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This week seems to have flown by.

Am busy working on a training pack for my role today. I want to try and have it finished by this afternoon so that I don’t have any to do over the weekend. Good ol’ Powerpoint is my tool of choice, and I have to write a bit of a summary about most of the wireless data stuff we sell that can be used as a base to train any newbies we get. But there’s quite a bit, and so getting it done this arvo is gonna mean some serious work. I also want to be out of here reasonably early (4ish) so I can pick up Debbie and we can head up to the wonderful Blackheath for dinner!

Then tomorrow will be equally awesome – Debbie and I are getting together with a few of our very close friends to have lunch. It will be really, really good to see them and just spend the afternoon hanging out. So very exciting!

And this weekend means that there’s only two more weeks left before I get to go up to Hervey Bay again. Ohhhh yeah.

If you kinda like being settled in your job and things not changing every couple of months, then it’s definitely not good for you to work at Telstra. Everything’s about to change yet again for me! Fairly big, but I think it’s gonna be cool, and I should still stay in Parra. I spend yet another day in the city (I feel like I’m never at Parra at the moment) tomorrow and should find out all the details then.

But in the meantime, today was very tops.

After all our meetings and mini celebration events where one of the exec directors came and talked things up about last year’s results, and encouraged us to do better this fin year, today was one huge fun activity all arvo, and then a big party.

We headed to The Domain at about 2pm and got into pre-assigned team. I was lucky enough to be the captain of my team! There was about 10 in each team, but with some no-shows, we had 6 in ours. A company called Corporate Outdoor Training had organised everything for us – a big Amazing Race style game with a “Telstra” twist. Each team got a Blackberry and a Nokia handset. We had to SMS all the answers in, take some pictures of things and MMS them, and even use the Nokia to scan some QR codes to find out some bonus questions.

We had a couple of hours to run around the Domain end of the city looking for answers to questions, and then we got SMS’d the final location – Luna Park. And we had to be there by 3:30 (they’d given us money for taxis). We got there, and then an extra “challenge” was for the whole team to go on at least two rides in Luna Park  - the Wild Mouse was awesome – and then we crossed the finish line! It was a lot of fun, and as a team, the 6 of us thought we did well, but we knew there was so much we missed and so were just happy to have had fun.

We headed into one of the function rooms at Luna Park and had drinks and some really good food. Then they announced the runner-up, and then to our surprise, announced that our team, number 55, had come first! Very, very cool and very surprising! As the team captain, I was invited to make an acceptance speech… and proceeded to make a very sucky stumbling together of words. It was pretty crap, and I’m sure some of my colleagues will be sure to remind me of it.

Still – it was a very, very tops afternoon/evening. It was brilliantly organised – much better than most of us thought it would be. Working for a huge corporate company has its benefits sometimes ;)

Got my hands on one of these devices this afternoon. With all the excitement about the Blackberry Bold, I haven’t been all that excited about this device when otherwise, I probably would’ve been quite looking forward to it.

HTC Touch Diamond

First impressions are that it is awesomely small and light. The previous HTC model, the Touch Dual, had a pretty tops touchscreen interface that required no use of the stylus, so I’m hoping this one will be the same. I’m supposed to be demoing it to some small business customers tomorrow all day, so I hope that I’ll have good things to say about it :)

It’s running the new Windows Mobile 6.1, which is supposed to have improved quite a few things on the operation and stability of these PDAs. HTC also put their own “skin” over WM, which adds a nice home screen that is much nicer and more usable than WM’s standard home screen. The skin on the Diamond seems to have really stepped up again over the Touch Dual, and actually has a whole series of screens that are part of the “home screen”.

I think I have to give it back at the end of the week, which is a bit disappointing, but probably not all that bad. Over the last few years, I always start using a new Windows Mobile device, and after a short while using it, end up deciding that I like my Blackberry better. I think the Motorola Q was the longest serving device, and perhaps I only used that for a few months cos I felt obliged to seeing as they gave it to me. A couple of iMates, the older HTC Touch Dual, Palm Treo 750… they all only had a few weeks before I went back to my ever-reliable Blackberry.

