On Personal Martyrdom and Pretending to be Something that you are Not

I think that sometimes the world, and by the world, I mean the people in the world, think that I’m not paying attention to them.  That the words they so effortlessly spout bounce off the thick and callous exterior of my head and fall unheeded into the gutter.  I haven’t written in quite a while, but for some reason, I’m driven to write today.  Perhaps it’s because someone was so kind as to offer me the voluminous praise of referring to me as a “journalist.”  Whatever the case, here I am.

Two things have caught my attention over the past few months that I’ve not taken time to write down.  The first is that someone quite correctly referred to me as a “martyr” when it comes to work.  Since that time I can’t really do much without thinking quietly to myself… yeah, I’ll be fucked, but they’re right.  It just oozes from everything I do.  Some terribly shitty job to do?  Something idiotic and redundant and no fun whatsoever?  Well hell, Slaven’s practically jumping up and down to volunteer.  What the hell?  While this *SEEMS* like the attitude of a real team player, someone who will do whatever it takes to get shit done, really it’s the attitude of an ass who doesn’t really take proper care of the rest of the team.  While I’m off doing the shit work the rest of the team is flailing for leadership.  Overall, they fucking suffer MORE because I’m not delegating properly and letting the shit work fall where the shit work belongs: with the junior members of the team.  Further, it puts a hell of a lot of pressure on the people at the bottom.  There is a strange solace to the low-level work of any job.  You know quite clearly what is expected and you can measure your results.  Just because it’s crap doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.  It’s an ass-move on my part to take that away from the position where it belongs.  That’s how you prove yourself and work up.  If senior leadership takes all the garbage work then, surprise surprise, junior members of the team are forced to perform at levels they’re not prepared for and feel like shit because they’re not excelling.  They would have excelled if they’d been able to start at the right level of work.  But they couldn’t.  Because someone had to be a fucking martyr and do the job for them.

So the first lesson is, ironically, to be selfish.  Stand up for what you want.  Not just because it’s good for you but ultimately because it’s good for everyone.  There is a natural pecking order to things and on some levels it seems completely unfair.  Why the hell should someone have to do the shit work in whatever it is you do?  You know why?  Because it’s how you learn to do the real work.  I am often harkened back to the tattoo parlor.  There, they have an “intern” who does nothing but absolute garbage work.  He makes people fill out forms.  He sanitizes instruments.  He does all the crap work that nobody else wants to do.  But you know what?  When he finally graduates from that position he’s going to know that shit backwards and forwards.  He’s going to know about hygiene and he’s going to know about the mechanics of not getting the place sued because some drunk guy got stars tattooed on his face.  Add to that the fact that when he finally gets to put ink-to-skin he’s going to appreciate it so fucking much.  In playing the martyr I’ve denied the natural order of things fucked up someone’s career path in the process.  That sucks.  Speaking of tattoo artists though, I need to call Roger.  It’s about time. 

The second thing that’s echoed about my head is a reference to the “Imposter Complex.”  This little tidbit was posited by my gf/fiancée and her father.  I’d long suffered from this affliction but never quite realized it had a name.  Overall, I consider myself good at my job.  I’m fairly in tune with what’s going on at both a low level and a high level but part of me still fears that someone’s going to dig in and determine that I’m actually a total dumbass and have no clue what I’m talking about.  This is, in a nutshell, the imposter complex.  The feeling that you’ll be discovered as not knowing nearly as much as you think you do.  To remedy this, perhaps it’s appropriate that I just come clean and say what I think that I am with no pretense whatsoever.

So let’s start at the beginning.  As a programmer, I’m fair.  I’m the sort of person who would rather write 20 lines of code that absolutely everybody understands than three lines that were effusively elegant.  If you look at the body of my work at my current job you will probably understand it all immediately.  While some programmers will revel in the succinctness of the C# delegate, I’d quietly say that a simple for loop is more than sufficient.  My work is plodding, mundane and uninspiring.  But for the most part it gets the job done.  When I have the chance, I like to cover all the bases and test the reasonable cases for any bit of code but I’m also impatient.  I want the thing to work.  I’m focused on nuts and bolts.  Appearance and presentation are secondary and often so dependent on the browser that I’d prefer that it look like shit than write it once for IE, once for Firefox and once for Opera.  I’m a Luddite in every sense of the word.  At least to the extent that preferring to omit client-side code constitutes a Luddite.

As a product manager, I’m a bit better than fair.  I try to focus on the big picture, am more than willing to say “no” when it doesn’t serve the product direction as a whole and tend to be fairly good at taking product requests and stretching them out to cover not only the current requests but a fair number of future ones.  I could be significantly more limber in this area, but one is only granted so many development hours.  I yearn for a day when development of a product is driven by the developers rather than the sales team but I fear this will never happen.  Such is the sad state of the revenue-driven world.  I understand and only seek to gain a balance.

As a people manger… well, I’m not qualified to say.  Technically speaking, I’m not really the manager of anyone but I hope that those who work with me understand that I really only have their interests at heart.  Perhaps it’s the martyr talking again, but it’s fairly typical for me to suggest that anyone in my group might be happier somewhere else even if it promises to make my life a living hell after they leave.  Ultimately, I want people to be happy in their work.  Even if it totally screws me over.  There was a time when I thought I could offer an environment that provided an optimum mix of product freedom and stability.  That time has passed.  I think I understand what people look for in a job and I hope that I’m able to convey that to them so they can find the best outcome for themselves.  I’m hopeful that I can foster not only some level of contentment in the current jobs of those under me but also help them look beyond the here and now, a facility that I sadly lack.

To summarize, I think the lesson here is that I need to be more selfish.  I need to focus on my needs and my desires and not get nearly so bound up in what the company wants or what my co-workers need.  They’ll sort that out for themselves and the company will certainly look out for itself.  Ultimately one gets only a single life to live.  If one lives it with too many others in mind, one is simply giving away the only thing you truly have.  Martyrdom must cease.  It is time to reclaim again what one has duly earned.

The Eye that Sees Itself – 2010 Version

Firstly, let me say that this particular blog posting is an especially difficult one to write. Not because it’s particularly complicated but because it nibbles at the edges of my own self-perception and contradicts strongly what I hope and intend to be as a person. However, because it is difficult to write, I think it all the more important that I *DO* write it. So here goes.

Earlier this week I got back my yearly peer review feedback from work. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the process, I’ll summarize. Each year a subset of one’s co-workers are polled and asked probing questions about you. These questions range from technical prowess to how well you play with others. In the past, these have been fairly useless but this year was psyche-shaking, since the preponderance of the responders seemed to be of the opinion that I’m an utter and complete asshole.

On the brief positive side, a minority of people at work think that I do more than my fair share of work, am forward-thinking and even go so far to describe me as “brilliant” but I find that feedback especially to be highly embarrassing and uncalled-for. I will say simply that I do try to come in to work each day and do my best. Any aptitude I may display for my profession derives more directly from determination than it does from anything else. Enough said about that.

Let’s move on to the real fun, the negative comments. I had lots of stuff along these lines:

“Rob can be very "snarky"  He needs to think about how he responds to things before making a response.”

“…I would encourage him to watch his tone in emails and conversations when dealing with difficult customers.”

“Rob, is very approachable, but he does not communicate in an approachable way. He can be very short,sarcastic, or just plain sassy. Some times it is hard to know if Rob is serious or not in his email. On a personal level, Rob is a great guys to chat with.”
 

