Git 'er Dun (or fess up)

If you tell someone you're going to do something by a given date, I feel you should be required to do one of the following:

• Get the 'something' done on time
• Have the huevos to fess up to not getting your shit done

There's nothing that I hate worse (well, maybe some things, like cats, or Indiana) than people that say they're going to get something done and then conveniently "forget" to mention why it's not done.

There should be come kind of a common social penalty for this. I'm not sure what, but it should be creative. Maybe you should be forced to drive to work on a moped for a week (those of you who don't live in the Midwest won't appreciate this), or possibly be made to stand in front of a stone wall and have to dodge fast-moving projectile rodents??? I don't know, but I'm sure I could think of something.

Anyone have any ideas?

A glimmer of light

It's so nice to meet people that just "get it." In the past week or so, I've met several people that really do get it. Not just technologically, but moreso from a management and personal standpoint. They understand people. This sounds generic, but it really is a pleasant surprise. It's like a breath of fresh air that was well overdue. I'll leave it at that. ;-)

Hurry up and wait (or don't)

Being bought-out, as a company, is not a fun thing. Many of us have gone through this, but this is my first experience with it, so I'll make some comments on it.

First of all, I'd love to know what goes on at the higher-levels during the post-buyout discussions. I'd like to think that there are lots of talks about org charts, management shifts, project plans, etc.; however, it seems that private jets, warm sunny beaches, and little drinks with umbrellas are more likely what's going on. And that's fine. If I paid out millions and millions of dollars for another company, I'd probably take up drinking myself. The downside of all this is that no one else knows what they're supposed to be doing. Heck, I'm not even sure who my supervisor is. Everyone is closing doors, whispering secrets, and trying to downplay the whole situation. My group can't continue on any of the "pre-buyout" projects we were working on because most of them are probably going to get changed (at best) or completely dumped (at worst.) I'd be more than willing to start working on new projects, but without a manager/supervisor to give me some direction, it's hard to know what's going on at all. AFAIK, all purchases have been put on ice, so new hardware/software toys are out of the question too (although I did manage to sneak in a few servers somehow???)

The long and short is that after months of auditing, reports, and hard work, we have this huge new company and tons of resources to work with, and absolutely no idea what we're doing or who is doing what. It's frustrating.

In addition, there are a few things I've noticed during the whole process. Some of these I knew before, some I didn't.

• It's every man for himself. Loyalty goes out the door when things like this happen.
• Everyone's job is up for grabs. No one is safe.
• Some jobs are safer than others. The title "manager" seems to be a petri dish for growing the "reasons-I'm-useless" virus.
• No matter how many times "new" people say they have an open-door/phone/email policy and that they're glad to answer any questions you might have, they're people just like you and me, held by the same logical and political constraints, so don't expect any more than you'd be willing to offer.
• It never hurts to have an out, and you can't expect others around you to be looking for one as well.
• In the end, no one really knows what's going on. It is a work in progress.
  

So, for now, I'll wait (or not) and see what is going to happen.

A Perl of Wisdom

A funny quote one of my friends sent me. For all you techies out there:

"Perl is an OK operating system, but it lacks a lightweight scripting language"

Defining "on-call"

If I hear one more person bitch about how bad the "on-call" is in their line of work or how horrible (or cool in some cases) it is to carry around a pager, I'm going to lose it! (Not just "get upset" lose it, but "put on a bunny suit and try to catch pickup trucks with my elbows" lose it!)

On-call sucks... we all have to deal with it in some form or another, so frickin' get over it people! If anyone thinks that their on-call duties in jobs like accounting, journalism, or public relations are so bad, then I encourage you to enter into the world of a systems administrator that manager 24x7 global ecommerce sites. Computers don't rest, and neither do a certain percentage of people around the world at any time of the day/night. I deal with it at that level, so the rest of you can too. Furthermore, to stop tooting my own proverbial horn, think of what "on-call" means to people like fireman, military peronnel, the Red Cross, etc. Do you hear firemen bitching that they have to get up every time a call comes in? No! Why? BECAUSE IT'S THEIR F%$(#*G JOB.

In the words of my brilliant little sister: "Shut up and deal!!!"

The 80 / 20 Email Heckler

The 80/20 rule is so true, regardless of the situation. Work, troubles, car accidents..., you name it.

I witnessed the rule in its full glory today. We all have difficult people that we have to deal with every day. Some are worse than others. Well, I have "that one guy" that consistently goes out of his way to make my life miserable, which is quite odd, considering I go out of my way to avoid

Anyway, because of my place of work, email is so prolific that people seem to use it for everything and anything. One thing that I have learned for certain is that email is quite possibly the worst medium for general argumentative discussion evveeeer! You can probably guess where I'm going with this.

I'm officially labeling my argumentative co-worker as "the 80/20 email heckler ." The really funny thing, and I find this to be true of most email hecklers, is that they generally fall into two category of persons:

1. People that are very intentional and succinct with their words
2. People who pretend to be this, but really have no idea what they're talking about

The first class of person tends to be very mechanical, planning, and generally, correct in what they write. These are the people that take 30 minutes to write a paragraph-long email. If you try to call these people on their email statements, they don't hide behind them or deny them, the stand along side them and rationalize their thought process. These people are reasonable.

The second class of person generally takes 30 seconds to wing off an email, giving it no thought for things as simple as spelling or grammar, and certainly no sight into the political or emotional ramifications of their words. Remember, there is no "good" way to represent empathy in an email, which is why satire, jokes, and the like need to be kept to a minimum unless they're blatantly obvious (which is a topic in itself) or the recipient of the email knows you well enough that they understand what you're trying to get across without paying too much attention to your words (and even this fails most of the time.) Furthermore, if you call people on their statements, they'll deny them, alter them, and make it painfully obvious that the real content of the email boils down to "I don't understand what I'm writing or reading, I don't particularly care for your interaction, so I'll cower behind an email in hopes that I can prove how much more important I am than you." I.e., these people are unreasonable.

My solution: boycott email, revert to this device called a "telephone", drink heavily, and watch Office Space, quite possibly the greatest movie ever!

Viva la resistance!!!