the storm - part i

holy shit, it was the calm before the storm. the end of the work week got progressively worse, culminating in my walking into a private meeting with megaman on friday afternoon - with my phone set to record - wherein he verbally abused me for most of half an hour in spite of his realizing halfway through that i'd been right all along. something he said during the meeting about the cto's attitude towards me changing, whether true or not, made me realize that his reports to them count in spite of their history with me and if i allow him to continue my professional reputation will be jeopardized.

i'm not certain how much it really matters to my next potential employer, but i do know how much it matters to me. and on a more immediate note, fighting with my boss is not at all pleasant* and perpetually being charged with "damned if you do, damned if you don't" tasks makes me feel like i'm trapped in a padded cell.

* even if causing him to drop his facade in front of others was just a teensy bit satisfying

i spent most of friday and the beginning and end of saturday so upset and unable to collect my thoughts that i was on the verge of an anxiety attack. i woke up at 4am angry and worried and with the taste of bile in my throat.

my mum helped me gain a little perspective, and i've prepared myself for resignation. i think and i hope that i'm doing this the right way, i'll do my best to remain professional. i feel like it's time for full-time french and some personal projects.

---thursday:

i tried to wake up at 1.30am to speak to the mortgage bank but as i stood next to my computer i felt like the world was dropping out from beneath me. i hurriedly returned to bed and tried and failed a couple more times before eventually getting it together at around 3am. it felt like a live nightmare followed by a call to the mortgage bank that made me hate them more than i thought possible. of course, i was unable to get back to sleep after that.

i've mentioned that creepy grin cheshire cat lady uses, there was something unnerving about watching megaman turn an exact copy of that grin back on her during the morning meeting. it's not clear if she realized what he was doing.

a summary of my interactions with megaman on thursday:

(him) "prioritize these tasks."
"no, you."
"i insist."
"okay, we should begin with this one..."
"no, you definitely shouldn't do that."
"how about you prioritize?"

---because hating my mortgage bank wasn't enough for the day's list, the vending machine supplier decided to remove our favourite cookies. i discovered this when one of the developers asked me for coins for the machine, and we were both horrified when we saw that the delicious, vegan-friendly "cookie club" cookies had been replaced by "cookie star" crap. it was a travesty!

i called up the suppliers, who explained that while they cannot guarantee that the desired cookies would be returned they were also not at liberty to disclose where those cookies were sourced. the nerve! so i hunted the supplier down myself, got in touch with them and found that they're happy to deliver to our office at half the price per cookie.

screw you, vending machine people. screw you.

---we work in cubicles, and sound travels well throughout the office. creeper told me he'd had trouble finding vegan food the night before.
"the reason i'm trying not to eat meat or dairy is because my wife and kids are away this weekend, so i'll be trying dmt."

my brain froze.
"you know what dmt is?"
"the drug?" i asked hesitantly.
"yeah! i mean, it's a long weekend so i figure i might as well enjoy a good trip!"

holy crap (O_o)

---the it guy seems to have sensed that his theft might have consequences and seems to think i'm a good confidant. he's apparently interviewing for other jobs now because "interviewing when you have a job is like walking into a club alone when you have a girlfriend."

i wish that didn't apply to my own situation so well.

...

our sister company provides a service that they've left entirely unprotected and open to the internet. when i sent a mail describing the authentication requirements we have their star it guy responded by calling the open access a "feature" :S

---i was a little tired when i left for class. i made it in time for jiu-jitsu and there were only two of us so it was basically a private lesson. the instructor asked if we felt ready to grade, we didn't have anything to lose so we both gave it a shot. the other guy really wasn't ready, but me? i was awesome! i got through the tough "everyone always fails on these ones" moves easily, and was almost done when he asked me to do a chest-to-chest sweep.

the chest-to-chest sweep is the first one you learn, it's the most basic. and i failed. i launched my body up to do it, and for the first time since my first class i froze and didn't know how to proceed :(

anyway, the monster who was with me was oddly shy but happy to let me do as many exercises as i wanted so i got really good practice. odder than him being shy was him deciding that he was done fifteen minutes early. that was strange, but let me catch the second half of the advanced kickboxing class. it was one heck of a warm-up for the beginner's class, and i learned a lot (especially how to kick: upgrade!) even though i was completely broken by the end.

the girl who kind of invited me out the other day? totally ignored me. weird!

as happens every now and again, i had no appetite. i chugged a protein shake and went to bed early.

