WangNet

Stephen King’s On Writing.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/stephen-king%e2%80%99s-on-writing/

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Stephen-King/dp/0743455967/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220169092&sr=8-1

The night plods forth... a lone programmer in an empty apartment hunches over an aged keyboard scripting, comparing, and logging the differences between Thursday night's backup and the current set of tables and procedures.

Phase three is almost complete.

» Read More

My company loves me.. or enough to throw some more money at me... I shall decide to enjoy them a bit longer!

It looks like the House opted against the bail out. Hi -500 points in the market. I am now putting wagers on the likelihood of us breaking the 10k market in the downward spiral...

Must... not... pull.. 401k

Rear brakes are changed! It was not as totally annoying as I was guessing, but still annoying. Though you can't argue 20 bucks and some time versus 300 bones...

My buddy's dad is truly a fount of car knowledge. Ha!

I am somewhat lost on the time frame Jefe is giving us. By my vantage point it looks like we will hit the mid-November deadline, but she mentioned earlier in this morning's standup meeting that it was August. Just August. Not as in "August is when the last jobsite will be on line" or "August is when the first project goes online"... just August. WTF is that all about? Unfortuantly there wasn't a place for me to ask questions. Go figure.

I have also decided that I want to the WowWee Rovio robot to start building my flock of artificially intelligent machine gang. Yes, the terminators do not spawn from Skynet - nay they spawn from an abode in the middle of the USA.

In other news this weekend my buddy and I are going to replace my rear drum brakes on my car. I was always under the impression that drum brakes are "complicated and scarey". Nope... it turns out there is a bit more involved than the front disc brakes but not by much. This should be a fun experiment!

Yesterday.. i had a work item (#A) that I was estimating. It turns out that there needs to be a bit of simliar work that would subsume #A so I created work item #B. When I created #B I referenced the old work item #A (since it will be subsumed), closed #A as obsolete and went on my way. It turns out that Jefe didn't like that since #B will be out of our contingency time, and now I had to reopen #A, close #B, copy the contents of #B to #A, and clear the estimates out. Strange... that sort of shuffling of and redeclaration of work items is fishy... like someone is trying to hide something..

In the revamping of work item #A I had a brief history of the process outlined above... and suddenly I am getting the sneaking suspician that I will be snapped at for doing that.. you know.. drawing atttention to the redefinition of a work item and what not. *sigh*

I came across this site:
http://www.thecherrybox.com/html/plushies.html

I am profoundly disturbed. Essentially They are 12" plushie wall hanger..

I could probably make one.. and the $80 price tag is a big hefty..

Lots of beer.. lots of log sawing... lots of dancing.. stellar time by all!

Wow.. this versioning bug is annoying, but a bit more so when the versioning process is a bit of a mystery to most of the team. C'est la vie.

Currently the mood is high... I have fixed a few major unknown problems while spending the day testing.

I should get back to my videogame of our purchasing system. That will be a killer Link-esqe system!

"Huzzah! That skeleton dropped the third component to a purchase order! Now I can go make one! I also got some phat experience!"

My personal side bet to myself for yesterday's standup meeting came to fruition in today's meeting. It was as awkward and annoying as I guessed it would be. On the side, it seems that there is a new sense of urgency, fright, and agitation from Jefe. She made brief mention that we need to "shave off time" from the project, and might be punting less than necessary work items. Hmm. So Falloutboy's prediction of the rejection for Jefe's estimate to finish the project was correct. Falloutboy also indicated we are hiring a new person Monday. Wow.. really? My guess is by the time the new hire is up to speed the project will be done.

We have no requirement docs.

We have no design docs.

we have NO DOCS what so ever! (a reoccurring problem with most of our systems).

So the new person will have to learn by using it and oral instruction. Yeah, it blows (I've done it). On a side note, the current culture of our department seems to exist like early tribal units... oral traditions are passed on (partially correct but missing information) regarding the system design and reasons "why" something are done. The elders are valued not for the ability but this lexicon of information in their head while their skills diminish. Strange considering one company I worked for had tomes of data on every aspect of their systems. Oh, wait, I forgot... this is how agile development is supposed to go. Silly me!

As it is, Jefe is also trying to punt off our/my old system to our Maintenance Group... sadly I will not be going with it. For some reason she believes this is holding the team back. I am the only one on my team that works on it, and that is sparing since the outsourcing group is the ones doing the grunt work and I only deal with catalogs and dashboard documents - you know things that are time sensitive. Oh well! Jefe knows best!