Had a bit of a late night last night. One of those nights when Debbie and I just talked a lot, and didn’t care how late it got. They are good times. It was one of the best nights we’ve spent together just hanging out and doing nothing in a long time. It’s gonna be nice in a few months when I don’t have to then get in my car and drive half an hour to get home. :) She’s housesitting in September at a place up in Hornsby Heights. Little bit further to get to, but the bonus is that I think the quickest way to get to that place will be to go through the ‘Gorge! Fun times.

Today is set to be a bit of a long one – I’m in the city cos today is the day when we have some big Blackberry Bold launch events. We’ve got an internal one for staff this arvo at 3pm, and then a little break before the customer event at 6pm. So I’ll be home by about 9:30 or 10 if I’m lucky :)

Not a write off in a bad way, but in the manner that I’m barely gonna spend 10 minutes in front of my computer doing work today.

Just finished getting hammered by a customer who’d been told all sorts of lovely price stories by a Telstra dealer -crazy price things that we can’t do. And now I’m in our weekly training session for the account executives – someone else is running it this week and I’m just enjoying sitting up the back doing some iPhone blogging.

And then it’s off to the city for our quarterly awards afternoon. Wondering if I’ll get an award this arvo…

Looking forward to just relaxing tonight with Debbie… Cos me thinks it will be a busy weekend as well!

If you’ve been following my twitters over the last day, then you’d know that I’m quite excited that today was the day I got my new Blackberry Bold!

It was a painful wait today… but eventually, at about 4pm this arvo, the courier arrived with our brand new toys. I had seen the Bold before at a couple of different events, but to finally have my own is very exciting. And better still, to finally have it before a lot of other people was awesome. (We usually get pretty badly left behind as far as devices go - even though we’re supposed to be specialists in the area.) And like I said last week, to even have it before many other people in the world is incredible for Telstra.

Telstra's Blackberry Bold

First impressions are that it is just so light for what it is. And the screen resolution is amazing as well. They have updated the software that Blackberry runs on in a pretty massive way, so while it looks and acts similarly to previous models, there’s just so many new features that are more than skin deep.

I will be keen to set it up as a tethered modem and see how it performs – it’s a 3.6Mbps HSDPA device, so I’m expecting it to hopefully cruise along at about 1.5 – 2Mbps.

My device has just finished synchronising to the server, so I now have all my emails and everything set up the way I want it – right down to the little things, like that the profile is still on vibrate, which is exactly how I had my old BB set up before I took my sim card out about 2 hours ago. See, it’s those little things that make the whole Blackberry platform cool.

The fun begins tomorrow as I venture out to deliver a couple of devices to some “special” customers. Hoping that isn’t too much of a painful process and won’t destroy my whole day.

So, in my eyes, I’ve now achieved mobile perfection: an Apple iPhone 3G for my personal, and a Blackberry Bold 9000 for my work phone. Love it.

So Blackberry are about to release their new Bold device. I think AT&T are going to be the first ones to carry it in the world, and they don’t have a firm release date yet. Supposedly though, Optus might release it before the end of August. Telstra will be very close behind in mid-September. Good that a big handset release is actually happening in Australia concurrently with the rest of the world.

But more importantly, my mobile specialist colleagues and I are getting one, which we were all very excited about. And then today, my boss told me that she got word that we may have them as early as the end of the week. That would make me amongst the first people in the world outside RIM (the makers of Blackberry) to have one… how exciting!

Had enough of being in the city. Had a bit of stress attack yesterday morning when I realised what my boss expected of us for a big offsite day next week – to have a pretty broad idea of what the portfolio (my bunch of customers) are likely to do over the coming months, where the big opportunities are, what the top 20 customers are, etc. All stuff that I need to find out by actually talking to and just hanging around near my account executives.

So I did the bolt from the city after our team meeting and came out to Parra. Once I got into some solid work and got through some stuff, I started to feel like things were much more under control. Thankfully.

Mr Tax Man visited my bank account the other day and deposited a nice healthy sum of money for me. And thanks to him, I have managed to get rid of an annoying credit card debt, and also pay off my bass guitar that I bought on one of those interest free things at the end of last year! Thanks to the government for helping me go a long way to being debt free before I get married … and then enter into a massive 30 year debt :D

Just wanted to make that clear from the outset. I’m over it. Time for the media to get over it too.