---as i climbed into bed i discovered the codex seraphinianus. i don't even know how to begin processing something so magnificent! so i've pre-ordered a copy for myself :)

---friday:

i woke up exhausted but otherwise feeling good, in serious need of a massage. good thing is was feel-good friday :P

first success of the day? i've been wearing my awesome orange troop jacket home from training and it smelled of sweat; i decided to rinse it and hope that wouldn't do any damage. it didn't, it dried quickly and it smells fine. superb!

first fail of the day? noticing that my septum is swollen. now i'm worried about nasal polyps. gods, i hope i don't have those.

i wonder if my subconscious knew how badly the day would go when it decided to play linkin park - in the end's chorus over and over during the morning meeting. or how cheeky it was being when it brought out becker saying "anger... ooh, go with that" as i pissed off megaman the first time.

i'm convinced that he's dishonest because he's incompetent.

---nin - hesitation marks is growing on me. bnw and her husband told me that hearing songs from it at the concert had changed their minds, and now that i've given it another chance i'm finding myself likening it to pretty hate machine. satellite feels good.

great friday night boxing training, not-so-great sparring but with the guy who'd previously upset me but at least it was a considerable improvement over that last time. i'd left the day behind for an hour or two, but afterwards i was so focused on the shit at work that i went shopping instead of heading straight to vfmp :$

i was a little late, but there was plenty of vegan feast left and we followed it with about five hours of thunderstone and way too many freshly-baked cookies.

---saturday:

i slept decently in spite of thinking about work before and after. i had a good smoothie breakfast, chatted with my mom and then headed to old montreal for the day.

[continued...]

peak to trough - part i

well! i cannot express just how much of a relief this weekend is for me. i mean, i've just spent most of my day today either reading or contemplating where i am and how fascinating it is that all of the things causing me to stress in life are in the niggling details while the big picture is looking fantastic.

the past three days have been intense; i'm supposed to be healing, and i spent them suffering sleep deprivation (partially due to the absurdly uncomfortable weather we've been having) and a pile-up of responsibilities that pushed me to a new level. i'm really proud of how i managed to keep it all together!

---wednesday:

i got up stupidly early for an appointment i've waited over a month for - which was set for tuesday. how did i screw up the calendar entry?!?! this was a really good start to the day. there wasn't enough time to get some sleep before work, so i got in to the office an hour and a half earlier than i usually do.

everything was quiet and peaceful until cheshire cat lady rocked up. i don't particularly like her at the best of times, and to have her suddenly popping into existence behind me while i was trying to focus on bigger issues didn't push my sympathy buttons. i dismissed her, telling her to let me know when imperieux became available.

instead, she brought imperieux over to my cubicle which was not what i asked her to do, once again disturbing me and giving me a sense of having my personal space invaded. fine. i locked my computer and walked them over to her space.

i have a job to do, and that job is to solve problems. the first part of solving any problem is determining what, precisely, that problem is. so i began the interview. cheshire cat lady is not one for precision, in fact she's one of the least technical / rational people i've come across. i have no idea how she ended up in the field of technical writing and i'm pretty sure she's the worst possible candidate for the job.

her first claim: "the interface is terrible and it doesn't do what i need it to do." the sad part is that she participated in the design and its iterations. as i drilled down in an attempt to uncover the underlying causes of her distress, i began to pick up on specifics and offered her solutions to those so that we could focus on finding the rest of the problems. it was terribly frustrating to have her repeatedly return to the resolved issues, and just as frustrating having her instruct us on technical aspects of a solution that wouldn't actual help anybody.