Now if I can just verify this error isn't occurring as I thought then life is good for the day!

I saw a kid at the gym tonight that reminded me of myself fourish years back. I thought about stopping by and offering some encouraging words, but I thought other wise. I wonder if that was a good idea or not.

It turns out I was wrong on my internal bet. Wow. Stunning. Vegas is rocking from that shock.

The work item has drug on long enough, but now I see a new problem. The damn versioning system doesn't want to keep my lines there when checking things in. WHY!>?!?

Off to play Encylopedia Brown and investigate..

I got a bit more sleep than usual last night. The inner fist-a-cuff fight it takes for me to get out of bed was lessened to perhaps just a slap battle. Yeppie. I was still miffed about yesterday, but decided on the way in to work that I'll let it go. I have some testing to do and should be done with this work item grossly under schedule.

While burning the after hour oil at work I was on my Nine Inch Nails bender. Off their cd "With Teeth" I zoned in on the last line of this group of versus. That about sums up work for the moment.

"Everyday is Exactly the Same"
~Nine Inch Nails~
I believe I can see the future
Cause I repeat the same routine
I think I used to have a purpose
But then again
That might have been a dream
I think I used to have a voice
Now I never make a sound
I just do what I've been told
I really don't want them to come around

No..no..no.. Happy thoughts. Work is good. I am good. I shall play by the ever changing rules.

Regardless of all that above, I think I shall later on investigate the work place / company created "The Other" and how that becomes a common dumping ground for misplaced anger, ill will, scape goating, and covert cold war style tactics that only end up hurting customer service.

Until then!

*Side bet: DK and/or Bowser shall bring up my ill allocated time in this morning's standup meeting and it will be talked about into the ground (gotta love public shaming) for no less than three minutes.

Let's see how many myspacers made it here... I am going to guess.. four.

Comments are open to the public... so use'm because you can't lose'm...

wooot woooooooooooooooooooo!

New story in keeping me down and out while at work.

Mystery problem lands in my lap this morning. The guy who usually takes care of this (and subsequently runs herd on the offshore group that has taken over maintenance of my old platform) is out on family leave. Okay. The error was some what destructive since the it saved a duplicate-that-isn't-quite-a-duplicate detail line extra for each line supposed to saved. This caused a constraint problem on a load and it appeared that nothing came back, but in fact it did. Basically it took it out of the normal states, injected some problems, and mis represented what state it really is. It shouldn't have been that hard of a problem, but it was. Not to mention that every ten minutes meeting? was in my office distracting me with issues I told him before on (and thought he wrote down the answers).

Oh, and I was able to correct enough of the data on production for this screen so the user could go in and delete it. That uncovered another problem since after she deleted the form the user couldn't reuse the number even though it said she would be able to. This user's job required her to keep a sequence of numbers for this particular form (a supply demand form) and would have caused much grief, delay, and paper work on their end to get it changed.

Towards the end of the day I get an email out to the appropriate people about what the state of the problem researched so far, the other problem I found, and that's about it. fine, moving on to what I was PLANNING to do that day I get stopped. Again. This time by DK.


DK has his super serious big boy face and voice on... was clearly annoyed... started in about what happened with the error... then told me a few things. First that the change to to production was wrong on so many levels it almost hurt. The SEC and audit could come in, notice my name in there, and toss me out to the cold... also that if I do it again I might get canned (sans work request that EVERYONE is required to know about)... and that my time is too precious to be wasted on this one user (who actually represents a lot of users that may have experienced the same problem (circa 10% or so says the Offshore guy). Total time should have been no more than 45 minutes, and the user should have gotten a new number to the supply demand form. Wow.. that's pretty heavy shit. Then he continues on about how the stuff I was *supposed* to be working on has caused him to fail for a whole day in work.

What?

Er?

How the hell does that work?

My changes, granted have to deal with the versioning, are not really related to what DK was describing. So he's pissed at me for that. Clearly. I ruined his whole day it seems. I looked at it, and no... I cannot get his problem to replicate (a database didn't copy things over from table A to table B). No my changes would not effect the whole thing, or I seriously doubt it.

*sigh*

Now I am just tired. Vague commentary about SEC crack downs, jobless ness, and misplaced anger over my time allocation/output today kills the motivation. I am guessing in tomorrow's standup meeting it will be addressed in full for the whole crowd to see what a bad person I am.

