Job

I got no reason to complain

July 1, 2008 – 3:20 pm

I'm at the tail end of working 3 shifts over the past 32 hours. I had just enough time to get home, go to bed and then get up and come back to work. I have been overseeing the launch of a new corporate web site, every bit as exciting as it sounds. There's nothing like trying to string together several disparate tech teams to simultaneously launch various connected web sites, finding out the hard way that Rsync means the lynch pin of the whole project won't be published until everything else is done, totally screwing up the delicate ballet of timed launches we had scheduled. Plus we found that our server mirror suck bigtime, so people in New York were seeing something totally different than the people in Hong Kong. And the people in Singapore, well, they were seeing (or not seeing) things nobody else was seeing. Why? No one knows.

And no one cares. Another boring web site has been launched and I'm kind of spacey. Tomorrow I'll be back to normal, and it'll be like none of this happened. Will my work schedule lighten? That has been my major motivation for the past couple of months, that once this is over I can go back to loafing, office-stylee. Of course, it's times like these I momentarily consider I should spend some time thinking about a career I might actually like profoundly, and how much more fulfilling that would be. Then I get an email marked URGENT (like 95% of the emails I receive now) telling me the URL redirection isn't working on an orphan page in Jersey (the old one, not the new one). And I can't even work up the energy to explain that the likelihood that anyone will ever notice it is so slight that we need not waste precious sweat glands over it, but they claim they're only upset because they're getting leaned on by the higher-ups, who no doubt are being leaned upon by their higher-ups, and nobody will admit to being personally invested in anything, only that they are totally not taking the blame for this one. No sireebob. Now, what was I thinking about? Oh yeah, that Britney Spears, she's like such a ho bag! N'est-ce pas?

By Jimmy Legs | Comments Off

But the dark is working overtime

June 17, 2008 – 11:08 am

Here's a nice half-assed post! I'm totally busy with my stupid job, full of stupid people asking stupid questions for jerks. It may get better at the end of the month, or way worse. It remains to be seen.

We had a bunch of relatives over the house for a week. It just so happened they showed up for exactly the same duration as the horrible heat wave, and I didn't remember until the last day that we do in fact have an air conditioner that sort of works. Oops! But it was fun anyway, they brought duty free liquor from the Virgin Islands, we went to Brighton Beach, and they availed themselves of the local fish market, the little diner down the street, and Lincoln Chicken and Pizza, all places we never patronize. It made me realize if we were non-vegetarians, this little corner of the neighborhood does all right food-wise, assuming you're not that interested in being healthy. The diner sounded really good, too bad they're closed by 6pm every day. And Lincoln got all-around good marks, except for the fish. But for wings and pizza, you could do worse.

Despite our macho claims that we had neutered every cat on the street, we found a few more. We've trapped one so far and gotten him fixed (he has his own interesting story). There's at least one more out there, not to mention the local Gawker cat who is pretty clearly Marbles' daughter! Cat adoption is rolling on, very, very slowly, but we did get Shaolin a new home. Four more to go! Frankly I just want to get this batch moved out before the next charity case shows up!

Meanwhile, I hemmed and hawwed about joining the Bushwick CSA for so long that when I finally decided to do it, it was too late and they were all filled up for the season. This is why I'm a bad vegetarian, you'd think I would have been first on the list, but fear of too many vegetables spooked me into reticence.

I doubt anything interesting will happen here until the end of June, when my workload will lighten a smidge. Unless you all wanna hear about how the tech team returned us a sizing for a project fully 10x what they initially estimated, and have the chutzpah to think we will agree to fund the project at this level, when everyone knows there's a perfectly-functional javascript workaround that would take nearly no effort to implement. Suckahhhhhs!

By Jimmy Legs | Also posted in Bad Stuff, Cat Fixin', Tedium, Visitors, Weather | Comments Off

You just want to rhumba

May 28, 2008 – 3:30 pm

How to Get Something Done in a Big Company the Requires Intra-departmental Funding in 13 EZ Steps:

Decide that your project cannot go any further until another department is brought in to do work because they own some back-end services they don't let anybody else touch. Sigh heavily at the prospect of getting them to do anything for you.
Approach them, pleasantly and gingerly, like approaching a young squirrel.
Ask them if they wouldn't mind doing the work that is, after all, their job to do in the first place.
They respond: Please have a funding number set up. Secured funding is a must before they can even consider the scope of work.
Ask how much money should be assigned to the funding number.
They respond they won't know how much it will cost until they begin the project.
But to begin the project, they will need that funding number.
Which, of course, will need to be set up with a certain amount of money. Spend about an hour trying to wrap your head around this, then pick a huge amount of dough to apply funding.
Ask the folks in the Finance Department to set up funding number with this funding. They won't return your emails or calls for one week. When you finally get a hold of them you are fuming and irrational, to which they will respond with insulted shock. Funding number will be created with less money than requested, even though the money 'belongs' to your department.
Return to 1st department armed with funding number. They respond with polite frustration, explaining that your funding number is not compatible with their billing system. You try to ask "Why didn't you tell me this in the first place?" but suddenly they no longer understand English.
After begging them to complete the work which is now weeks past due, they will finally admit they can do it once one of their Finance Department contacts alters the funding number to match their system.
With the money in place, the department can finally get to work. Immediately the entire department goes on vacation. Meanwhile, somebody else finds out about the funding number and, rather than go through all the trouble of setting one up themselves, uses it for their own project. Funding runs out; the project is now 3 months behind schedule and the boss is starting to notice.
Send frantic emails to every single person you dealt with during the course of this ordeal and wire some 'emergency' money into the account. The work is done by the next morning, perfectly. Except "American" is misspelled. Which is your fault. Blame it on the contractor in India.

By Jimmy Legs | Also posted in Funny to Me | Comments Off

Whoops upside the head

April 30, 2008 – 1:32 pm

You remember that Kurt Vonnegut story, "Harrison Bergeron"? It's the overly-pointed tale of life in the not-too-distant-future when the government makes every equal, not just legally but physically. So everybody has actual devices implanted on their bodies to reign in their innate abilities so everyone is no better than the weakest link in the chain. In this case, it's the mom character, who has no devices at all. Anyway the story is like junior high-grade pedantry about how conformity is bad and how we shouldn't let our leaders legislate too much of our lives, yahyah yah.

I bring this story up because of the father character, he has a little radio embedded in his brain that sends out a piercing tone every so often, "to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains." The noise is just distracting enough to make him lose his train of thought. You see, for the past few weeks they have been demolishing the building next door to our office. There is much drilling, much hammering, some exploding. I'm supposed to be working on Important Business Work here, but the constant pounding is making it hard to think straight.

So I'm thinking of the dad in the story, how he can't remember what he's thinking out after a few minutes; that's what it's like in here. I am frustrated and antsy, but have no idea what to do about it. The simplest tasks are hard to bring to fruition, and I find myself looking forward to the lunch hour, if only to have a reason to get outside the building for a few minutes.

Yet I also feel oddly elated. Outside of the annoyance of the noise, nothing phases me too much. I can't remember the things that are supposed to be worrying me for more than a minute at a time, so consequently I don't feel burdened by them. I am dimly aware that this is an artificial state and that once away from the sound of the piledrivers all my daily worries will come home to roost (most likely as I try to fall asleep). But for the moment I take comfort in the fact that all this noise is dumbing me down enough to feel rather happy.

I think I might get another credit card!

By Jimmy Legs | Also posted in Funny to Me, Office | Comments Off

We got games at high speeds

April 9, 2008 – 10:39 am

I'm hard-pressed to think of anything to write about that's not cat-related, it's really the only interesting aspect of my life these days. I could tell you that the reason I've been so distracted of late is due to the Amazingly Important Web Strategy piece I'm supposed to be working on for my job. I have been tasked with coming up with the Vision and Mission of a thoroughly new site, which will no doubt change forever the face of our industry. Oh yes.

Of course, like everything we do around here, we'll start off strong, with everybody excited about whatever new concepts get brought up. But slowly, enthusiasm will die, and the field will empty once they realize that somebody will have to maintain and work on it over time. Everybody wants a piece of it but nobody wants to work for it. My business is the corporate equivalent of the guy who stealthily goes to the bathroom when the dinner check comes to be split up. Dick move, pal.

Anyway I just completed a brilliant outline (!!! haven't made one of these since like high school), and I'm now translating it to PowerPoint, or The Place Where Creativity Goes to Die. We call these files 'decks' for some reason. What does that mean? It's not a backyard patio platform and it's certainly not deck in the way British douchebags say it. Is it a deck of cards? No, but I assume that's the closest definition, considering the application's insistence of calling the individual screens "slides," as though any PowerPoint presentation could be as fascinating as your family's vacation to the Grand Canyon. I wish they would use terminology from filmstrip technology; each new frame could be preceded by a loud beep!

By Jimmy Legs | Also posted in Tedium | Comments Off