my job is to solve problems. my job is to determine underlying causes and then to figure out how to resolve the issues in a manner coherent with the big picture. the user is always right, but that extends on so far as to say that the user knows when something is wrong with the experience. it doesn't mean that the user knows what needs to happen behind the scenes and it certainly doesn't mean that one user's needs can override any of the others'.

so i pressed on in my quest to put all the pieces together, and she pressed on with complaining about everything being wrong (there were three issues in the end, the rest of this rather complex piece of machinery was designed perfectly adequately). not only was she repeating herself and constantly returning to the already-resolved issues, which was frustrating, but the more she repeated herself the more frustrated she became and the louder her voice got. very soon this escalated into her screaming at us, so loudly that the entire building could hear full well what she was thinking and this upset a lot of people.

now, i'm no angel. i kept my voice down, but as much as i didn't want her to shout i cannot say that my dislike for her and her idiocy didn't extend to my holding back on making her feel cared for and appreciated. it's hard to refrain from gently pushing someone over the edge when they're highly unlikable and talking utter rubbish. i was on a path to being entirely dispassionate, and while i knew that this was upsetting her i wasn't about to begin pandering to a fool. i don't play nice when i'm being shouted down by incompetence.

i say i was on a path to being entirely dispassionate, but the shouting soon devolved into personal attack. i went from cold to super-heated anger in a flash, at the same time keeping an iron fist clenched around remaining professional.

"i'm trying to help you, " i said behind gritted teeth, "and you're antagonizing me. it's very hard to think straight when you're doing that."

just then, megaman stepped up to the cubicle. he stood for a moment, while cheshire cat lady screamed on, and then made a quieting motion with his hand. what happened next made me do something totally unprofessional; i simply couldn't resist such an appropriate response to her (perhaps unwitting) moment of clarity. she continued her rant in her loud voice, this time directed to megaman and with me behind her back.

"... and i'm sure everyone thinks i'm mad..."

and in full view of imperieux and megaman, i opened my eyes comically wide and nodded my head furiously in agreement.

megaman invited us to join him behind closed doors, and with all of her perpetual noise it took the better part of fifteen minutes before he understood what we had already homed in on a while before. i explained my plan of action and told him how and when we'd execute it, and once he had ever-so-sweetly managed to get our message across to the idiot, imperieux and i made our escape.

i needed a few moments to explain to everyone else what the drama was about in the most politically correct "we just had a miscommunication" way possible without sharing my true thoughts on the matter. when it was time to get to work on the fixes, i took imperieux for a game of pool first to put us in a better mood (he won) and i sat with him the entire time to make absolutely sure that there was no way for any more miscommunications to interfere.

it took an hour or so, but by the time he was done i knew that this was everything cheshire cat lady needed. i called her over for an acceptance test, sighed deeply when she approved and then went back to my otherwise pretty busy day.

...

a few hours later she approached me again, with that extra-special super-sincere cheshire smile of hers.
"everything's great, thank you. now, is it possible to have all the items in the menu listed in alphabetical order?"

fuck you.

"i don't know, but it's really not a priority right now. i'll discuss it with <imperieux>."

boy, was i ever pissed when she approached imperieux directly and he made the changes on the fly!

petty? sure.

---the qa manager came up to me later on to inform me that he was buying sports supplements in bulk if i wanted in. l-carnitine was on sale, i don't remember if i ordered it or not. i just found out that l-carnitine is bad.

[continued...]

anguish sandwich

today was an exceptionally good day. grand, in fact! the exception to "exceptionally" only lasted about half an hour and it was cheshire cat lady. that woman is not only deranged and creepy, but she's bloody annoying and not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

that tone i got into trouble for when i used it with cam2? that's my i-can't-deal-with-your-incompetence tone. it came out in full force today and i'm not sure that anyone in the office didn't hear it. i'm pretty sure they all heard precisely what was causing it, too. her idiocy is relentless.

after trying to explain to me why i should make design calls when it suits her and not bother with our lead designer (hmm, perhaps she thinks we should fire him?) she then finished everything with a bang: "you always have to have the last word!".

this is not a bloody domestic argument about who's doing the fracking dishes. i'm in charge of development and everything we do needs to make sense in context of what we produce. my fracking job is to get the last word and to make sure that that word is the right bloody one.

what an asshole.

