idea I was getting it, so that made it a really nice surprise.

Anyway, from now on, when I say “sorry, I was busy with work” I’ll at least have something to look at and know that the people who pay my salary and write my performance reviews recognize my commitment and contributions. And really, that feels by far the best of all.

[Word Count: 235]

Which reminded me that I’m now allowed to talk about my day job in my blog.  The company that bought the company that I work for has a “uniform policy for personal internet communication, social media, and online networking” (and I deeply love the fact that they used the serial comma) which was distributed as both a .pdf and a printed brochure (which, frankly seemed redundant) during our onboarding process.  Now that the rules about talking about my job are more clearly defined than “pull a Dooce and we fire your ass,” I’ll regale all (six) of you with a description of what I’m sure you will agree is the single most boring job description in the world.  The job itself is FAR from boring, but describing it is like watching paint dry.

I am a Senior Implementation Consultant working in the Workflow and Service Solutions Group of the Tax Automation division of Thomson Reuters Tax and Accounting Global Services business unit.  Specifically, I am focused on delivering end-to-end integration of the Sabrix Indirect Tax Solution into complex financial and accounting systems for Fortune 500 and Global 100 customers around the world.

Essentially, if you were a large to super-large company, and you had a software package that automated your financial accounting (and you would), we provide a solution that can be integrated into your financial system that will calculate the appropriate indirect tax treatment for a particular product based on transaction criteria and produce a resulting rate combination, and then optionally record the transaction to a Sarbanes-Oxley satisfying audit record that can generate compliance returns and reports for legal jurisdictions around the world.

My job is to understand super-expensive financial systems (SAP, Oracle Financials, J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft, Ariba, etc.) and the potential underlying technology platforms (Oracle, DB2, Java, XML, Unix in essentially every flavor from AIX to HPUX to Linux to Solaris, WebLogic, WebSphere, NetWeaver, JBOSS, et. all) and create solutions for integrating our product into those environments.  It’s different every time.

Every customer I’ve dealt with in the last three years has a name you’d recognize.  I’ve met with their CIOs and CFOs and Controllers and Directors of Finance and Technology Managers in boardrooms and conference rooms around the country.  They don’t come to us, we obviously go to them.

If this sounds specialized, well…it is.  There are less than a dozen people who do what I do.  My company employs about half of them.  Our partners employ the rest.

My day tends to involve solving weird interface issues between Java Application Servers and integration packages on unusual operating systems, followed by a call where we discuss chain transactions for VAT recovery and intrastat scenarios around the EU, followed by a call about creating test cases for use tax on cross-border supplier shipments through the tax-free zone at Shannon Airport landing in Newark and Toronto.

I have to be ready at the drop of a hat (well, the ring of a cell phone that never shuts off) to answer questions about incredibly detailed technology issues from IT groups and Software Engineers, followed without pause by questions from tax managers and business unit accountants about software configuration customizations to accommodate detailed and specific tax and financial transaction processes from a non-technical perspective.

And I’m a specialist, generally Implementation consultants focus on one specific integration platform (Oracle Financials or SAP) but I’m one of two people (in the company AND essentially on earth) who goes the full cycle.  I can do SAP or Oracle, but I also design custom integrations from scratch.  Have a mainframe that sits on old AS400 gear and you want to batch process in a nightly run written in RPG and Cobol to our XML process engine?  I can help with that.  Have a completely custom built software system based on some version of DB2 running in Z/OS on IBM mega-hardware?  Yeah, I can help.  Hell, if you run on DB2 I’m gonna get your account, since I’m “it” in the DB2 department.

Fifteen years ago I wrote financial software for government agencies.  Now, I’m one of a handful of people with the skillset to integrate one of the most flexible and powerful indirect tax software platforms into pretty much anything that constitutes a financial package.  Well, one of two if you do something outside of the SAP or Oracle Financials world.

And I am in demand.  The interesting thing about being in the Tax Automation business is that taxes don’t really have a recession.  In good times or bad times, companies pay taxes; and companies that pay taxes want to find solutions that will help them maximize their tax accuracy and minimize their audit exposure.  When a company buys our product they almost always need time with our consultants to guide and assist them with the implementation.  As the consultant in question, this has been good for my job security.

All this job security means that I travel pretty much three out of every four weeks in a month; but now, I’ve been given an incredible opportunity.

My company (before the acquisition) was primarily based right here in beautiful Lake Oswego, Oregon (with our corporate headquarters in San Ramon, California…but that was just so we could say we were a Bay Area software startup ).  It’s great for someone who lives in (and loves) the Portland area, but kinda crap for supporting the eighty-plus percent of our customers who are in the east or central time zones, or the ten percent who are in Europe.  I’ve flown coast to coast pretty much every week in April and May, when I got to fly home.  Before that I’d been in Chicago, Columbus, and New York all for week-long stints multiple times since the start of the year.

People always tell me how “glamorous” it is for me to get to travel, and I will admit that the travel is a bonus to my job most of the time; but after a while life becomes an endless parade of airplane seats, airports, taxis, hotel restaurants and hotel beds.  You know you travel a lot when you land in a connecting airport and have NO idea where you are.  I had a layover in Houston and had to ask someone what airport I was in.  It wasn’t critical to know, I just didn’t recognize the layout, which was disconcerting.  Conversely, I could walk through the Denver and Chicago airports blindfolded and comfortably navigate from gate to gate while on a conference call and buying something to eat.

So, as the powers-that-be are happy with my performance, and have the ability to identify a gaping hole in our ability to support our customers, I’ve been offered a relocation package to move to Atlanta, Georgia and start up a practice that will focus on east coast customers and provide technical leadership for our UK and South American groups in a timezone that can answer before they all go home for the day.

I have to say, I’m excited.  I’ve never lived east of Boise, Idaho; so this is going to be an adventure.

OregonSunshine has been a true trooper as she scouted for new homes and worked on the practical details of our move (and also started to consider a change to her nom de plume).  We think we’ve already found a place to lease for the first year and still keep our “hobby farm” lifestyle, and we’ll be settling the details within the next few days.  I fully expect to be moved before the Fourth of July holiday.

Yes, my job is unusual.  I do technology AND finance…I’m a Geek AND a Nerd.  If anyone read this far without their eyes glazing over or falling asleep at their desk, well, I’m either really impressed or just a little bit frightened.  But I have to admit, I love my job.  I love the challenges and the complexity, and I really love the people I work with and the quality of the work that we do; but it does tend to eat into my free time.  Currently I’m “on the job” for about 12 hours a day…on a slow day.  Hopefully the move to the eastern time zone will help me find more time away from work simply by being closer to the work that I’m doing.  Well, that’s the plan anyway.

So, I’ll try to post more and essay less, but honestly that’s just not how I naturally write.  If things are a bit quiet on this front, keep in mind that I’m probably in the middle of hauling my life across the country.  I’ll post pictures and tweet from my iPhone, so watch the twitter feed for updates.

And wish us luck.  I don’t know that we’ll need it, but it NEVER hurts to have all that we can get.