self-diagnostic

monday:

it's so nice to be doing piles of dishes... haven't experienced that in a while :/
i suddenly remembered that on sunday we'd seen august burns red, i guess that shows you how much of an impression they made. they were pretty good, to be fair, but yeah...

the all-hands calendar appointment was for 9am but i'd decided that the first meeting wasn't until later so i'd get in regular time. newk'd sent me an apology for being late before i was even dressed, and then i thought "damn, that was a bad idea" and rushed out. nobody seemed to care that i was half an hour late.

we interviewed one mr nervous loudwatch in the morning. there were four of us at the beginning, then everybody else suddenly disappeared leaving me alone with him. fine, i carried on, but then suddenly they all came back with executives in tow. if he'd been nervous before...
he seemed like a nice guy and gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about, but when we tried to do a technical evaluation it was a total disaster. when he did understand the questions he deftly demonstrated that he hadn't a clue what to do with them, and when hinted at he stood by his previous answers proudly.

we had a few long meetings and i had lunch with a couple of french speakers (they obliged me with english, mostly). later i was talking to moonlighter and the it guy and they stopped me and told me they'd only listen if i spoke in french. i made it through most of a pretty complicated sentence before i ran out of words, and they were well impressed :D

scrapper's phone is open for international calls but not for messages, which makes the call he made to me during a meeting pretty expensive, and the calls i made back later too. he hadn't taken my advice and had rocked up at the bus station expecting to be able to hop on for toronto, but they were all sold out until this morning. he hadn't taken the set of keys i gave him even though he's returning on friday...

*sigh*

we finished the workday with an extended happy hour with loads more alcohol and snacks than usual and everybody stayed for it. it was mostly enjoyable!

my favourite moment was after two beers when darn was telling us a story about a company he'd worked for that experimented with outsourcing.
"so... you're telling us your company went to india and found itself?"
everyone laughed or snickered, darn didn't get it and proceeded to explain what had happened as if i hadn't understood.

*sigh*

---tuesday:

that moment when you wake up from that short nap before dinner and it's 2.45am...

today was a day that made me confident in my self-diagnosis as manic-depressive. i woke up from almost twelve hours of sleep (on a weekday! i was truly broken) to find my apartment in disarray and no note:

who doesn't know the right way to put cutlery in the drying rack? to hang wet laundry? to recycle? to turn off lights? to lock the door? to clean the sink when he drops toothpaste? to refill the water filter? to remove unused hangars from the shower?

these are fairly unimportant things that i've gotten used to taking for granted since i moved into my own apartment and then lived with pg who's a neat freak.

i'm always reminded of my father screaming at my mother about how only a complete idiot can not know the right way to load toilet paper. i was a little kid and was horrified at how he was so abusive towards my mother over such a trivial thing, and i promised myself never to be that kind of asshole. so on the one hand, all this shit really bothers me and on the other, most of it isn't worth being upset about. so i'm actually less upset about them than i am about being upset by them.

also, it's only the stupid shit i'm annoyed about, otherwise having scrapper here is a pleasure and it would suck if he was in montreal an staying somewhere else. i really feel bad every time i make him feel bad for not doing things the way i expect.

---i arrived more than ten minutes late for today's set of meetings, which scored me a "we noticed" email. we enjoyed about five hours of back-to-back meetings during which i desperately needed to pee almost constantly. my bladder would only relax when i finally got to training, i don't know what the hell that was about. the creatine is supposed to make me retain water and i didn't have any more caffeine than usual...

the vegetarian lunches that were ordered for two of us came with pizza. that sucked.

our product manager asked everyone in the company to say why they come to work every day. most of the answers were insipid, so much so that i caused quite a stir when i stated that "i like to work on beautiful things that i can be proud of." i was actually embarrassed to be sitting around with such uninspired people.

the next thing that would bum me out would be the project manager (okay, i've referred to him enough that he needs a name - i'll call him "darn") informing me that the big boys all want a demo of the software that we haven't even received design approval for. to make that worse:
unless something's changed darn and i both report to megaman. we're supposed to be a team. everyone is constantly reminded that it's a small company and that any suggestions and concerns will be heard. megaman and darn made a decision that would cost us more to implement than the alternative and would limit our ability to follow the product manager's plan in addition to reducing the software's usability. i took darn aside and tried to explain this to him, and he was not only dismissive and offensively unwilling to listen but he treated me in a manner fit for a wayward subordinate.

that made my blood boil. it made me consider giving up and leaving. it made me feel a darkness well up inside me. i cannot abide incompetence, i absolutely abhor irrationality and i detest behaviour that runs counter to everyone's interests.

my impressions of darn so far include him having no sense of humour and having his head stuck deep inside megaman's arse. i now have zero confidence in him as a project manager.

that said, i can't stop thinking about the last round of interviews we've given; if i leave the company after only six months, that reflects badly on me. i still want to be there to try and keep things on track. now that i've been offered options it would be financially irresponsible of me to abandon ship before my first year is up.

i was so impressed and hopeful when megaman arrived, but i do believe that the honeymoon is over. now to just ride it out and see where it goes.

---on a different note, the product manager made a comment about using a pcmcia card and followed that with "this was way back when". yeah, well, there were kids at the table who've never heard of pcmcia cards, so that was a bit redundant :P

---i left the office late and filled with a burning desire to smash something. i arrived just in time for kickboxing but had forgotten my hand wraps... i worked light so it was okay. i was more concerned for my leg, the bump on my shin isn't going away. the horrific bruising is now "normal" in my mind. not even worth a funny photo.
the lesson was solid and i did really well, and it ended with us being offered the opportunity to buy tickets to good seats to see david l'oiseau fighting on saturday night. from the man himself, which was pretty cool, so i picked up two and we'll be there :)

on the way back i felt it - it's the beginning of the end of the shortest summer i've ever experienced. but it's not the suddenly earlier sunset nor the dropping temperature i could feel on the rainy breeze that really hit it home... it was receiving the invitation to renew my ski pass in the mail. YEE-HAH!!! ^_^

so i renewed my pass and i bought in to kite patch, a brilliant indigogo project to reduce mosquito-borne infections in africa. i chatted with a friend before buying into hot watch, which may be awesome but i'll wait to see if they actually deliver.

now it's way later than i should be getting to bed. so that's me for tonight.