“Rob needs to work a bit on his people side.”
 

“I would encourage Rob to watch his tone and approach in communication with customers (internal and external) when he feels the project or customer is being unreasonable.”

“Rob needs to be less sarcastic/snarky/negative. He is in a leadership position and this is not motivating  for the people around him.”


OK, so the part that really bothers me here is the implication that I’m snarky to -customers-, meaning external customers. For my entire working life I’ve been at least somewhat customer facing so the idea of being disrespectful to a customer shakes me to my very core. I would hope that if I was *EVER* snarky to a customer that somebody would have called me out on it immediately and directly. That said, I do tend to be honest with customers. Not in the “you’re the biggest schmuck I’ve ever worked with” sort of way, but I do recall that in the past I’ve just had to just give up and say, “I’m sorry, but I’m out of different ways to explain this to you.” Verbal communication is a fairly sore weakness for me. I’m a developer by nature so everything I say, everything I do, everything I think is planned out well in advance. If you put me on the spot in front of a customer and I have to deviate from well-worn script, you’re going to get my only available fallback position: complete and utter honesty. A big part of my brain will be devoted to being polite about that honesty, but that leaves absolutely no room for sugar-coating, politics or saving face for the company. I say this on my own behalf but I’m also willing to bet that it applies to a lot of the developer-types in the room. There’s a reason I’m not in sales. So if I was ever impolite to a customer then I’m absolutely mortified and apologize, but the best way to help me improve is to tell me personally and directly what I said or did so I can stop doing it. It is absolutely NEVER my intention to be rude to a customer. I’ve been in the working world long enough to know that the cliché really is true. They really are the reason that we’re here.

The other part of this is the implication that I’m rude to my co-workers. In all honesty, you’re probably right. Unfortunately, when time and resources are scarce, everyone gets a priority. The developers know that they can ask me for anything. My direct management knows they can ask for anything but that they may get an argument if I think their request contradicts the best interests of the developers. After that, it’s a crap shoot. Honestly, I’d absolutely LOVE to be able to do everything for everyone and make them utterly and completely happy with me and everything that my department produces. My psyche is a pretty simple one. I love to please people. I want everyone to have happy and glowing opinions of everything I say and do. Sadly, there’s just not enough time for that. If I can make the developers happy and keep management at least somewhat appeased then I can’t help but think I’ve got it made. So if I seem snarky or dismissive or rude, it’s not personal. I’d love nothing better than to do what you’re asking for, but chances are that I can’t without harming something or someone else.

Lastly, my feedback encouraged me to try to foster more personal connections with people at work. As the saying goes, that, is preaching to the choir. I’d love nothing more than to create more non-work relationships with my co-workers. I’ve spent a lot of hours trying to figure out how on EARTH other people do that. Unfortunately, that’s just a knack I’ve never quite acquired. Watching “Mary and Max” last night made me realize that I do appear to have a touch of Asperger Syndrome, though the extent of that is unclear. Point is, in many ways, I just don’t ‘get’ people. Trust me when I say that I’d love to, but I just don’t.

I’ve always felt that in the workplace I’m just a ‘tool’ to be used for some specific purpose; I’m the guy who does all the other stuff that other people don’t want to but doesn’t have any real personal connection to anyone. I’m OK with that, I suppose, because it’s all I’ve got. I recognize that the defect is in me, not in any of you. It’s just hard to hear that the ‘tool’ is viewed as defective, as wanting in some way. I’ll try to be more chipper, more accommodating, if that’s what’s really needed.

The Real “Job One”

In my last post I spent a lot of time taking the managers of the world to task on trying to squeeze as much as they possibly can from their subordinates. I can’t help but feel it’s only fair if I turn the pillow over and take a look at the issue of employment from the side of the employee and their responsibilities toward their manager and how to effectively maintain that relationship.

When most employees start a job they think about their job duties in terms of some specific task they’ve been hired to perform. Programmers think that they’re there to write code or a baker might think they’re there to pump out pastries as fast as they can and doubtless there is some aspect of that to any job but it’s not the most important thing you’ll do in any given day. The real Job One of any employee is to foster a relationship with their manager and make themselves as easy to manage as possible. An average manager has seven direct reports and in a perfect world managing that many people would be trivially easy. Unfortunately, it’s not because the roll of a manager, in addition to managing the relationship between his employees and his own superiors is to fill in any gaps left by his employees. Ultimately your manager is responsible for the success of the entire group whereas the employee is responsible only for the success of his or her specific set of tasks. If you screw up, the person above you in the org chart pays the price in some way. So it’s in your best interest to make that person’s job as easy as possible. Doing so reflects well on your manager and also reflects well on you.

So what specifically is one to do for one’s manager? The first thing I tell the people I work with is that it’s their number one priority to raise things up to management that they think are wrong or need improvement. Many times the reaction to this statement is, “shouldn’t they know already?” The truth to this is, though, that most of the time they don’t. Even in the case that a person does a job and is then promoted to manager over that same job they used to do, the second the promotion occurs they begin to become less and less well-suited to manage that job. Jobs change over time. So the norms from the time when they did the job slowly slide into the past and become obsolete. Unless you take the time to let them know what’s really going on, they’ll manage with the only information they have, which is from ten years ago when they were doing it themselves. So providing your management with the skivvy on day to day operations is essential.

Once employees realize that managers don’t know everything, they sometimes next fall into a trap of being fearful to tell the truth about what’s going on. Mostly commonly this comes up when managers need to know that there’s just too much work to actually get done. They’ll assume that it’s viewed as a weakness if you have to say that you can’t do everything you’ve been assigned. In some cases this is a well-founded fear. If your manager is a complete jerk then he may not care that you have too much to do. Alternatively, the company may just be unable to staff appropriately to do the allotted work. Or, and you’re not going to like this, you may just not be well-suited for the job you’re doing. Any one of these three may be the case and for the first two you lose nothing by raising up your concern. If your manager was a jerk before he’ll be a jerk after so at least you got it off your chest. It’s the third case that makes people worry. They think that if they raise up a concern and it’s found that they’re just not good at their job then they’ll get fired. But why would you want to stay at a job that you suck at? With all the employment options in this country, it’s uniquely silly to slave away at a job you just don’t excel in. If you’re really no good at it, then chances are you’re not passionate about it and you probably don’t really enjoy it anyway. So what are you losing except your whole life by hanging on to a crappy job? Go do something you really enjoy. The overarching point here is that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Give your manager good feedback about what’s going on and the outcomes are all positive in the long term.

So now that we’re all telling our managers what’s going on in our jobs each day, let’s see things from their viewpoint. The first thing to know is that managing people… well, to put it simply, managing people is really, really hard. Think of it this way: if you’re a baker, you come in every day, you mix up the dough, you put it in the oven for a prescribed amount of time and it comes out looking at least somewhat like bread. Easy. Predictable. Routine. Most jobs are like this. There’s some known set of inputs and the result is some known set of outputs. They can be tangled at times but in general you know what you get out from what you put in. Managing people is an entirely different kettle of fish. Every single person in a company is different and reacts in a specific way. Each one has various things which motivate them and annoy them and make them enjoy their job (or not). Most of the time they each have their own unique communication style so not only must you try to figure out how to make them happy but you must also figure out how to translate what they actually SAY into what they actually MEAN. So when you combine individual uniqueness with sometimes inscrutable communication styles, you get a job that is not only difficult but sometimes downright frustrating to the point of impossible.

