Hollywood or Wall Street
For about a year now, I've been growing a nation at CyberNations. Terrafrikkinbithia is an island nation that has reached a decent size by clever trading of our primary resources of water and fish. We've purchased improvements including 3 banks, 2 universities, a hospital, several clinics, a stadium and a factory. We're at the point of wealth now (25M Euros) where we can afford to purchase "national wonders" which aid development with big population happiness and income bonuses/etc. I can't decide whether we need a stock market or a movie industry. I'll probably go for the stock market. I am all about the imaginary money.
Carpetbaggin
This week i will finally get to see a little bit more of St Louis than the airport, which i've layed over at a few times. And when i say "a little", i mean a courtyard marriott somewhere 20 minutes from the airport (to the southeast i think) and a client site nearby. And when i say "this week", i mean monday nite, when i fly in, and tues nite when i fly out. And when i say "see", i mean whatever i can view from the rental car during said journeys.
Which kinda sux, b/c i'd always hoped to someday check out the pig n whistle and buy the christy a long overdue drink. And i am sure that registering and managing my domain should get ben and tempe at least a nice dinner, kids included.
Well, hope this client becomes permanent, and then maybe i can make good.
Wherein Recalcitrant Passive Aggression Towards My Superiors is Yet Again Spawned
I am back in that nightmare, again, the one where i work endless days that bleed into one with no closure or sense of progress, nothing ever gets signed off, and just when you think you've reached a milestone, more shit gets added to the to-do list. Don't get me wrong - i can handle doing this for a couple weeks a month. But we've been going like this pretty much straight since mid-march. Myself and two of my cowerkers have all at one point or another over this time worked through previously scheduled vacations or family obligations.
And it didnt have to be like this. But anytime you have a project (internal or otherwise) with this one partner of ours, this is what happens. His expectations are impossible to manage, he hears what he wants to, even when you write things down and agree to them, and he fails to acknowledge when you might have competing priorities, even when you escalate them appropriately. And always, after weeks of being unavailable for meetings / design sessions / input, at the last minute, he will micro-manage content and processes and become the mother of all bottlenecks. His primary contributions to the work development are to ask for middle of the night status updates and renegotiations on timelines.
I'd bitch more, but i have work to do.
Tri-State Area Dominated
I have to say last night's metal tribute wars at bb kings was pretty wikkid. By far the highlight of the evening was Tragedy, the number one All Metal Tribute to the Bee Gees in the Tri-State Area (tm). After their rocking set, i cant understand why the Bee Gees weren't metal in the first place. It sounds pretty frikkin good. Turns out last nite was Tragedy's CD Release party as well, so now i have my very own copy of "We Rock Sweet Balls and Can Do No Wrong".
But it's not only the fact that Barely Gibb and bros can put the power cord hurt on "Shadow Dancing" and "More than a Woman" that makes for such sweet hawtness, as their attention to detail. Their act includes homage to Bee Gee's glam and tendency towards excessive entourage - stage right you will find three requisite female back-up singers/harmonizers/disco dancers in silver lamé, and one in angel wings. Stage Left, however, you will find the pièce de résistance - a translator signing the lyrics throughout the entire show in American Sign Language. There were also about three ancillary characters who occasionally filled out on cowbell or tambourine, but mostly glided around the stage, stage-dove and mimed atrocities during the acts. And last but not least, there was Lance. The band intern, who's job it was to mostly piss off and swab down given Gibbens and Glibb's between songs.
It was the most fun i've had in ages. And in midtown/times square no less, so that's an extra surprise bonus there.
Pity Youth Is Wasted on the Young
Spent part of my current vac with some friends i met online / ingame who were in diapers when i was hitting puberty. The age / generation gap was actually unnoticeable. Mostly only in retrospect did it strike me that there are 15 or so years between us. Key takeaways:
- I did not have my shit that together when i was their age
- There is good 'new' music out there
- Between 28 and 38 something reptilian and evil happens to your skin
- Once i was cool, but now it is too much of an effort
- I can still drink any of them under the table
eBay Discipline
I've been flirting with eBay lately. Although i've had an account for several years, somehow i've actually only ever bid on a couple things and each time i was always outbid. Mostly, i think i just don't have the patience and dedication required to keep up with an auction. For that kind of work i'd better get a real bargain... When i saw this hot little item however, i was sorely tempted to just hit the buy it now button. But i didn't - instead i am planning on catching a wild one in the park or somewhere and taming it myself.
I can't promise i'll show the same level-headed restraint regarding this pimp cup auction, though.
Slip Me A Micky & Wake Me Up When Itz Over
[early morning at work]
Pwylla: ... ow...
Cowerker: What's wrong?
