Most useless PowerPoint I've ever seen

Slide 1:  Meeting title
Slide 2:  Meeting agenda, 3 items, plus time for questions
Slide 3:  Meeting agenda, with item 1 highlighted
Slide 4:  One line summary of agenda item 1
Slide 5:  Meeting agenda, with item 2 highlighted
Slide 6:  One line summary of agenda item 2
Slide 7:  Meeting agenda, with item 3 highlighted
Slide 8:  One line summary of agenda item 3
Slide 9:  Questions?

I hope no one printed this out.

Can't lose for winning

Not a day goes by where I don't wish they (my bosses) would sever me.  If such a thing happened, I would burst into tears of gratitude, grab my severance, and sprint for the door.  But corporate politics being what they are, my head is not on the chopping block, despite my subtle attempts to put it there.

No one has officially announced anything anywhere, but I am now a release manager (or something like that).  I spend most of my days directing email traffic (when I'm not ignoring it or watching Lotus Notes freeze up).  Last week I was near meltdown, so stressed my face went numb.  This past week was not so bad.  I had to lead the weekly status meeting, though, and when I saw who was attending, I thought, At last, someone upstairs will see how incompetent I am and start that severance ball rolling.

But no.  Instead, Mr. Big told my mentor that he liked the way I led the meeting.  What leading?  I didn't do anything! All I can figure out is my mentor is ambitious and a bit confrontational in an attempt to impress, and I'm neither.  Maybe Mr. Big finds that refreshing.

Anyway, after this little episode, it occurred to me that too many people have a vested interest in believing I am doing a good job, whether I am or not.  Whatever.  It also occurred to me that I don't have to be like my mentor.  The project is high profile (and being on such a project is against my slacker religion), but I am happy to share the limelight (and the work) with the whole team.  Meanwhile, I wonder how long I can use the excuse that I am new to explain away my screw-ups.

Besides routing email, I also spend a lot of time in meetings.  We have Web-Based Conferencing, so all we far flung team members can participate through the magic of technology, video on our PCs and audio on our phones.  I long ago switched to using a hands-free headset so I can knit type notes.  The downside is, just as popular songs can become ear worms, the sing-song sound of accented English can haunt my brain cells long after I've said good-bye.  It's like I am in a crowded room with the sound of conversation going on in the background.  Even when I wake up in the middle of the night - especially when I wake up in the middle of the night - the voices are there.  I'm never alone.

Fortunately for me, everyone I work with speaks English very well, better even than some of my American co-workers.  The only ones I have trouble understanding are the Indians, because they tend to speak rapidly but softly.  I do get a kick out of the little mistakes the different nationalities make:  pronouncing "synonyms" as syNONyns, making "closed" a two-syllable word (the Latvians do that), writing "rump down" instead of "ramp down", etc.    There is one phrase I'm not sure of the origin, though:  they talk about "clubbing" defects or reports, as in grouping them.  Sounds violent.

I guess that is enough for now.  Happy trails to you!

Oh, yeah

Now I remember what it is I hate about having a management-type job: it doesn't feel like real work. Yesterday it was like I was playing "Operator" - developer A tells me he fixed a defect and sends me a file, and I send the file to deployer B and ask if he can deploy it today; when B says okay, I ask tester C if deploying the fix will interrupt testing; when C says it's okay, I tell B to go ahead and deploy; then I wait for B to tell me if the deployment was successful. Which it wasn't, because for some reason a "node" was down, which was causing business analyst D to panic. For this I went to college? Twice? Retirement cannot come soon enough.

Most recent evenings I have been watching the Olympics, which is mildly entertaining and surprisingly engrossing. I'm not attracted to action movies, but wipe-outs on skates or skis? I'm so there. If I was the boss of the Olympics, though, I would turn it back into amateur competition. The primary rules would be, you can enter only one event, and once you have won a medal, you can never return. We could call it the Olympics for Real People.

I finished Bright-Sided. It was okay. Some of my friends are into the Law of Attraction and The Secret and I was hoping B-S would supply me with some ammunition against their magical thinking. But it didn't. Barbara Ehrenreich's bias is about all that carries the book, although the history of positive thinking was interesting. (I didn't know I was such a Calvinist.) Anyway, we all engage in magical thinking in one form or another, which is okay as long as it doesn't supplant critical thinking.

