Thanks to ZenGrrl for bringing this to my attention.

And look which superhero I am…WHAT A SURPRISE!!

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 90% Robin 60% The Flash 50% Supergirl 45% Spider-Man 40% Batman 40% Iron Man 40% Green Lantern 35% Wonder Woman 30% Hulk 15% Catwoman 10%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…

Every quarter, the big government agency I work for requires Employee Performance Reviews to take place. I have to administer them to the staff in my department and in turn I have to endure receive one from my supervisor.

Actually, I’m pretty fortunate (in one respect) in that my boss says to me, “Here, write yours up and if I agree with it I’ll sign it”. I say “in one respect” because it may be as hard or harder to write your own review as it is to listen to one your boss has written. At least if you’re an introspective person or one who is not prone to blowing your own horn, I think it is. Sometimes I find it difficult to enumerate (or even remember) things I’ve done in the course of a quarter that would call for recognition and or notation, while at the same time I have to curb my tendency to point out ALL my shortcomings and areas that need improving.

Blog Girl says I’m too hard on myself, and she may be right, but I’d rather it be me doing it instead of someone else.

Of course having to perform an Employee Performance Review can be stressful too. Although I’ve done it before (and will in the future), I don’t particularly enjoy discussing a person’s shortcomings in their work, especially since you know that most people are not going to react kindly to even constructive criticism. But again, I’m fortunate in that regard as well because I have the greatest group of people to work with in my department. Their reviews typically consist of, “Great job, do this a little more to advance, keep up the excellent work, etc” I try to be as individualized as I can be in preparing and writing their reviews because I think it’s important to give each person that attention to their work, but on the whole I could write “Great job!” for all of them and be done with it. Except, as I said, I believe they deserve more than a generic review, whether it’s good or not.

And that’s where the stress comes in for me this time. Because right now we’re all involved in a couple of huge projects that are causing me to put in 12 and 13 hour work days and keeping me busy the entire time I am at work. I’m feeling the time crunch when it comes to wanting to dedicate more time to these reviews…and not having the time to do so. To add to the pressure, management chose to move up the completion date for the reviews by about a week.

So this time around the reviews will not be as detailed as I would like because, as I said today, “We’re all victims of time”. I will try to individualize them as much as possible but they will be brief and to the point.

Today, Chili’s restaurants across the country will donate 100% of their profits to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to help fund the hospital’s pediatric research and treatment efforts.

This is an opportunity for patrons to enjoy a delicious meal and support a worthy charitable organization at the same time. Blog Girl and I plan to share dinner at our local Chili’s tonight. Perhaps you’ll consider doing the same at some point during this day.

This is an entertaining presentation I read over on Solonor’s blog this weekend. As he says, “Will civilization be destroyed by hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, nuclear weapons, asteroids or gay marriage? No! It will be the wanton violation of Male Restroom Etiquette!”

Take a look by clicking on the picture.

Good news! I did a hard reboot and “bingo!” my AC power (I plead exhaustion for referring to it as DC in the previous post) started working again. I was starting to go into withdrawal, so I’m very thankful that I’m powered and connected again. Whew!

The “Legal” session was interesting and I would venture to say that more questions were raised than were answered.

Following that was a session lead by the conference host, Josh Hallett, that he titled, “Off The Record” and here’s  how  he described it in the program details:

This session will be an experiment. We’ll turn off our laptops and other recording devices and talk off the record about things we can’t blog about. For example have you ever started a post and then said, “I can’t post this”. Sometimes it’s emotional, other times it’s job security. You know you’ve been dying to get it off your chest. Now is your chance. This might be the best session, or the worst…we’ll see.

Now I could really identify with this! On both a professional and personal level there have been countless times that I either thought about a post subject or even started writing a post and decided that I just could not publish that particular entry. Either there would be a confidence broken, would be something related to my day job that would be detrimental to my continuing to be employed or it would be something that would be too personal or hurtful to family or friends. My solution has been to create a separate document to either write those entries to, or even just jot down a few key words or thoughts into, that document and one day I will either be able to publish it or use it in some other aspect of my writing, like short fiction or a magazine article.