The other major point to remember here is that your manager is human too. Just as you come in to work every day and want to be successful, she too wants desperately to do well. She has a boss to whom she reports. When you don’t give accurate information about what’s going on in your job or use communication styles that she has to spend extra time unraveling you’re making her job a lot harder. Remember that as frustrated as you may be with customers or clients or end-users or whoever consumes the work you do from day-to-day, your boss’s relationship to you is similar from their perspective. You are a direct consumer of your boss’s management skills. If you make it harder for them to do their job then you’re the equivalent of the customer at the bakery who changes their mind 15 times about what the birthday cake should say on it.

Remember too that unless you work for the CEO directly, your boss also has a boss. Just because you tell them something is wrong or needs to change doesn’t mean they have the power and influence within the company to actually do anything about it. That doesn’t mean they’re not listening. It also doesn’t mean that they don’t agree with you. Just because they’re management doesn’t mean they are always heard or listened to by those above them.

In summary, management of a team, while in title it resides with one central leader, is everyone’s responsibility. Nobody really knows what’s going on in your job except you. The most important thing you can do is to accurately and promptly report to your manager so that he can do what’s best for everyone. Only the manager has visibility across all parts of the team as well as knowing what’s expected from above in the org chart. It’s also worth repeating that managers are just people too. From the bottom of the chain of command it’s easy to look up and think that everyone’s sitting in an ivory tower of authority above you. Fortunately, that’s not really true. Everyone in an organization has a boss and the CEO usually has a banker. Personally, I’d rather have a boss.

The Over/Under on Overtime

Society puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of managers in the workplace. There are a thousand books you can read about how to manage people and how to get the most out of your employees. Each view on the topic is slightly different but the fundamental underpinning of all of them is that as a manager, the harder you drive your staff and the more hours they work for you the better. If employees end up working 50 to 60 hours a week, it’s cause for celebration and adulation among the management staff.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that whenever employees work overtime it’s a sign of absolute failure. Your employees almost never work overtime because of something they did wrong. In the cases when they do screw up and consistently end up working overtime, they’re just not a good fit for the work they’re doing in the first place. Most typically when employees find themselves at their desk beyond the usual 40 hour workweek it’s because someone above them screwed up. Too much work was scheduled or the company was just too focused on revenue to hire appropriate staff for the workload or some other employee just isn’t doing their job in the first place. All of these lead to staff that resort to after-hours heroics to get their work done. So to the managers of the world, when a single employee submits timesheets for 50+ hours a week, it’s a sign that you need to take a serious look at them. When your whole staff submits timesheets for 50+ hours a week, you need to take a serious look at yourself. When you find yourself actually asking your staff to work overtime every week, you need to take a serious look at your whole company.

What is underappreciated about this situation is that it’s not really in the company’s best interest to have employees working overtime. Even in the situation in which it’s not something you have to pay for directly, it is something you will eventually have to deal with. Employees who work overtime to compensate for the failure of others are your best workers. They really care about their jobs and the work they do and most importantly, they really care about your company. These are the people that great companies are built around. When you consistently demand more from them week after week, you only hasten the time when these key individuals are going to take their resolve and dedication somewhere else. The costs of replacing a good employee are astronomical. In some cases, it’s just plain impossible and when it happens your company might never be the same.

Further, when employees work overtime it’s not just their tenure with the company that suffers. If your staff is forced to work longer hours you can bet that it’s not the most efficient work they’re doing. When a person realizes that they’re “stuck at work” for 50 hours a week it’s likely that an increasing percentage of that time is just lost to the ether of water cooler banter and other random distractions. An employee who knows they can put in their 8 hours in a day and then go home to her family is more likely to be focused on her work and actually produce better output. Not to mention, when the time comes that you have to ask for more hours because a big project is due, they’ll look at it as a novelty and put more energy into it than they would have if they’d been forced to work overtime every single week. When overtime becomes the norm, then work is reduced to a mindless grind. Employees come in, sit at their desks and grind through their jobs in an almost Zen state. Innovation in this environment is almost nil. There’s no reason to do things better or more efficiently because what is most certain to greet them the next week is yet another week of too much work. In an environment in which there’s a proper balance between life and work, employees feel relaxed and free to innovate. In some technical trades especially, demanding fewer hours actually nets you more work. An employee who feels valued by his company and is allowed to work in an environment that respects his free time is more likely to contribute that free time back to the company in one form or another whether it’s thinking about the big project on the ride home or sitting down to create some new tool that will make their job easier in the future. Happy employees will naturally contribute more to your company all by themselves. If you enslave them they’ll do exactly what’s expected and then go home to complete their résumés.

Some of you out there may read this and say to yourselves that you realize all this but that you’ve got it covered. Your company, you say, has a policy. In your company, everybody’s expected to work 50 hours a week. You even tell your new hires that when they hire on so it’s expected. It’s equal for everyone so it’s OK. Unfortunately, this is a crock. Even if your company has a policy that raises the bar of expectations, the simple fact is that you can’t raise the bar for the entirety of society. Every company in the world isn’t just competing internally but is in fact in competition directly with every other company in the area for quality employees. The greater the gap between your company’s expectations of employees and those of your competitors, the greater the chance that those tried and true employees that you’ve relied on for years are going to wave the white flag and go somewhere else.

What’s saddest of all about this situation is that employees really do want to do well. They want to be appreciated for what they do and feel that they’re contributing positively to the company. When you consistently expect people to work overtime, you reduce passionate and dedicated employees who would have worked longer hours for you anyway into mere drudges who pound out the hours as a matter of required course.

The complexities of February 24th, 2011

It’s the 24th day of February in the year 2011. It’s so funny in a way because I have a very distinct recollection from my childhood. I read somewhere, that the next transit of Venus was going to be in June of 2012. At the time, it was sometime in the early nineties and I remember thinking that I had absolutely NO concept of what my life would look like *SO* far in the future. I expected to be walking down the street and seeing cars flying around me. 2012 was as good as an infinite time in the future and now it seems just around the corner. I won’t say that the future disappointed us, but the future of our childhood was far, far from reality. No flying cars. No world peace. Just the same problems we’d grown used to. At least the cold war is over. The nuclear warhead bearing the hammer and sickle has been replaced by one in a suitcase or simply passed from our concern altogether. It really is a good time to be alive.

Next on the list of things on my mind is that of work. Now is a time of transition. Some days I’m utterly convinced that the people around me really “get it” and understand what the problems are in the microscopic neighborhood that is my work life. Other days I’m equally convinced that they have absolutely no clue. At this point, I think the wise decision for me is to simply retract to that place that I know best. I’ve found my way into a multitude of tasks within my company simply because I was the only reasonable candidate to do them at the time. I’d consider myself capable but I’m far from the optimal choice. The best course of action may be to simply step back and let those who know those jobs best take over. Can I tinker with the schedule for future releases? Certainly. Can I write documentation that describes the document in elegant and aching detail? Most certainly. Am I the best person to do those jobs? Hardly. Though it may sound like boasting, I can do any one of a thousand jobs. I am the all-purpose tool. I can tear an application apart and generate a hundred defect reports or I can painstakingly document it’s nuances. Ultimately though my strength is simply in getting shit done. I’ve often considered retooling my resume and sending it out with that as the header. You need a job done? I don’t care what it is. I don’t care what it involves. I’m the only person in the universe that will sit down and assiduously and single-mindedly do that job in such a way that it might very well obsolete my actual employment. I am, above all, a force of action. My own self-interest is secondary. The greatest compliment you could give me is to fire me because I did my job so well that I was no longer necessary. In retrospect, perhaps a bit self-destructive but you get the idea. I must do.