Now I am reading Horse Boy, which is about an autistic kid with an affinity for animals. The dad is convinced his son can be healed if they seek out shamans in Mongolia. No, this is not fiction, which is what makes it such a compelling story.

Somewhere in there, I watched "Bon Voyage" which I would describe as a French romantic farce. It must not have made much of an impression on me because all I can remember is that Gerard Depardieu was in it. Oh! Wait! It was about an actress and her besotted childhood friend in pre-World War II France. Gerard played a government minister the actress was leeching off. Not exactly a fun time in history, but the movie did make me laugh.

Take your golf ball to work

My right heel still hurts, off and on, from the plantar fasciitis. My SO's daughter suggested rolling a golf ball around with my foot, so that is what I do at work when it is bothering me. At home, I use one of the dog's toy balls, a nubby thing that won't slide on the carpet. Hopefully, it will continue to improve because the latest health news says, it doesn't matter how healthy you eat or how much you exercise if you sit on your butt all day long. So now I am making a point of getting out of my chair at least once an hour at work. We'll pretend that is not affecting my productivity.

Speaking of work, this week I heard the final nail in my career coffin driven home. The short version is, I no longer do software development, since that has all been outsourced. Now I am doing product support, which is more like business analysis. Instead of writing code, I get to study the requirements and research defects and validate modifications, all those things I HATE. The only worse thing would be code reviews. Right now I am at the "study the requirements" stage, which is really difficult for me because I keep dozing off. I don't know how BAs do it. The software developers are in Riga. Maybe I will have to go visit.

What else is new? I broke down and bought some jeans. The only ones I had that I could still fit into were growing a crotch hole, and it was just a matter of time before they became indecent.

An aside: There is something about entering a clothing store that just makes me lose heart. I don't know if it is the plethora of unflattering choices or the fact I have the fashion sense of a doorknob or what, but it is all I can do to not run out of there in tears.

Anyway, I bought these jeans at Kohl's. They are Lee's. They are incredibly LONG. After washing, they are better but still too long. Maybe "boot cut" now means you are supposed to wear them with stiletto heels. They have some Spandex in them but don't feel like they have Spandex, if you know what I mean. Very comfy. But long.

While I was there, I also looked for simple, inexpensive tops to wear with my pj bottoms. I have looked for these multiple times in multiple stores. They don't exist, at least in the women's department, unless you want something that looks too stupid to wear even to bed. At Target, I had purchased some long sleeved T's in the men's department, but despite being 100% cotton, they were unwearable. They must have left the bolls in the cotton when they created the cloth. I gave them to the Goodwill; was that wrong? Anyway, at Kohl's I picked up a couple of waffle shirts from Men's Underwear. They are soft and warm and comfy!

I am in need of a new winter coat, too. I tried Dick's, where I discovered those nice insulated coats with a brand name I can't remember (North Country? North Face? North Something. Or maybe I am thinking of Columbia) are EXPENSIVE! So I looked for women's coats at Kohl's. I looked and I looked and I looked. They had a gazillion men's coats, but I could not find the women's. I finally asked someone - the coats were behind the bathing suits. There were not very many to choose from, they each weighed about ten pounds, and they were so puffy I could not get my arms in the sleeves. FAIL. But my SO purchased his coat at Kohl's last year, for a song, so I plan to return and check out the men's coats. And pick up more of those waffle shirts.

In other attempts to spend money, I have been trying to upgrade my DSL to FIOS (FIber OpticS). The Verizon website is a nightmare to navigate, but I also find all the deals they offer to be confusing. Brand new customers get the best deals, of course, but I doubt it would pay to discontinue my existing service long enough to become a new customer. I used to get an offer from them almost everyday in the mail. The offers trailed off during xmas, but they are starting to arrive again. I'm trying not to get obsessed with getting the best deal, but I would really like a free Netbook when I sign up. My SO bought one and it is so CUTE!

