Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Well, it's been a while. Life here at Sisyphean Corp has always been a grind, but in the past it always had a modicum of amusement value, as well as the opportunity to do slightly interesting things with the support of a string of pretty good supervisors. I worked hard and had fun. That changed about a year ago. January 2, 2014, I had a new boss. It didn't take me long to figure out the good times were over. My second or third one-on-one meeting she said, "I'm not sure I understand exactly what you do, but you seem to have a lot less on your plate than everyone else." It's gone downhill from from there. It occurred to me the best way for her to find out what I did was to quit, but I need the money. So last year was pretty depressing. I'll spare you the boring details but I've been in a bit of a funk, to the point where I've rarely felt like writing. Why depress you, too? I did talk to a couple of recruiters, and even flew to Seattle for an intervie...

I like most things about my job (good co-workers, appreciative boss) except one: my daily commute takes me from south of downtown Fort Worth into Denton County. I-35W is an awful road, regardless of the direction. Best case: I can make the run to or from my office in about 25 minutes. Worst case: it has taken me over 2 hours. The official name of that system of roads known as the "Interstate" is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways . Its construction was authorized by an act of Congress in 1956 and its passage reflected the post-war, cold war mindset of the time. These "superhighways" were seen as a means for moving heavy military equipment from one side of the country to the other quickly in time of emergency. These days that emergency better be prepared to wait, because those roads are often parking lots. After six year of slogging along at 10 mph, I finally decided to start exploring some alternative routes -- the back-r...

Arrived at my office at 7:30 this morning only to discover half a Domino's pizza abandoned on the breakroom table. Someone's weekend must have sucked.

My employer, the Sisyphean Corp, announced today the retirement of our beloved CEO, L. C. "Soupy" Soupington III, after 17 years of service. He's regularly mentioned in the financial press for his unique hands-off management style, and was recently voted "Third Worst CEO in the Fortune 500." Although share values have plunged over 90% in the last 18 months, Mr. Soupington is fond of reminding employees their 401ks are buying more stock, more cheaply. He's done his bit to ensure that's possible by dumping huge amounts of his own holdings before the vomit-inducing plunge in stock prices. Insiders were surprised at the low-key announcement. Some privately remarked they expected the announcement to come on the national news, accompanied by video footage of Mr. Soupington being frog-marched from his office in handcuffs. When asked his plans, the usually CEO reserved grinned, "Play golf, gain weight and be on my guard for angry shareholders."...

The spousal unit and I popped the cork on a bottle of champagne last night: layoffs came and went yesterday and once again I dodged the bullet. My boss (bless 'em!) used his considerable mojo to keep our group intact. I think I'll name my first child after him. Wait -- I already did! Who could have known? Update : for the record, this is *not* how my employer handled things.

It is an urban legend and somewhat of journalistic cliche that Eskimos have a large number of words for "snow." which somehow belies the importance of snow in Eskimo life. If this be the case, consider the number of words in our capitalist system related to moving from the state of employment to unemployment. For starters, there is " losing one's job " (whoops, it was here a minute ago), as if it the poor unfortunate merely misplaced his livelihood. Then consider the personal violence inherent in the following: fired , discharged , axed , cut , given the boot , and of course, terminated . British workers find themselves " sacked ," and when collecting unemployment, they go " on the dole ." It's important to distinguish whether the separation was for cause ( fired! ) or merely bad business conditions ( laid off ). Of particular interest is the term " given the pink slip " or more simply " pink-slipped. " According ...

Just a quick note here: I finished gate 7 (the final gate) of my Gweenbelt project, passed my oral exam, and am now a certified Thick Thigma Gweenbelt. If that statement made no sense to you, don't feel bad. For the uninitiated, Thick Thigma is a religious cult that is prevalent in many a Fortune 500 company. I'm hoping they'll show me the secret handshake soon.

