Digging Out

We didn't get the eight inches of snow. More like three inches of sleet, with a glossy topcoat of ice. Lots and lots of ice.

Click to enlarge photos:











And the driveway's probably had it. We had to chop the crusty mess off with shovels, then go over it again with the snow blower.

We've had so much snow now, that there's nowhere to put it anymore.

I call this: Surrendering To The Avalanche:



Then, out of the white, desolate winter, Mother Nature does something amazing. She gives us the double finger:



Or maybe they're peniscicles. Who knows?

Snowbound

I guess everyone's heard that “Snow-mageddon” is upon us.

It blanketed the Midwest, and now it's headed for the Northeast.

Part One hit last night and dumped about four inches on our little hamlet. Not much, but that's on top of the 20 inches we've already got.

Now the weather nerds can't decide if we're getting eight inches more of the fluffy white stuff, or just several inches of ice. New Jersey is expecting the ice storm of the century, so I doubt I'll be driving there tomorrow. If it's as bad as they say, we'll be without power at least part of the time. Hubby's outside bringing in firewood as we speak.

So.....what else?

I feel obligated to acknowledge the fact that I've been among the missing for three months, but that gets kinda old, doesn’t it? Every time I fall off the planet, I show up again with some crappy excuse.

Where was I? Oh yeah...

Does the job and commute still suck? ...check and check. But I'm employed.

Employed, but still looking for something better. A job that doesn't give me nightmares. Like the one where I'm chased by angry business people, screaming that the application is done in the wrong shade of chartreuse, and they can't find the "save" button.

There's also this strange dream where I'm working in a small, smelly stall, and no one speaks my language. When I ask them a question, they just smile pleasantly, as if to say, "How adorable you are, trying to understand our cryptically written code. I'll just smile at you and hope you go away.".

Oh wait. That's real-life.

Anyway, I also wanted to mention that I finished watching The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie trilogy. Last year I wrote about the books, which were fantastic. The movies did not disappoint.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was true to the book, with great acting and action sequences. The Girl Who Played With Fire was also good, but not great. Point is, it'll get you to the finale: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. The last movie in this trilogy was simply superb. The book was huge, so they had to cut back what went into the movie, but the writer's did an outstanding job. Plenty of intrigue, plenty of revenge for Lisbeth Salander.

Of course, I'm speaking of the Swedish production of these movies, and not the upcoming travesty that Hollywood is putting out in the near future.

The Swedish versions are worth renting. Seriously. I never thought I'd be saying this, but rent them – and don't use the English dubbing. You lose the feel of the movie, and it belittles the acting. Just use your brain, suck it up and read the subtitles. Trust me. It's worth it.

Inertia, Dreams And Sweater Washing

Layoffs.

Apparently I didn't make the cut. I still have a job.

Sweet package deal too - I'd be able to survive for the better part of a year before having to secure new employment.

Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t talk like that in this economy. I'm just really, really fed up, and looking for another position outside the company would probably be a great idea, but I'm not quite ready to give up my length of service. I've got a few leads, so I'm waiting around to see what develops.

If I'd been given the boot, I had it all planned out:

First, I'd do nothing for the first two weeks. Not out of depression, but because I haven't actually done nothing for that length of time.

Complete inertia. I might not even leave bed. Just me, Dorito crumbs, every book I've been trying to finish, and Quincy re-runs.

FYI - Quincy is awesome. For anyone born after 1985, he's was the original CSI. Take note, and go rent it.

After two weeks of marinating, I'd scrape the funk off myself, and work on all the chores I've been neglecting around the house.

For instance, I'd finish the laundry.

I have sweaters that spent the better part of a decade in my hamper. Mostly due to the incredible difficulty involved in cleaning them. There's the Chilean wool monstrosity that requires hand washing in a bathtub, in order to take in it's entire bulk; the angora that pilled up with bunny-sized balls the first time I wore it; and the red Benetton that required washing in fairy dust and unicorn spit because the color ran so easily.