Pwylla: I musta slept wrong or something. My lower back and tailbone ache. Almost like I slipped and fell on them at some point, but i didn't.
Cowerker: Hmmmmm.
Pwylla: Yeah, it was probably alien abduction.
[later that same day]
Cowerker: I heard R. telling F. that you guys need that web based survey tool developed in three weeks for that conference. You know that is probably gonna be a stretch.
Pwylla: ... Yep. And that isnt the half of it. Therez a whole website to develop as well as accompanying assets, and i wouldnt be suprised if [Partner] also decides he needs a couple pieces of marketing collateral on top of all that.
Cowerker: [laughs hysterically] You KNOW how this is gonna turn out!
Pwylla: You don't have to tell me - itz what happens every year at this time for that damn conference.
Cowerker: Yeah - you should know! You've been through this exact thing before.
Pwylla: Well, this time will be different - I am letting R. manage all of it. I am just along for the ride, baby.
Cowerker: ...i bet thatz why your ass hurts...
And I'm Sure I Deserved It, Too
-----Original Message-----
From: Cowerker
Sent: Tuesday,
February 05, 2008 10:09 AM Eastern Standard Time
To: Another Cowerker; Pwylla
Subject: KM Stats
Guys – when we are counting docs in the Assets folder structure we should definitely be enforcing the file structure rules – no docs or new folders created in the first three levels of the hierarchy (I had to move a folder to its proper place - like Pwylla when she gives me backtalk)
-----Reply Message-----
From: Pwylla
Sent: Tuesday,
February 05, 2008 10:30 AM Eastern Standard Time
To: Cowerker; Another Cowerker
Subject: RE: KM Stats
But like I told the people at social services, he only does it because he cares.
After the Plague
As immersed and fascinated as i am by this teeming metropolis that i live in, therez a part of me that has always been ineluctably drawn to scenarios of urban devastation, destruction and/or decay. Not because i scorn urbanity, or wish it ill in any way - i don't. More because it is so easy to get caught up in it, and forget that it is all transitory. To that end, I saw I am Legend over the holidays. While as a movie it has its issues, i have to admit that as a citizen of New York, it did have some effect on me. Not the least of which is my growing collection of potential zombie vampire hive locations.
All's Fair in Love and RIF
My current client is going through a pretty massive downsizing (not related to my projects
)... It is interesting to be an observer during this - throughout my career, i've been on both sides of restructuring. It may be the fact that i've been self-employed before and had to bust ass every few months for my next project with a new client, or that the very nature of being a management consultant means moving from client to client on a frequent basis, but my perspective on layoffs has changed radically since the early 90s.
My very first experience with "rightsizing" was as a middle manager with a high tech firm. I remember looking at a list of my reports and being told that 10 percent had to go. (Later it would be an additional 5 and then another 2 percent more). I'd already counseled out those few with performance issues and I had to fight over the 6 unfortunate severance candidates with my HR business partner. I remember referring to one employee and telling him, "But she developed best practices that we've been using for two years - I can't let her go!" His answer would ring in my head years later during my own "outplacement" from a different firm: "Yeah, but what has she done for us this last quarter?"
A lot of people take their first experience of being laid off personally. The truth about your employer is that their memory is only as long as the preceding quarter. The days of working for one company until you retire with a nice pension ended in the 60s, if not earlier. It's not about you, it's about EPS.
A friend of mine was let go from another high tech firm during a restructuring. He'd even gotten contribution and client satisfaction awards the quarter before. The reason? His product lines were not strategically important and were either being cut or outsourced to Malaysia. Market and industry pressures can make you obsolete. If your work isn't highly placed within the transformation plans, be worried and be looking. In fact, you should always be looking - if at least just to know what your market value is and to stay on top of what skills are hot in your field. Ask any COBOL programmer.
If you stay with a company for a long time, you forget that the very nature of your engagement with your employer is incremental. You are paid for the work you do, as you go. They usually keep the intellectual property you create as well. This is the agreement.
But if you think your life ends when someone you've worked for for over a decade decides that you aren't necessary, then wake up. The 6 employees that i had to let go of in the early 90's moved into much more satisfying careers and lives after their severance. Some got phatter new jobs with competitors, some went back to school and reskilled, others went independent and worked for themselves. I know, because i kept up with most of them afterwards. And i know people in certain fields (read "technology") that have been through layoffs several times and each time managed to better their next position.
That doesn't mean it's always a happy story. I have family members that weren't so successful. But the lesson for everyone is the same: everyone is always at risk. Nothing is forever. Not that you shouldn't be committed to a job (i certainly am), but you should treat each work experience as a chance to extend you business network, and each new colleague you work with as someone who can give you a good referral or reference in the future.
You know you would for them.
