selling out - part ii

[continued...]

when i eventually got to the office, it was for a short day including a supremely painful massage and a happy hour send-off for imperieux that he didn't attend. oh, well. we played great pirate fluxx instead of pool.

i got home wasted (not from alcohol, i still haven't had alcohol since i started - and finished - the antibiotics) and dehydrated, binge-watched the rest of how i met your mother season 8 which vastly improved after the halfway mark. i was rather disappointed by the first half but believing it to be the final season (whoops) i was just watching it for closure.

the mongoose: sometimes good friends just drift apart. seeing as the past few times he's contacted me he's been looking for drugs (and i've never been the right person to ask), i felt that his message to me was hollow and i couldn't let it slide. after the back-and-forth, i think it's now "official" that we're no longer friends.

---today:

i woke up stressing about renting a car for the exam, as my driver's license is no longer valid to drive on. i tried a few numbers but they all seemed closed on the weekend, and i spoke to godmother who very kindly assured me that we'd work something out but i didn't want to inconvenience her so much. fortunately, one of the numbers i'd called got back to me, and they'll happily be waiting for me on the lot of the saaq on monday morning!

awesome ^_^

i tried to go back to sleep but got caught up in AddaWordRuinaMovie madness - i'm not a big twitter fan but i had a lot of fun nonetheless :)

i went downtown for a large lunch and a haircut. the latter was good, though the old dude cut my ear with the cutthroat!
my south african sensibilities and i are not happy with this :S

---i felt the soft, warm death of a sleepwalking siesta through a beautiful afternoon, which is how i got home. on my way out the metro i experienced the joy of being able to help someone carry her stroller up the stairs: i always feel awkward and then terrible watching mothers carrying their kids in their strollers by themselves, and this time the woman took one look at me and asked for assistance. granted she asked in french and i had to infer her meaning, but still the assistance felt appreciated from the get-go.

the afternoon was reserved for napping, but after a shower i instead got stuck into the final episode of the second sherlock season. THEN i napped. wonderfully ^_^

---i just realized why i can't get anything done at home: i keep rushing off to the kitchen to grab more snacks. i'm off to the starbucks to work on my comics.

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...]

manic for sure

i was a long day, most of it a bit unpleasant. in addition to our network going down repeatedly (making most of us quite useless and frustrated), imperieux and i being locked out of our office for over half an hour because of a "five minute" phone call, being asked by megaman if i ever went to school (i think he was trying to be funny, but it came across shockingly condescending) and experiencing an otherwise meaningless lunch fail that had most of the development team laughing at me (not with me), i was really tired both physically and mentally and the coffee didn't help at all.

oh, yes: and aota and i had to take newk'd aside an give him an official warning for repeated tardiness. not cool.

i did have a very positive conversation with the cto, though, and it looks like work and an external interest just combined in my favour.

---i was exhausted by the time i met with metro, and so my pitch really wasn't as enthusiastic as usual. even so, she seems as professional as she is interested, she's definitely more experienced than mason, and she'll be available to get on things in about two weeks. and we totally agree on attitude towards the project! very cool. i have a good feeling about this.

kickboxing:
i did see gg between classes, and i think i made things awkward. without actually saying anything, so i guess there's a good chance that i was just being awkward all by myself. in any event the training was solid.

after showering i began my mars one application. trippy! and now that i've read through the faq i know exactly what my video needs to look like. and that if their criteria are to be believed i actually stand a good chance!

...

i suddenly found myself bouncing up and down to the music, and i've been on a crazy high since.

...

i spent the following couple of hours playing with node.js. node.js is awesome.

---i discovered today that i'm not the only one enjoying the summer but missing the snowboarding.

an awaited long weekend

last night:

the pilot episode of star trek: the next generation was interesting (although the psychic character was just tedious), but what really captivated me was trying to catch riker sitting down.

i managed to get into bed early. i needed it.

---it was a good morning, sunny and with me feeling considerably less stiff and sore. as i sat down on the metro, i noticed that the girl next to me was sketching. after furtively glancing at her page and ascertaining that i liked her work, i thought about asking her if she'd be interested in working with me. i believe that bothering strangers in a closed space isn't cool, so i didn't, but then i thought about how these are the kinds of opportunities that might turn out to be really good, and then i thought "no, you can't do that" and then "really? are you really going to do this?"
by that stage we'd passed three stations, and i was running out of time. "sod it," i thought, and i popped out my headphones and said "excuse me" in my most casual voice.

my gods, she literally jumped out of her seat with a frightened squeal! i hit a 10.0 on my awkward-o-meter, and quickly apologized for scaring her. i then asked if she's currently working on a project, and she told me she's working part-time on a video game for one of the big companies. i asked if she'd be interested in working on comics, she asked me if i had a card, i babbled about arranging a meeting and she told me she'd send me her portfolio. nice!

we then proceeded to ignore each other for the rest of the ride, except to say goodbye with smiles. i'm so proud of myself for taking the chance :)