What else is new? Not much. Same-o same-o. Plan to spend the day making a butt dent on the couch while I watch football and knit. Sounds like a plan. Go Colts!

Not a movie review

Not that I don't have a movie to watch from Netflix. I have a bad habit of not watching my Netflix movies in a timely fashion, a habit I was trying to break - hence, the sequence of movie reviews - but now I am back to my old wastrel tricks.

So what have I been up to? Well, I went on a business trip last week. I complain a lot about my job and I don't always agree with how I am managed, but there are very few really bad things I can say about my employer, especially when they own what amounts to a time share in private jets. And that is how found myself in this...



... eating this...



... with a view like this.



The problem is our fair city is very expensive and difficult to fly in and out of, and the company's solution is NetJets. This was my first time on board, and it puts commercial flight to shame. There is no security to pass through, none of this get-to-the-airport-hours-ahead-of-time. In fact, I was late due to an accident on the highway and THEY WAITED FOR ME. And the steward brought us coffee and breakfast when we took off and hot towels when we arrived(!!!)

The time at HQ was not very interesting. We were seated in the "basement" with the contractors, and this was our view:



Believe it or not, there is a deer in that picture. My travelling companion and I were so excited, you'd think we had never seen wildlife before. And, for me, that was the highlight of the trip. That, and getting to watch "Monday Night Football" and back-to-back-to-back reruns of "Law and Order: SVU".

The low point was getting sick from the salad bar in the cafeteria - the shrimp cooties in the mango and shrimp salad must have jumped across to the asparagus (I'm allergic to shellfish). The upside was I missed the company party, bowling followed by a meal in a shrimp-infested hibachi restaurant. By the time I felt better, it was time to go home.

Sleepless in October

It's not that I have been having trouble falling asleep the past few days. Instead, my dreams wake me up, mostly as a result of a new home improvement project. My philosophy is that the likelihood of bad things happening is in an inverse relationship to the amount of worrying I do. In other words, the more I worry, the less likely things will go wrong. The work is supposed to be done by the end of the month, though, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

Meanwhile, the fall-spring bug I seem partial to has returned. It strikes about once a month, during the fall until it gets wintry cold, then again in the spring until it warms up. It feels like I am coming down with a cold or the flu, but after a couple of days, it goes away. Exercising my immune system, I guess.

I have given up on the new position at work. A co-worker of mine who also applied for one of the two openings was invited to a second interview (and I was NOT). They finally offered him the job, but at a lower salary. That is giving him pause. I would be willing to earn a little less if I could have more vacation, but I don't think I will have the opportunity to bargain.

More troublemaking, plus updates

My usual MO at work these past few years has been to keep a low profile. If they did not know who I was, what I did, or how to find me, they could not sever me. Now I have enough pension years and am old enough that technically I could retire tomorrow. There are some financial goals I'd like to meet first, like paying off my mortgage. However, I feel more willing to take risks these days.

My latest campaign is to whine about our development tools. I have no idea how the corp decides on what tools to use. I do know that the ones my team uses are archaic by technical standards. I also know that other IT teams within the corp use more modern tools. With a new, smallish project coming up, it seems like a perfect time to introduce a better development environment. And I am not afraid to say so. We'll see if it gets me anywhere.

I also asked the HR guy about the position I interviewed for (more boldness there). He says they still have not decided; check back next week. My interpretation is this means I am not on the A-list, but hiring me for the job is not out of the question, either.

As for my yoga class problems, I abandoned the Tuesday night "Yoga I" class in favor of Wednesday night "Core Yoga", which meant moving date night to Thursday night and rescheduling appointments with my hair stylist. See? I can be flexible not only in body but in psyche as well.

And my insomnia has taken a leave of absence! (Knock on wood.) One of the studies discussed in Insomniac involved the relationship between protein consumption and melatonin levels. My diet tends to drift toward vegetarianism, so in the spirit of experimentation, this past week or so I made a conscious effort to eat more animal protein other than the usual eggs and cheese. And I am sleeping much better. My question is, Is it the meat or is it something in the meat, like hormones? The book decries the dearth of studies linking insomnia with hormones, but most women will tell you that such a link exists. I guess I could further my personal experiment by switching to organically raised meat, but I have a difficult time forking over that kind of cash.

