What Is The Matrix?

I've been working for my new boss for several weeks now. He's formerly of Intel, and has a hardnosed quantitative approach to measuring results. He has other ideas, which I've mentioned here, such as having every engineer travel to customer sites now and then, which make for some pain.

While my team lead was on vacation, I was asked to be the 'virtual' team lead, as well as running a new measurement process, and doing my own work. I also had to take a day trip to San Jose and coordinate a lot of information that came out of that visit with the customer. During those three weeks, I must have had an average of two meetings a day, about half of which were two hour meetings. Needless to say, I was feeling a bit fragmented.

Yesterday, Dave (my new boss, whom I've also annointed Travel Man), held an all hands meeting to discuss progress and look to the future. At the end of the meeting, he handed out awards for various accomplishments. Guess what. I got one! This was in recognition of the work described above, apparently done to his satisfaction.

Sitting on my desk right now is a 'hermetically sealed' plastic 'blister box' containing the bullet-time tableau between Neo and Agent Smith, from The Matrix. "Recommended For Mature Collectors." The link above (which may go stale after awhile) says it costs around $20, but it's the thought that counts .