CafeChatNoir

Wheeee! Short day today. Of course, it’s short cause I’m going to the dentist, BUT I’M STILL DONE FOR THE WEEK AT NOON!!!

And I didn’t come in early either. Phhbbt.

So, yeah, weekly staff meeting conference call today. No one, and I mean no one had anything to say. Our new manager started yesterday, and she was in on the call, but really, I don’t think her presence had anything to do with the near deafening silence. I don’t have anything to say in these meetings anymore once I realized that it just went in one ear and out the other, I think that everyone else has caught on, too.

In a little over a year, we’ve lost 6 people in our department, and another is transitioning out right now. (I’m not counting the revolving door action we had on newbies there for a couple months.) 5 of the 7 have at least stayed with the company. People are actually taking bets and asking me when I am going elsewhere.

Thing is, I don’t want another job - I like this one. I like the work I do, and I’m good at it. Sure, I’m not stupid, I am keeping my ear to the ground just in case, but I’m not actively looking or trying to scout anything out.

What I want is for management to clue in. For them to actually acknowledge in some tangible fashion what we’re doing and the conditions we’re doing it under. We get some mumbled words in passing, but they don’t cut it. The group is really getting beaten down, and it feels like management is just letting it happen without so much as a sideways glance, or worse, jerking us around even further. It’s sad, really.

But management isn’t gonna change, so I need to figure out how to best deal with this nonsense short of going to another department. So far, working on having a life outside of work has helped immensely.

Dammit, I was gonna post this f-locked, but I can’t get my thoughts together enough to make it readable.

In short, paycheck player time.

I’m trying to pinpoint where the day spiraled into a black hole of suckage, but I can’t quite nail it down - I am guessing sometime during the staff meeting though, and it went down from there. I know it’s a bad day when I start clock-watching, cause it’s rare that I do that, and today I was counting down the seconds.

Had been planning on the gym for revenge against the water (had a great weight circuit last night, followed by a complete crapassed swim), but since I am having trouble keeping my eyes open, I have decided against it.

In the weird department, got an out of the blue email from someone that I haven’t run into in probably a year. Friend of a friend, and while we always got on perfectly fine, I can’t even begin to fathom what prompted it.

Oh, to all those out there that are much more up on sci-fi things - please educate me… Serenity is based on Firefly, correct? I’ve seen the trailers and it looks kinda cool - if you’d never managed to actually see the show, would it make any sense? Nevermind, asked the same question 12 minutes ago and I have my answer now. :)

Sleep well, all.

Network came back up, I gave it about 5 minutes to make sure there wasn’t some freakish crush of incoming stuff, and went to lunch. :)

Yep, this has been my week for being the worst employee possible.

Network still down. Truly enjoying the quiet. Letting the folks in the office call me if they need to feed me calls. Usually I’m the one in the office with all the sticky notes from the call center and no one will take any of them. This is a nice change.

If you’re a dog with lots of fur. It’s flipping cold out there!! Dog is loving it though, so it can’t be all bad. Me? I’m in a sweater… There will be no visible evidence of my workouts again until next May…

Tasha’s in town, so we’ve been out behaving badly the past couple nights. Amazingly, I’m not totally fried today, just moving a little slower than I normally do.

Wheee. Citrix just crashed, and everyone on IM in the office just simultaneously went offline. Someone must have tripped over a power cord.

Happy Birthday !!!!!!!!!!!

Make your own ribbon!

My contribution:

http://www.supportourribbons.com/maker_show.php?id=30839

Happy birthday !

“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

1. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what’s the first thing you look at?
Pretty sure it’s my eyes. But I’d never really thought about it before either…

2. How much cash do you have on you?
$195. Bartenders at the Ballroom love me, cause I don’t waste my time and theirs with putting a $4 beer on a credit card)

3. What’s a word that rhymes with “TEST”?
Guest

4. Favorite plant?
Hmm, I don’t know that I have one.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell/home phone?
My broker

6. What is your main ring tone on your phone?
Weezer’s Beverly Hills

7. What shirt are you wearing?
Black cami

8. Do you “label” yourself, or could you?
Heck, I don’t think there is any one label that would fit anyway.

9. Name brand of your shoes currently wearing?
Barefoot :)

10. Bright or Dark Room?
It’s going to depend on what I’m doing.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
- goofiest person I’ve run into around here, and in the coolest way possible.

12. Ever spilled the beans?
I’m sure I have, I just can’t remember any specifics.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Dancing.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell phone say?
“You’re trying to text message a landline, you idiot.”