So. Is everyone getting an H1N1 flu shot? I have not had the flu for about 12 years (more knocking on wood). In that time, some years I have had flu shots, but not in the past eight or so. I am not inclined to get one this year, either. I am not in a high risk group, plus they may or may not protect me, plus I am reluctant to be a guinea pig for these rushed-to-market medical "solutions". But that's just me. What about you?

Casual business

Every year we have Breast Cancer Awareness week at work (although it boggles my mind that anyone can be UNaware these days). In recent years, this fund raising event has been dubbed "Denim Day" because we get to wear denim if we donate $5 to the cause. (Fortunately, the money does not go toward breast cancer awareness but to your choice of a research fund or a mobile mammogram unit; more about that later.)

This year the subject line of the memo announcing the event was "Denim Days start Sep. 29" and the memo ended with "Contributors are encouraged to celebrate Denim Days and Breast Cancer Awareness Month by wearing jeans, along with something pink, on Monday, October 5."

Well, I misinterpreted the subject line and the last sentence of the memo to mean, starting Sep. 29, we were to wear denim, and on Oct. 5, also wear something pink. Guess who the only person in the building wearing jeans today was? Well, not the only person. I saw one other who must have the same reading comprehension abilities as I have.

Re the mobile mammogram unit, I took advantage of its presence in our parking lot a year (or two?) ago. That will probably be my last mammogram. The technician managed to twist my right breast before applying tectonic pressure with the plates, and it was excruciating. It made me cry. My breast ached for a week. It seems counter-intuitive that treating breasts like this is a good thing. Plus I read (in a book the name of which I cannot remember) that, anecdotally, mammograms save lives, but statistically, NOT. For now, I will take my chances.

Almost two weeks and still no news on the position I interviewed for. I'm guessing that I am not their first choice, but if they can't find anyone better, they might give me a chance. Or they are negotiating with my boss for my release. Or they have made a decision but no one has bothered to tell me what it is. Or (fill in the blank)....

Meltdown

Friday was one of those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

The interview Thursday started out well, but I fell down during the second half when a lot of specific and technical questions were asked about Oracle. I've never had any formal training, so I don't know the actual terminology or definitions of all things SQL, but I have always been able to figure out what needed to be done or found the information in books or online or from co-workers. I tried to stress that in the interview, but I'm not sure how it went over.

So I was already feeling a bit battered when someone did not just press my buttons on Friday but leaned on them, heavily. I won't bore you with the details, but my head exploded. I don't think I showed how upset I was, but when everyone left for lunch, I found myself pacing my 9'x9' cubicle and just had to get outside. Fortunately, it was a beautiful day. I walked around the construction site and the pond until the feeling returned to my extremities and I could breathe again. When I returned to my desk, I was calm enough to deal with the situation.

Friday night, though, the whole upset came flooding back when I tried to go to sleep. I spent half the night chewing on my work situation, plus the yoga class thing, plus several other problems in my life. And I did come up with some strategies, so the insomnia was not a total waste of time. Sometimes we are awake at 2AM for a reason.

On a separate note, I performed a little blog cleanup in the sidebar today. Despite my IT background, sometimes I am a little slow to adopt new technology. I just recently switched from IE to Chrome for my browser, and consequently to Google Reader for my blog feeds. Blogger has a "Blog List" gadget that can be populated directly from Google Reader. Easy peasy!

Sign of the times

We received notice at work that our pensions are being frozen. Actually, new hires have not had the option of participating in the pension plan for some time now. Instead, they get an extra company contribution to their 401k. Now we all will get that, plus those with frozen pensions will get an additional transitional amount. I actually like this method better, because the calculations for one's pension always seemed a bit, well, mysterious.

Re the new position I applied for at work: I had an interview scheduled for this afternoon, but "they" cancelled it at the last minute, due to a meeting conflict. I find this a bit odd, because we have software for scheduling meetings that detects such conflicts. A co-worker who is also applying for one of the open positions had his interview today, though, and from the kind of questions they asked him, I am less hopeful that I will get the job. Another co-worker questioned whether I really wanted the job, which further wobbled my leaky craft. At any rate, I don't have to worry about it again until next week, so I won't.