I think chinesse food sounds good tonight. A bit of that.. a big of 'Eureka'.. and some 'The Office' would make my outlook change. Now if I had a second TV and could watch 'Total Drama Island' (while watching the other two) life would be great! Maybe some iCarly... hahahaha..

Help! My 401k is being brutally raped by the market!

A bit of exercise update today..

At the gym the usual routine got bumped up in weight. Now the chest press is at three plates and a twenty five per side... The row, wide grip over hand lat pull down, and the close grip under hand lat pull down are at two-thirty. Sled's still at eleven plates, and the calf raises are maxed at three hundred (but I am getting more reps per set).

The taichi is a bit more difficult on the other hand. I have started to get the moves down for the first ten and damn is it confusing. I am going to have to sit down, go through each one, write down what's needed, and start to memorize it. I really wish this dvd had a function to play from one to 'N' where 'N' is the step I stopped at (and also repeat).

Das ist alles!

I finally was annoyed by the default "Day/Month" style of time I read through the help files and now have it worked to a more civilized "year.month.day hour:minute" format.

Day/Month - ha! Savages!

A few things to start the morning off!

1. I was in my local gas station this morning looking for something to drink. I am shying away from my usual breakfast of champions of Mountain Dew, and my fall back of 'Vitamin Water' was looking too picked over. Bee-bop'n around I came across something that looks suspiciously simliar to Vitamin Water, but was called "24c Jones". I shrugged to myself and said 'what the hell'. I grabbed a bottle of their "tropical citrus" and went on my way. Wow... Where the same colored water from Vitamin Water was tasty but way too watered down this stuff was all good flavor. I shall now have to sample their other wares.

2. I won an online give away! A favored website of mine, www.thebachelorguy.com had a drawing for a case of something called Hint Water. I was stoaked to try some out and now I get a case of it. Of their flavors (Strawberry Kiwi, Cucumber, Tropical Punch, Pear, Peppermint, Raspberry-Lime, Lime, Pomegranate-Tangerine, Mango-Grapefruit, Blackberry, Honeydew Hibiscus, Watermelon, or Hibiscus Vanilla) I opted to go with Tropical Punch. I know, I know.. the cucumber or honeydew hibiscus ooze flavor but no thank you. My alternates (in order of favor) was be either Mango-Grapefruit or Pomegranate-Tangerine. Sad.

Regardless I'll drop a review on here when I get some. Depending on the size of the case I shall distribute as needed to friends.

Also, go hit up www.thebachelorguy.com - it's a great site. Stellar articles on manly-man things for this day and age.

Gotta love listening to coast to coast am at work in the place of music... Paranoia - my old friend - welcome home.

Yup.. got it added..

Also in the middle of a nice project.. will tell later.

--

and there's the rss feed icons! nice!

I haven't gotten around to splicing in the code for an easy RSS feed button, but here's the link if you care:

http://www.wangnet.org/blog/xml-rss2.php

I have been tracking quite a bit of activity from these three places... if you find yourself a reader and from one of those places (or a New York/Miami resident) drop a comment. I would love to chat with ya!

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/gonzo?q=gonzo

Seeing me some Gonzo tonight at the local hipster theater! w00t! (please note that the happiness is not for getting to go to the hipster theater, but for the movie).

Oh, hipster movie joint: Film Streams

I got my STP* tickets... my buddy Anna Montana is riding shotgun on this prehalloween trip!

*stone temple pilot

Last night's VMAs* were interesting in a sad and tragic sort of way. It's like seeing an old friend panhandling on the streets for change when no more than a few years ago he was zipping around town in a pimped out ferrari.

Let me start out with some of the most obvious issues. The host... Who the fuck is Russell Brand? I saw some of the commercials and they were poking fun at the fact no one would know him - is that really a good thing? At least he could have indicated what he was famous for up front.. that would have been nice. His act was amusing, and if Jordan Sparks would have gone fist-a-cuffs with him I would have been totally swayed, but alas no.

The next big issue I saw was the lack of a crowd (okay so "didn't see" for the pun). Once upon a time the VMAs pulled a massive crowd on par with that of the movie awards. This year it looked like it took place in a casino ballroom, with fold out chairs. I was shocked. There was an 1/8th the size there usually is. Were the fans not invited? A celeb only event?