All washed and Downy fresh. It would be like going shopping! In the 1990's!

Then I'd clean the garage, the basement, and maybe repaint the bathrooms. Such mundane things, but right now it sounds simply exhilarating.

It would also mean that for the first time in 10 years, I'd really be able to enjoy the holidays with my family. Thanksgiving and Christmas with no stress - just cookie baking. Lots and lots of cookie baking.

Come January 1st, after all those cookies, I'd work on getting back to the gym. Maybe take up yoga.

I'd finally get to read all those technical manuals and get up to speed on my skills, before searching for a job.

Yeah, I know. You're thinking I'd never do that.

You're thinking I'd never leave the bed after those first two weeks, then you'd be reading about me being craned out of the house thru a window, because I'd become Jabba the Hutt.

Funny, but I don't think so. I've reached that age where if I won the lottery, I'd go back to school and study all the things I was interested in, but never had the time or money to do.

Study Japanese? Sure!

Obscure field of archeology? You bet.

Ancient literature? Definitely.

Sigh.

I can dream, can't I?

!@#$%&

Got to work around 9am, had meeting, left at 1pm.

Then, a much needed three hour nap.

As a side note: I've noticed that most of the people I work with behave like big babies. Temper tantrums all around. I also noticed the only thing that makes management take notice is no-nonsense straight talk, sprinkled with well placed expletives.

In recent years, when I get handed some real crap, and the frustration overwhelms me - I don't want to cry or scream. I just get really, really angry.

Two points for not being a pushover, but minus a squillion for potentially getting myself into trouble.

3 am

Yeah, it's 3:00am and I'm writing a blog post.

Why, you might ask? Because I'm working, of course! ...but I'll get to that in a moment.

Got up this morning at 5:00am – nearly 24 hours ago, got the teen off to school, then headed to NJ for eight hours of slamming my head against a brick wall.

No project requirements? No design documents? Got a project that was mishandled from the beginning, and need someone to make it look like it works?

That's me. It's what I do.

Currently, my boss is upset that the most recent turd rolled onto my desk isn't ready for install.

It also helpful when he pokes his head into my cube every five minutes to ask: "Is it done yet?".

"Is it done yet?"

"Is it done yet?"

"Is it done yet?"

Is there an echo in here?

We're re-writing an entire business process as a "bug fix" instead of a fully funded project, so there's no actual instructions or direction on to how this needs to work. So it will be fudged together into something closely resembling what the business needs, in an insanely short time frame.

Left NJ at 5:00pm, no traffic issues, thank God. Made dinner, cleaned up, laundry, checked email, spent some quality time with teen and hubby, then caught an hour of sleep between 11:00pm and midnight.

Got up again at midnight to run off-hour testing. We all have to take turns doing this, since there's no night shift team.

So I'll be awake for the remainder of tonight, periodically running tests when needed. Hopefully this will wrap up by 7:00am, because that's when I'll need to leave again to drive to NJ for a "mandatory" meeting.

WoooHooo! Livin' on the edge!

One hour of sleep in 24......I can feel the buzzzzzz. Zzzzzzz.

Big Bad Wolf

I had to work last weekend.

Fifty other dorks and me, babysitting a software release.

They don't let us cover it from home, like a normal 21st century company. Nobody really trusts that new-fangled whooziwotzit called VPN anyway, right?

Either that, or they just don't trust their employees to actually log in and work.

Now that I think about it, that's exactly the reason.

As a silent protest, it's practically an unwritten rule that everyone dresses as grungy and disgusting as possible.

So I crawled into the office around 6am, and Boss was waiting.

"You look like you just rolled out of bed!"

I was sporting my battered Bad Wolf Corporation sweatshirt - hood cut off, and sweatpants. It may also have had mustard stains. At least I think it was mustard.

"Yeah, well...I did. I figure if I have to work over the weekend, you get my makeupless, greasy-haired, unbathed self." I have no shame.

"That's not very professional...."

"Hey, at least I combed my hair. Pradeep's still got his Star Wars jammies on. Seriously, go check it out. I think he's even wearing bunny slippers."

Got Lemur?

It pissed down rain today. Black skies, no daylight til at least 8:00am. Took three cups of coffee just to get out of the house.

No accidents on the way to New Jersey. The first time in a month without a jam up. I'll take it where I can get it.

Key card. Parkade. Elevator. Home Sweet Cubicle.

Boot pc. Hit the ladies.

Aaaaargh....the bathroom smells like crotch rot.

Not that I have any experience with that – it's what I expect it to smell like: BO and barnyard - with a hint of rotting flesh. Usually it's just pooey, but this was definitely not last night's chicken vindaloo.

Spent an HOUR on the phone with our business people, deciding how to make a screen more user friendly. Bear in mind that our users are also our employees, so they're supposed to be trained, reasonable people with more than just space between their ears.

The offending item causing all the fuss? The “save” button. It was confusing people.

My suggestion was that, at some point, you have to let people make mistakes and they should be held accountable for them. Why are we treating them like idiots?

Or we can make the system completely self sufficient. We wont need humans then.

Maybe we'll just hire lemurs. Evil lemurs.

In Summer-y

So yeah. Just a bit of blog neglect there.

I guess I slid into a funk. For a while there, I didn't even log in to my home laptop when I came home from work. Too tired, too bored, too depressed. Just didn't feel like it.

One problem though - I need the diversion. Poking around on the internet is better than flopping on the sofa for an evening of House re-runs.

So let's see.....what's been going on?

We had one of the hottest summers on record. More days over 90 than since... FOREVER. Well, maybe. I don't know - but it was a total stinkfest.

Don’t get me wrong, heat is lovely. In Hawaii.

Here in Pennsylvania, the air becomes a sponge. A thick, sweaty, smelly, damp sponge. And it never ends. Just this past week, we had two more days in the nineties. Last Thursday it hit 93 degrees. I'm sorry, but that's just stupid hot for late September.

Anyway, school started. Yay!

To recap, we decided the local, public school was woefully unqualified to impart a reasonable education. The teaching staff was filled with an inordinate number of inexperienced teachers (owing to the population growth in the area), and way too many liberal educators. No dissenting opinions – even politely presented - would be heard. And yes, they had no qualms penalizing any student who didn't think the same.

The school refuses to separate children that want to learn, from the ones that don't give a shit. So they have classrooms they can't control, and end up teaching to the lowest common denominator.

Instead of book reports, they had collages of crayons and glue, representing the theme of a story. Almost all the required reading for the “advanced” Lit class involved only stories of victims – they're the real heroes! No classic literature whatsoever.

What's worse is, every other day I'd see something in the news about gang violence, or kids getting knifed because someone didn't like the way they looked.

So The Teen is going to a different school. This was preceded by several months of hemming and hawing about what a mistake this was, that the uniforms suck, and what if her old friends forget her, and she doesn’t make new ones? What if there's no cute, swooshie-haired boys? What if the girls are bitchy?

So far, the hope of a more serious education looks promising: they had a required summer reading list. Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, To Kill A MockingBird and Pride and Prejudice to start. All must be read by the time school began, and there will be tests. Hooo-boy!

Sure, I would've hated that when I was her age - but hey, as an adult I can see the benefits of having been forced to read the classics. Some kids grow up and “get it”. Others blow it off and never pick up anything other than teen angst novels.

And they're reading Orwell. ORWELL. How awesome is that?

Thankfully, now that we're a month into the new school, my daughter's adjusting, friends have been made, and things are finally settling in nicely. Unfortunately, I am told there are no swooshie-haired, Justin Bieber wanna-bees. Sadness.