On a positive note, construction on the new building should start soon. Or at least, the parking lot will be carved up into construction and non-construction territories this weekend. Baby steps.

Gulp

Tired of listening to myself whine about my job, I finally did something about it: applied for an open position within the company. It's an IT position, but in a business department instead of IT proper. And it is right here, in this building, on the same floor even, with people I already know. The work, however, would be something new, at least, and maybe interesting. I don't think it could be worse than my current plight. The application process is online on our intranet, so I am hoping that I have better luck than I have had with other online processes lately. We shall see, come next week.

Why the sudden motivation? Maybe it has something to do with waking up each morning, chanting "F*ck, f*ck, f*ck, F*CK!" Maybe it has something to do with the insomnia, which already seems to have become resistant to the caffeine reduction program. Maybe it's the stomach churning in the middle of the night. I need to hang in for at least another 2.5 years, but I don't think I'll make it if my stomach hurts and I can't sleep and my language skills continue to deteriorate.

And maybe some of the motivation comes from the blogs I read. Jane changed jobs a while back, and is happier than ever. Laurie decided to move and just like that, it was done. Noelle has been floundering a bit lately, but is on a new course of self-discovery that I greatly admire. If they dare, so can I.

Gee, I feel better already.

Insomnia

That's my excuse for not updating this blog more often. Periodically, I suffer through bouts of insomnia, but this most recent one has been particularly relentless. Recently, I participated in an insomnia survey of sorts, a class project of my massage therapist, and she suggested I read Insomniac, by Gayle Greene.



I have never been able to discern a reason why my insomnia comes and goes, but I'm guessing it's a combination of anxiety, hormones, and stress.

Also, the rabbit died. That used to mean "I'm pregnant" but in this case, the rabbit literally died.



My pet bunny suddenly sickened and passed before I could get him to the vet. I've lost pets before but only after they have grown old and/or suffered through a long illness. HipHop was young and I expected to have him for several more years. I'm a little surprised at how much it affected me, too. I think the older we get, the more difficult loss becomes, which is unfortunate because losses large and small really start piling up as we age.

Another feature of aging is realizing we are not going to do all those things we thought we would do "someday". Like travel. And by travel, I mean really travel, and not just in herds of seniors.



From reading Where the Hell is Matt? I realize why I don't really travel: my physical comfort and safety matter more to me than visiting strange and exotic places. Is that the definition of old or what?

Speaking of old, I am also reading Somewhere Towards the End, by Diana Athill.



Liberated woman or slut? She likes to kiss and discreetly tell. She is less discreet in her opinions, and I favor candid people.

What else has been going on lately? Our all-employee summer event was postponed at the last minute because it was inadvertently scheduled the same week as a global downsizing. (My department downsized last year, so we were left relatively unscathed.) We were to go bowling. We went bowling several years ago for the all-employee event. At that time, we were gifted tee-shirts in the company color with the company logo on the front. Not bad, I thought, until I unfolded it the day of the event.



Fridays are jeans day and I frequently wear this shirt then, which makes the person responsible for its design happy. She does not realize I am wearing it ironically.

Speaking of work, we are getting a new building next year and the new building will have new work stations. This is my current cubicle. (Sorry about the crummy pics - had to use my cell phone camera.)



This is your standard cube, about 9' x 9', with a hutch, some shelves, some drawers, a visitor's chair, and a 5-drawer file cabinet. I also have a white board and a hook to hang my coat. The cloth walls are about 5' tall, giving one the pretense of privacy.

Here is the new work station. (If you look closely, you can see the hand of god giving it the spark of life.)



Floor space is about 5.5' x 5.5'. Walls are about 4' tall. Shelves and drawers are limited; no white boards and no coat hooks. If one rolls one's chair back from the desk a bit, one is in the aisle.

The desk can be cranked up so one may work standing up...



... just in case one wishes to remain above the fray.

"They" set up two of these 6-stall pods, one right next to my cube, so I get to hear all the complaints and carping. Once the novelty wears off, two employees are going to take up residence.