Spending lots of time in the city at the moment. It seems like every different management area within Telstra, and every manufacturer wants to have a start of fin year meeting/presentation, and they’re all held in the city. Yesterday was some follow-up training for a course we did about a month ago, and then today was a launch of the Blackberry Bold [I didn't win one of the giveaway devices, how sad], and also a Telstra Business kick-off event [although I'm pretty sure we've had about 3 of these kick-off events already...]

Looking forward to tomorrow night though… hang out time at the House of Bach with pizza, and then board games a-plenty. Fun times :D

The internet is so slow at work today.

Had a bit of an interesting day. As is usual for Wednesdays, I didn’t even get my work computer out until after lunch – rock into work, have a coffee with a couple of people, endure the 2 hour mobile sales meeting, and by that time, it’s usually 11:30. So there’s some time to say hi to a few city people that I haven’t seen for a while.

The arvo then consisted of some serious planning for Friday. We have finally received an engagement document that we need to present to our team of account executives about our new job direction and stuff for this fin year. And because these guys are all pretty new, I have started to work on a schedule of wireless data training that I’d like to roll out over the next few weeks. It will be a whole new thing for me I think… but I am looking forward to it all.

I’m round at Debbie’s tonight… had some very nice beef with hokkien noodles for dinner, and now Debbie is having lots of fun playing games on my iPhone. I’m looking forward to having a go at jailbreaking my iPhone when I get home actually. There’s already some apps out there that assist the phone in becoming a tethered modem – quite cool.

Work has kicked in again.

Yesterday was quite an interesting day. There wasn’t too many emails to get through, but there was a lot to get my head around. Last week, it seems there was quite a bit of talk about sales targets for 08/09, our sales commission incentive plan, and just general job role talk for this fin year. So it was a bit overwhelming at times.

Suffice to say, my job role for this year is almost that job I’ve always wanted – just focused on mobile and wireless data, and moving away from call rates and handsets and basic stuff like that. Unfortuantely, the job I’ve always wanted involved me being a support for things like that, and not having a sales focus. But alas, I will have targets and will need to sell :) Still, it’s pretty tops.

I was all excited about getting home last night and cooking an awesome pasta bake. I felt like pasta bake on Sunday, and Debbie suggested I cook it on Monday night for dinner. So off I went to Woolies to fill my basket with all sorts of things that would make my pasta bake awesome: chicken, prawns, broccolini, mushrooms. And I put it all in a baking dish and into the oven in went. Unfortunately, cos I had so much stuff in it, there wasn’t quite enough liquid to make sure that everything was covered – so some of the pasta was exposed. So consequently, 20 mins into the cooking, the top layer of pasta was badly burnt and I had to throw it out. But once I removed all that, it worked better, and it still turned out pretty nicely. But lesson learnt – when making a pasta bake, make sure the sauce/water covers the stuff completely.

It has been quite the busy week. I’m not a fan of having the end of the financial year on a Monday. By Tuesday arvo I was definitely feeling like I needed the weekend quite desperately.

Wednesday and Thursday were some all-day training things. Found it hard to keep from being tired just sitting and listening. But it was good stuff. And then today has been pretty relaxed too - I packed up my desk here in the city this morning before heading out to Parra to get it all set up so that it’s all ready for Monday morning. We were supposed to have a meeting this arvo about 08/09 sales targets, and so I trotted back into the city… but in the end, it was postponed. That was a bit frustrating, but not so bad. I had some chinese food for lunch, and then just went through some work emails briefly. What’s really strange (for me anyway) is that I haven’t had my work computer on and been logged in since Monday afternoon. It’s quite strange and unusal for me.

Now I’m just sitting here killing time waiting for my boss’s new computer to finish building and get it set up for her. Yes, I’m a mobile sales specialist. :)

One week til Kedron begins. Crazy. There’s still a bit to do… but not much I don’t think. I’m feeling quite anxious… but that’s normal for me. I’m pretty certain everything is done… I just want to get there and get into it.

I’m gonna head home soon and start working on the final hour-by-hour timetable that I like to have. And that is good to have. Then it will be dinner at parentals’ time with Debbie and my sister and Ryan too.

I think I’m going to love working at Parra.