---otherwise, it was a very good morning. everything was operational, ceh and i are both enthusiastic about node.js and i showed megaman and our qa manager how real qa is done (i broke something during a dry run and my method totally took them by surprise).

i finally, after much deliberation, made an appointment for laser surgery. it's next week! in a few hours i'll go for my pre-op eye exam and get my prescriptions.

megaman and i seem to see eye-to-eye on our organization chart and on seating, which was a little worrying for a while. and he acquiesced when i suggested that the project manager he's bringing on board should not be lumped together with his previous teammates* but rather be dealt with according to his functions.

* have i mentioned my conspiracy theory?

it was a late afternoon of successes and hand-holding (it's what i do), followed by back-to-back kickboxing that was killer but excellent. well, the advanced class was tough but i had to work with the slow dude again (way before it's relevant he comes up to me to ask me personally, and i don't feel comfortable saying "no" even though i really, really want to work with anyone else). the class ended and i still had pent-up aggression from cheshire cat lady so i decided to join the beginner's class too.

hardcore. i worked with a new guy who's come from a traditional martial arts dojo and is crazy-polite to the instructor and to everyone else. he's also an absolute beast and after delivering full-power strikes non-stop for seven minutes he pushed me really hard to deliver the same.

i returned home soaked through and feeling amazing. i had a quick, hot bath (my back was hurting) and then sat down to... try out the card hunter beta. shit, it's fun! great concept and beautifully executed.

it's almost 2am. i've got sleeping to do. oh, crap... i didn't really eat dinner...

unclogging

i woke early enough and with enough presence of mind to call the caretaker about my sink being clogged up for the past couple of weeks (i spoke to him about it at least a week ago).
"i'll be right up!" he said.
"great!" i said, surprised, and promptly realized that i really needed to pee. i didn't want to risk him arriving while i was relieving myself, so i decided to wait it out - of course he only arrived fifteen minutes later.

---once again i got on the same train as the intern who's difficult to talk to, only this time i made the mistake of not walking right past him :(

the big, unhappy deal of the day: being called out for shouting at imperieux about negligence. he defended me - "we're just talking" - which is how i'd felt until i was called out. then i felt bad and he looked like he was going to cry (i'm beginning to suspect that he just always has watery eyes) and that made me totally awkward around him for the rest of the day. as well as feeling like shit :(

cheshire cat lady, after all the time we've spent with her defining the process that covers her work and implementing it, has decided it's not good. she's a technical writer. for some reason i expected her to be less clueless than a regular user.

we had another hour-long demo today, this one was pre-lunch and post-too-many-fries. so i heated up my lunch and took it in with me; i wasn't actually hungry, and it didn't taste very good... the lesson learned is that i should stay away from lunchtime fries.

the new guy refuses to skype, so i tried to connect with him via irc. i haven't used irc in long years, and i totally failed :$

...

gods, i've been exhausted all day. i'm glad this is my training "day off". i desperately need this long weekend coming up!

visualization

waking up visualizing the talk i was going to have with the cto, the horrible realization dawned on me that there's no way for us to discuss it without my at best implying that he's an idiot.

i'm not a politician, and being especially tactful is not what i do.

aota came in to the office for a short while, and i'm very glad i managed to catch her for a "talk". i shared all of my frustrations and she assured me that a) all the executives are aware of what's going on and b) that that's precisely what megaman's been tasked with dealing with.

i headed back to megaman's office to convince him that i don't need to be in the meeting and to argue with him for over half an hour about the value of commenting code.

...

if i don't give a shit and take things less seriously i *do* feel better. can i keep this up?

---i can't tell if megaman is a victim of buzzword-speech or if he's simply imprecise. regardless, he knows how to make me feel needed.

...

three things made me smile yesterday: my rocket surgeon shirt arriving at the office, buying ministry albums (psalm 69 and the mind is a terrible thing to taste), and one of the interns finding the original syndicate on gog.com.

oh, and leaving early for an eye exam.