15. Do you ever click on “Pop Ups” or Banners?
Not intentionally

16. What’s a saying that you say a lot?

17. Who told you they loved you last?
My grandma.

18. Last furry thing you touched?
The dog.

19. How many hours a week do you work?
Between 40 and 50. Closer to 40 these days cause it’s gotten so intense I just don’t have the go left to do more.

20. How many rolls of film do you need to get developed?
All digital baby.

21. Favorite age you have been so far?
So far, it’s right now.

22. Your worst enemy?
Myself.

23. What is your current desktop picture?
Windows Coffee Bean theme

24. What was the last thing you said to someone?
“Love you and I’ll talk to you next week” to my grandma.

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to change a major regret?
Ooh, tough one. On the one hand, yes, changing a major regret could be good, but it would probably cascade into a lot of other things changing too, and I don’t know that I want that.

Hit the Clarendon Ballroom last night, one of the more outrageous nights there so far - I attribute it to spillover from the neighborhood drunkfest that was in the general vicinity yesterday. One really good band, one band that made a 4th grader learning violin sound good, and the usual techno in the basement.

Each time we go, I dress down progressively further than the time before, as I go for the dancing, not the hookup. I still don’t seem to be getting the point across, as evidenced by the one gentleman (and I certainly use that term loosely) that was humping my leg in the middle of the dance floor like an unaltered puppy. I am sure he’s got a rather nasty bruise on his foot this morning from where the heel of my shoe planted itself on his foot.

Next time we’ve got to bring some token testosterone and/or I am just going to wear BDU’s…

Don’t get me wrong, it was completely fun, it just gets rather surreal at times. After the leg humping incident, I went upstairs for a beer, and as I am walking along, someone taps my shoulder, I stop and look, thinking maybe it’s someone I know - nope, just a couple random guys, one of them says, “Damn, look at you, walking along like you’ve totally got it going on or something!” If I’d had the beer in my hand already, I would have likely snorted it out my nose. I laughed and promised I wouldn’t let it happen again.

Then there was yet another dance partner, who asked where I was going to school… Cue beer snorting again. Told him I’d gone to GMU but been out for a while now. Oh, when? Um, 1993. Eyes widen. “Wait, how old are you?” *shake off the feeling of being positively ancient* “33, and you?” “I don’t want to tell, cause then you’ll think I’m just a kid.” Well, hell, with that statement, yes. (The answer turned out to be 25.)

Honestly, I was the most conservatively dressed** in the group (and none of us that outrageous to begin with), and yet it seemed to be an attractor… And this is why I really will never figure out men. Admittedly, for whatever reason, my confidence was running really high last night from the moment I parked the car, so maybe that fed into it somehow, but still, surreal.

**Pair of jeans I inherited from my BROTHER, black tank top, long sleeved knit top over that, black slides, hair in the usual “I don’t give a shit” updo and normal makeup… Get there and Abs proceeds to tell me I look “totally hot” *headdesk* NOT THE PLAN!

The dog is afraid of the new bed.

Ran at lunch, so no guilt for not hitting the gym after work. :) Best distance for run/walks splits to date, marginal pace, though, but it was also warmer than it’s been in a couple weeks and I’ve not done *any* running so far when it’s been over 90. Note to self: throw a couple of bottles of Gatorade in the fridge at work…

Was presented with a 4 pack of Guinness from one of the newbies in the office today. Sweet. I had rebuilt a table for her (long, pain in the ass process), and she offered any alcohol I wanted, and I said a 4 pack of G would be great, and damned if she didn’t come through for me! It wasn’t *that* big a deal, just something she doesn’t know how to do yet, but she’s well on her way, though. (She’s already good at this, she’s gonna be great with more time.)

New bed to be delivered tomorrow between 11:30 and 2:30. More room for me! For those of you that don’t have pets, or aren’t aware of how the parceling out of space goes, it’s proportional to the # of feet… 2 cats, 1 dog, 12 feet to my 2. I don’t get much space on a double…

Got a call from someone in California this evening, he said my number was on his missed calls list… I didn’t even recognize his name or number, could have been from work I suppose, but I would have left a message. Do you normally call people back on your missed calls list if you don’t even remotely recognize the number? Freak.

National Book Festival tomorrow - 10 to 5 on the Mall between 7th and 14th Hmm, if the bed gets here early enough…

I know too many people in Texas.

Ah, yes, dealing with the phone company…

(As pointed out on fark.com, best enjoyed if imagining John Cleese reading it.)