The other thing that sits on my mind is my dear Laura. As the weather closes in on us I am irked that it might come between me and the woman I love. It’s interesting to me that I’ve been asked at work twice now about Laura in the past couple of days. I’m not one to promulgate information of this type. Primarily that’s because I assume, perhaps rightly, that nobody really gives a shit. As I sit here on a Thursday night, the most pointed thing that occurs to me is that she’s not here. The distance between us is more than a bit unpleasant. I’d love nothing more than to be able to simply pop across the hall and see her. Unfortunately, the hour to Lafayette is non-trivial. That said, it makes our time together all the more precious. Not to be inappropriate, but after so long being fundamentally alone, it’s so easy to simply lose myself in her. I feel as if I could tell her anything and she’d roll it around in her head for a bit and give me her honest and unbiased opinion. There is no prickly side to her. I need never fear. Tomorrow makes seven months since we met and they’ve been the most amazing seven months I can recall. She constantly expands my horizons and allows me to expand hers in a way I never honestly thought possible.

At this point I am reminded of Fred Savage in The Princess Bride complaining against the inclusion of “mushy stuff” in the novel his grandfather reads to him. In observance of this unvoiced objection, I shall digress. It is often underestimated just how closely linked are the mind and the body. It’s been almost two weeks since I bought a Kinect for my xBox. I’ve contemplated for a while that if the video game industry could somehow break the ‘controller barrier’ that they’d really have something. Microsoft seems to have done that fairly well. I’m not one that can play a video game sitting on my butt for too terribly long without feeling as if I’m wasting my time. As time goes on a conflict builds in my mind between entertainment and guilt. With the Kinect system, the guilt is absolved by the exhaustion. After two weeks, I not only physically feel better than I have for a long time but also feel like the change is somewhat sustainable. In some strange way the Kinect marries my obsessive nature with the very real need to get myself moving even when it’s two degrees outside. I’m simultaneously entertained and exercised. Hours race by without any apparent notice. That said, the game library available for the Kinect is found to be more than a bit wanting. To date the titles are much more oriented to children than adults. One can tolerate that but it’s annoying to sit through redundant and excessive menus. It’s my hope that the market is strong enough to bring more games to the field that take advantage of the technology without being quite so puerile.

So far we’ve covered work, heart and body. What’s left out then is the mind. As I look back on my reading list, I find that I’ve heinously neglected my own intellect. Not only over the past few months but for the past couple of years. The practical side of me wants to focus on the analytical. I’d be a better programmer, my Left Brain says, if I devoted myself more assiduously to it. My mind spins with programming projects that I could undertake in my free time. Perhaps I should ponder number theory or analyze classical texts. Analyze, Analyze, Analyze, my brain screams!!! My Right Brain, however, simply lowers its eyebrows and thinks, “you’re already too fucking analytical. Piss off and hone your other skills. Be well rounded ya great bloody arse!”. While I question why my Right Brain has picked up a distinctly English usage pattern, I tend to agree with it. I need to set a schedule and stick to it. Ultimately it’ll all be for the best if I make a point to write and read and nurture the side of my intellect that doesn’t think in terms of equations and absolute outcomes.

Sadly, I realize I’ve said this all before. It’s time to defocus a bit. Step back and see the big picture. *sigh* Perhaps this time it’ll be different…

Random Thoughts for 1/27/2011

Looking back, I have found that my thoughts are more and more random as time goes on. I don’t apologize for that, but merely note it so that “Rob of the future” will not look back on this time of his life and think that the situation was totally chaotic.

Work has progressed to the point that I don’t actually know what my job is any more. On any given day I could be tasked with anything from development to product support to more managerial functions. Quite honestly, I’d be happy with any of these. What is lacking is some sense of how I would measure my own success. Is success an empty queue of support tickets? Is success happy developers? Is success a reasonable business plan for my product? Frankly, any of these could be the case at any specific moment. It’s funny because I really like my job. I adore the people I work with. I take it very personally when things go amiss. I just wish that I could actually finish something and have some sense that I’m “done” with it.

Related to the work end of things, I’ve been told as of late that people view me as…. Well, it’s difficult to find a word. Abrasive? Caustic? Not quite the right adjective, but I come across to my co-workers as *insert negative thing here*. I hope at least that they do not see me as a person who cannot get things done, but it’s been pointed out to me that I’m seen as anything but effusively positive about things. Honestly, I understand completely where that comes from. I am utterly realistic. If I think that something is completely wrong, I’m likely to say, in terms difficult to confuse with their antithesis, that something’s wrong. Typically though, this is a rhetorical construct. If I say, with vehemence, that the sky is pink, then often my intent is not to state an irrefutable premise, but instead to instigate debate. I say without doubt of contradiction, that I am the person most likely in your acquaintance to accept logical defeat. I come forward with some utterly determined opinions. I will argue and debate and bicker and complain endlessly but I’m also the first one to admit that you’re right and I’m wrong. Above all, I love debate and discussion because I believe that it brings out the best in both parties.

This reminds me… the other day, one of my work cohorts told me that a new QA person was being hired to oversee our product staring Monday. Personally, I’m absolutely thrilled by the prospect. To date, the product I oversee has been amazingly dynamic but it would benefit from some outside influence. It’s a great change, in my opinion. The real point of this paragraph though is to point out how skillfully and how tactfully my workmate brought this to my attention. I do tend to be a bit overwhelming at times and he simultaneously informed me of the change and also very gently told me enough about the new QA person to hopefully assure that she will be an incredibly positive influence on the product despite my somewhat overbearing personality. In retrospect I was exceptionally impressed with Mr. Barker’s delivery and message. I work with some truly incredible people.

OK, so moving on from the professional… I’ve been sitting here all evening half watching Netflix rot (has anyone else noticed that nothing seems to be loading on instant watch?) and half watching the screensaver on my computer. It’s set to show photos from my picasa albums. I find myself watching the photos more than the television and in some strange way my life automatically organizes the photos in terms of other people. Each one is either “Oh! Laura was there!” or… well, something else of a less positive nature. It’s funny to me how we organize our lives in terms of other people. “Oh, that was the time I spent with Chris” or “That was Dan time”…. In a very real way it seems like the other people in our lives are the milestones, the most important and notable things we have to look back on.

TOTALLY unrelated, I’ve been trying to spread an absolute craze throughout the nation. I call it the “License Plate Game”…. When I was a kid, this was much less entertaining. I’d take the 4-digit number in the plate ‘12a5747’ and find the prime factorization. Even I’m less than impressed by that, frankly, and since 5747 is 7 times 821, it’s an example of just how terrible this game could be. Now though license plates are alphanumeric so there’s an amazingly fun game to be played (at least in Indiana). So if your plate is 574 AWY you can take the character part of that and make a word. The rules are simple. For whatever 3-letter combination is in the license plate, you have to find a word that uses those three letters in the same order they appear in the plate. So if you get AZJ then your obvious answer is katzenjammer. You must use the same letters in the same order in a single word but you get extra “points” if the letters are non-consecutive and if the word does not begin with the same letter as the three-letter combination. For example, if you have AWY, then ‘anyway’ is a valid response, but no bonus because the ‘A’ is both the first letter of the word and the first letter of the three letters you needed to use. However, AZJ – kAtZenJammer earns extra points because the A, the Z and the J are non-consecutive. Also, the resulting word does not being with A. The rest of the rules are to be determined, but you get the idea. I’ve also pondered the idea that shorter words should earn more points than longer words. Play the game for a few months and send me your scoring recommendations.