---it wasn't hard to find the eye institute, their welcome was quick and pleasant. they did make me wait a bit, though, and i was pretty tired...

the tests went strangely. my right eye couldn't focus on the letters either, and the pressure tests left me in tears. afterwards i was led back to the waiting room where i sat for so long i began to nod off. it was in a haze that i entered the doctor's room...

... where we discovered that my right eye's vision is excellent. perhaps the test equipment wasn't calibrated correctly? anyway, for my left eye i was asked to look through a patch with holes in it and my vision was instantly corrected. science! and piracy. maybe i should just wear a patch instead of dropping almost two large on surgery?

the technician who explained the details and risks could barely speak english; he made everything awkward by constantly apologizing...

---i felt a couple of drops of rain and headed into tim horton's for a cup of coffee. i was inside and cozy when the skies opened up and the rain came bucketing down - once in a while i get it right!

while there i went online and was touched to read a lengthy note by tpj concerning consciousness; he may have missed a few steps in my personal history but he definitely internalized what i was getting at :)

i returned home with no plans to train. i did laundry, chatted for a while with SxS and then overclocker, finished season 7 of doctor who and watched another couple of episodes of death note before going to bed early.

i *was* thinking about working on my comics but i really disn't have the energy.

---today:

special deliveries! i received both my copy of the arden sonnets and my syndicate shirt! it came out beautifully ^_^

so far, it's been a positively meh day at work. the most interesting bit was designing icons for something and almost explicitly stating that cheshire cat lady's input wasn't appreciated...

revisiting: wednesday

i'm splitting these up. it's been a crazy week. it's 2am on a monday morning and moonlighter and i just decided to call it a night...

---wednesday:

it's crunch time, and moonlighter and the cto are working nights so why shouldn't the rest of us? what's a couple of hours of sleep time?

...

three 'n one - reflect and cj stone - in your mind were part of a good start to a sunny morning.

i settled in to get focused, but ccl was bothering me. she keeps forgetting her passwords. this time, on a system where we don't have a method of resetting a password... that blew only five minutes of real time while i figured it out, but an eternity of aggravated time...

after ccl there was a general state of madness. a few of us had lunch at l'artere and aota and i somehow ended up discussing my previous relationships, which somehow led to a discussion about work incentives, unemployment, skills training and career switching which i believe deserves a post of its own.

i wasted some time and totally lost my cool because our wiki refused to accept "/etc" in the document text: at first i was lucky because i'd copied all the text to the clipboard before previewing because i'd written a lot... but while trying and failing repeatedly i got distracted and at one point pressed "save" having overwritten the clipboard data... i was *very* grateful when pressing "back" had the desired effect of restoring all my text.

i decided i needed to block out the world, and blasted good trance with my headphones on. it totally worked! except for one incident when an intern came to ask me a question and laughed at me because i was completely absorbed in what i was doing but dancing in my chair at the same time. the blockout, however, was a great success! i was really excited about having migrated to amazon cloud services even though everything else was going to shit. that's when i decided to take my leave.

i stopped to pick up shirts at walmart, and the queue was really slow. i was upset because i had to shop before doing laundry so that i could put the shirts in, but by shopping first i wouldn't have time to do laundry before training. on the way home it struck me that as long as i can put my things in the dryer before i leave, i can pick them up afterwards... i just need to confirm each time with the caretaker that nobody's going to throw away my clothes.

boxing was killer, and my arms felt properly overworked. enough that i'd be concerned about over-training... i watched it crowd over a huge dinner, found myself entirely incapable of working and went to bed.

uncovered

i realized this evening that i most certainly could not live in london. it's been over a week and a half of grey, overcast misery, and as i left my apartment the clouds began to part, allowing a sense of freshness into the air that was otherwise psychologically stuffy. i walked to the closest tattoo parlour, and my mom called just as i arrived so i stood outside chatting excitedly for about half an hour: my mom has some very good news that i'm extremely pleased to hear!