Insomnia AGAIN. Only til 3 AM this time around… No biking for me this morning, thanks. I know myself well enough to know that if I am not mentally clear/alert, I am just asking to ride into a parked car or something, and I am definitely NOT clear or alert this morning. I’ll probably hit the gym and do the lifecycle on the way home, at least I can zone out while I go without fear of crashing.

Realized this morning that my shower gel leaked in my gym bag - not really much of a mess, it was in one of the outside pockets, but it does explain why my car smelled so fruity last night when I got in to go home…

Have our weekly staff meeting today - should be interesting. The past two weeks have just done me in - I’m just all out of go. I don’t know what on earth management could possibly even do at this point, we don’t have the manpower we need and we’re not getting any more in the immediate future. Sure, bitch sessions have their place, everyone can at least feel like they’ve been able to say their piece, but I’m also not so naive to think that anything can actually come of it.

OK, I should probably go to work or something now, shouldn’t I?

Rita is apparently a bitch on wheels, and if you’re not out of the way yet, you’d best be hauling ass here very soon it seems.

Please be safe, be smart and don’t take any stupid chances, OK?

Today I spent at least 4 hours solid writing a 1100+ line script to rebuild a table. This is NOT EASY. However, because I am also the only one in the group that has come up with any kind of methodology as to how to do this, no one really realizes what a bitch and a half it is, they just know I am hyper-focused on something and ignoring the rest of the world.

During the course of this, I get an IM from the manager that one of my other clients wants their call escalated, as I am impeding the progress of their upgrade to the next version because I haven’t fixed their problem yet. I tell manager I have repeatedly tested the “problem”, cannot recreate it, and no one else has ever heard of this happening, and I will give it to M, no problem. I immediately IM her and being a good soul, she is off and running with it. Manager suddenly is saying “Oh, you didn’t have to give it away…” Um, yeah I did, client thinks I am a putz anyway, this will make her happy. Well, turns out the client lied to me, had me completely barking up the wrong tree and M had it figured out in no time flat. This is where the brain-fried stuff is bad - I’m too out of it to consider that the clients aren’t telling me the truth. M happily told the manager it was the user’s fault.

Finally finished the damn table, which isn’t even for one of my calls, but that was really good, it’s a kickass little thing I’ve figured out that no one else has ever even bothered to attempt, even if it is somewhat time consuming.

Then I get an email from another client saying that I have kept their budgets from working for the last five months… WTF? I’ve had this call for all of two weeks, and I’ve been fighting w/QC over whether or not it’s a bug. She has cc’d half the world on this, including the Managing Director for their implementation. (This client has been very, very high maintenance.) Before I can even reply, the MD is emailing saying to give him a call. Aw, shit, I am in no mood for this, every other time I talk with a consultant or MD, they’re mad at me for work done (or not done yet) by QC. Seriously guys, it’s not even my department!! So, I call. First words out of my mouth are, “Ed, I have NOT had this call for 5 months!!” He assures me it’s really OK, he understands, this client is rapidly becoming a known quantity for being full of herself and he will handle it. I did give him the rundown on what I’d done so far, told him I’d go poke QC yet again. I told one of the newbies who for whatever reason wants to strangle him (and probably legit) that for the moment, she is to be nice to him since he just helped me out. :)

Then, last call of the day. My old nemesis from AT&T. Who is now an independent contractor doing an implementation out somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Really, this should be M’s thing cause she’s the Asia/Pacific international person, but she’s also saved my butt today, and I owe her. He’d already talked to her last night, I looked over her notes, they couldn’t nail down what was wrong. So, I pulled a few more tables, could *conceptually* see what was happening, even if the data looked perfectly OK. Told him to go delete the record, re-enter it, and reprocess. Damn, I am good. Yep, it’s one of those solutions that I feel is right up there with “reboot your system and see what happens”, but it worked. And for the first time ever, this guy didn’t treat me like a total idiot. (It could also be that he’s forgotten who I am.)

But yeah, what an effed up rollercoaster of a day.

I am so mentally fried. Case in point: Helping newbie w/a call. Ugly call. Large, ungodly mess. The final solution is take table A, summarize to match format of table B, then update table B accordingly. Of course, I am the only one in the group that apparently has the wherewithal to actually attempt this in the first place (I’ve done a handful at this point, completely of my own initiative, there is no laid out procedure for this) I managed to write the summarization script wrong, and discovered that this morning when attempting to in turn write the update side of it for table B…

No blood, no foul and all that, but I had to re-write it this morning and have it sent back to the client before we can update table B, and that is going to slow things down again. I’d hoped to get the update piece of it done this morning before going in, but no luck on that now.