Thought for the Day: Blundering into Success

Over the years the random inputs to my mind have been rife with examples of the fact that sometimes you can just try TOO damn hard. Yes, I remember back in the late 70s I saw a Dr. Who episode in which the only way to solve some bizarre quandary was to simply stop trying to do so. Not long after, the “Key to Time” storyline from the same series has the Doctor escaping his somewhat dualistic enemies by randomizing his own destination so that not even HE knows there the fuck he’s going. Even later we find Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently proclaiming that the key to learning to fly is to simply “throw yourself at the ground… and miss.” Clearly Dirk’s modus operandi is doomed to a painful conclusion in the cold, hard light of reality but I think that in some twisted way there’s something to be said for the general concept.

This idea was brought to mind today as I was creeping up on 5:00 and writing the same UI for what is at least the 5th time. As a sidebar, let me say that when I say “the 5th time” I do not mean “the engineer-exaggerated version of the phrase which really means the 2nd time but has become the victim of hyperbole to elicit sympathy” 5th time but the more than a little annoyed version of the 5th time. This is the 5th time that comes just before the 6th time when you actually throw a coffee cup at your screen. Sidebar ends.

The clock was hovering around 20 minutes to 5 and therefore, as any employee knows, I had exactly -0- interest in what I was doing. The only purpose of even TRYING to do anything was the knowledge that doing NOTHING would simply make the remaining 20 minutes of the day seem even longer than they were already doomed to be. So as I was diligently and apathetically typing out code I had absolutely no interest in I was shocked to find that what I had carefully crafted out of my own ennui and general desire to be anywhere else but in the office was actually… working…? No… no, no, no, no, no… At this point I must take reality by the short and curlies and shake it until it yelps in an unmanly falsetto.

But no, gonadal agitations aside, it was indeed true. What I had TRIED to do 4 times without success despite much careful research and care and feeding had in fact appeared quite figuratively out of nowhere. Unluckily for my new creation, its sudden call into existence, though miraculous, was insufficient to keep me in the office even one nanosecond past 5:00 but I did ponder the significance of the event long enough to at least consider immortalizing its spontaneous generation with a blog entry. It was during that mental memorialization of the miracle that other strange examples of this came to mind.

My eldest daughter Amanda, for example, is profoundly personally apathetic. She walks down the hall and kids will trip all over themselves to say hello to her. She is the most accidentally popular kid in the class but her universal response to all such greetings is a stony silence. Her reaction isn’t due to snobbishness; in fact it’s quite the opposite. She is absolutely CONVINCED that she has no friends so the people who say “Hi, Amanda!” with such enthusiasm must most certainly be greeting some OTHER nearby person who happens to share the same name and therefore she needn’t embarrass herself by responding to them in error. In counterpoint you see people every day who try *SO* hard to be liked and to be popular and inevitably they are universally disregarded. They’d give their left arm for even the tiniest measure of what Amanda garners so effortlessly yet despite all their trying they come up empty.

On a personal level, I’ve noticed this bizarre phenomenon come into play for me in the most unimaginable ways. Invariably, the greatest things befall us when we least expect them and when we weren’t even really looking for anything to happen. The surest way to fuck them up, of course, is to overanalyze them too much and start asking questions of The Fates. Nothing pisses off a woman with a pair of shears more than unnecessary cross-examination. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years it’s that sometimes you just have to grin, shake your head and quietly accept the gift that life has given you.

Lastly, if you think about it, this actually really makes perfect sense. The entire body of life on Earth is the product of a lot of time and a hell of a lot of random chance. A billion years ago the planet was a ball of chemicals, a huge chemistry set waiting to find its true potential. As time passed, a little bit of this met up with a little bit of that until you had simple cells. Once those cells learned to reproduce then the wheels of fate and fortune really hit their pace as every conceivable organism that the laws of nature and probability could dream up found its place in the Cambrian Explosion. Forms came and forms went but in the end, standing at the top of the tree of life you find the miracle that is man. We really are the luckiest of the lucky, the pinnacle of success from a billion years of throwing dice. Should it really be any surprise that from time to time life smiles on us when we’re least expecting it?

Into the Office - 12/27/07

Well today I drove in to the office and stayed there all day. For those of you doing the math, that's an hour and twenty minutes or so round trip and 7 hours actually in the office. In exchange I think I managed about 30 words with a real person. That's a pretty crappy rate of return but since absolutely EVERYONE in my sphere of immediate influence was out of the office today by some unpleasant holiday miracle, not a particularly surprising one.

Just for amusement, let's recall those 30 words: E gets credit for 10 words as she saved the company 41 cents by delivering something to me by hand rather than mailing it. I think I could have squeezed a few more words out of her ever-smiling countenance if I'd thought to mention that she can just save them up ad infinitum and I'd pick them up on but I wasn't quick-thinking enough to manage that one. The other 20 words go to T as he accosted me literally as I was walking in the door this morning. T is one of these people who could strike up a conversation with a tree and the tree would have a comprehensible response. It is, frankly, an amazing talent. I'm *SO* jealous. I did get a chance to do what I call the 'accidental conversation termination dance' though. Here's how it goes:

1. Conversation starts unexpectedly, generally across some distance
2. Subject A approaches subject B and conversation continues
3. Subject A senses a lull in conversation and takes it as a hint that the conversation is over and begins to leave.
   
4. Subject B begins speaking again so A dashes back to B so as not to appear rude or disinterested
   
5. By the time A arrives back at B, B has stopped talking and the conversation really is over
   

I really must stop doing that as it's most embarrassing, especially since it generally only happens with people you don't talk to very much anyway and might actually be offended by the maneuver.

Alright, enough of that. The office silence was certainly not a problem today. I heard all manner of interesting background tidbits including a complete inventory of all the Christmas gifts received within a 10-cube radius, detailed instructions and FAQ on how to pay a citation online and the hardware requirements of an entire department. All in all, much more interesting than the Leave it to Beaver reruns I'd get at home.

On returning home, however, I found chaos and a general miasma of pissed-offedness. It is too early to draw a causal relationship between going to work and the death of domestic bliss but things were clearly not in a good form. Children were being obnoxious and demanding, adults had headaches, crap littered the areas I had picked up just yesterday. Only hours later did everything return more or less to normal. I guess we'll see how things go when I finally make it out of the house again on the 8th. *grumble*

Time Off Sucks

Alright, it's pretty clear that this is going to be a long five days. I'm 4 hours into a 5-day vacation and I'm already hopelessly bored. I'm not sure I can blow another 100 hours watching television.

What sucks is that this is a side effect of actually enjoying work for a change. Back in the days when I was ready to quit, weekends were a joy. I couldn't get out of the place fast enough. The past week though has been really enjoyable; I've managed to keep myself busy, I've had a lot of entertainment from friends in the office and there's an air of hope in the place. My mind is constantly abuzz with excitement of a personal and professional nature.