I don’t have a parking spot just yet, but when I get it, it will be right under the building! But until then, the public parking I’ll use is only just across the road. No more 10 minute walk each way!

Peak hour looks like it’ll be a breeze. I just left the office this arvo at 4:45 and it took me 2 minutes and two sets of lights before I was well on my way to James Ruse Dr to head over here to Debbie’s place. So very quick.

Importantly, the two newly formed account management teams that I’ll be working with each day seem tops. Good bunch of people who know their stuff. Definitely going to mean some good sales and at the moment, I can’t see any hassles.

The office is pretty sweet. Reasonably recently rennovated, and absolutely massive desks. After a brief argument with Shay, my device specialist sidekick, I scored the window view desk :) and there is plenty of room around our desk – just need to convince the boss that having a couch there is going to mean increased sales. Hmm, that might take a bit of work.

I’m looking at moving my stuff out there on Monday I think.

I went on a little hunt this arvo for some coffee. I found Hudsons coffee. Very funky looking shop, but in the end I reckon it could just be like just a mini Starbucks – too much money in looking good. The coffee was incredibly hot and nothing to get excited about. The search shall continue on Monday.

But three cheers for 40 minute return trip each day… as opposed to the current average 2.25 hour return! Love it.

What a day that was. I woke this morning feeling quite energised and looking forward to the day. And I finished feeling incredibly drained and disappointed.

I started the day with my monthly sales on $270k or so. My target is $221k per month, so I was quite happy with already making my target. But there was a sale on the table – we’d visited this customer and chatted at length with them on Thursday last week. It was all very positive, and this sale alone was worth $180k. And the customer had said they wanted to decide by the end of fin year – today. So that’s why I was all energised and looking forward to today – it was going to be pretty much the only thing on my mind and I was going to drop anything for it.

And in the end, the only thing we could do was wait. There was a few emails back and forth, and we were missing the mark on pricing a little. But it was still just a lot of waiting. At 4:30, we got told that there was a small gap we needed to make in order to get the signature. We made that gap… but only at 5:45 this arvo. And by then, the decision maker had gone home, and there wasn’t a chance of getting it signed today. That was definitely a massive letdown – the three of us had given so much energy, and I think a lot of emotion to it today. And if it’d come through, it would’ve been one of the biggest months in mobile sales that area of Telstra has ever seen. But it wasn’t too be.

So driving home this evening, I felt incredibly drained and very disappointed. But we’ll get it signed tomorrow or Wednesday, and I’ll be about 80% toward my target for July already… but it would’ve been awesome to have my first month in a new job be the best Telstra had ever seen in that area.

I’m sitting here enjoying City Homicide. I was all excited that it was back last week… but then realised it was this week that it started. I loved the first season, so I’m hoping this second season is just as great.

Everything is happening at the moment.

Aside from the obvious huge thing of marriage and such, Kedron is just around the corner, and I still need to get heaps of stuff done for that. It will be an absolutely massive week, but it will be cool.

But Kedron lands right in the middle of something else huge: I just had it confirmed that I’ll be moving offices – I’m off to Parramatta! :D This is a good thing cos travel time goes from 2 hours per day down to about 45 min per day. There are some farily big internal restructure things happening, and some account executives who sit out at those offices are now coming under our banner, and so we’re providing a mobile specialist resource to support them. And I was the lucky one :)

One of our mobile fulfilment type specialists who I already work with at the moment is coming out with me as well, which I’m stoked about… cos we already work well together and it will be good to keep something consistent.

In the end, the customers aren’t that different to the ones I’ve just gotten used to over the last 6 weeks. The bonus will be that these account executives haven’t ever had mobile specialist resources available to them, so it’s a great chance for me to be able to set the rules about how they engage me in a sale, what I do and don’t do, etc. But the flipside is that they’re quite “amateur” as far as mobile education goes, and so there will be a lot of training, leading and coaching to be done, and that will be my responsibilty.

Knowing that they are going to need a lot of coaching, I felt a little overjoyed when my boss asked me to be the one to head out there. It’s a bit of pressure, cos in the end, I am heading back to management type things, still with the expectation to make mobile sales and hit a $$ figure each month. But it’s all being seen as very positive, and I’m pretty stoked about how it’s all panned out too.