In fact, here is one of those employees now, with another co-worker who is making sure the monitor is level by using an app on his Google phone.



Is that geeky or what?

Tricks I play

There is a co-worker in my office whose phone rings incessantly when he is not at his desk. For some reason, the calls don't roll over to voice mail. A ringing phone, especially one that you can't answer, is maddening. I don't really know this co-worker well, so I don't feel free to accost him in the hallway and tell him just how annoying his caller is. But I don't care to expend much emotional energy on this issue, either, so I pretend he has a relative who is mentally ill and who needs to contact him 24/7, sort of like the Laura Linney character's brother in "Love Actually". Then my quiet seething is transformed into Poor guy.

Several years ago, another co-worker spent a lot of time in our department conducting user tests on some new software. This woman tends to laugh - a lot - frequently to the point where she sounds like she is choking. It was rapidly driving me crazy. Again, I did not know her well enough to tell her to Shut the f*ck up! So instead, I pretended like she was my best friend. Oh, that Mary! There she goes again!

One more example is a contract worker who I considered a bit of a pompous asshole, but with whom I had to work on a regular basis. In order to calm my general crankiness toward this individual, I pretended his wife had cancer. Not that I wanted to wish her ill, but simply to generate a little compassion on my part. Give the guy a break.

I consider it part of my job to get along with my co-workers. Most of them are simply doing the best they can, sad as that seems sometimes. But occasionally I need to trick myself into being civil if not downright friendly, in order to get my work done.

Hey, it works for me.

Take me out to the ball game

Last weekend we saw our newly named, newly mascotted, newly housed minor league baseball team make a rather feeble attempt at playing ball. Baseball games can be interminable, especially if the home team is playing like they are dazed and confused, but that did not stop the women in front of us from talking interminably to each other, even though they were complete strangers.



Fortunately, there were plenty of other distractions.



Unfortunately, my camera batteries died before the end of the first inning. We did have a good time, though. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon in the Fort.

After a wonderful, 5-day weekend, it was back to work, where I seem to have become persona non gratis with a certain group at our location. Things like this used to bother me, but now I find them amusing. While their emails to me are terse and simmering, my responses are lightly gushing, like I'm a dimwit who just does not understand that they hate my guts. I doubt the ice will ever melt, but at least I cannot be accused of fanning the flames. Unless they think I am being sarcastic. Heh.

Time and money

Today, in honor of Earth Day, I decided to recycle some office paper. I salvaged the paper clips and binder clips to reuse but otherwise tossed 3-4 years of my working life into the trash. The files started with 2003 and were thick with the defects I fixed for each release of the Big Fat Enterprisewide App, but by 2005 the defects were thinning and I wondered if maybe I was programming myself out of a job. In 2006 I received kudos for a task well done, that task being training our replacements, and again I wondered if I was doing too good a job. But I'm still here! Less one file drawer of paper to move to the new building, the new building that has not yet been started.

Thanks for participating in my honesty survey, although after giving it some thought, the survey may have actually been about money. Otherwise honest and noble individuals are often reduced to dunderheads when it comes to money. I'm surprised by those who cannot NOT spend every cent they earn (and then some!) or those who are well off but can't part with a single dollar for charity or those who think they are poor but can afford to send their kids to parochial school. And what we each are willing to spend money on is also very telling indeed.

I've come to the conclusion that I will never be rich, will always have to work for a living, but will also not become homeless or destitute, partially due to dumb luck but also because I try to make wise financial decisions. Somehow I have always found a job when I needed one, always made enough money to get by (although at times, things were a little tight), chose to have only two children, chose to own only one car, chose to live in a modest house (which is almost paid off!) I don't carry a balance on my credit cards, I avoid buying things I don't need, and I make an effort to share my so-called wealth with a variety of charities that are important to me.

While I am happy to buy my kids the occasional gift, they are both self-supporting adults who do not need my money (of which I am SO proud!) Several of those co-workers who thought I should keep the tax refunds that were not mine to keep subsidize the lifestyles of some of their adult relatives, presumably because they equate money with love and/or to assuage guilt. One fellow may wind up in bankruptcy because of his "generosity".

