Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

After a month of printing out my weekly calendar and keeping detailed notes, then entering my time into our web-based time accounting system in 15 minute increments, I've developed a new method of tracking, which has simplified things a great deal. I call it MSU: Make Shit Up. It's much more efficient, and arguably just as accurate.

Yet another sad but instructive tale from the annals of the IT world. Yesterday, our network was shit. Email was slow, half the corporation couldn't get to any web-based applications and those that did found them unbearably slow. People whose jobs depended primarily on being able to do work online (me, for example) found ourselves sitting on our hands. Of course the application I babysit for a living was hosed. We were able to do some stuff in our development environment, but the production environment -- forget it. I spent a large amount of time replying to emails ("Yes, we are aware of the problem and working to resolve it as quickly as possible") from our user population since there wasn't much else I could do. Many games of Solitaire were played yesterday, I suspect. At around 6:30 PM, after being on a conference call for about 5 hours with the vender to whom we outsourced control of infrastructure, my counterpart who's responsible for making sure the machines...

Last week I put in an 88 hour week. I didn't like it but it was a necessary evil in my line of work. Furthermore, I have no illusions that I'll be taking any comp time either. Today was supposedly a holiday and I ended up working at least 4 hours from home. I had one of those sad realizations that seem to come to me so often about my job -- sort of a mathematical thing. My salary is based on me working 40 hours a week (yeah, right). If I work for 80+ hours and get no other compensation or comp time, I've effectively taken a 50% pay cut for the week. Do the math. Beany Countwell, our CIO (Chief Income Outsourcer) loves to go on about working Faster/Cheaper/Better. What it really means is finding assholes like me who'll work massive amounts of unpaid overtime to fuel his bonus. Keep your merit raise. Just pay me for the hours I actually work.

The Bean Counters now have us using a time keeping program (web-based, of course). When, last month, we were told at our functional unit's group meeting that we were about to start doing this, we were assured it wasn't because they don't trust us. Do we do chargebacks to our internal customers? No. Uh-huh. In addition to being so granular that I have about 40 different time categories to account for, across 10 different business units, we are required to always account for at least 8 hours every day, either to projects or to personal time, regardless of how many hours we spend total for the week. Do we have official categories assigned to specific activities? Not exactly -- lots of categories but no official word on how or what we are to charge things to. Today, after hitting 40 hours late Thursday (slow week) I found myself at 1 PM with 45 hours for the week but only 5 hours for the day. So I was forced to enter 3 hours of personal time when I left so I could pad the day...

...Never attend meetings that include the insane. They always run over the allotted time. You've been warned.

The application I babysit at work has been having "issues" (code word for "fucking up"). A colleague contacted the vendor's tech support and they recommended we install a patch. Eyebrows raised all around. In reading the release notes, the following gems were uncovered: ...the hashcode functions in these classes are horrendous. ...and: [blank] was the customer that profiled our code to find this issue. Wouldn't it be nice if we could actually profile our own code instead of having to have our customers do it for us? We forwarded this to my boss who then passed it on to our account rep with a solemn pronouncement. She reported back that these comments were the work of a "disgruntled employee" who no longer worked there. You think?

The last few years have been hard on a fair number of us who claim Texas as our home and birthplace. The Dixie Chicks aren't the only ones ashamed to have the former governor of Texas squatting in the White House, remaking America's image like a child smearing feces on his walls. We might have the shame of George W. Bush, but thank God we got to claim Molly Ivins ! Sadly she passed away January 31, 2007, of breast cancer. After being treated for it in 1999, she observed, "First they poison you; then they mutilate you; then they burn you. I've had more fun." With the passing of Ann Richards, former governor and another quick wit, we've lost two of the great voices of Texas liberalism, leaving us with the likes of Tom DeLay, former congressman and rat poisoner, and Rick "Governor Goodhair" Perry. Why are all our women smart and funny and our men mean-spirited or stupid? Almost makes me wish I was a woman. Swinging at the forces of evil until the end,...