Now when I think of five days stuck at home it just pales by comparison. Luckily, I suppose, my wife has expressed the same sentiment so we can at least commiserate on that point. That unlucky woman has two weeks of this rot to look forward to; I hate to think how she's going to feel over the summer when she's kicking around here for three months.

Pushing outward, I wonder if others feel this letdown. Yes, I know the holidays are supposed to be a time of joy to reconnect with family and all that but I think that in today's society co-workers really are an extension of family. In fact, I'll readily admit that I know the people at work a HELL of a lot better than I know my in-laws and furthermore they're a hell of a lot more interesting. Perhaps I'm the exception because I'm so thoroughly detached from my natural kin but I'm not getting the warm Christmas glow here so much as holding my breath waiting for it all to be over so I can get back to my life. Christmas seems not so much a celebration as it is a practical exam in personal tolerance as we remind ourselves why we don't hang out with certain relatives more often. Add to that the accounting required to make sure that each person has EXACTLY the same amount spent on their thoughtless and unnecessary gift and I'd say you have Christmas in a very tidy and cynical nutshell. Ho Ho *adding machine prints* Ho.

Mysteriously Great Day

I've found lately that sometimes the hardest thing to understand is oneself. Today was punctuated by brief periods of unexplained jubilance. Was it too much caffeine? Perhaps something in the air? It's impossible to know for sure but I have the usual theories.

Over the years I've noticed that I tend to move the opposite direction emotionally from those around me. Just when my wife is about to go berserk with the kids screaming all around her, I slip into a calm and entertaining mood and take the kids off to play a game of "You're too little to push me over!!" When she's absolutely in a rage and ready to tear my head off because of some stupid thing I've done, I move effortlessly into the role of ruthless logician and explain to her why she shouldn't really be mad in a calm measured voice (this REALLY does not help, by the way). Similarly, when people at work are at their lowest ebb of doubt and pessimism I tend to move the other direction. Today was such a day; multiple people in my virtual vicinity were obviously frustrated and perhaps that was enough to push me towards more effervescent side. Pity I was not in the office for any of it to flake off on anyone else. [Side note: This can actually be a fun game if you play your cards right. When I see an obviously sad person I do some of the craziest shit that I'd never THINK of doing under any normal circumstances. For the most part it's utterly beyond my control but obviously I can't realize you're doing it or it breaks the spell. No explanation really; some visceral part of me wants to cheer people up. *shrug*]

Alternatively, maybe today I was just smart enough to take my own advice from yesterday. I'm unusually far ahead in my work hours for the week so I started work late after picking up the house a bit, cleaning the toilets and wrapping a few Christmas presents. In a word, I was relaxed. No panic. No huge queue of mega-important tasks. No thoughts of "I have to put in X hours today or I'll have to work over tomorrow." Just calm, measured performance of my job. We tend to get so wound up over metrics and hours and performance that we stress ourselves into crappy performance. We freak out and screw up that causes us to get behind which causes us to stress out which causes us to freak out and screw up that causes... well, you get the idea. Take a deep breath once in a while. If all else fails, do those LaMaze breaths from the Cosby Show... you know the ones. You can't deny it.

Lastly, and perhaps related to the first theory, I feel needed. I'm not really sure WHY; nothing whatsoever has changed to indicate I'm any more necessary than I was before. Perhaps it's some unfounded optimism about our impending structural changes. If pressed, I'd say there's a 75% chance my job gets significantly better in the next 90-120 days. That's not to say that the transition will be at all pleasant but most of the scenarios to which I assign non-zero probabilities do turn out to be real, tangible improvements over the status quo. I'm not sure what better reason one could have for jubilance... well, perhaps if I had some way to substantiate my 75% estimate.

But whatever the real reason I just felt I got my parking on this planet happily and properly validated today. From random comments from the field of my acquaintance to my wife's breathless, "You know, you really are just the best husband ever!" this afternoon on the phone all the lights of my life were green today. Almost makes a person want to go to bed early to see how tomorrow's going to turn out.

Lessons Learned: 12/19/07

Alright well today was an amusing day to be certain. I went into the office, had lunch with one of my esteemed colleagues, talked to a mind-boggling friendly customer and then... well, who's to say what's next. In this short span I wound my mind around some wisdom.

OK, this first bit. Well, it's pretty damn obvious but it's probably the most important lesson I've learned in a REALLY long time. And the funny thing is that at the time of learning it I didn't really realize I was learning it. The whole thing can be summed up in one simple word. One word, five letters: relax. Yeah, I know... that's it though. It's not something I do well but I think it's the key to actually enjoying ANYTHING and you all know how important enjoyment is this to me this week. In the past I've tried to enjoy by planning... and fretting... and worrying... and making contingency plans... and carefully measuring each word I ever utter... That's all bullshit. You don't plan enjoyment. Enjoyment is sitting down and turning off exterior concerns and just letting things happen. Whether this is wandering in the woods enjoying nature or reading a book to a group of children in your best "Mama bear, papa bear, baby bear" voice the result of simply letting yourself simply be in the moment and go with the flow of what's going on around you is just simple, teary-eyed, euphoria. It's the difference between nervously worrying about what the other adults will think if you read "...and somebody's been sleeping in my bed and they're still there!" in falsetto in a crowded library... and just doing it with as much gusto as you can to impress your tiny audience. The words are the same but by relaxing and showing people who you are with sincerity and honestly you take what might be a mundane task and turn it into real enjoyment. If there's one unalterable directive I could brand across my being this would be it.

When I was in the office on Friday the atmosphere was almost festive. People were out and about chattering away with abandon. It reminded me of my first job out of college where we operated like one big party every day... Today when I went in the company had returned to its normal sepulchral state. I was only actually in the office for half an hour or so but the whole time I expected a half-decomposed corpse to amble around the corner at any moment and start eating people's brains. Perhaps the tension was internally created but the place had a strong aura of "leave me alone I'm friggin' workin' hea!" No doubt at least half of that is generated in my own psyche but it's hard to talk to anyone in a place where 20 cubicle occupants are working away in dead silence.

Lastly, an unnamed but high-ranking company official called me an 'enigma'. I can't help but laugh at that. Of all the people you know (if you're reading this) I have to be the LEAST enigmatic. For Lord's sake, I've published a detailed and intensely personal autobiography for any yahoo with a browser to read. This is the 207th blog entry I've posted about random crap in my life and it's not like my entries are about celebrigossip crap. You've got the innermost workings of my mind floating around on here. So if you want to, you can call me lots of things... but enigmatic... that's not one of them. I'm an open book.

Better Better Better Worse Worse Worse

After 10 hours abed we're feeling much better, thank you. Before the workday begins it seems I should put down some random thoughts for the day.

As proposals swirl around the company to reorganize the department in which I work I'm becoming increasingly interested to see how things will work out and in what perverse way I can get screwed over by it. My initial and unfounded optimism is starting to fade as I see the competing schemes.

The one proposal I know the most about I cannot make any reasonable objection to. It is the most inclusive of the four and seems to be the most compatible with my own. It stresses the need to dedicate a non-billable resource to maintaining our baseline products and at least hints at keeping our programmers from having to do many of the non-technical tasks they do today. If these two objectives are realized then I'll be happy (and a bit surprised).

The second proposal I've heard vague rumblings about scares me a bit. Its focus seems to be more concerned with realigning positions by their functions within the company. If this happens I'll be annoyed, perhaps terminally so. It will be an extreme disappointment if this theme leaks over into the others and our new product developers are moved into a department with schedule and other considerations totally unrelated to the part of the company they're supposed to be servicing.

The last person with a say is also the most influential and we've discussed strategic goals for the department for so long that I've long since lost a good sense for where his opinion ends and mine begins. We seem to agree on all the major points but differ only in the degree to which we're willing to do things. His view seems to be to blur the roles of positions in the department a bit more while I'm determined to let people focus on specific tasks. He's probably more closely aligned with reality but I'm determined that I'm more optimal.

So in summary, there actually isn't a whole lot of difference between any of the plans I've seen. Any one of them enacted as-is would be an improvement over what we have now. The pessimistic side of me though wonders how this can all come to naught. While I think it would be impossible to make things WORSE it's possible that the improvement will be so minor as to make it no longer worth the four years I've been waiting for things to change. It's also entirely possible that despite my somewhat selfish lobbying I could still get the short end of the stick and end up right where I am now. All this has pretty much rubbed the shiny optimism off my attitude at least for the moment.

Bored Bored Bored Sick Sick Sick

At the risk of being branded a valetudinarian I'm going to mention that I feel like crap. My stomach has been generally annoyed for at least four days. Nothing mega-violent but enough to make my head swim a bit and make life somewhat unpleasant from time to time. Let the record show that it is so.

In a similar vein I'm sitting here on my work computer and I'm bored bored bored. I heard through the grapevine that my company's CEO said that he expects people to be working a minimum of 50 hours a week. That's a bit of a surprise considering I've been logging exactly 40.00000 workweeks for a long time due to exceptional job-related ennui. I've even occasionally gone so far as to round down in places just to make a the point and keep from accidentally oozing over my self-imposed limit. Oops. I've been told, however, that change is in the air around the 'ole workplace so perhaps I'll have a whole new level of motivation here in the next... oh, 100 days or so.

I tried to live today in the spirit of the true sensualist but it was really hard. I was stuck home with a sick toddler who did something really rude to her diaper about once every 90 minutes. No doubt her stomach doesn't feel well either. This, I suppose, must be the evil drawback to living for the moment. Sometimes the moments suck and you're stuck with them. It was amusing talking to absolutely everyone I can think of about recent company events and realizing that we all seem to have the exact same opinion about what needs to change around here with the differences between schemes being merely a matter of degree. Now the fun begins and we get to see who wins (and who quits).

Just about out of words it seems.... Now the question is what does a person who lives merely for the pleasure of the moment do in the 20 minutes before he collapses, exhausted, into his bed? Old me would have crawled into bed to read "The Mysteries of Udolpho" because he'd read something about how the novel had influenced Jane Austen and he really wanted to know what made her tick. No more however! Now we live for pleasure and amusement! I think I'll go read "The Mysteries of Udolpho" because it sounds like a nice, creepy example of Gothic literature. *whoooo!!!!!* It's mind-boggling how quickly things can change!

Happy 2nd Anniversary to me

For those that don't remember, flashback to one year ago today. (You know, isn't that just the greatest thing? I can negotiate a flashback to my personal thoughts from a whole year ago in this thing with a few keystrokes.)

Yes indeed, it has now been 2 solid years (and a day) since I have had regular face-to-face contact with any humans other than my family! As you might have guessed, I am now utterly and completely insane! Because, as we all know,

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy.

Now where'd I put that axe?

Alright, alright, very real murderous thoughts aside, let's look at this with a bit of impartiality.

OK, so as far as any personal office relationships I might have had two years ago... yeah, those are shot to hell. I go into the office and half the people don't know who I am. Apparently I carry myself off with enough aplomb that people don't call the cops at least. So if it ever comes down to "let's fire the people we know the least about" I'm as cooked as goose liver in a fancy French cafe. That said, I *am* logged into my work computer at 9 p.m on a Friday night (rather than down at the Harley Motorbike Rally with one of my honeys) waiting for a customer to email about some problem or other so they'd be mega-silly to get rid of me. *hem* Never mind that there's no space for 'personal blog' on my time sheet.

My blog is officially a piece of shit. In the old days I had an hour or more a day to let my mind wander over all sorts of random topics. Now I'm lucky to find time to actually do my job, get the random household chores done that I'm responsible for, get everyone where they're supposed go to in the morning and back home at night before it's suddenly time to go to bed again. Frankly, I'm not sure how I ever managed to do all this and commute to work as well. All that said, our house has never been tidier.

All that said, most of the mind-bending isolation has worn off utterly. I'm now completely accustomed to the fact that for the most part I go weeks only speaking to my wife, her parents and our children. In fact, I don't remember the last time I spoke to anyone else face-to-face who didn't want to either take money from me or rip teeth out of my face. Granted, I have a horrible memory but one shouldn't have to look at a CALENDAR to answer such a question. Such is the life of the modern, American misanthrope I suppose.

One thing I have done is replace the random office chatter. Now rather than listening to the inane conversation floating over cubical walls I listen to inane nationally-syndicated talk radio. The only problem with that is that it's often the same sad crap from one month to the next. One can only listen to narrow-minded conservative talking heads complain about how narrow-minded the liberal talking heads are for so long before one goes completely mad. That's when it's time for a little bit of TV-land reruns from before I was born. Talk about TV that was made to ignore.

Lastly, I seem to have reverted to a lifestyle I adopted as a child. You'll recall from the autobiography that I spent a lot of my 13-year stretch at the Sim's Street Academy for Unruly and Incorrigibly Sneaky boys reading anything I could lay my hands on. Lately I've taken to that practice more and more but haven't completed the process by documenting what new ideas came out of whatever I was reading.

When I was in the office, I would take in the office babble, assimilate it and then poop it out into blog entries. These entries constitute what my wife refers to the 'interesting' part of my blog. Whenever she tells people about this thing she always makes a very clear distinction between the 'interesting' bits and the politely termed 'other' bits. She's completely right of course; nobody gives two poops about my opinion of 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' but they might give a crap (or at least get really pissed) if I wrote in more detail about what I think the book has to say about Americans and their bigoted and self-centered attitudes. The blog's focus for far too long has been on the specific. I need to return to the practice of taking the very personal events of the day and distilling them into a more generally meaningful output that anyone can relate to.
When this transition finally happens, I think I will have officially recovered from the loss of community and 'inner quiet' that working in an actual office and driving to it each day provided.

Annual Company Meeting

Well, here's the story... well, at least the background to the story. Every year our company has an all-out meeting where everyone in the whole place (with I think one exception in customer support) comes to Indy. Since our company of about 90 employees is about half Indy-based and half based in random cities throughout North American this involves a lot of people flying in and getting hotels, etc, etc, etc.

So 90% of this has little to do with me except that in the 3 days this meeting spans I am forced to do something that I don't really ever do any other time of the year. I'm forced to go and meet people and talk to them. In many ways I dread these 3 days but in other ways I suspect they're really good for me as they draw my attention away from the things I usually do and onto other people. I'll give the detailed results of this particular company meeting below because otherwise I'll not remember a dern thing about them later.

Day 1 was a 'meet and greet' at some local restaurant. The pointedly memorable bit was seeing my coworkers each take a microphone in hand and introduce themselves giving name, rank and favorite toy as a child. The most intellectually stimulating bit of this was to notice the incredibly wide range of comfort levels people had in front of the crowd. I have no idea how I looked up there but others ranged from "completely casual" to "looking as if they would rather eat the microphone than speak into it." For the record, my self-introduction was something along the lines of: "I'm Rob S, Junior Web Developer Third Class and my favorite toy was anything but a microphone ." Not my best material by far. My other choices for a favorite toy were somewhat obvious: "fire" or "rocks and a sharpened stick (when I could get it)."

Day 2 was an all day event and did honestly seem to drag on forever. It consisted of the usual company rah-rah sessions about the state of things and a motivational speaker who had a series of VERY obvious things to say about how to be successful in a job. Afterwards we traipsed endlessly around the zoo in a non-competitive race/scavenger hunt. I'm somewhat powerless to explain my team's motivation to complete this activity given that it detracted from one's ability to simply enjoy the zoo. There was apparently a secondary assignment during the activity to 'observe' your coworkers and when one of the remote employees sought to 'observe' me I wove a string of increasingly unbelievable falsehoods for the observer.

Day 3 was another all day event that I managed to partially skip out on due to previous work commitments to customers. By the time I'd returned to the meeting I'd completely missed the activity in which teams built sculptures from non-perishable food to later be donated to charity. I'm almost sad I missed it (and not just because it was my uncredited idea in the first place.) The Q&A session that followed was, as always, amusing. Some of the questions were just obnoxious and I found myself glad that none of them could be pinned on me. I'd forgotten to ask my obnoxious questions this year. The day closed with departmental outings. Every department had something planned ahead of time with the exception of ours (or so I'm made to understand). I'm not entirely sure what that says about our department but I'm dead certain that it's not flattering. Luckily, one of our more inventive employees was able to come up with a spur of the moment Geocaching race that I thought went extraordinarily well. (Well enough to cause me to add something to my amazon.com wishlist and create an account on this site anyway.) Initially I was, I'll admit, a bit piqued that the person who organized the race actually won the prize but after due consideration it seems appropriate considering he pulled our chestnuts from the fire and kept us from sitting through some idiotic transformers movie or something equally inane for a departmental activity.

Now that you have the unnecessary detail, what did we learn/observe at the meeting?

One of my coworkers told me (as she seems to whenever we talk) that she was talking to some other people about me. She's apparently been telling people that I'm funny if you can get me by myself and not in a big crowd of people. They've also given me a nickname of 'Eeyore.' I guess I can, if I try hard enough, not get offended at being compared to the greatest stoic of children's literature.

Along the lines of our glum Eeyore, at several points I got the impression that people think I'm incredibly negative. I've suspected this for a while but it's *SO* not true. The simple fact here is that I just don't say anything unless it's necessary. If things are going well and everyone's happy I have no need to say a word. It's not until something is amiss that I feel the need to speak. Since things being amiss tend to cause negative utterances one tends to hear nothing but negativity from me. All the positive things are shrouded in contented silence. So yeah, stop promulgating some bullcrap about me being negative.

Our company used to have these annual 'STAR awards'; basically an employee of the year. It seems to have dissipated for some reason. No doubt some people got offended that we didn't all get one.

After speaking with a few more people I hadn't in a while, I think I need to do a better job of seeking out human contact as some of the humans I talked to at the meeting seemed pretty interesting. Pursuant to that, I'm starting up the 'Lunch with Human' series again. Any humans reading this who'd like to have a bit of lunch should drop me a line to get on the circulation list. Lunchees should come prepared with an idea of where they'd like to eat.

Finally, it has become obvious that the people who plan company meetings really don't know how to deal with introverted people. This isn't really all that surprising though since most planners of such meetings are themselves extraordinarily outgoing. At several points during this this year's events I felt that someone was REALLY trying to push me into getting to know people but going about it in totally the wrong way. So, for the benefit of meeting planners everywhere, here's the easy key for getting people of all types to get to know people.

Extroverts: Whatever. If you throw an extrovert into a room with 20 strangers for an hour then at the end the extrovert will have made 20 new friends and have 20 new business cards. It's like some sort of personality magic.

Introverts: If you throw an introvert into a room with 20 strangers for an hour then at the end you'll have one exhausted introvert and 20 strangers asking themselves, "What the fvck was HIS problem?" Introverts don't do well in crowds. We get to know other people one or two at a time. If you put us in groups we'll shut up like clams and make people think we're just being snooty.

All that said, it's good to have that over again for another year if for no other reason than I can get back to an appropriate summer haircut.

8/8/07 - Death, Witches and Masons

Today's big event was a funeral for my wife's Uncle John. Funerals always strike me as a real shame. It's a pity that we get together with each other and talk about how nice someone is after they're no longer around to appreciate it. It makes me really think we should have more birthday parties as adults to celebrate ourselves a bit more.

Many things about Uncle John fascinate me but the one that stuck out was his membership in the Masons. For some reason I'm utterly unable to explain Freemasonry has always been somehow attractive to me. Now, that's not to say that I know even the first thing about it. I imagine something equivalent to the Royal Order of Water Buffaloes but really have no clue. I'm sure in many ways it would be a disappointment if I actually bothered to join but it would be a group of people with a noble purpose to hang out with in any case. Kathy has suggested the Beech Grove Lions club as a substitute but chances are good that I'll just get over this temporary fad and go back to my usual ignoble existence.

Work... work work work... I should say something about work. It's funny, after taking forced time off traveling all they way to Mount Vernon for a funeral I actually came back somewhat motivated to actually do some work. It seems as if the tension level at work is rising exponentially and I'm amused to discover how much higher that level rises next week when the whole company is sitting in conference rooms for two days. I can tell you with absolute assurance that I'm *NOT* going to be at all motivated to try to come home and clean up the mess created in my absence after I've had to sit in 'team building' activities all day and into the evening.

All that said, the situation at work seems to be becoming increasingly heated. I find it hard to imagine that things can go on as-is for much longer. Sometime soon something is going to snap violently and cause a pretty significant earthquake in the department. I'm confident that I can maintain my aplomb.

On a personal note, I have recently realized a few things in the 'vein' of my own friendly relationships with humans.

Thing the first: By setting my criteria for 'friend' status so high, I'm inadvertently insulting people. See, I tend not to call people friends because I don't want to force them into reciprocating something they're not ready to. But by doing so, I risk the reverse. That they consider me a friend and I'm failing to reciprocate. This tends to piss people off and they take it as a personal affront. So I think the best thing here is to actually reverse this utterly and consider everyone a friend with whom I have even the slightest acquaintance. So, be warned that you might be getting a call at 4am to bail me out of jail.

Thing the second: I'm a shitty friend. Not, of course, because I intend to be but because I tend to get stuck in my own doings since for so long that's all there was. I really need to concentrate more on actually DOING things with other people. I've been cooped up in this house for a dangerously long time and need to find some sort of not-in-here activity.

OK... lastly and most embarrassingly... So I wondered what all the hubbub was about. I mean they have all these books and all these movies that I get dragged to so I finally broke down and read those Harry Potter books. Alright, alright, stop laughing. I'll be back to the Oxford World's Classics soon enough. Anyway, after the first 5 books and over 2,000 pages of text I have to say they're entertaining but not at all original. There's not really ANYTHING new here but it performs it's function of entertaining people. Not great literature by any means. But did anyone really expect it to be? Time to plod onward I guess.