Several years ago (before the current economic downturn), my financial advisor suggested I was living too far below my means. But I look around and wonder, What else could I want? Really, the only thing I want right now is to be able to retire as soon as possible. Living below my means will help me toward that goal better than anything else. Besides, when you buy something, you have to take care of it even if you don't use it much, and also find a place to keep it. My house is small and my time is limited, so I'd rather keep my belongings to a minimum.

I know. I'm a bad consumer.

Plateaued

I have not lost a single additional pound following the four-day jump-start of the Flat Belly Diet, after which I lost four pounds. This lack of progress is due to the fact that I am finding it nearly impossible to stick with 1600 calories a day because I'M HUNGRY! Instead of four 400-calorie meals, I am eating five. And while I am not losing weight, at least I have not gained any back. So, if I ever get down to my target weight, I know how many calories it takes to maintain.

My daughter is also following the FBD, more or less. I asked her if she was hungry, and she said, Yes, but she just tries to distract herself. So that is going to be my strategy, too - set hard limits on how much I eat and how often and when I feel hungry in between meals, try to find something to keep my mind off food. At home, this is relatively easy, but it would help if my job weren't so BORING.

In other news, well, there isn't any to speak of. Yesterday was Easter, but we don't really do Easter. Hell, we barely do xmas. I consider myself agnostic, my daughter is an avowed atheist, and while my son told me once that he believes in God, beyond that, things get a little fuzzy. (The only time he might have heard anything about God was during locker room prayers.) My dad had never been in a church until he married. My mom came from a long line of ministers and tried to get us to go to church once in a while, but it was a lost cause. When I found out that her brother had converted to Catholicism, I went around telling people I was "half-Catholic" as I thought it was like being half-Danish. Anyway, the closest to Easter I got this weekend was calling my dad and putting ham in the scalloped potatoes for dinner on Sunday.

No real update on last Friday's issue at work, either. Today was very quiet. Too quiet.

It was a good Friday

When I arrived at work today, it looked like having my carpets cleaned was going to be the highlight of the day, but it actually got better and better.

Several years ago, I wrote a little application that has run without fanfare or problem for a select number of users, until this week, when suddenly it began to hang after submitting a query to a database. For most users, instead of executing in a few seconds as it usually does, it was taking 5-10 minutes; for some, over an hour. Totally unacceptable.

After lunch, I found out that not only was my little app affecting its own users, it was slowing down everyone in the corporation who was trying to use our big, fat, enterprise-wide business application. Wow. I didn't know I had such power.

What's even better is, it's totally not my fault. Nothing has changed with my app for years, so it is either a database problem or a network problem. Dance, infrastructure team, dance!

I think my work here is done.

Crying at work

No, I did not get "right sized". Things were a little slow today, so I was stealth-reading an essay in the NYer by David Sedaris, trying desperately not to laugh out loud, mopping up silent tears of hilarity. Who thought a giant box of condoms in a shopping cart at Costco could be so funny?

Once the new building is built, I won't be able to do any of this - read, stifle laughter, dab my eyes - unnoticed. When we move into the greenest office building in northeast Indiana, we will trade our tall (over five foot) cubicle walls for short (three foot) ones. Ostensibly, this is so everyone will be exposed to the natural light streaming through the high tech windows. Everyone will also be exposed to everyone else. But, more importantly, everyone's monitors will be exposed to everyone else instead of just the techno geeks who monitor (heh) our Internet access behind the scenes. I predict the economy will suffer from the sudden slow-down of online shopping.

How can a company lay off 10% of its work force and still erect a new building, you ask? Funny accounting. My employer won't own the building; instead, they will sign a 12-year lease while someone else owns it. Still, closing an office in South America while erecting a building in the Midwest looks bad. I for one would gladly sacrifice my new (short) cubicle walls in favor of keeping my current (tall) ones if it will save someone's job.

For a while there, I was obsessed with doomsday scenarios (besides unemployment), to the point where I started collecting two-liter pop bottles to store water. I don't drink much pop, let alone from two-liter bottles, so I asked a co-worker to save me his. I was too embarrassed to tell him why, so I made up a story about building a cold frame and wanting to fill the pop bottles with water and use them as a heat sink. Now he periodically asks how my cold frame is coming along. I tell him I am still accumulating building materials for it, which is sort of true.