I’m trying to think through a 30/60/90 day plan that I will have to present to my boss in a little while about how I’m going to approach the whole thing and what I want to have acheived by the end of each month. I wasn’t keen on that when she asked for it… but looking at it now, it’s going to make things a lot clearer in my head.

Oh, and this all only surfaced last Thursday… and I will probably start there in a week. :) Here’s hoping that I can actually stay put in one job for more than a few months this time round.

I have a Sony Ericsson K850i. I can’t send MMS messages - I keep getting “communication error”. I want to be able to send MMS messages so I can use Twitpic! Sending MMS messages is also included in my cap, whereas data charges aren’t.

Given B’s frustration back in the day, I wondered if it was a Sony Ericsson thing. I dug through his posts and found the page he’d written for his Sony Ericsson K610i and Optus, and had a play around making some changes and trying and trying.

Nada.

Nothing works. Still keep getting error after error after error. I’ve checked the settings in the back-of-house system for my mobile number, and everything’s fine there! I tell you, it really is the ultimate frustration. This is my job; it’s what I love being good at! And I can’t make it work for myself!!

But after what seemed like a two week holiday, posting to my photo Blogspot directly from my phone has randomly started working again… so I think I’ll just stick with that. Twitpic woulda been fun too.

My goodness, the last 72 hours have been crazy for iPhone Australia rumours. In particular, which carrier(s) will be ranging the phone.

From my personal point of view, I love it all. Can’t wait to see what happens in the next 6 weeks! I’m quite excited that the rumour that began about a month ago (3G iPhone announced in 1st week June, launched in Australia on all carriers in last week of June) seems to still be the latest rumour. A while ago, that dream of an HSDPA iPhone on both 850/2100mHz and not carrier locked seemed crazy. But as June draws closer, and that rumour hasn’t been quashed or proved wrong, it gets more exciting…

But from a work point of view, it’s incredibly frustrating. All the non-mobiles people and customers expect us to have all the answers. And that’s frustrating because Telstra haven’t released anything at all. And very importantly, neither have Apple. I guess people who don’t normally follow all the Apple releases know that until Apple actually say something, nothing is in concrete. There’s just been article after article after article on what “people” and “sources” have said.

This is the latest article that everyone’s talking about in the office today – apparently Telstra are ranging the iPhone. It’s a great wonder who ZDNet’s source is… cos I reckon out of Telstra’s 10,000 odd employees, you can probably count the number of people on your hand who are actually in the know on what’s happening between us and Apple. And I’m most definitely not one of them.

Everyone knows that Vodafone announced that they would be selling it. However, I love how very vague this press release is – no date, no mention of what version, certainly no mention of excusivity… just that they would be selling it. And I find it really interesting that Voda actually annouced they’d be selling it before Apple announced it in those countries – isn’t that very, very out of the ordinary for all the other country releases?

Oh and it’s “understood” Optus will sell it too.

But again, I know better than to trust anything about Apple until Apple tell me themselves :)

What a fun weekend that was. Lots of driving and doing things.

Saturday night was bassing with the women of Toonie Bapts. Steve, Dave and I made guest appearences at their Women’s ministry night helping out in various ways. They’re always very awesome nights, and many of the guys who’ve been along to help wish they could go all the time. And as a bonus, Ellie played some songs in the background as people were arriving for about 20 mins, which was quite cool to just sit and listen to. The boys’ plan of ducking out to Gloria Jeans to get a coffee during the evening was thwarted when GJs was shut. Disappointing.

Sunday was a pretty tops day of relaxing after not feeling so wonderful at the start of the day. A quiet drive up the Putty Rd was in order though, and photos were taken. It’s such a lovely piece of road. I do want to keep going all the way up to Singleton one time soon, and then across to Newcastle, and then back down along the Old Pacific Hwy. Other roads still to drive include the Royal National Park and Sea Cliff Bridge, and also the Old Northern Rd up to Wisemen’s Ferry. Going up into Watagans would be fun too. Ahh so many nice roads in NSW.

I led at church on Sunday evening, and am a bit disappointed in the effort/prep I put in, but thankfully God still used us in the service, which is always exciting to see. And it just made me more aware of the effort I should be putting in. It was acoustic stylings on Sunday evening though – we were drummer-less. But surprisingly, that didn’t bother me much. And an acoustic sesh was actually quite fun. I enjoyed playing with those guys, and the songs really worked. Guess God had it planned all along.