In other news, work continues to suck loudly and powerfully. I was moved to a failed project that somebody, somewhere up the food chain is attempting to resurrect. It's horrible, and nothing works right. The IT department decided this doesn’t matter, they intend to cram it in anyway.

It's my job to help fix it, with no documentation or resources. Departmental politics prevent me from actually interacting with the other members of my team, because they're technically still tied to other projects. It's a bit of a spy game communicating with one another on bug fixes.

Which leads me to another thing about fixing other people's crap. I'm burnt out on it. I'm not talking about fixing little oddball scenarios where the user right-clicked a field, on a Wednesday, during a full moon, and the web page failed. I'm speaking of the large, gaping holes where someone overlooked an entire business process. I'm tired of trolling through thousands and thousands of lines of code, Scotch-taped together by at least 200 other people, trying to find the mystery exception. Or, in this case, finding whole sections that were apparently not finished – made obvious by all the “add such-n-such here” notations.

I used to think I wanted to just do development work, creating applications from the ground up. Too boring, and a huge personal sacrifice. Our developers put in an average of 60-80 hours a week. Maybe ten years ago I would've had the patience, interest, and extra time, but now I just want to do the best job I can, go home, and take care of my family.

GOLD....1979

"......cuz people out there turn the music into gold...."

This song brings back memories. It's not a great song, just a piece of fluff from the 70's.

And it totally cracks me up.

Some background: The song is by some dude named John Stewart. No, not from the Daily Show. This guy was from the Kingston Trio, and all I know about them is they're probably a band my parents listened to.

Anyhoo, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks appeared on the track. Lindsay's guitar work is obviously apparent – and probably a large part of why I like this song - and Stevie Nicks lends her voice. It's not credited as a duet, but it might as well be – you can't miss her vocals.

However, every time I hear this song I get the vague feeling Miss Stevie is singing a completely different song than Stewart.

It's like she's singing along to something in her head, and it doesn't quite match up. Quite possible – it was during her drug addled years.

Still, it works.

I went YouTube-ing hoping to find a live version of them performing this song, but instead found Mr. Stewart's 1979 appearance on Solid Gold.

AWESOMENESS. SQUARED.

Hello....McFly ????

Since it was Thursday, I went grocery shopping. This is a weekly trial that's always more difficult than it seems. Mainly because people turn into complete morons there. Maybe it's something they pump into the air conditioning system. Or maybe not.

Aside from the usual aisle-hogs and human speed bumps, there was only one real incident. Allow me to share.

I got lucky and nabbed an empty checkout line. No sooner did I have four items on the conveyor, a woman appears in line behind me, slams down the plasticky divider thingy and begins emptying her cart, using the entire swath of conveyor - including the area I was using.

So, the conveyor keeps rolling. Little Miz Impatient's groceries float past me, all the way down to the checkout clerk, effectively leaving me with a cartful of groceries and nowhere to put them. At this point, I might as well just hand them one by one to the clerk.

I shove the plastic thingy along with some of her crap back up towards her, and she barely takes notice. She's all blurry arms flying, tossing everything from her cart en masse onto the conveyor. Thankfully, the clerk realizes what happened and stops it from rolling.

My initial reaction was that maybe she wasn't paying attention.

“Excuse me, ma'am.....could you wait til I've finished?” I said.

She just stares at me, then goes back to putting her stuff on the conveyor.

Hello.... McFly !! Bonk bonk....

So I try again. “Ma'am, I still have a cart full of groceries, could you wait til I've finished, please?!?”

No response.

She's looking at me with irritation. I'm motioning to the conveyor and my cart. I swear something behind her eyes stirred with recognition for a split second.

Then she said, “No habla Ingles”.

Really? .....like, really??

Personally, I don't care what language she said it in, or where she comes from. She could come from Germany, Japan, Iceland - or the moon. I don't care. I'm more than sure she's been in a grocery store before.

Maybe I'm just crabby again, but I'm pretty sure not speaking English is not actually an excuse for being a jerk.