---i got in to a bit of a nightmare. the first part was what appeared to be a ddos attack on one of our servers. the second part... have i mentioned hating mysteries? two of our servers, one local and one remotely hosted, both completely disconnected, began to exhibit the same really strange behaviour. when we finally established what the foundation of that behaviour was and were even more mystified, everything went back to normal. wtf?

the rest of my day was spent managing, with one incident of my having to take a developer aside and instill in him a real fear of not using the tools we have to keep our codebase sane. i felt bad for him, but when we got up he thanked me and assured me that we were playing the same game. the others are beginning to work in a more disciplined manner, which makes me feel successful. on a similar note, i had a lot of dealings with imperieux today and things between us are fine, so i'm glad and fortunate that yesterday's unpleasantness didn't stick.

megaman told me that he had no issues with the holidays i've been planning, but that he finds it really weird that i'm so pedantic about logging my hours that i know precisely how many over or under i am. on the one hand, it would be easier to do as he says and just log eight hours a day regardless, but on the other... i feel like my knowledge gives me a certain amount of leverage when asking for a day off here and there and it's good that my information ocd is served :)

kickboxing tonight was good, but my arms still felt heavy and my punches mostly sucked. i worked really hard, though, and i definitely had fun!

it's now past bedtime for those of us who have to be up super early to get on a bus, and i've still got to pack. but it doesn't really matter. i can sleep on the bus :D

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!

google fails

let's start with the blogger app that i used for my last post, that refuses to post here and sends things to my poetry blog instead:

map fail - the big one
ooooh! it was all a horrible google maps mistake. i wondered why the clinic didn't have the same name, and now i know why the website was off: maps + streetview sent me to an unrelated clinic across the street.

i guess it's a totally private walk-in clinic and that that's why it cost me so much money to be seen. now to find out if that's why the waiting time was bearable, too.

so to continue on that thread, no. the waiting time was much less and the doctor was thorough and has a great bedside manner. i appreciated it even more when i realized that he wasn't referring to my tattoo as a disease. [apparently i have a skin condition that's called a disease but most likely doesn't mean anything]

---the first part of the day was a major headache; the "misinterpreted" upgrade by imperieux saw the two of us spending an inordinate amount of time being extra-careful about integration. at least by the end of the day we were happy with everything, but that first part had me running out of the office for the lunch break just to get away.

megaman and i are no longer the only people on "our side" concerned by the cto's blatant disregard for everything we've been working towards and his apparently inability to play with others. my mother, bless her, griefed me for about half an hour earlier because she thinks i should inform the ceo - in addition to putting my job on the line, i'm not sure it would be constructive. [having said that, you do have a point, mum. i heard you.]

at least i'm in a position that i wouldn't need to rush to find employment if i stopped working.

---it is entirely likely that my sudden energy drops are related to my not consuming enough protein. different sources cite different numbers, but i'm getting the impression that i should be getting at least 150g in me per day, and i've been getting little more than a third of that. today i made 130g, and that was through three protein bars / snacks, breakfast, lunch and a double-dinner that i'm only halfway through.

note to self: mlo bio protein double choc is gross. i was desperate and that's what the dep (kiosk) had, and contrary to the review i just linked to i found both the texture and the taste appalling and cringe-worthy.

season seven of dr who while sewing my other hand-wrap's velcro: much better than the three doctors.

kickboxing: i slurped down the grape-flavoured rockst*r, which was easier to get down but made me feel a little nauseous. that *could* have been from the protein bar, though... i almost hesitated, but went to training anyway and had a really, really good session. i'm so buffed i almost didn't recognize myself in the mirror during warm-up! very cool.

forgotten towel

first, some reminiscing:

i walked out of the apartment yesterday listening to house, and a dj quicksilver track came on. the tracks of his i'm familiar with all use similar samples, and they remind me of the first vinyl i ever purchased, bellissima, which i bought as soon as i could after hearing it at 6am at the faithless / sister bliss / judge jules rave at culemborg in 1997.

that was either my first or second rave ever, and i'll never forget how krybabie laughed at my inability to dance so i headed into the crowd and started copying people - by the time i got back, all his friends were saying "dude! he dances better than you do!"

---one of the interns was on the same train, and i looked at him for a while without getting a response before deciding that i was simply looking at someone similar. i'm glad he didn't recognize me, because when we arrived and i was certain it was him he really wasn't much fun to talk to.

imperieux: after thursday's horrific discovery, he spent the night like every other night for the past week - working and not sleeping. he looked terrible, he looked unhappy, he looked frustrated. i feel bad for making him feel bad, as much as i feel bad for him having worked so hard unnecessarily; i really hope this hasn't burned him out. megaman and i spent the day trying to convince him to get some rest.

the previous interns: they weren't very good. in particular, their ability to pay attention to detail was practically non-existent, and it's very frustrating to discover that they completely disregarded an important column in the data sample i provided them and the new interns are now going to have to work around that.

