Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Wednesday night at SKO was the award dinner. We dressed up— well, some of us did; I dressed to the nines in a jacket and black bow tie, complete with cuff links and pocket square— and sat for a nice dinner— well, maybe someone's dinner was nice; my steak was tough, and I left more than half of it uneaten on my plate— in the hotel ballroom. Ahead of dinner we mingled for drinks as a magician worked the room to entertain us. The magician, Nick Ivory, worked for us at our trade show booth at AWS re:Invent in December. When he saw me roll up in my tuxedo he recognized me right away.

The sales awards ceremony was good night for me. I was called up on stage for three awards: Deal of the Year (Americas), New Logo Deal of the Year, and SE of the Year (Americas). I was named to President's Club. Again. Now for the 3rd year in a row!

That "Deal of the Year (Americas)", BTW? The company's biggest contract ever. We re-signed a customer for $11 million over 3 years, a significant upside from what they were spending with us previously. The New Logo Deal was a lot smaller in size but was recognized because of the great work I help lead in putting together a business case. We found a return on investment of 7-to-1 for them, powered largely by a new feature in our product that no one else had thought to do the math on yet. Now that business case is an example we lead with in talking to other prospective new clients.

Recently I've gone on my clothes shopping spree for 2023. Over the past 6 weeks I've bought 9 shirts and 1 pair of trousers. I call this my 2023 shopping spree because the last time I bought more than 1 item at a time was when I bought 8 shirts... in May 2021. (BTW, this recent set of 9 shirts are long sleeve while the 2021 set was short sleeve. I'm replacing different wardrobes in different years!)

This time, as with the last few times around, I did all my shopping online. That still seems a bit new to me as I resisted online clothes shopping for a few years. Oh, it's not because I'm afraid of technology or online identity theft or anything like that. I've been buying things online, including major purchases, regularly since 1997. It's just that buying clothes online took me a while to warm up to because details of color and especially sizing are so crucial, and you can't be sure of those online.

"Oh, but you can buy stuff online and return what doesn't fit," people assured me. Yes, I always knew that was possible. But it seemed like abusing the returns policy to me to order lots of stuff, 2, 3 or even 4 different sizes and colors, planning to return more than half of it.

What tipped me over was seeing that even traditional brick-and-mortar store chains were embracing online clothes shopping. As part of that they were implicitly endorsing the practice of plan-to-return-most-of-it necessary to make buying clothes online an actual, reasonable thing.

Speaking of returns, I did make a few this time. Those 9 shirts and 1 pair of trousers I mentioned are only the items I kept. I returned 2 other shirts because their colors didn't look as good in person as in the photos, and 2 other clothes items because they were inches shy of fitting properly even relative to the sizing chart the manufacturer provided. Overall 10/14 seems like a good hit rate. It's better than the 2/8 keeper rate I had on a buying spree earlier in 2021.

New Orleans travelog #5
French Quarter - Saturday, 22 Apr 2023, 6pm

After a delicious lunch today at the Court of the Two Sisters we continued our self guided tour around shops and sights in the French Quarter— or as it's named in French, the Vieux Carré (Old Square).

After ducking in and out of a few jewelry/antique shops on Royal Street, where a good many of them are located, I spotted a hat shop. I've always enjoy looking at good hats— and by "good hats" I mean not baseball caps or trucker hats— so we went in. I spent time looking at several more formal-ish hats then realized what I really need is a hat for today. It's sunny out, and the top of my head is getting increasingly likely to burn.



Prices were expensive at the shop, but the hats were the real deal. Quality materials and workmanship. I chose a straw porkpie that would work well as a "today" hat. Also a more casual hat than the gray fedora I've owned for years. I was pretty close to buying a maroon fedora at the shop... but I reasoned that I don't have that many opportunities to wear a more formal hat, so it wasn't as good a buy as the straw hat.

Though maybe I will be wearing more hats in the future.... When I first noticed I was going bald years ago and swore I would never comb the last 3 hairs atop my head sideways I also decided that instead of doing that I would a) shave it all off and b) buy hats. Well, I've had a good, long run of losing my hair only slowly but now I can tell the time is approaching to fulfill my promise to myself. So maybe it's time to being stocking up on hats. 😅

Anyway, sightseeing. In the pic above we're at the St. Louis Cathedral. It's the back garden. We walked from there around the front to Jackson Square. From there we continued out to the Moon Walk (not sure why it's called that) along the Mississippi River and out to the French Market.

At the French Market, a two block long bazaar of food sellers and merchant stalls, I bought another hat. I kind of had a feeling when I bought the nice porkpie for a stiff price that I'd see similar hats way cheaper elsewhere and would kind of regret spending up. Well, I did kind of regret spending up. But I could also tell when I bought another straw hat for less than 1/3 the price it was nowhere near the same quality.

We then took a circuitous route home, walking back along the Moon Walk past the Holocaust Memorial. We turned inland to find the Audobon Butterfly Garden & Insectarium, but all that's on that block is a huge federal building. And as is with the case with pretty much all federal buildings since the late '90s, it was locked up like an ancient fortress. Was there even a butterfly garden there? We think so, because there was a big butterfly painted on the sidewalk in front of one of the totally fortified locked gates.

Update: At the end of the day I had a bit of pink on my cheeks, where I'd used suntan lotion but didn't reapply while I was out for 6+ hours. I did not have any burn atop my head where my hair is thinning.

Recently I wrote about a clothes shopping trip where I bought an impressive six shirts— a record for me— and a few other items. As I noted in that blog I knew I'd be returning some of them for poor fit. The question wasn't if but how many.

Well, after a trying-on spree yesterday afternoon I now know how many. Five of the six got returned. Only four of those were for poor fit, though. One fit great but it turned out I already owned an exact copy of it from last year!

BTW, it wasn't just one shirt I bought or saw that was a dupe of shirts I already own. On the shelves were several models I bought at least a year ago. It seems the pandemic may have knocked the fashion/retail industry off kilter a bit. Fashion that used to move to the clearance racks after 6 months is now staying on the main shelves for a year or more.

Along with returning 5 out of 6 shirts I'm returning 1 out of 2 shorts. The shorts I'm returning are an exact dupe of ones I already own, too! They're a solid color in a classic style so it's no surprise to see them remaining on the shelves for several years. The shorts I kept are a dupe of ones I own, too, but they're hiking shorts that I'm keeping to replace a set that got torn on rocks last summer.

Bottom line, the returns are in, and I'm batting 1/2 on shorts and 1/6 on shirts.

The necessity of working remotely during the Coronavirus pandemic has introduced many people to videoconferencing. Newcomers need to be guided on how to do it well, and even veterans need reminders as the year+ long lockdown has led to increasingly lax standards. Here's a helpful guide I saw today:



It's satire, of course. 😂