Right now I’m in the “Tools” session and we’ve exhausted all the obvious jokes about that unfortunate title, but I’m learning and refreshing my knowledge about blogging tools, programs, etc.

At some point between Panera and arriving back at the conference hall the transformer on my DC connect cord seems to have bitten the dust. I have checked every connection and all of that seems to be fine, but the transformer is stone cold and my battery indicator shows I only have a little less than 2 hours of battery power remaining, so this may be my last post from the conference and indeed for a while from my laptop until I can buy a replacement power cord.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the “Politics” session was informative, especially with the upcoming elections here locally and in Florida. I don’t usually have a lot of political commentary on here so, while I was interested in the subject over the alternate offering of “Corporate Blogging”, it was not as interesting to me as the “Hyperlocal” session that followed.

As the name implies, “Hyperlocal” dealt with blogs that contain content that is exclusively of local interest. O’Blog is one of the few locally exclusive blogs in Orlando that I am aware of, and even it has content that is mostly of a political nature. In fact it’s author, Bob O’Malley, was the leader of the “Politics” session this morning. There used to be an excellent local blog by some guy who called himself Man About Town that was exclusively about local Orlando issues, entertainment, news, politics, etc. but he seems to have left the building back at the end of July. I miss his unique take on local Orlando subjects. Metroblogging Orlando, a collaborative effort by a group of local bloggers (including yours truly) is a great blog source for local Orlando issues.

The “Hyperlocal” session leaders were 2 bloggers, one from Tampa and one from Jacksonville, and they offered up some excellent advice and interesting anecdotes of their experiences, and then the attendees enjoyed a free-wheeling forum among ourselves regarding experiences and advice, as well as thought-provoking questions about both content, behavior and ethics.

I strolled over to Panera for lunch and enjoyed a small portion of the beauty of Winter Park. I wanted to sit in the park and enjoy a little more, but I also wanted to get back to the hall and get a good seat near an electrical outlet (not that it did me any good; see above).

Right now I’m sitting in the “Legal Issues” session and there is a great discussion going on about liability, privacy and libel issues that bloggers have and may face.

If I don’t have enough power to get back here, thanks for reading my experiences at the BlogOrlando Unconference.

The “Politics” session was informative but I really enjoyed the “Hyperlocal” session since in another guise I used to do a blog about Orlando happenings for a huge, multi-national media conglomerate and currently contribute (with a great group) to Metroblogging Orlando.
I’ll get some more pictures up here and at the BlogOrlando Flickr page later, right now I’m about to tear into a Sierra Turkey on Foccaccia at Panera, my favorite place for food and free Wi-Fi (and apparently that of other bloggers as well, since a good portion of the conference attendees are here for lunch with me).

I arrived at Rollins about 8:40. Checked my cell phone and had a voice mail from ZenGrrl saying she thinks she’s coming down with the flu and wouldn’t make it today. It’s been a few months since we’ve been able to get together as she has been out of town and recently returned for a visit, so I was disappointed but hope she feels better soon, especially since her birthday is tomorrow. Swing by her site and wish her a “Happy Birthday”.
After calling conference host Josh and navigating over to the campus, I stepped through the doors of the hall, picked up my name tag and complimentary BlogOrlando T-shirt, then joined (at that point) some 40 other attendees.
Josh opened the conference at 9:10 and by that time the crowd had grown to 55 or so and by the time Josh finished his humorous introduction most of the 80 or so attendees were seated and ready for the individual sessions.I’m off to the “Politics” and “Hyperlocal” sessions.

I’m taking a well-deserved (in my opinion) day off from the big government agency to attend BlogOrlando, the UnConference. Free Wi-Fi is promised, so I hope to post a few entries through the course of the all day meeting and pictures here and at the BlogOrlando Flickr page.

Today is the birthday of my beloved Blog Girl. From me she’ll be receiving the gift she requested, dinner at the restaurant she requested and the traditional birthday spanking will take place, if my arm can hold out.

Happy Birthday to the best sidekick a Masked Blogger EVER had!!