And, speaking of doomsday, I finally finished listening to Collapse on CD. Or I should say, CDS - there were 22 of them. A very interesting book, but I was disappointed in the ending. Jared Diamond sounded like he was going to make some suggestions about what we as individuals could do, but then he didn't. I think I will focus on reforestation (this from someone who last summer cut down four silver maples in her backyard) and population control. I hereby pledge to have no more children.

Our turn

Thursday morning, as I was walking into the building at work, I mused that things had been awfully quiet lately - no announcements, no town halls - and wondered what was up with that? Upon opening my email, I found out: 10% reduction in staff in the coming 12 months, by retirement, attrition, and "redundancies". Shit.

My department reorganized last year, and at that time, trimmed about 10% of the IT staff worldwide. So the general feeling, as expressed by my line managers, is we have already done our part. But I am sure they have a list of potential lambs to sacrifice.

I feel relatively safe because I support several esoteric but high-profile applications. One is being phased out over the next year or so. Another is slated to go as well, but the end date is TBD. The third actually generates income, and I am the last programmer standing on that project.

After revealing just how much money the company lost last year, the CEO and chairman of the board resigned a month or so ago. These were the two guys who kept reassuring us that everything was fine. Were they asked to leave or are they rats deserting a sinking ship?

Later Thursday, they announced some office consolidations and shifting business. We are supposed to get a whole new building in the coming year, but they have not broken ground yet. I will feel a whole lot better when the heavy equipment shows up.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

That was Thursday. Not only had some erroneous data magically crept into the database of one project I support, but on another project, one on which the end user was about to sign off on the requirements for new (and high profile) functionality, said end user uncovered my total incompetence. Not only had I supplied the business analyst with an outdated user manual to use as a starting point for adding the new functionality, I myself was working off an outdated code base. Then when I went looking for the most recent code, I could not find all of it. This resulted in many mea culpa's on my part while I surreptitiously and unsuccessfully tried to finger someone else for the blame and dealt with that stomach-twisting sensation I get when I screw up.

What I could not understand is that ordinarily I am compulsive about backing up my work. In the bad old days of software development, it was ridiculously easy to accidentally delete a whole project or format a hard drive or damage a disk. But now we have version control systems and network backups and trash folders to save us from ourselves. There is only one caveat - one must actually make use of these tools for them to work. And I thought I had. And if I didn't, I should hang up my keyboard and mouse.

I wasn't the only one having a bad day. A co-worker who was also working a bit later than usual dropped the F-bomb, which is unusual in this office. I said, My sentiments exactly, and we traded our tales of woe. He made his sound worse, but I think mine topped his by one ulcer and a dire need for a grammartini.

My plan was to crawl home and inter myself under the covers, but my daughter showed up to walk, which was a good thing even though it was unexpected. The fresh air helped, as did a small supper of black soy bean soup (much better than it sounds) and dark chocolate, a little meditation, a little yarn winding (aka merino therapy), writing in my journal (mostly in all caps), a warm shower, a crossword puzzle, and listening to my life-is-but-a-dream tape. At least I got a halfway decent night's sleep.

Friday morning I kept looking for the missing files, still not believing I had not backed them up, while also trying to solve the firstly mentioned data problem. By lunch, the bad data had been removed but it looked like I was going to have to recreate the missing code. So I fetched the latest code base from the repository, opened up the project, and THERE IT WAS! The missing code! WTF?!?

As near as I can figure, I DID back up the project, but I had renamed a form which I thought would also rename the file it was in, but it did not. So the functionality I thought was missing was there all along, disguised by a misleading filename. That does not explain why the code on my PC was outdated, but at least I am not totally incompetent; I'm just a half-assed fuck-up. What a relief!

(Sorry if this was too nerdy for most of you, but someday, when I am perusing old postings, I will be reminded of my fallibility. Not that I'm not reminded on a daily basis, but I don't usually create such a detailed account of it for public consumption.)