*facepalm*

...

i stocked up on food and supplements at loblaws, and couldn't resist buying a box of french fries. i was hungry, and i thought a big box would be a good idea, but the big box was much bigger than it needed to be and the fries were so delicious that it was impossible not to overeat. i couldn't eat a real lunch after that and i didn't feel good at all. that's not to say i didn't enjoy them...

i added some cool functionality to our central development server yesterday and was very pleased to receive a pat on the back for it. it's the little successes that count, no?

my nose didn't stop running the whole day in spite of the antihistamines, and by the time happy hour came around i was feeling out of sorts. but i went anyway, and i had a beer anyway, and although it was a pleasant hour or two i got up feeling *drunk* in the sense that walking in a straight line was a problem. i was exhausted by the time i got home, so i sat in front of some old doctor who (the three doctors, not the most exciting introduction to the series) before climbing into bed.

---saturday:

i slept fitfully and for more than twelve hours, not including an afternoon nap. i'm embarrassed to admit that i forgot my towel at home when i left for a hair cut. i was uncomfortable the whole time (those health issues) and i think the guy figured i didn't like him because my face was frozen in a scowl.

afterwards i checked out the clinic website which says "seven days a week", and i arrived there to discover that it's only open monday to friday. well, that sucked. just like last week.

---daniel tosh is so offensive he's hysterical, and i love his meta-jokes.

i'm reading wired again and they mentioned brian k vaughan - the private eye: i've just tossed him two dollars for a look and i'll let you know if i like it.

rewrite

i experienced a soul-crushing moment today, when i realized that after a long time working on his mandate to upgrade a system i constructed - most of my time on the original spent creating libraries to make development quicker, easier and more secure - imperieux had been rewriting the system from scratch instead. this is exactly like cam2, except that this system actually works and does what it's supposed to do, but it's now incompatible with the previous system and that's going to cost us in integration :'(

well, that's what happens when you're overloaded and you delegate. this sucks.

...

on a related note, but in the other direction: one of our developers has been bitching about work that one of the previous interns did badly, and he called me over to show me something he was struggling to read and translate. i looked at it, then looked again, and realized it was something of mine :$

---i left work much later than i'd have liked (working around robocopy, which doesn't work as advertised), and was long out of time to eat before training so i made do with a protein bar. i didn't feel too good by the time i arrived in the gym, the short jog had worn me out and my abysmal failures with the jump rope had me a little dizzy; i was hesitant to continue, and considered just saying "i can't" and leaving.

but i didn't. it wasn't an easy training, but once i'd warmed up i started doing the right things, and even though i was partnered with the slow guy (he doesn't seem to understand any of the exercises) i left feeling very positive.

...

you know you're shadowboxing well when:
"dude! are you alright?!"
"i'm fine, you should see the other guy..."

...

the final part of the training was very exciting - we were working on the heavy bags that up until today have dealt more damage to my legs than vice-versa, and this time i came out on top! it's the little victories...

---check out this brilliant summary on exoplanet detection!

piraro being serious is quick and fun to read.

is $120 to drive a lamborghini galland through two laps (less than five minutes) on a race course worth it? because that's how much they're charging. i compared the per hour rental cost of a ford fiesta to its purchase price ($2.5/hr : $20k) and this deal to the lambo's ($1440/hr : $210k). although i suppose using the track might be expensive... that expensive?

willpower

and i don't mean the power of shakespeare, although i have some of that, too.

yesterday was a very relaxed friday. in addition to all my usual distractions, i had one job to do and that was to get one of the previous interns' projects to work. now that i've finally gotten it fixed, i find myself even more disturbed by this third year engineering student's complete lack of logic. also, he overcomplicated everything. but i suppose that can be put down to a lack of experience.

happy hour was quite funny and a little embarrassing; one of the guys (imperieux) had just enough to drink that he hopped up to play on the piano. this was funny, although he was actually quite good, but embarrassing because there were plenty of other patrons and pianos don't have volume controls. one girl had to move away to continue her skype conversation... i felt partially responsible.

after we were done, jock, newk'd, imperieux and i made use of our cafeteria pool table for a couple of hours. jock introduced us to cutthroat when newk'd left, which was so much fun that i was overjoyed when i won the final game. jock joked about me being a bad winner, which did shame me a little...

anyway, after a really enjoyable evening i returned home, made dinner and tried to decide if i was going to hit a trance party downtown. eventually i figured that it would be better to rest just a little bit more, because i really want to be in fighting shape as soon as possible!

...

i woke up around 7am this morning, and i'd slept enough. i finished reading chris beckett - dark eden and i cannot praise it enough! i'm now ready to face a day wherein i see a couple of movies that i'll regret not seeing on the big screen...

---on my way home i was thinking about the possibility that my feeling horrible this past week might well have been a purely psychological thing. the demotivation from work hit me hard, and i shouldn't be letting bullshit get under my skin.