standing outside gave me a good sense of the vibe of that area - only about five minutes' walk north - very student-funky and fun, possibly related to the cégep school at the end of the road. as we finished the phone call, i realized i'd been standing outside for half an hour with no gloves, no sweater and a bare head: spring! i sprung up the steps and into wizard's.

i waited about five minutes, explained myself badly twice, and when the guy understood me he said "ah! i have a tool for that."
i thought he meant he had a tool to help me get the helix back on, and i said that if i needed a tool to do that i'd rather buy a different one. he wasn't listening. he'd taken my helix, he pulled out something unidentifiable, and then returned my helix. he'd stretched the metal! so now it clips and unclips really easily. too easily, i suspected, but i've tugged on it a bit and it's all good :)

"umm - thank you! what do i owe you for this?"
"nothing, man, you have a good evening!"

boy, did *that* all put a smile on my face. it was with a lightened step that i walked back home to catch a bus to the mall to check out rollerblades. the first guy i spoke to didn't know anything, so he brought over another guy who managed to get what i was looking for and found me some pretty close fits... not close enough, unfortunately. but after twenty minutes trying them on and rolling around, he made me feel secure with my indecision and advised that i check out a competitor. satisfying service, twice in one evening!

i walked out of the mall into a breathtakingly magnificent sunset. i can't even describe it well, and my camera certainly couldn't get a hold of it: looking north, light blues and yellows blending from the east into an orange and violently pink north-west corner of the sky, slashed across by deep purple clouds creating a diagonal from that corner and passing through indigo into grey cloud on the right edge of my vision. when i stood staring while waiting for the light to change i wanted the moment to last forever; when i crossed the road and arrived at the stop the bus arrived with me.

i picked up a starbucks soy latte on the way home, and arrived totally psyched to work on my comics. huzzah! i got through two pages (covering four lines of verse) before realizing that two hours had passed and it was late... i'm *really* excited about what i've done! so i made dinner and ate it watching a great episode of community and then the last half hour of the penultimate episode of the ultimate fighter - team gsp vs team koscheck. great ending!

all that because the weather played nice ;)

---tuesday:

i woke up around 3am for midnight snacking: humus and carrots. the new training me can get pretty hungry.
the weather's shittiness was felt, and i was not in the mood to be anywhere. let alone arguing with cheshire cat lady because she doesn't understand that we should develop solutions to fit needs and not compromise by using existing solutions that only make our jobs harder :/
the afternoon was a confused mess of multitasking and security issues that made no sense whatsoever.

i left a lot later than i'd intended, and had to literally run to the shops in order to get to training. and i was still half an hour late. then i partnered up with a kid who made a great partner, but whose ass smelled... like ass, and every time he caught my head with his leg i had to hold my breath. ugh.

kickboxing was killer - i didn't give up, but the last five minutes was a blur of dizziness and pain. i do believe it's making a positive difference, though: every step i took today i could properly feel my stomache muscles. which means they exist!

---today:

i woke up a little earlier than usual and so took the morning slow, beginning with the latest episode of strip search. another great one :)

i still felt bad today, and thought about going to see a doctor. apparently that's practically impossible here in quebec, and my medical coverage (when i receive my card, which should be any day now) isn't valid outside the province. as soon as i get that card, i'm going to go camp out in a clinic until i can find myself a gp.

today was a long day of meetings, but they were all up, interesting and positive. i'm not getting my hopes too high, but they did inspire a little more confidence.

the cheshire smile

the office day began with a cheshire grin from the technical writer; i've thought of her as "crazy cat lady" until now but i guess cheshire is more appropriate than crazy. it's as if that grin jinxed my day, man, in addition to creeping me out.

the main endeavor would have taken ten minutes if everyone had done things the easy way. but when you mistakenly think you're competent you can really mess things up. instead of working with the instructions, my interns had me rescuing them for over three hours. i need to make new guys write an exam or something, this is ridiculous.

of course, the surprise demo by our ceo helped my stress levels, and the more surprising catastrophic demo failure was the cherry on the top.

maybe pg's right. maybe i shouldn't work in such an unhealthy industry.

...

speaking of pg, i can't say i'm not distracted at all.