Know Your Time Balls
- One of the first time balls was erected in Greenwich Observatory in 1833 and dropped every day at 1300 GMT / BST in order to enable boats in the Thames to regulate their chronometers
- The first New Year's Eve time ball in Times Square was dropped 100 years ago, in 1907, ushering in 1908
- Artkraft Strauss created and operated the first NYE time ball, as well as many of the most famous Times Square "spectaculars"
- The 2008 time ball will incorporate state of the art LED lighting effects to celebrate of the centennial anniversary of the NYE time ball.
The Future Revisited
I'm re-reading Neuromancer. I think i first read it sometime in 1990. When it was already, even then, six years after its publication, part of the canon for the "cool kids". Who i hung with when they'd let me, and i'd watch the things they'd do with ftp, and try to understand, always making analogies which they'd laugh and shake their heads at ...
When i first read it, i had connected primarily with the dystopia. The Sprawl, Chiba, the Ninsei plastic neon overkill .. and characters that had nothing to lose, less to prove, but enough "fuck it" existential paranoia to drive the narrative home.
On a second pass, the things that stand out for me - just how beautiful the prose is, how intricate the plot. Therez an immersion, an ambience, which i definitely experienced the first time around, but now (post-internet, post-y2k), itz somehow more meaningful.
Especially when you consider that when i first read it, it would be two full years before i'd have a modem, or even an ISP... I think i was concerned that when i re-read it, my current understanding of the matrix and cyberspace would conflict with his vision, making it obsolete, gernsbackian... But in so many ways, gibson's sprawl future is still possible. Still just enough beyond us, but familiar.
Trick, Treat or Retainer
On a conf call with client and cowerker last week:
Client: ... sorry someone just walked into my office and i was showing her pics of my daughter in her halloween costume - i'm back now.
Pwylla: ... Oh really, what did she go as?
Client:... Raggedy Anne
Pwylla and Cowerker: Aaaaaaaaw!
Pwylla: [to Cowerker] And what did your son go as?
Cowerker: He went as a lawyer ... you know, with the fangs and the little black cape.
Suspension of Disbelief
Discussing Joss Wheadon's Serenity movie.
Shaun-0: ... See, i just don't understand that - it doesn't make sense!
Pwylla: What? The lovebot?!? Yes it does. Mr universe is supposed to be a future 'super geek' - of course he'd have a love bot.
Shaun-0: Yeah, but only one?!?
Head Space Reclamation Project
"Work - Life Balance" is the wellness program phrase corporate america will often use to pledge that they will never intentionally endeavor to suck your life dry of personal meaning. When they say they'll respect your WLB, they are basically saying "you'll never be required to work 80 hours a week".... And they mean it. However, you are required to hit certain performance targets, which you'll agree to, of course... and if you fail to accomplish those within a 40 hour workweek... well, then, you do the math, and make your own decision about whether or not you work some unbilled overtime.
Truthfully, and it may be sick, but I've always felt that WBL is less about what the company promises and more about the individual's ability to set reasonable goals and manage their own time. No doubt this has deep roots in childhood and needs (more) therapy, but i always utterly fail to have a life outside of whatever project i am focused on at a given moment. My ability to set aside any "me-time" is undoubtedly hampered by the fact that i respond to stress by immersing myself in work. Kinda a "make hay while the sun shines" sorta impetus.
Anyway, realizing that i grow resentful when thus overextending, and then find myself having imaginary "fuck you" conversations with my employers (who don't deserve it, srsly) and/or clients (who may or may not deserve it, but still, better not to go there), which are eventually followed by periods of insolent self-destruction, and ultimately, incidents of crass pettiness towards peers/friends/colleagues... sometime last spring i decided to establish a regime of personal / non-work-related reading. As in fiction. As in books.
I think if you understood my previous relationship with reading, you'd understand how momentous this decision was. Because when i say i had a previous 'relationship' with reading, i really mean it was a relationship, just like the relationship you'd have with any other ex-lover... especially one who stole your heart, promised you an entire future, a whole way of life, but then failed you miserably, and you had to move on. This creepy analogue makes more sense maybe if you realize that for a great portion of my life i really planned to be a lit prof, and expected my life to essentially consist of people paying me to read books and talk about them. Well, so, turns out that life doesn't really pay so well, so i sold out, see and went for Mammon. So in various ways reading for me was nearly a painful pastime, for a number of years.
But i found myself now far enough removed from both the academic arrogance of my former education and the the poignant sense of loss, to be able to finally enjoy a few books. Because a part of me has never gotten over the urge to take notes or write about what i read, i can't help but abuse the blog this way. So i'll try to avoid spoilers where they are intrisic to the experience of the book, but no promises. Short notes on the following, then, following at some point: