A coworker was asking me about a personal (non-work, not like... super-personal) matter over facebook chat, and accidentally went into the client's facebook page (company page) as admin and continued messaging me.

Since the message was SENT to me, my name was on it. 

I never saw it, and absolutely didn't write it.

I'm now no longer an admin for the page, which means I can't do my work for that company. 

I don't want to get co-worker into the shit, b/c she's 1. a friend. 2. awesome. 3. I don't think it's a big mistake, and they're making it out to be one. 4. needs the job more than I do.

otoh, I don't want to be locked out of my job. 

blech (this is a rant, not a request for help. I know my options, and neither is particularly good)

Whoa, sorry to hear that, fleeb!

Looks like trolls, smells like trolls.  Might be trolls.

I hope this all ends with you in a better (better-paying and better environment) job very soon!

uhm... is it that easy in the US?

i'd definitely visit a lawyer.

Crapolla Fleeb.  Sorry for ya man.  Sounds like you have it figured out the game of the current employer.  If not, from what I have read about you on uncensored, you seem like you are an upstanding guy. You will land somwere that will be better soon.

Ugh, fleeb, very sorry to hear that!

Completely their loss, though! 

In fact, shoot me your resume by email, if you like.  My brother in law is with Scripps and maybe he'll know someone who knows and all that...

Isn't that called Google Glass?

Also, wonder if this is how factory workers felt during the industrial revolution:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/04/ibm-robot/

Loved this post from Fed Kaufman:

Is your job driving you nuts?  http://linkd.in/10um5o9

watch your breath.

feeling like a dog running for the sausage hanging down from a fishing rod in front of your nose?

You're not going to catch it, no matter how tasty it smells or how hard you try.

http://martinvalasek.com/blog/pictures-from-a-developers-life

harhar... I like the best this one:

When my regex returned exactly what I expected

It is very challenging to keep a high sense of urgency and drive to complete a project when the Client paying for it doesn't have one.....

Sounds like it went quite well, fleeby - congrats!

Mon Apr 08 2013 11:46:35 PM EDT from ax25 @ Uncensored

 

Mon Apr 08 2013 03:50:03 PM EDT from Ladyhawke @ Uncensored

You know, there really should be legal exemptions for those who take action against the criminally obnoxious.

Agreed, but then again, I might have become a mass murderer by now.

Yes, but then they wouldn't multiply.....

Mon Apr 08 2013 03:50:03 PM EDT from Ladyhawke @ Uncensored

You know, there really should be legal exemptions for those who take action against the criminally obnoxious.

Agreed, but then again, I might have become a mass murderer by now.

You know, there really should be legal exemptions for those who take action against the criminally obnoxious.

Thanks for sharing that, fleeb.

Sounds lousy, fleeb - hope it works out ok!

<laughs>  I'll pass that along.  Assuming we find a guy before the BF goes insane trying to do both jobs.

Anyone know a solid hosted environment Operations Manager that may be intersted in a contract position (read: hourly pay) in the healthcare industry?

Wed Jan 23 2013 10:38:39 PM EST from Ladyhawke @ Uncensored

Indeed.

Ax, Howard Dean is awaiting your visit.

Thanks.  I needed that laugh Ladyhawke.

Indeed.

Ax, Howard Dean is awaiting your visit.

I feel so manic at work today that I want to let out a loud scream (I won't, but I have an urge to do so).  I guess this would fit in a room other than the workplace :-)

Very cool, Fleeb!  And actually, your name is there plain as day.  :-)

IG, much less cool.  Definitely not on the higher side of life.  :-(

I really hate that, where someone talks you up when you're there, says everythings fine, then trashes you afterwords.  And everyone bloody does it.  Really though, just ignore it, if you used the standard mechanisms to try to leave on good terms, and they don't get over that, that's really their problem more than yours.  And from my experience, people are going to get over things, rather quickly, so just let them vent as much as they want beforehand.  

I can't say I don't do that from time to time, where someone is mentioned and I say that I'm personally not a fan or whatever, but I don't normally talk those people up either.  Honestly though, even that is generally none of my business.

So I tried very hard to leave my ex-boss on good terms, despite leaving her for a competitor who she really dislikes (and is my adopted little sister).

I explained to her over and over that I would stay if I weren't sick, but I couldn't keep up with the hours. (I'm currently not working at all, but am hoping to go up to 5 hours a week. I had been working closer to 30/week, and it was just way way too much for me b/c of the fibromyalgia)

I apologized over and over again.

And she said we were cool.

And now I heard that she trashed me to a potential client.

Business-wise, it's unprofessional, but I don't give a shit.

But on a personal level, I'm really really hurt. She said she was my friend, and she trashed me.

Wed Sep 26 2012 08:28:25 EDT from dothebart @ Uncensored

animal, if you buy a citroen next time, it will just lift the broken wheel and continue its way on 3 wheels.

Gotta love the Citroen... :) In Hebrew it's called the rising French(woman)... which is kinda dirty...

animal, if you buy a citroen next time, it will just lift the broken wheel and continue its way on 3 wheels.

Heh, the account I just finished stuck 6-8 of us in a room that had one long table (that only fit 5!), windows and blinds - neither of which actually opened, and no air conditioning.

It was too hard to breath in there to sing much of anything, most days.

I'd prefer a cubicle with a window view instead of a big office with no windows.  I need my sunlight.

There is a bit of glare on the screen but I can close one or two of the blinds during that part of the day and still have the others open to light the room.

a room with a view is a good thing to have.

as long as the sun doesn't glare your monitor, and you're not sitting in a loneley space... ;-)

I like fresh air and a sight into the green to do good work. I guess I would get suicidal in a qubicle somewhere inside an office tower. The week in beijing with that meeting room without windows was the pure horror to me.

I started singing elvis-gospels: "I'm a working in a coal mine..."

Lots of changes at $IG_WORKPLACE.  Among other things I'm being moved to a new office in a nice sunny location.  For a seasonal depressive like me, this is good news indeed.

Kindergarden teachers are nicer and less crazy.  At least they allow recess and snacks!

Feh. 

Seriously?  You're paying umpteen dollars for the expertise of my consultants, but you trust them so little that they have to notify you before and after going to lunch and about every meeting?  What's next - permission slips to use the restroom??

In germany, lots of companies use this internal book keeping/accounting software provided by a big southern german company with a three letter acronym. They are also on the international market, so you might know what company I mean. If you dont, you are amongst the blessed people. This software is mostly used by the secretaries of our departments in order for them to see the departments finances. Most of them have read only access. In order to make things secure, you need a chipcard and cardreader, provided by an external company which starts with the same letter as the acronym of aforementioned company. Quite like with your bank account card you also need a pin to login to the interface when you want to use it.

Now we all know that secretaries have to attend special security and data safety seminars and would never ever even think about leaving the chipcard in an unlocked desktop drawer in about 1 meter distance from the card reader.... Their passwords/pins are also assembled of various words in at least three different dead and foreign languages, non-words, assorted random chars and at least a 7 digit long prime number. They are also able to memorize them easily and wouldnt need to write them down or reuse another password. So this is all pretty secure and a good working system.

Well, now that three letter acronym company bought the company providing the chipcard stuff and you'd think "fine, now they just issue an online update to streamline the corporate design and replace the former software's name with the hip and amazingly buzzword laden new name they came up with." Oh how you failed... The sysadmins now need to manually download a new install package in order to replace the existing one, quoting from the email I received that informed me about this: "this procedure will take about an hour per PC. Oh, and your users will have to change their PIN/PUKs, because now you are only able to use numbers, no letters or any other chars." Isn't that an improvement?! Not only do we get to waste at least two persons time, we also increase security by increasing the possible combinations of PINs while at the same time skyrocketing the usability and making it far easier to remember this sequence of numbers! I can already see the secretaries searching for the most unique 20+ digit primes to

What blows my head is why this company buying a security company does not have enough money to pay at least one security consultant telling them "Err, uhm, you know that most of this chipcards are stored as secure as if they were left directly in the reader, so we could make the reader optional and only reserve it for some special facilities... and, err, uhm, if you force them to only use numbers, why don't we provide a multiple choice aproach like: Use the following as my pin: a) 0000 b) 1234 or c) my birthdate?" 

Heh.  Typical.

*gna*

fixed a memleak in some code which also was already in a production release.

now I said that we needed to patch that in the production code also.

-nooooooo we can't do that, and its not an issue since that functionality isn't used in production anyways.

now, two years later, this code is in fact in production, and the memory leak is threattening the production system.

so, we spent next to a month worktime distributed over the last 3 months searching that issue again, since its not as occurant in the live system, and the usecase isn't triggered very often...

meanwhile the whole part of the code was replaced with a more elegant way of doing things; that was backported, but they didn't deploy it for over a month now.

....the Weird get Shitting?

Oh ugh.  We've a couple of those.  Less than pleasant.  Hope it improves for you, fleeb.

True, I'm afraid.

Could be worse though....  In addition to the issues you noted, you could also be facing a situation where the joiners do not understand your industry and/or do not understand your business model.

Tricky business, mergers.

Don't suppose those two have any sense of humor....

Sadly not unusual with mergers.  Just keep out of it as much as you can....unless you can parlay it into something funny (for you).

Just tell them that you had to stop the sofware from crying when the internets go boomy.

Be safe over there, Sig!

<laughs>  Welcome back, Groo - it's great to read you again!

And congrats to you, 'Bella - you go, girl!

Wed May 23 2012 12:22:44 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

I don't trust the ShamWow guy ... he murdered Billy Mays.

He's too busy playing with his Schticky these days... REF: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAQjF5RPgbg

-- 
http://www.skpacman.com

I've come "off-agency" and will be signing a contract by the end of the week, it is initially a 3 month deal, and I'm optimistic about renewing for a longer term.

'bella: keepin' on truckin'

Yeah, he has that raunchy killer look to him. That Jeffery domers feel.

That was o s not is my phone auto corrects spelling and doesn't like o s together.

So in training classtoday we had to make our owncommercials. Everyone got paired up butme because of the oddnumber of students. Soi did my commercial the infomercial way. Sham wow style. Here goes. Now rem I stood up infront of the class sayin this.

You like new phones? Of course you do, what I got for you is the htc1x

You know you're gonna love it.

It has the newest is icecream sandwich, just wait for this to drip down the side of your face.

Do you like beats in your ice cream,well you'll love the fact you can use all beats products on the htc1x. Want to catch your friend cheating on another friend, well we have videocapture, now you can pluck pics right from the video, and you know we all love to pluck. Don,t love to pluck, take 90 pics a second.

How much do you think you'll pay,549.99? Well you be right, but today's offer we are charing only 199.99, w 2 yr contract. Now we cant do this all day,because we close at 8.

Anyway it took me about 5 Mins to write this. Made the class laugh.  Teach look like she liked it. 8)

the other way around this is to do a coding camp.

work offsite in whatever location to get your job done; be it your home, or a coworking office, or a hotel room.

yes, interruption is bad.

but as long as its not to much and just small ones i can quickly reattempt my primary task.

i.e. the new citadel smtp client was hole another case, since its in sparetime which isn't available uncluttered in that huge amount...

drawing an UML diagram helped me a little to get forward, but wrapping a complex linear flow into event driven stuff is pretty complicated.

valgrind, code review, etc. can help to get that a little smoother post mortem, but thats here for shure for all work ;-)

the other way is to employ the 'getting things done' principle, which helps some people to schedule more efficiently (and then maybe have more time to work heads down...)

fleeb, I recently read an interesting article about the success of "feminist vocabulary". Which stands in total contrast to the actual success of feminism. The author was arguing that although the number of females in traditional male jobs didnt increase (and vice versa), todays management vocabulary is totally feministic. You need to be "a cooperative teamplayer with high communication skills and a talent for multitasking, capable of proper networking..." Just read up any Industrial- and Oraganisational Psychology guide for management, etc.

These are skills traditionally attributed to women, whereas men would be more of a "predatory loner, leaving everyone else uncertain about his single goal which he tries to achieve at all costs, ignoring every corpse he leaves on the trail" or something like that. The author argued, that this change in vocabulary was done as diversionary tactic to pretend to be more feministic while keeping up the status quo. In my opinion, the easier explanation is that mostly women study I/O psychology and they write the guides other people are using. Conclusion: Stop listening to job desciptions that are only good as bullshit bingo material ;)

Also, I hope you get rid of the stress they are putting on you 

That actually does sound pretty cool.

Yeah - the live shows seem like stuff I'd love to see. I'd guess, though, that fleeb would have a better time in a place like where I was last week - Camping, on the water, lots of families, lots of teens. Loads of swimming, loads of people practicing really cool stunts in the gym, and amazing shows with really talented jugglers every night. I did see some people who were drunk, but not badly so. Most of the people I saw drinking were drinking water, Coke, or coffee. (There was a random Sprite or energy drink here and there)

It's the kind of place where you feel comfortable taking your kids because they see people really having fun doing something physical and challenging. Plus there's plenty of time to socialize... 

I love the Israeli Juggling Convention.

I'd like to see Penn & Teller, too, and the Cirque de Soleille shows look like they could be rather nice.  There's also a big push here to see the Phantom of the Opera production.

Downstairs from the hotel, there's a comedy club that intrigues me, but until I get my wallet, I can't really give it a shot.

Las Vegas has done a credible job of providing a lot of entertainment, from circus-like acts and magic shows to Broadway productions.  If you crave human entertainment, you can find plenty of it here without having to resort to the casinos, sex, or drinking.

I don't know if the NAB show is responsible for this, but I also hear a variety of languages spoken out here.  I'm used to that, living near DC, but I don't expect such a variety of cultures gathered in one place elsewhere in the country, so it's refreshing.

So, I'm in Vegas for this NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) show.  Aside from forgetting my wallet and phone, some other things about this might not make for a wonderful Vegas experience.

The show goes for about a week (if you include setup and tear down time).  Instead of living this week in a condominium, we're having to deal with hotel rooms.  Not awful, but not ideal.

We also have to pay all expenses out of pocket, keep all receipts (for a full week), and fill out an expense report.  We requested per diem, but it was denied (in as non-confronting a way as possible... they simply did not respond back to us).  I don't know how you get receipts for the many tips you are supposed to leave for everyone (to include the damned union worker bribes required to get anything done).  But when they already pay poorly, expecting you to front the expense of your trip until they get the money to you is rather abusive.

This includes, incidentally, the hotel room.

I don't have a corporate credit card, but my boss does.  And since I don't have my wallet with me yet, he's paying for everything out of the corporate credit card.  So we've worked that out.  Eventually, my wallet will arrive, and I'll be able to manage my own expenses, but until then, I have to stick to him like glue.

Whoever selected my particular hotel room didn't listen to me when I said I do not smoke, and would prefer a non-smoking room.  So I'm in this room that smells like a pit.  For a week.  It's otherwise a very nice room.  Although it's a nice room that could nickle and dime you into oblivion, since almost nothing is complimentary (thankfully, the toiletries are).  Frankly, from what I've seen, that has become the norm now anyway.

I've never been to Las Vegas before.  This place, frankly, kind of disgusts me.  I don't think I've seen a collection of self-involved nit-wits posing their corpulent bodies about a twistedly unnatural landscape in various states of inebriation before in my life.  I feel a little like I've managed to enter into one of Dante's levels of hell.  Hooded latinos try to push some kind of advertisement (I've heard they're for strip clubs) into your hands as you walk along this particular strip.  Bimbos with absurd figures filling entirely too-tight dresses teeter on their high-heels as if to say, 'You could only dream of touching this.'  Many people wander around with aburdly huge drinking vessels filled with liquids not designed to nourish, but to help you become insensible.

Sometimes, I see families with children walking about.  My heart melts for them.  I would say 'WTF', except it's such a relief to see it that instead, I think, 'Ah, how nice!'  Sometimes, I see some obviously retired old folks throwing away bits of their retirement to the ever-present money-extracting machines.  Everyone has their own idea of entertainment, I guess, but this kind of entertainment just seems so empty to me.

If I weren't so distracted by the horrors of humanity possessing this place, I should find the technical achievements amazing.  These guys built a fucking city in the middle of a damned desert.  In all defiance to nature, it has plenty of water flowing around, none of which seems to be shared with the ground to let plants grow, except in certain very specific areas.  Sky-scrapers litter the land like they're a huge deity's tinker toys.  They have what seems to be a pretty decent monorail system, analogous to our Metro, although I don't know if it's quite as extensive.  And several gigantic video screens to help advertise various entertainment venues available here.

But, overall, they use technology here to help engage humanity's excesses.  It just feels so very, very wrong to me.  I realize this is a vacation spot, but I guess I'd prefer a tranquil mountain top to this blatantly artificial place.  I am actually finding the place entertaining, but I suspect for all the wrong reasons.

quit your job and become a professional snowblower sabateur. 

I usually get suicidal in the spring. Thus far, I'm doing pretty well :)

Spring is the worst time for my depression.

go to www.fiverr.com

For five bucks, you can get an impressive repertoire of things done.

You could find someone on Fiverr from that town and pay them to place the sticker.

You don't know what Fiverr is? It's totally awesome. You can get people to do little jobs of various sorts for 5 bucks. 

Fri Mar 09 2012 10:52:13 EST from fleeb @ Uncensored

We pranked a customer today.

We created a magnetic rainbow-fish, and put it on his car.

The car is several states away from us, so it'll be interesting for him to figure out how we pulled that off.

Fiverr?

American beer makers came up with the "born on" feature, and a label that changes color so you know it is cold. 

1) If the beer has been sitting around for a while there is a reason for it.

2) If you pick up a beer and you can't tell if it is cold without looking at the label color STOP DRINKING.

I have tried many of the beers from this brewery, they are all good. 
http://www.unibroue.com/en/home/

IGnat, you should be able to find the in a quality store near you.  I have purchased them in New York and Florida.
For a darker beer I would recomend Maudite or Trios Pistoles, for a lighter beer La Fin Du Monde.  La Fin Du Monde was the first beer I tried from them.

I thought beer was already urine.

--Wine drinker

Mon Feb 06 2012 11:53:08 AM EST from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored
Looks like a nice house to turn into a studio if they could figure out a way to remove the floor in between the first and second levels ... plenty of room for lights and stuff on top. They could even put curtains and/or blinds in all of the windows before putting another wall in front of them.
The wings on either sides could be used as offices or (un)dressing rooms.

From what I can tell there's a clear shot of the sky if they want to put an uplink dish on the roof.

 

Insider knowledge? bow chicka bow wow...

Just kidding.

They are going to be bumped out when the new residents move in.  (or maybe not)

nitestar, If I got that correctly they just were searching for the problem and didn't know of another place to look at.

so they asked the public to help them, and 14 days later the errorsource was located and evaded.

My official title right now is "Mechanical Design Technician",

My actual title is "The monkey who sits in the corner of Engineering B and plays on SolidWorks"

or in all reality "The newest pee-on in Engineering that is at not-quite-the-lowest-part-of-the-totem-pole"

horray for department transfers *hurk*

Fleeb, do you have the ability to request a different title?

As someone who has done a lot of hiring, I can understand your concern.  But, especially if you ask for a lower title, perhaps they might be willing to oblige.

well, fleeb,

the first point is... the sallary?

depending on that, you still can do 9-to-5 and do what you want in the other time.

since its never bad to have a look on better job opportunities...

but anyhow, Question... you're doing subtitling, right? Which future do you expect from the technology your company delivers? Or... which future do you expect from the customers (TV stations) you deliver? (...since print is dying...whats going to happen once youtube is able to addres all (or most) TVs?) So... what are your Boss'es reasons to sell? do they account for you?

and... which future development would you expect from your product? is there much more new to add?

from my point... being bought by a bigger company (gemalto) and the pre-aquisition head offs currently quitting (after 2 years) my sum has a little different story.

we were aquisioned because of another (junior)partner of gemalto was aquisioned in advance by another company, so their roadmap had a dead end.

so. sales is pretty much dead at my location now. We do 2nd to 3rd level sales support, and the 10k other guys can sell much more than the 50 guys could sell (if they weren't developers..) So if  I'd been sitting in the sales office, my jop procastination would have been pretty much dead end from the start of the aquisition. But since I'm not, my job is rather more safe than it was before the aquisition; there now is a second level support installing the software I'm working on in several countries at once; and they do most of it without us ever hearing they did (aside of seeing it on the list of customers on our monthly status update presentations)

hope this helps.

*impressed*

Wow, how could you even tell, fleeb?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4q6eaLn2mY

It's a very Monty kind of day....

What I wish I could send to certain people without getting fired...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL6wbsGx9qw&ob=av3e

You know, the more Eli and I talk about having a kid, the more I agree the The SubGenius Foundation. Too bad it's not getting any better.

You didn't interview with my current employer, did you?  ;-)

yeah, putty (still) needs to be forced to utf8, but you can save that as a default. I think the setting is under appearance. Always annoys me when I need umlaute...

Heh, I'm with you there - when I first came home from Moscow it took me months to stop dreaming in Russian.  To this day, if I get really tired or frustrated I have trouble coming up with the precise words in English because the Russian language is so much more rich etimologically.

And pozhalusto.  ;-)

Today is the last day of actual class (only from 0830 to 1830 today), and then we have two days of language testing.  I'm reasonably confident I can maintain my previous levels (and resulting monthly bonus), but we'll see.  It's hard to stress over it.  I'm more concerned about transitioning back to my day job, which involves very technical, very precise applications of English.  I don't feel qualified, at the moment, to edit anyone else's work in any language.

(And спасибо большое!)

<laughs>  Well, in that case: Ni puxo, ni pero!  :-)

Ahh...  So how does Ft Lewis compare with Monterey?

So I went into the upstairs break room to heat up my lunch and go eat at my desk.

One of my friends that works downstairs in the production floor comes up to my area and asks, "Alright, who has that stinky saurkraut?"

me: "Whoa, you can smell that all the way downstairs?"

him: "Yeah, we can smell it at the SMT machines..."

Mind you, the SMT machines are over 260ft away from the microwave I cooked my food in, and there are two flights of stairs and three doors in-between.

My lunch: Corned Beef and Cabbage with potatos, carrots, saurkraut, and a wheat roll.

Once upon a time, but Fort Lewis now.

<laughs>  Just be happy you're not in the 24hr/day one!

Monterey?

Today is Day 6 of 12-hour immersive language training.  I am so damned tired of speaking Russian.

whew, no fans. refrain from closing the doors ;-)

A client called today, tone of his voice on the edge of histeria:

He: "Our server rack arrived today! The other IT guy says you will need 2-3 days to set it all up... How are we supposed to be working in this time?! We can no rest for this time, we are serious business and need to work!!! You need to tell us these things in advance!"

Me: "First of all, I refuse to take any blame! We (me and the other guy) were discussing this in the beginning of the year, you then stopped requesting it [because they are misers and it would have meant investions] and last week I am told by accident that you already ordered a server rack! Second, we were planning to do this in the christmas vacation time, since nobody would be in the office then!"

He (tone back to normal, with hints of shame): "Well, yes, ok, I understand that. But we can not wait until christmas, we need it now." [For reasons you wouldnt believe: The whole IT equipment is "housed" in a default metal rack with some wood construction. This takes up too much office space and is too loud, so they wanted a server rack which is smaller and less noisy. Now, we just throw in the mess of cables and towers into the rack...)

Me: "Ok, we could do it on a weekend, if you leave friday early. And I can't and wont guarantee that it is done by sunday evening, it might take until monday noon or longer. In theory, this is an easy job, but Murphy will always get you when you are too selfassured."

He: "Ok, we can leave early, I will see which weekend is good and call you later today"

He didn't call until now...

My main question is: Why are people expecting rapid and perfect migrations of their most mission critical servers being done without any downtime and with amazing grace?! Without notifying me in advance that this will become urgent soon and that I should prepare... and without asking how complex and timeconsuming this is?

I spent hours earlier this year, researching for the best and cheapest server rack for the bunch of misers and how to do pci-passthrough in order to virtualize the servers...

My rack would have been halve as expensive and it would have fans included, now they don't have fans, since they are too loud anyway. Also, I will have to come up with some ad hoc solution for circumventing the pci-passthrough problem. I would also have added more raid, more virtualisation and replace the server distro with something with much more ease of use and comfort so they wouldnt need to nag me when they want to create a new user...

 (Sorry for length, needed to ventilate my frustration ;) 

<laughs>  What?  You don't carry coins anymore?

@IG: way ahead of you. I got a Droid 2 Global with unlimited data on Verizon network.

The tracks and destinations I'll be working on all have verizon 3g towers lining them non-stop.

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

Good luck!

and Sig, yeah, classifying your wife as top secret does have some negative potential....

Thanks for the advice guys and gals.

I've decided to wait for the position that I want at the new place to open (which should be the next week or so) and give my current place of work notice that I've done so. I don't want a counter-offer because I actually _want_ to move to the new place.

I'll keep you posted.

It depends how you present it with the counter offer.

If you say - I'd really love to stay here, but I have this offer, and it's hard to say no to such a substantial salary difference. Can you help make it easier for me to stay?

then it sounds like you really are a team player who wants to stay.

On the other hand, it sounds like you have more reasons to leave anyway.

After doing the math, this is a no-brainer....

During the first year at the railroad, i'll be making 163% of what i'm making right now, per week.

After the first year, once my probationary period and final training are over, i'll be making 265.8% of what i'm making right now, per week.

Unless my current job can give me one hell of an offer, i'll be jumping ship as soon as the other position is available.

In this case, I say "Amen"!!

Thu Sep 08 2011 10:56:31 AM EDT from triLcat @ Uncensored

Is it a job you could be happy doing?

Are you willing to move?

Would it cost substantially more to live there?

And when the job offer is in hand, bring it to your boss to see if you can get a counter-offer.

I would love a job like this.

I am willing to move since my wife and I have family at our desitnation.

Cost of living is about on par with where I am now.

And yes, I planned to bring the offer to my current boss to get a counter-offer.

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

Is it a job you could be happy doing?

Are you willing to move?

Would it cost substantially more to live there?

And when the job offer is in hand, bring it to your boss to see if you can get a counter-offer.

I need someone to talk me into taking a job opportunity...

The plus side to this opportunity: money, and tons of it. appx 2.2x times my total current household income

The minus side to this opportunity: I'd have to move to another state. total travel is 135 miles to my new home from where I am now.

The job is as an entry-level conductor on the BNSF railway hauling coal, steel, and other commodities out of Wyoming.

I just haven't worked up the balls to fill out an application and tell my current boss the situation...

:)

Content of an actual conversation with one of my team today:

"Hmm...maybe it would be better to just hook up Eyore with Da Man and Houdini and let Eyore follow up?  Otherwise, you will be accountable for a change to his system that you've only got 2nd hand."

"Good call....see, this is why you're higher on the awesome scale."

<dreams of B&B>

Wow - big groups to train effectively.

read the article; felt a little like left behind in the woods at the end...

is it going to be finished? or do I need to buy the book? ;-)

I did.  :-)

How many people did you end up training at one time?  Sounds like a large crowd.....

Thanks for sharing, Iso.

lol my boss is trying to implement something quite hilarious at work.

I work in documentation and we send documents out to the production floor, usually work instructions, that need markups then they're supposed to come back to us after an engineer has approved the markups. On occasion we get back the markups, but they're all in the form of questions that we can't answer.

My boss has suggested that for every "?" we get back from engineering that is not our responsibility to answer, we send the work instructions back to them, but with a hello kitty sticker next to their "?" as our response...

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

If I work in marketing, why am I up at 10pm doing tech support?

Ha!

Amused me, as well.  Missing the Sales function, though, for 2x laugh potential!

Cute!

Sorry - should'a bit'd that:

http://bit.ly/qMvvro

http://images.ichc.s3.amazonaws.com/originals/completestore/2011/8/25/afb5ad74-abb5-4d88-9196-8e3ffab7a4f7.jpg

Mo Aug 22 2011 15:43:09 EDT von fleeb @ Uncensored
Perhaps you don't burn yourself out.

remember blade runner?

the flame that burns brighter burns shorter.

Well, I already do the majority of my coding work in Microsoft

That's not a crime, that's a sin. Small difference there.

ROFL

Now that brightened up my morning :)

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

10 years later and that's never come back for me.  On the other hand, I do still enjoy my new career.

well, fleeb, I did make my hobbie my job, and kept it up as a hobbie too.

effect:

- live the creativity you can't live in your job in your hobbie; not being able to find demanding tasks etc. sucks less if you can save your good ideas for something else (citadel ;-)

- once you're realy tired from work (or realy overworked), you don't find recreation in the hobby anymore; you need another hobby totaly ortogonaly to the rest; cycling in my case.

Mi Aug 17 2011 18:03:19 EDT von fleeb @ Uncensored
Well, I already do the majority of my coding work in Microsoft Windows...

thank god I so far managed to avoid that; collecting lots of profile proving my point. I'm the Valgrind & Callgrind guy right now..

Though the fight isn't over yet, gemalto policies making it hard.

I've always been a fan of the "eureka method": If you're stumped on something like remembering a name or specific word, working on a difficult and/or tedious problem, figuring out the intricacies of the cosmos, or what have you, just walk away from it for a while. Don't concentrate on it at all for a while, and usually the solution, or thought that leads to the solution, will just come to you. I do this quite often.

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

This reply makes me want Chunky Monkey ice cream.

Perhaps it would be more cost effective to design a better hu-man.

The jamming returned and this time was worse, I had to rip out the paper from the front this time... and found pieces of the seal that was on the toner cartridge. Those seals are usually marked in big red letters "Remove before usage"...

If it makes you feel any better, spac, my work laptop is being replaced on component at a time.  Suspect next in line is the fan.

meh.

so, turns out the problem with my computer at work wasn't *just* the power strip... there's something wrong with the graphics or memory or power supply. not 24 hours after i posted my relief in this room, it happened again, but in an even worse way.

back to the drawing board...

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

Here at the institute for engineering psychology, our printer was jammed. But I was told that they switched it off, because they didnt find any paper in it yesterday. So I restart it and the 9" b/w display tells me that there is a paper jam in the slot on the back of the printer, together with an animation how to turn the printer around, and open the exact place. (This is the most idiot proof solution suggestion I ever saw. And since the printer is on a little table with wheels, turning it around is totally possible.) Which I did... and I found paper... which I removed and all was good again...

Only because it is Sysadminday today and people really did thank me on their knees, I will be kind and won't apply the LART.

Lesson learned here: Printers need arms, they are already smarter than their users, so they should be able to fix themselves. And being able to poke troublesome users would be a benefit for their sanity.

after two weeks of troubleshooting with our IT department, we figured out the problem with my computer wasn't my computer at all.

It was the power strip that my computer was plugged into that was causing problems...

heh, go figure.

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

So I get to work this morning. I hadn't even clocked-in yet. I go to turn on my computer, like normal. I hit the power button and start walking away to get to the terminal that clocks me in and out and I hear an odd noise coming from my cubicle. All of the fans in my computer are hitting the highest RPM they possibly can. Akward... it's not booting into anything...

So I shut it off, unplug it, and hold the power button for a while (to discharge anything left over on the motherboard) then try starting it back up.

I plug it all back in, hit the power button, then starts up like normal. Breathe a sigh of relief. I go clock-in and come back to my computer. The tower is running like normal, no funny sounds, no high rpm fans, but my screens are blank. I check my monitor cables, those are fine.

Turns out, the video card burned out. Worked fine yesterday when I went to shut down. Just wouldn't work after sitting alone, unused, overnight.

So I didn't get to work on anything until my computer was fixed about an hour later.

My work computer now has an ATI Radeon 3400 (a couple steps up from the old Radeon I had).

I guess it works out for the better.

I keep blaming the logo in the bottom left of my screen...

-- 
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com

>.<

I have a similar problem... but it has to do with training a new co-worker...  "Where do I find what components on this board are put on at each step?".... the work order or router...

My standard answer (as is my boss') is RTFM - Read The Fucking Manual!!!

Yeah, it's stressful, and it certainly is the downside of being small.

We hope this will change soon, but one never knows.

Sounds stressful, fleeb.

We have just three people.

I do the C++ stuff (engines, daemons/services, etc.), and augment technical support as required.

Our junior guy does the web-related stuff (pages that communicate between user, database, and my engines).  And our boss does GUI development and technical support.

I write heavy-duty stuff that represents the core of what our customers buy.  That core sends and receives its information from one or more web sites developed by our junior guy, and occasionally from a GUI communicating via TCP/IP (but we're getting away from that).

At this point, the biggest problem is that if something happens to either my boss or me, we're fucked.  Neither my boss nor the junior guy can do C++ (and it would take a while to train someone else), and only my boss has the business relationships to do all the sales/marketting that the company needs.  It's difficult to take days off, too, without possible phone calls interrupting vacation because of some kind of customer panic.

Two more people (dev-wise) would help, just to have some overlap.

The best meetings have no chairs....

Indeed, fleeb.

If it makes you feel any better, Bart, today I incorporated the latest round of "edits" to a weekly status report from a VP.  It was a 90 min conversation and represented the 5th iteration.  First draft of "next week's" report is due on Friday.

I'm starting to miss my b0rk3d Small Company(tm)

Yep, over 5.

But, at least you've got two teams.  That helps, at least a little.

well, 7 + 5(web) developers here, 5 qa guys, two PMs, plus around the same in france, plus another team for the deployment and running the live systems of similar size.

but, I wouldn't say it was easier before the people in france came into the game.

It got a little more complicated that we couldn't reproduce the CLOSE_WAIT condition from the remote system on our development systems, so we couldn't tell we actually fixed the incident...

...

Do you have more than 5 people developing the product?

Such conversations seem to just happen in such cases.

today.. wasted several hours to diskuss whether to deliver a missing close() in a destructor or not.

ok, we're in a very late phase of the project, but WTF?

Ladyhawke:

Ugh.  hate that.

Ford II:

Yes, it is.

Big Company(tm) escalation from the 9 circle of hell.  Which wouldn't quite as hellish if there were an actual *reason* for the level of insanity and time-waste caused.  Bah.

Oh, I know... but I'm pondering things, I think.

I lived for a while not terribly far from it, in the grand scheme of things, but I don't know much about it.

I forget... I might have had distant cousins who lived in Kentucky.  But then, it might have been Tennessee instead.  I can't remember.

They don't live there now, though.  I think they're in Michigan.  And, honestly, they weren't really from Kentucky anyway... they were from Michigan.

Yes, but you'll need to run all the connections to it so it may continue to work in your yard, if you want to truly be a redneck.

There are some redneck projects that have hack value, oddly.

Just an educated guess.

It's to scrub the bugs out of his code.

After a fashion, the same here.

We survived another intense trade show.  Apparently, we've already packed up, and the guys who were at the show will enjoy touring Nevada before returning home this weekend.  As to the show's success?  I guess we won't know about that until some time passes.  I sure hope it was all worth the effort.  At least this year, the show went better than in previous years.

If you are breaking the desk by banging your head on it -- don't stop banging, just get a tougher desk.  You need to get out that frustration.  :)

ah. thats why you're loosing your hair. There are others around who tear it off.

well, the linksys would probably be a little overdosed with all those vpns and stuff.

and... some where using their android as hotspot to continue surfing... but sometimes you need internal infrastructure and some of those vpns too...

this is the advantage of a small business. My brother has an extra cellular-to-wifi-point thingy. He figures if his office goes offline for 2 hours a year, it pays for itself.

Probably a couple of weeks, as the work order cleared seven layers of internal red-tape.

the router died. half a day offline during tough timelines have to be met.

since our admins prefer to have the router as a single point of failure even local DNS and DHCP was gone...

so I wasted some time to get  2.6.38 running.

Very few of us do

Conversation at work:  "Will you make sure XXXXX flushes the toilet after he's done?"  "Ah...why would you think I would want to because the rest room police?  That's a polite way of saying "Get the fuck away from me!""

True story.  Apparently I do NOT work with geniuses.

You've read a few weeks ago that the company I work for recently bought a new, bigger building.

Today, we had our first run-in with rodents. There was a little tiny mouse running around our office! he was no bigger than my thumb and was jumpy... he jumped about a foot high, out of my hand and ran out of the office from under the door. :D production floor is going to have fun catching him now.

ah... the adventures my office has.

I knew of one company who seemed somewhat convinced that we wrote voodoo code.  They didn't really believe that we could do all the things we said we could do.

Grr... not 'thread', but 'stream'.

By 'dumber', I mean I was stupid.  I should have remembered that the std::hex thing would stick to the thread until I cancelled it with std::dec.

No, something dumber.

std::cout << "Display this as hex: " << std::hex << variable_with_some_huge_number << std::endl;

std::cout << "Display this as dec: " << 1080 << std::endl;

The second line will display as hex unless you do:

std::cout << "Display this as dec: " << std::dec << 1080 << std::endl;

I found my logical explaination.

1080 is 0x483.  The stream was still displaying numbers as hexidecimal from an earlier setting.  So the number wasn't different after all, just the display of it.

I appear to be working with voodoo code.

The vendor helpfully provides these nice example sources so you can play with their hardware and figure out how to make it do what you need it to do.

In their example code, I see something like this (where the variables are 'int' variable types):

FrameWidth = 1920;

FrameHeight = 1080;

When I stream the values of these variables to std::cout, FrameWidth shows as 780, and FrameHeight shows as 430... even after they were set immediately before streaming the values to std::cout, with no intervening commands that could change those values.

I have to believe there's a logical explaination for this, but at the moment, I'm at a loss.  It looks like voodoo code.

We're going after the smaller orgs that they're leaving behind.

which is exactly why I use citadel for Blurred Vizion Studios' email and groupware.

My attempts at convincing our IT department to switch to Citadel were futile. They've decided to go ahead with Google solutions because of their wider range of colorful apps.

sorry folks, tried to get Citadel into a larger corporation, but didn't happen.

Attempting to convince our IT department at work that Citadel is a better replacement for M$Exchange than using Google Business e-mail solutions.....

Speaking as a PM who's had to adapt to and run SCRUMs:

Best way to handle your PM is to give him adaptive milestone level dates/tasks and let him/her update the revolving gant chart.  Understand that in all likliehood your PM is in one of 2 situations:

1) He/She has not used a pure scrum before (and/or doesn't really understand it) and thus is having a little trouble adapting

or more likely:

2) His/Her managment gets SCRUM from the perspective of reduced cost and increased agility - but not so much from a reporting impact and thus is still requiring exactly the same type, mode, and format of reporting as before....even when the futility of said practice has been explained.

Responding as above will create a ton of work for the PM (which they will hate), but if the situation is #1, they'll start to understand your reluctance quickly and if it's #2 then they don't have much choice anyway.  You'd be surprised how many PMO's in SCRUM shops find themselves in this position.  Thankfully, most SCRUM shops run a modified version of the process vs pure SCRUM, but those that don't quite often run into this problem.

I was supposed to be flying out to Toronto tomorrow morning.  Needless to say, my presentation's being postponed...until Valentine's Day.

hubby was in Toronto yesterday. Should be in Atlanta by now.

seems like an expensive gift....it must be cursed.  It probably only runs Windows for Workgroups.

Toronto in the middle of winter - bah.

IG, hide your snowblower till I get back on Thursday!

I visited my former workplace over Christmas. 32 acres of wrecked textile mill. There's just 2 usable things left. A nice indoor a/c chiller and the Lawer Rotacolor and Silomat. The a/c unit is good. The Lawer runs on MS-DoS and is stupid. Dye storage, weighing and mixing robot is what it is. I guess nobody needed good software, so I had to think in DOS terms when working with it. Now if someone has 99 different varieties of coffee and wants a machine to serve the kitchens of say, a place the size of Ft. Bragg or Nellis, the Lawer would be good for that.

Holy crap, the new place is more massive than I previously thought!

You'll never guess what the previous owners of this building left!!

BlueArc Titan 3200:  http://bit.ly/gVG0Id

:D and not just the single rack, it's in the full cabinet! (6 racks, 14 drives/rack, 2x gigabit lan/rack)

-- 
Stephen D King
Network Admin
Blurred Vizion Studios
outsider@blurredvizionstudios.com

The company I work for recently bought a building roughly 15x the current building's total sqft area.... We're moving to the new building here in about a half hour... both exciting and nerve wrecking at the same time.

Did I mention the new building can only be decribed as MASSIVE?.... My new office will be roughly 4x the current size... dunno what I'll do with the new-found open space.

:D

yea, that was a real delight over here too, when we got a real espresso full automaton that pulverizes the beans first...

Time for the periodic review of my security clearance.  Full addresses and timelines (down to the month, at least) of every place I've lived in the last 10 years, including deployment overseas and any temporary assignment longer than 90 days.  Addresses, phone numbers, and supervisor name/address/number for every job held during that same period.  I finally gave up for the night trying to track down a street address for the job I worked 3 weeks just prior to going to Afghanistan in 2005.  E-mail archives are very useful for this purpose; I wish I'd switched to gmail earlier.

Could be worse.  Last time I did this, we had to have a different person to verify each residence and job, in addition to personal references, etc.  None could be related to you by blood or marriage.  I was running out of people that I even knew and had to resort to vague acquaintances from church.  This time, I only have to have them for all jobs and residences going back three years.

It's not easy sleeping in space.  But someday you'll find it, that space-sleep connection, all the lovers, the dreamers - and you!

mixing work and sleep in space is probably one of the worst ideas one can have i'd say.

I have a bedroom that I use as a sort of office.  But Melvin shares it, so sometimes I take phone calls in the other bedroom, which doesn't get used for much more than sleeping.

The joy of trucking is NO co-workers, but plenty of not-going-crazy-at-home.

It's a joy I hope to be experiencing again real soon, Have an interview later this morning :)

I currently work in a corner of the living room. It's ok as long as I don't try to work when anyone else is home.

I'm looking at grad school in maybe Fall of 2012, by which time I would need to either a) convert my extra garage space to an office, b) convert the spare room (currently Her storage and craft room) to an office, or c) ship my kids off to military school.  My primary computer currently is in a little nook off of the main living space, and I just don't see that working for homework.

Today is the first of 10 weeks of having Wednesdays off.  I'm supposedly studying Russian for my proficiency test tomorrow, but doing anything on a computer that requires concentration means hiding in my bedroom right now...

Yeah, I'll be getting my out-of-the-house time.

Fortunately, we're going to meet up at my boss' house at least once a week, so that should help keep things from going too crazy.

I will agree!  You go crazy real fast working at home.  I was able to enjoy it for a few months, but after 3 years I was going crazy I mean really chew your own balls off crazy.

Rented a small office above a strip mall just so I have a place to go every day and talk to people. ;)

yep, another good reason for coworking spaces.

also the way home is a good thing to switch from work problems to private problems.

I've heard of places like that, but I have pretty much everything I need at home.

What won't work well for us is the manufacturing side of our business, where we build boxes that we sell to folks, or replace broken boxes.  That's going to be really, really awkward.

fleeb, do you have coworking spaces over there? here in germany we've got 'coworking cologne' for example. you can simply step in, aquire a desk with net for a week for a minimal charge.

Tomorrow is our last day at the office, before we're all working from home.

However, today was my last day.  Tomorrow, I'll be working on co-location stuff, checking to see if I can do everything I need to do without having a ridiculously sluggish virtual machine, etc.  It's going to be weird, I think, working from home, but I think I'll enjoy not having to drive an hour to work every day.

Seriously reduced stress at work since putting in notice.  I'm thinking about grad school part time to make up the difference.

me gets sick seeing all those rumpelstilskin lookups filling up hundrets of lines.

(It is, of course, heavily taxed.)

You can "sell" days of leave?

Is that what it sounds like? Exchange days off for cash? Do you sell them to your peers or to back to the organization?

We can sell leave under certain circumstances, but no more than 60 days over the course of our career.  You're supposed to take it during the period that you're on active duty, but sometimes it's just not possible to take all of the leave you've earned.  I have 30 days saved up, but no one can entirely cover for me when I'm gone, so I can't exactly take it all at once, or even in very big chunks.

Same customer who can't keep viruses off the server is complaining that this tool we built just for them doesn't work correctly.

I think I explained about 'aliases' before... they translate one media identifier for another, and help you find the caption file you want.

Well, the older version of the file-dropping thing doesn't handle this.  It never could.  You had to use this other tool, Media Registration, to add the aliases after you added the file.

Our newer tool does handle it... you can drop files, and an associated .meta file to get the aliases in there.  Or, the .meta file can just be empty... doesn't matter, but it has to exist for me to process the media (because otherwise I wouldn't know if I'm supposed to or not). But it's currently set up in a 'testing' mode, so they cannot use it for that purpose yet.

He said the old tool isn't registering the files.  Yet, it is clearly registering other files.

So, I asked him for an example media ID for where this failed.  It's a really, really simple question, with a straightforward answer.

He babbled some nonsense that showed me he wasn't actually going to answer the question, so I exploded.

None of you have experienced what it is like when I lose my temper.  It happens very, very rarely.  Which means when it *does* come out, it's really awful.  My boss was more amused, since he's just as frustrated with them... so I kind of imagined him saying, "And then it exploded." like in that movie about Star Trek (but it wasn't a Star Trek movie).

In my explosion, I just said, "No."  But I said it with the force of a volcano erupting.  I think the building vibrated for a little while after I said it.  I think I might have used some other words later, but none of them were foul.  For having lost control, I'm still pretty professional.  Heh.

There was shock on the other end.  They're going to tell their boss, I know, but I've met the guy several times.  He's going to be surprised, because I'm always so peaceful in person, if not rather timid.  He'll probably wonder what they did to make me lose my mind.  I'm sure there will be some indignation, but honestly, how can anyone work with someone who isn't going to answer a simple question straightforwardly?  Besides, my boss was right there when it happened, so he knows the circumstances.

Hmm... I would keep track of how many of your fellow soldiers died of cancer at a young age.  That information might be needful in the future.

Though the powers that be are already aware of my plans, I'm giving official notice today.  I'm going to start my new job 16 Feb.

Since I have to burn or sell about 30 days of leave between now and then, I started by requesting about 10 days on the back end, and then every Wednesday off, starting in December.  Wednesdays are our staff meetings.

I've got mixed feelings about it.  I feel a little like I'm abandoning ship, but the boss has made it clear that he has no problem with burning out mid-grade NCOs after two years of the job; there are plenty more where I came from.  Nice.  It will be good to go back to a job with the exact same pay and benefits, but doing my actual MOS and leaving it at work every day (vice waking up at 0200 thinking about things I didn't get done).

In semi-related news, I found out last night that one of my teammates from Afghanistan in '06-'07 died of cancer last month.  He was about 25 or so.  In traditional terms (phone calls, visits, Christmas cards) we weren't close, but if any of my team found themselves with an awkward corpse, I have a shovel and reliable transportation.  We tend to forget that just because the talibs couldn't get us, that doesn't mean we're immortal.

(that was my boss speaking to our customer, not me... I don't think I know the guy well enough to say anything like that).

"Did you also tell your customers that you are no longer using the server as a virus container?"

"*embarassed laugh* Not in those words, but yeah.  We told them that."

thats why I call'em winTendo.

Sun Nov 07 2010 22:26:35 EST from Ford II @ Uncensored

It's been a week of this insanity.  It's the technical equivalent to
a sitcom.  Only geeks can get it, though.  Enjoy the show.  I'll
be here all week.

I'm still laughing. I'm envisioning this group of geek scrambling over a production system and then just when things are almost working, some boob walks by the server and mindlessly plugs a usb drive into it immediately infecting it.
The whole image just keeps making me laugh.
I'm sorry, but it is funny.

That is *exactly* what happened.

And it's hilarious.  It really is.  You can almost hear the embarrassment in the engineer's voice out there.  The sign of resignation.

The primary server blue-screened.

Glorious!

You guys are geeky... you might appreciate the details involved in this particular version of hell.

A playlist has a media identifier that describes the tape used to play the media (or, perhaps in these modern times, an MPEG2 file).  We use this media identifier to find the appropriate caption file for playback later.

Based on the media ID, we run it through a hash that generates a number from 00 to ff (hex), which we then use as a subfolder, so all these files won't be in one folder (it gets pretty nasty if all the files are in the one folder).  However, we also have this 'alias' mechanism... sometimes, the media ID has some extra characters that describe the segment of the program, and the playlist will give us that instead of the actual media ID.  We use an aliasing mechanism to help us find the real media ID (the user has to manually enter these aliases so we know what file to pull).  Well, since it's all just files, we have these 0-length files whose names describe the alias... which are themselves hashed into the various sub-folders.

When you start to get a lot of files in these folders, it can take a long time to find all the aliases for a particular media ID.

Well, we've been wanting to get away from this hackish mechanism for a while, and we've elected to store it all in database instead.

We use a web interface to the database to push and pull the files.  It's actually a pretty good use for HTTP, I think... a protocol precisely designed for this kind of work... why not use it?

(You'll note that I'm glossing over which db and web engine we're using.  You probably already know.  I feel dirty.)

It is surprising difficult to migrate over to this other mechanism.  I have to change all the client machines that fetch these files so they can use a web interface... but the code wasn't well-designed for this kind of change, so (given the time constraints) I had to add hacks upon hacks to get this to work.  And... well, it worked in testing, but not in their environment.  So it was something of a disaster.  I've since asked that we use a 'backup' box they have so I can test our client application before we go live, to avoid this kind of nonsense.

Add to this that I needed to migrate these files into the database.. and my boss wanted me to delete the files as I ran.  I thought that was insane, but he's the boss.  I at least had the wisdom to make a backup of the original set of files (something that gave him a disgusted look, but he agreed), which we have since needed.  I'm so very thankful I insisted upon that... it saved our bacon, since the client didn't handle the web requests entirely properly.  Man, this was bad, and unfortunately our fault.

But there's blame to share.

Now, they didn't like having to register hundreds (or more) of these caption files, one at a time, using our registration tool, so I created this thing that let them drop the files into a folder, and we'd convert it for them.  It's easy to share the folder out so another computer can have access to it... so they can use another computer to drop the files in, so they don't have to actually touch the server.  And our media registration tool is a client to a server, so they could install it on that other computer, too, to ensure the files are going in okay.  Even so, they could also examine the 'error' folder for any problems that might have happened after dropping the files.  Sooo many ways they can protect themselves.

But, like a moth to flame, they plug USB drives into the server, the one machine that makes these files available to the workstations that play back the caption files, causing the machine to get infected with a virus, and wreaking absolute hell on the server.

So, we had this really big discussion about everything yesterday.  We explained our points of concern.  We answered their questions.  We took care of whatever problems arose, and generally worked through a lot of problems caused by a lack of management on their part.  But, most especially, we got them to (after months of this) finally install a new box through which their folks may communicate with our server, making it so only a very few people ever touch this server in any way (me, my boss, and this guy out there who is responsible for handling how they register these media files).

Last night, they had several problems with files not playing out.

I come in this morning, and find this 'bolt.exe' sucking up 50% of the CPU on the server (it's two cores, so basically it's consuming a core), and the only bolt.exe files I can find are in TEMP folders.

Naturally, I thought; "oh, great, another virus."  But according to one of their technicians, it's likely the cleanup tool they used to remove the previous virus... their engineer probably forgot to remove it, and it's trashing the disk (making it harder for me to serve files).

Kind of hilarious, in an oh-fuck sort of way.

It's been a week of this insanity.  It's the technical equivalent to a sitcom.  Only geeks can get it, though.  Enjoy the show.  I'll be here all week.

Yesterday, the customer's staff plugged a USB drive into the server we maintain for them, and infected it with two viruses.  It took nearly 8 hours of two sets of staff's time to take care of that, so we could rule out viruses as the cause of the symptoms of a problem we were trying to address.

We asked that they stop doing this... that they use some other approach instead.

Today, someone did it again.

They're trying to copy these caption files to a folder where we'll turn them into our own file format and pull them into our file server, so we can play them back when they're supposed to be played back for broadcast.

But the left hand doesn't know what the right hand over there is doing, so they put the files in the wrong folder, and wondered why things weren't working.

The insanity gets even nuttier, the deeper you look into this, though.  Honestly, if I hadn't met some of these guys, I'd assume that this company has hired patients from a mental institution to take care of their broadcasting needs.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmeier/archive/2010/10/21/40-hour-work-week-at-microsoft.aspx

fancy to read something like that out of the fingers of a microsoft employe...

I currently know all of the points he enlists in the 60-80 hours week.

Actual conversation at work last night.

Dim bulb:  uh, Dan, is it normal for your nose to start bleeding for no reason?

Me:  No. (disbeliving tone to my voice)

Dim bulb:  oh.  I must have bled a gallon of blood.

Me:  Maybe you should ask a doctor about it.

Dim bulb:  Nah.  I'll be okay.

Me:  Well....if it happens again go see a doctor.

Dim bulb:  Okay.  I left a puddle of blood in the back. Should I clean it up?

Me:  uh...yeeees...I don't want to.  Could you not leave the bloody rags on the floor too?  k...thanks.

*HONK*

*whiff*

-DAMN-

Now *there's* an image.

"Oh oracle, wise and all-knowing, please tell me how I may achieve never-ending happiness in my life?"

"Not now, son... I'm hunting goslings!"

oh, forgot about the dark and all that.

Have you ever had someone, in the dark, stop their car just on the other side of a hill on a busy road?

the ducklings can't fly. Ever read "Make Way for Ducklings"?

Generally speaking, birds are very difficult to hit with a car.  You'll always find exceptions, of course, but as a general rule, you can't hit them with a car.

not to be stupid, but what would you have her do? run them over?

Yep.  Today was filled with stupidity.

On my way home from work, a lady stopped her car in the middle of the road (in the dark, with her lights on), honked her horn as I approached.  I couldn't get around her car, so I was stuck.  She then got out of the car and scooted some ducks off the road.  This went on for about a full minute.

I wanted to get out of the car and kill the ducks, throwing their remains in her car.

Today seems to be a day of high-powered stupidity.

It's as if there's some cosmic rays spraying our customers with gamma radiation, but instead of turning into The Incredible Hulk, they just turn stupid.

If I sit still, very quietly, and listen, I can hear the drool running down their face.

In the military, you can't fire someone or even pass him up for promotion for "being a dirtbag." You have to quantify the behavior.

"Has been late X times in the past 3 months"

"Did not pass the physical fitness test"

"Has come to base unshaven"

"Uniform shirt was improperly buttoned and sleeves were rolled up not according to standards despite three previous warnings" (I still remember how to roll up US Army uniform sleeves... You can't just roll them up)

You can't write "has a bad attitude." You have to give specific examples of behaviors that exhibit bad attitude such as breaking protocol, using inappropriate language, yelling at colleagues in situations where yelling is unwarranted...

It's actually not bad to think that way.

If you do the paperwork right (which is a big if), it's relatively easy, though time consuming.  Sadly, he could be JUST a complete dirt bag and the chain of command might insist that he stick around.  But since he's a kinda dirt bag who can't pass his APFT, the regulations require us to give him the boot.

We had the unpleasant experience of counseling a junior soldier in the company about the commander's intent to discharge him for unsatisfactory participation. He's been with us three years without being able to pass the physical fitness test; we SHOULD have discharged him a year and a half ago. He gets an attitude with his first-line leader, is habitually late, and is just generally a poor example of a soldier, even by our relatively undemanding standards.

And yet... He's a nice, likable kid. When he's sober and on time, he does decent work without complaint. He's been unemployed for two years, other than his one-weekend-a-month, and has a wife and two kids, plus another for whom he's paying support. This is his best shot at getting out of the hole he is in. But he won't take it.

We did everyone the regs required and quite a bit more to get him marriage and financial counseling. My supply sergeant has gone way above and beyond to try to convince him to help himself.  But ultimately, it is his responsibility. None of us feel good about it at ALL because he's a part of the family, even if he's the shady cousin who nicks the silverware. You can't save people from themselves.

If I had any.  =)  We're the nasty guard--we just turned in our muskets for M-16A2s a few years ago.

*gna* lots of work, no weekends and so forth.

Right.  Most, including the commander and senior leadership, are only there one weekend per month.  My supply sergeant and I do all of the endless admin and silliness in between drills.  There should be four of us, but those positions were never funded even before our state realized that it was in a massive financial hole.

Our "two weeks" is rarely a collective unit training event; more often, we send people to individual courses for professional development or language training or (more rarely) overseas duty training providing linguist support for joint training between our military and some other nation.  We sent people to Thailand, Korea, and most recently Ukraine in the last few months.

I would have hit 40 hours for the week sometime this afternoon, but I'm cutting out early to watch Siglet #2 while my wife goes to her appointment.

Interestingly, WHAT we do is not terribly secret--like, at all.  The classified parts are specifically how we do it and how WELL we do it, and much of that has been discussed in the media by congressmen who apparently didn't pay attention to their security briefings.

Tue Sep 28 2010 08:30:19 PM EDT from IGnatius T Foobar @ Uncensored

this is going to sound a little nieve, but what exactly do you DO?

You know the answer.

He could tell you, but then...

*chuckle*

"Piecekeeping"

That cracks me up.  All the King's soldiers and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again, but they could at least keep the pieces.  Heh heh.

Oh, so my boss tells our client's customer, "So, you're saying even though our system is working 99% of the time, you feel it is working only 50% of the time, and you want 100% uptime.  Fine.  We'll rip it out, and you can just do things the old fashioned way since that's apparently more reliable."

Nobody went for that.  And we finally started focusing on resolving the problems rather than bitching about them.

Due to the nature of our work, someone with way more rank than I decided that our unit needs many officers.  Our authorized strength is 94 soldiers, with 17 of those as officers.  The company commander is a major slot, and then there are four platoon leader captain slots, and then each individual team is led by a captain (with a few exceptions).  That's a lot of rank.

However, I only have 74 total soldiers right now.  2 of those are cadets and useful primarily for keeping the motion-sensor lights from turning off.  19 of the others are commissioned officers.  You cannot swing a dead cat without hitting an officer right now.

For added fun, in FY 2012 we get a new organizational structure and our authorized strength drops to 74 total--and only four officers.  I envision sort of a Thunderdome-style series of events ("Two lieutenants enter, one lieutenant leaves!") to determine who stays, but I suspect I will get overruled on that.

In the army, we referred to second lieutenants as 'butter-bars', in part because they wear a single gold bar to indicate their rank, and in part because many of them are not only inexperienced, but really clueless about how the military runs.

I say 'many of them' because occasionally you find 'mavericks', who were once enlisted before gaining a commission.

Nope, a major.  Nice guy, but he gets these enthusiasms... It's really no skin off his back to miss a day per week; he has been off every Monday for the last six months in order to burn "use or lose" time.

My hope is that once we are re-stationed (they moved us in March, now they're moving us again in Novemberish) and we get the new company commander settled (February or March), I will be able to talk myself into giving notice and I can go back to doing my actual job.

Is your commanding officer, like, a butter-bar or something?

None of us (OK, few of us) are admin pukes by training, but rather we have a military occupational specialty (MOS) in some field of intelligence.  However, our current assignment and full-time job is doing the admin for an intel unit.

Today our officer in charge announced that we will start doing MOS-related training each Friday starting at the new fiscal year.  This is supposedly in response to complaints that we never get to do our "real" job.

For added fun, most of the unit (not me) will be going to four 10-hour days after we relocate this fall and thus only doing their regular jobs 3 days per week.  When he brought this up, he said that we would just have to learn to be more efficient and "stop taking 90 minute lunches in the conference room."  My counterpart across the hall and I just stared at each other; I take an actual lunch break perhaps 3 or 4 times per month.

My admin job takes up 40-50 hours a week and I don't catch up.  We're supposed to have four full-time soldiers for a unit our size; thanks to state budget limitations (even before this year's massive shortfall), I am three of those.  I drop things all of the time; I just try to drop the less important things more often than the critical things.  Now I have only 80% of the time to accomplish the same tasks that I was already dropping.  The feeling of being set up for failure has never been as strong as it is right now.

Meh.  At least I'm employed, right?

One of my crazy ex-soldiers just e-mailed my work e-mail a response to something I wrote about him over a year ago, before I was working full time for the unit.

http://archive.sigspace.net/node/596.html

Among other things, he accuses me of being a gossipy, obnoxious child who played MarioKart during drill and bossed him around just because I outranked him.  Aside from the facts that I didn't outrank him at the time, only ever met him a few times, and never worked with or over him, I suppose it is remotely possible that I played MarioKart on my DS once, although I don't remember doing so.  Also, I am 32.

Even though I know he's batshit crazy, it kind of puts a damper on my afternoon.

On Friday, mere hours before our unit's "one weekend a month" (which starts at 1600 on Friday), I took possession of my printer.  We've been trying to get a new printer for about 18 months, and it's been more urgent since our 14-year-old LaserJet 6MP became unaccessible in April.  [The printer will work until the end of time.  The desktop with the parallel port, sadly, will not, and there's no other machine we can share it from.]  As much as I love running up and down the stairs to the nearest workgroup printer 20 times per day, it's a little disruptive to my work flow.

Initially, I tried to get a network printer.  I talked to the local IT guys* and they said I could get one; they don't even have a particular model restriction.  Supposedly, if I can get someone to cough up for it, they will install it.  My supply sergeant talked to the state IT guys (he rides motorcycles with the head NCO over there) and they said it wouldn't be a problem.  We got funding and a requisition sent up.  A captain with too much time on his hands decided to "help" by calling the same people to make sure we could do that.  Because he's an annoying and frequently hated man, he was told "no."  I cannot get a network printer.

So I do more research (keeping in mind a short suspense, money must be spent within 3 days, etc.), pick out a professional model personal LaserJet (P1606dn, $200 on sale) and have my supply sergeant buy that.  [Note the sneakiness: the 'n' means it has a network port, and we could conceivably put it on the network later anyway.]  It's now Friday, hours before everyone shows up.  I call the local IT person, who informs me that I cannot have a locally installed printer; all printers must be networked.

I die a little inside.

Eventually, they sort it out with the state people and it's determined that while we CAN have local printers, they will not be supported by state.  That's fine; state runs the worst IT organization I have ever encountered, including when I worked for the Navy on NMCI in 2005, so it's not like they support us much anyway.  [I've had tickets ignored for 4 months and then deleted without so much as a phone call, let alone a resolution.]  But alas, the local guy who is there doesn't have his special CAC for doing admin things, and the other one is on leave.  I have a great new printer sitting on my desk (grr, the OTHER reason I wanted a network printer) and it's entirely decorative.

As with most problems with our IT, we resolve them with personally owned equipment.  My netbook installed the printer in about 2 minutes, and I used that to print everything, e-mailing stuff back and forth to myself using a commercial internet connection I was leeching.

Seems like a nice enough printer.  I tried to get them to recommend one to me (since users picking their own printers strikes me as a terrible idea), but they kept recommending color LaserJets that were discontinued several years ago.  Don't need color, and would just as soon spend the taxpayer's dime on something that the manufacturer will support for a bit.

Hmmm... that new printer of yours seems a tad expensive.

I've been trying to get a printer since I started this job.  It's now on my desk.  Huzzah!

More political bullshit going on at work lately.

I think some new captioners are starting to use our system, and the captioning company has no way to teach them how to use the system without doing their lessons live.  This is leading, I think, to a tremendous amount of drama that's driving us nuts... mostly because our customer's customer keeps including everyone under the sun into these ridiculous e-mail messages, creating a political environment that winds up getting in the way of solving any problems.

Fewer people in an e-mail thread, the faster a problem can be solved.

sounds like fun...

Whats your lugage? Full combat weight? or just some food?

Nothing like the military to help keep you fit.

I kind of enjoyed the hiking we did, though.  But then, I like hiking.  Just haven't done enough of it lately.

I think I'd rather be watching Blue's Clues than sitting through this briefing.

That can be arranged.  (*Wheels in the TV cart and DVD player*)

And, yeah, it's turning into a 12 hour day, in no small part due to their complete incompetence.

I wish they'd just go out of business already or something.

Work plan was submitted at 9am Pacific time.  The Californians have elected to ignore the work plan until now (about 3:30pm Pacific) at which point they're finally electing to do anything about it.

Problem is, part of the work plan involves me.  So, basically, they're expecting me to work a twelve hour day because they don't give a damn about anyone else's time but theirs.

Increasingly, I hate this customer.

Not much at my place except the urge to drink whisky more now than then. Lead person is worse than an old lady in a beauty parlor for gossip and is nuts, the boss is a lazy suck-up, finding out about variables in space dye. I'm even wondering about returning to circus and mascotting.

we just took a trip and had a netbook with us... Dora saved our flight back!

Wed Aug 18 2010 01:39:47 PM EDT from triLcat @ Uncensored

Then there's my husband who thought that the Navy and Marines were the same corp (cough cough... Canadians!)

My mother-in-law thinks I'm in the Coast Guard.

yeah, I also noticed that and my mind translated it to NCO.

I told an American that I'm a brat recently and forgot that not everyone knows what that means... took him a moment before he realized what I meant...

Then there's my husband who thought that the Navy and Marines were the same corp (cough cough... Canadians!)

For me, the 'senior non-commissioned officer' kind of gave it away.  But then, I guess if you've been in the military, you get used to some of the lingo, and it screams out at you when you see it.

I think we have stuck it to our customer, for the additional wear and tear they've given us over the other vendor's issue.

At least I'm working on real bugs now, and not imaginary ones.

I'm full-time National Guard.  Along with my supply sergeant, I run the company the OTHER 28 days a month.

For added fun, both my commander and my wife are very pregnant, so I have the same conversations over and over and over...

Everything has finally calmed down with that customer.

Now that, beyond a shadow of doubt, they know we are not responsible for this problem they had, they're leaning on the other vendor.  The one who is actually at fault.  The one who has been at fault for a lot of their other problems, frankly.

Which finally frees me to find and fix the real problems that we have, so their system will work better for them.

I'd say that's the best conference call ever.

I have to go to a physical conference this week.  Wed-Fri is for the full-time staff; Fri-Sun is for the once-a-month commanders and senior noncommissioned officers.  Because of my position, I get to endure both parts.  There is exactly 75 minutes of difference on the agenda between the two parts, meaning that I will have already heard 90% of it before when the second part gets going.  The actual VALUE of being there is to explain things to my once-a-month commander and senior NCOs during the second part, but I'm supposed to be at the first part because I'm full time.

And, of course, I need to get a week's worth of work done by Wednesday morning...

"Your conference will begin momentarily.  Please continue to hold."

I wonder if fifteen minutes is an acceptably long enough time to wait on a conference call to start?

I wonder if there was a need for this conference call, now that the customer finally figured out that we were not at fault for their problems... despite plenty of evidence to that effect.

Oh, wait... it hung up on me after saying, "Your conference is ending now."  That's awesome... ended before it started!

Oh, yeah, the current reason why they are not looking into it for our mutual customer is because they're busy working on something for FOX.

That's hilarious.

I wish *I* could get away with that.

"Oh, hang on, I need to work on something for this other customer for a while.  Never mind that it's a near-complete disaster right now for you, and you're about to lose your own customer over this, FOX is more important than you."

Our initial response to a reported problem is to 'look into it'.  And we do.  We can usually narrow down the problem fairly quickly... and fortunately, it's usually something dumb that someone did.  But we always consider it possible that our software has had some kind of problem.

However, when the software hasn't displayed the kind of problem they're seeing for several years, and we're damned familiar with the kinds of things that can cause said problem, it's frustrating that people won't believe us.

Worse yet, when the vendor causing our problem says things like, "It can't be us, it's not in our bug tracking system," when we've been reporting the problem for literally years, we start to understand why their bug tracking system is perhaps always empty.

When PuTTy failed, we sent the tail end of the resulting log to the other vendor, with a very carefully crafted e-mail explaining what it is, and suggesting how they could use it (all without actually calling them morons, which is what made the e-mail difficult to write).

They didn't respond arrogantly for the first time since we got drawn into this nonsense.  His response was still kind of clueless, but something along the lines of actually trying to research a problem.  Their normal reaction is to constantly do 'damage control' and avoid taking the blame for anything... even when it's blatantly their fault.

We're still dealing with our problem customer.

At this point, we're finally getting them to tell us specific bits of information that allows us to prove that we're not at fault for much of the problems they're experiencing.  It's like pulling teeth, but we're making a pretty good case.

Still, I'm amazed by the brazen stupidity and arrogance of one of their vendors.  This vendor is convinced that we are the problem, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

They provide a stream of XML data via TCP/IP.  We connect to this stream to watch for a playlist.

Occasionally, this stream cuts out, and we reconnect.  "Co-incidentally", this happens at about the time we run out of playlist information for this one channel.  It also happens at about the time this other device that has nothing to do with us, but also depends upon this XML stream, starts to show problems.

Amusingly, this stream provides two channels of information.  We reconnect quickly enough that we get the other channel's playlist information without issue.  But, "peculiarly", we don't get playlist information for this other channel when it happens.

Now, given the facts, I would assume that something from the other channel is causing the XML stream to die, then recover (for people to connect again), but never actually get the playlist information out for that channel.

However, the arrogant pricks at OmniBus (a British company, if that means anything to anyone) refuse to believe this is their problem.  Oh, and they are having a difficult time figuring out how to evaluate what information is coming from the XML stream.

So, since they're too stupid and arrogant to do this themselves, I've got Putty looking at the output and logging the stream to a hard-drive.  When it fails, the putty connection will die, and we'll see the last thing that they sent us.

coffee, coffee, cooooooooooooooooooooooooffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Gee, I'm on prozac to deal with the nuts. I have one mug of coffee per day. For a wake-up, try boiling coffee, then strain the grounds out for army/kannchen jolt. Kinda turkish style with espresso grind, and 16 oz mug. Pour it on a grave sometime. Zombiecoffee wakes the dead.

I really really fucking love my job. I love my boss... I love the work I do. I got budget approval for $13k worth of improvements and upgrades to my database, largely because my boss recognizes the tool it is and wants to expand it's use throughout the agency.

The man who hired me resigned- he's going to work for the Make a Wish foundation (good for him!) and offered me a job on the way out the door. Very flattering, but I love love love my boss and I wouldn't consider leaving her for him under any circumstance.

The pay is HORRIBLE (think just out of college type money- really really bad money) but the work is meaningful, appreciated and shit, it's FUN!