So, the poor client is hosed because this is taking so long, my coworker is stuck in the middle, I’ve already got a shitload of my own calls I’m trying to deal with (rather unsuccessfully I might add!), and I swear I don’t think I will ever see the day again when I don’t have 10 to 20 calls assigned to me on any given day unless I go on another two week vacation here soon.

I’m starting to just close calls for nonresponse. If I’ve been calling and emailing you for data for a week with no answer, you’re gone, cause obviously, it’s not that important. I’ve gotten rid of a handful in the past two days with that. (In the past, I would hunt folks down and beat them soundly about the head and ears for the data. I just don’t have the time for that anymore.)

We’ve got some more people hired on, but they’re not starting til October, and they’ll be in training the first 4-6 weeks, so there is really no relief in sight until November.

My vacation balance is back up over 60 hours, it’s time to start scheduling some days off here and there for sure just to keep myself sane.

I’m worried that I am going to make a large mistake here somewhere along the way.

Funny thing is - I can’t say that I’m stressed. Just mentally steamrolled. We’re all in the same boat, I know this, but damn, I’m kinda tired. I think the worst part is, the manager we currently have (who really is a level removed from where our new manager will be), just really doesn’t want to know this, so she’s keeping her head in the sand.

Ah well, this too shall pass. I still love the work itself, I really enjoy fixing this stuff, the conditions are simply less than optimal right now.

Looks like there will be not one, but probably three tris ahead for me next season. Two sprints and a mini. (Only problem being that it looks like the mini won’t be the first one scheduled…kinda wanted to do that first.)

Fantasy hockey draft done. Should make for a fun season.

Work is beating the crap out of me again this week. Can’t say I’m stressed, just kinda flattened.

Got all philosophical on the way home, and realized that despite all the large potholes in the road this past year, things are finally shaking out, and life overall is pretty good.

Yup, swim and pizza did me good - slept like a rock.

Registered for the Columbia IronGirl Tri this morning - August 26, 2006! 1000M OW swim, 30K bike, 5K run. :-D

This means that I’ll be doing two tris next season, very possibly three, cause I can’t leave my coworker hanging - the August tri is chicks only. Want to do the Manassas mini in May, and hopefully WorldGate will be doing their sprint again next year as well - it’s truly local, so it couldn’t be more perfect - I’ve emailed them to see if they’re planning on it and when registration opens.

The Manassas mini really is a short one - I think it will be good for me in that a) I surely won’t die, and b) it will be good for getting the hang of transitioning in a race environment. I think it will also be a good thing for my coworker to be shooting for along w/the WorldGate, cause right now he’s not exactly convinced he can do this. (Unlike me, once I’ve made up my mind to do something, you’d best get the hell out of my way.)

OK, off to work, today should be good since I’ve actually gotten sleep!

Hopefully tonight I won’t have a repeat of last night’s “up until 4 AM” performance. Walked for ~30 minutes at lunch w/my coworker who I suckered into doing a tri next year, and then hit the pool on the way home. Ordered in pizza for dinner, and I am really nice and sleepy now.

It would be nice to get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight. :)

But I am SO incredibly restless tonight. Perhaps the nap wasn’t the best idea after all.

Bookshelves are not put together, needed electric screwdriver, didn’t have one that wasn’t burnt out (I think my mom used to drill bricks just for fun), so off to Target, the land of everything you need but didn’t ever know it, but it has to charge up overnight. So, that’s tomorrow mornings project before I leave for the office. Little bro has add’l bookshelves, but I am thinking I may snag one or two of these, cause they’ll go in my bedroom a little better. I’m trying to get away from the “post-apocalyptic-fraternity-house” decorating style that has been my habit over the years.

So, even though I didn’t get up to the city, a fair amount accomplished, errands run, new bed purchased (delivery next Saturday), good run in this morning. Then somewhere around 4, I decided, “Hey, it’s Sunday, you’re not heading anywhere else, why not a nap?” And I crashed hard for about two hours. The kind of nap where you’re not really sure what time it is or even what day it is when you wake up. Sure, I’ll probably be up until 2AM for it, but it was worth it.

OK, going to go try and put together some bookshelves. This should be good, since they’re ones that were just sitting around the basement, have no instructions, and very possibly not all the needed parts. But I have to at least TRY cause I gave my shelves to , he’s already filled them up with his stuff, and I have nowhere to put my books…

When you go out to replace your mattress & box spring, and as you evaluate each one, the first question that comes to mind is, “Would this be good for sex?”, then you know, yes, you’re quite ready to be dating again.

*snicker*

Got a headboard that is handcuff friendly, too. Bwaaahahahahahaha.