Are you an unemployed spook? Polish up your resume. I don't know what part of my search criteria kicked this out, but Monster.com thought the following might be something I'd be interested in (warning: it may be delisted before you read it). DynCorp International , which bills itself as a "Global Integration Solutions" provider (i.e. another corporate-run mercenary outfit like Blackwater ), is looking to fill the following position in Baghdad. Senior Human Intelligence Advisor Duty Description: Assigned as senior intelligence advisor on matters concerning human Intelligence and counter-terrorism matters. Provides advise on collection, intelligence analysis, and investigations related to terrorists groups, insurgency, criminal activities, and related threats to include subversion, sabotage, and espionage threats . Knowledgeable on matters pertaining to criminal intelligence including organized crime, financial tracking and kidnapping for profit. Mentors and assists th...

The trouble with days off is that, like many other pain-killers, too many and you run the risk of becoming habituated. Then when the pain-killer runs out, withdrawal sets in. It's now the Monday night after Thanksgiving and I've been off since Wednesday. Tomorrow I have to appear back in the office. God, what an awful thought. The only thing lessening this horror is that my supervisor (who, darn it, I like --I just don't like working for him) is out of the office until Wednesday. It's sort of like being sent to hell but getting to stand in the lobby for a few eons as you get acclimated. Or something like that. Thanksgiving was sort of a wild day and set the tone for the days ahead. The Wife got the bug to visit her sister (in London) and scored a free airline pass from a friend who retired from American Airlines. Long story short, she's left Ed and me bachelors for the next month. We drove her to the airport on Thanksgiving Day while listening to Alice's Restaur...

I have come to the belated realization that there are few things sweeter this side of heaven that the three day weekend. The two day weekend is far too short. The first day of it you are haunted by the horrors of the previous work week, and the second day you find yourself dreading the horrors to come. Four days is really too many. Returning to the workplace after that much time off is just too painful. The intoxicating freedom that felt so good slams you with a hell of a hangover. Three days is just about perfect in every possible way.

I was scheduled to have my mid-year performance review tomorrow (now mercifully postponed since I didn't send it to my supervisor for his input until late afternoon) and it reminded me of the latest bit of corporate zeal. We had one of our periodic all group off-site breakfast meetings last week. These typically consist of coffee, carbohydrates and lots of PowerPoint slides. The most highly touted stuff is usually bullshit, and the really interesting stuff is the stuff they try to slide by as "oh, by the way." It operates on the same principle that professional magicians and card cheats use -- misdirection. One of the perks provided to us in the salt mine is free sodas. It sounds stupid, but gosh, I'll admit it: I can be bought for a 12 oz. can of Diet Dr Pepper. Last week's "oh by the way" moment was when they flashed the slide showing the cost of our free sodas doubled from last year to the (projected) cost this year: $50,000. Never mind that our sta...

I just noticed I've whined for a solid month about my job. Is that pathetic or not? Anyway, I promise to lay off work topics for at least a month to get back on track. Or I had planned to, anyway. Then I got the email this morning that said no more non-supported (read: anything other than Microsoft Internet Exploder) would be allowed on company-owned laptops. Bye-bye Firefox. I asked our director (very carefully) whose decision this was, and without answering my question in a straight forward way, he let me know it was the work of Beany Countwell, our intrepid CIO (Chowderheaded Incompetent Obstructionist): Mister Smarter/Faster/Better himself. I put together an email stating how we used Firefox's web developer tools as an aid to productivity, but that ain't going change anything. The Microsoft Nazis have begun to goosestep.

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?

...That the reason I was tagged to do Six Sigma (or "Thick Thigma" as we like to call it in the cul-de-sac I call my career) was NOT that my supervisors decided I had that ineffable quality that makes for rising stars in the glittering firmament of Management. No, it's because the guy they (probably) had in mind, should have had in mind at any rate, just gave notice. So they had an empty slot to fill to make their goals for training this year. Damn, that's a relief to know.

From Dilbert today : It's scary...like the guy lives in the cube next to me or something.