And lastly… fun times last night hanging out with Sam and his lovely Canadian girlfriend, Jenn. It was frustrating getting home from work – clearly I didn’t learn from last week that leaving right on 5pm is a bad, bad thing. And then I was even stupider and thought I’d give Epping Rd a go! But finally at 6:30 I arrived in Thornleigh and cooked some dinner, and we all had a fun time. And even went for an excursion around the block in Micky.

I’m enjoying work being a little bit quiet. Hopefully my new friend will have her computer up and running tomorrow and I’ll be able to start getting her to liase with some of the customers, and can do even less! It’ll be like a mini holiday before I start my new role. Right now, I need to go fetch some coffee and some cookies for a friend who is having an uber crap day.

I thought last night as I was feeling very sleepy, “tomorrow’s gonna be a good day.” I have no meetings, no massive issues hanging around my customers, and we get to have Pancakes on the Rocks for lunch too! I’m counting down to that one – only an hour away now. Yum.

And speaking of nice places to eat… b and I headed for Chilis in Wenty on Friday night to have some bottomless chips and dip, bottomless drinks, and food too. But it was quite tragic to arrive, find all the lights off, and then a handwritten sign on the door saying “Restaurant closed. For information, contact [accountant's business card].” And Chili’s Australia website is no longer existant either. Gonna miss that place. Many fun times were had there.

I have enjoyed being able to hang out with Debbie a lot lately. I went round to her place on Monday afternoon after work. She cooked a quite awesome Romano Chicken, which I’d never heard of before… but had 3 large servings of it cos it was so good. And then yesterday, a well timed meeting in Belmore finished up at 3:30pm and so I was home just after 4pm. Debs came round again and we headed off to my Mum & Dad’s place for dinner and a game of Taboo, which, despite my debates, Debbie and I suck at. Good times though.

Work has been pretty decent lately. Monday was a very big day, but only cos I made it that. There was a couple of major issues that had been hanging around for far too long, and so I just decided I wanted to get absolutely everything cleaned up on Monday. It meant for a very intense and full on day, but a very satisfying one nonetheless. I also heard good news about new job starting in mid-May for me on Friday. And it’s been planned out very well so that I can handover my current job to someone over a two week period, which will mean it won’t be stressful at all. Love it.

It seems everyone’s getting on twitter now. Even 131500 have a twitter page where they post Cityrail delays and updates. Cool.

And Playjerise are playing a show again… hooray! I wanted to see them in February when they were playing at a pub up in Katoomba… but I ended up going go-karting instead. Looking forward to seeing them – they are an amazing live duo.

That is about all. Hmm, that was a post with a lot of substance. There is a blog I want to write about Fall Out Boy… but I will save that for another time.

I don’t know what it is about this week, but I’m just really over work. It seems each day I come in that there’s more big things wrong with customers, and that I have to spend quite a few hours just being a problem solver, while my boss expects me to hit sales targets.

Maybe it’s just that things seem to be going wrong all at once with quite a few big customers.

Either way, I can’t wait for this week to be over. Or at least for the problems to die back down again a bit. It’s making me very tired, and I end up being tired and frustrated at everything else outside work – and I hate it when I get like that. I hate it when my frustrations at work affect things outside work.

Right now though, I need to leave the office and head home for bible study that I’m supposed to be leading tonight. And then still have to try and think about a Kedron meeting tomorrow night somewhere in the middle there.

edit: so I did some thinking about this on the way home (listening to Playjerise helped me to be calmer!)… I reckon that sometimes my expectations of “people” in general are too high. In the end, I work in sales, and in a corporate environment. I know that this area of the world in particular is incredibly selfish – so why does it take me by surprise when they do incredibly selfish things? And take advantage of my efforts?

Without wanting to sound high and mighty, or harsh in anyway, I reckon I need to lower my expectations of “people”. They will always be selfish, rude, take advantage of me. I need to know that, and be prepared for it, so that when it does happen it doesn’t throw me and cause me to get frustrated and angry. Instead, I’ll be ready to react in love and be positive about it.

Just some thoughts that were running through my head…