Moving on to some of the performances - Lil' Wayne was a joke. Sagging pants are one thing, but he must have tapped those bastards to his drawers for this event.. wow... not to mention whatever bomb he dropped caught the cello player off guard with a super surprised look (right before Wayne was getting off the spiral stair case). The rest of the performances were interesting - Katie Perry singing 'Like a virgin', some act playing from the Whiskey Roadhouse, and stuff out in the Paramount back lot. It was odd to see them ship in footage to the VMA - who would have turned down that gig unless it wasn't worth it anymore?

Oh, and Christina Aguilera - yeah.. still totally hot mom..

Minor annoyances - Phelps - there is zero reason to say (unless it's truck loads of money) that while your eight gold medals are nice they are not as nice as a fifteen million records sold in one week for Lil Wayne. Those two things are not in the same ballpark.

Over all - not a horrible production but a serious cut back from past years...



*VMA = video music awards on MTV

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/cheat_sheets_for_web_designers/

One last thing about "The Talk" before I put it behind me and get on doing what I love - writing code... I noticed that during the talk it was constantly about my misinterpreted joke, my progressively negative attitude during the back half of the project, and what not. That's fine.. I mean really, that was the reason for the whole talk anyways... but what is a bit concerning was never, in any of Jefe's talk, was the question of "Is there anything going on that might provoke this new attitude change?", or "What can we do together to help straighten you out?". Essentially it was just a extended talk about what has happened. No resolution or concern to probe farther into the issue.

Strange managing technique for certain.

Well enough of this negative posts.. I'll keep my head down from here on out and revel in the work I am doing since that is currently the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning... I'll probably adopt Falloutboy's view of things and bide my time until November/December when the project is supposed to be done.

So I think I just had my "talk" with my boss ten minutes ago (about 10.00 to 10.45). A little back story - I am on a project that has been going for a year and a half. There are mad difficulties with the way it was presented, work was dolled out, and what constitute a requirement.

That aside, Jefe started sending emails out back in April and through July that were backhanded insults:
" I don’t see anyone being serious here.",
"I want both of you to put little bit more effort this and next week",
"If we can’t even program this basic thing (which we knew from day one), how are we going to release this big system? I am losing confidence and it is not encouraging."

are just examples. Mind you these were coming in when I was busting my balls with overtime during the work week.

Needless to say the deadline was approaching and things were getting a bit hectic. Four or five weeks of working Saturdays and Sundays to get things done and life was nothing but go-go-go. Jefe was getting antsy and quite complainy... generally her dour mood was grating on everyone’s nerves.

Now in mid July my associate, Falloutboy, who was looking to get out of this team anyways had his "talking to" regarding his attitude. By the next week I got an email from Jefe indicating my talking would be that following week. That week came and went. Then Falloutboy and I were pulled into Jefe's office (at different times) to indicate we are being seen hanging out at work too much. Someone turned us in and complained. After much arguing with Jefe and I about Falloutboy's time it ended up being a '"15 pieces of flair" style of argument about his schedule and what working ONLY 40 hours a week is like (I commented below on it). Fine.. so pissy moods continue. I also opted to NOT hold back information from folks when they ask "Where's your partner in crime - falloutboy?". I told them what went down in brief and went about my business.

Fast forward to yesterday. Jefe puts out an email for standup meetings (a worthless 15ish minute meeting every morning that people mumble what they were doing.. they were stopped two months ago for lack of Jefe showing up and anyone caring), and I sent a decline with the option of just emailing her what I was doing. She sends an email back with "You don’t have a choice. This is my decision. If you don’t like, I will look for other options for you.", and I promptly replied with an acceptance to the meeting and an indication I was only joking. This apparently caused a row in her world totally unbeknownst to me.

Two days go by and it was now 10 am today. She comes in all quiet and starts going in about the email and how it hurt her badly. Then she continues about how she would NEVER say that to her bosses, and the other two elder members of teh team were trained by her and eventually they conformed to the world and are now her bestest friends. There was also implications that the Goldenboy has been known to fire folks (Goldenboy would be at Jefe's level but with a different team) (his team can do no wrong because they are a bunch of 'yes men' or so the rumor is). I wasn't sure why that was tossed out, but later she indicated something like my attitude and this email would have gotten me canned. Then came the circuitous torrent of information about the "reorg", people's perceptions, manager recommendation of team member trades, and so forth. That seg-wayed into a talk about no matter how bastardly we, the team, act she keeps that information from other managers. Never spreading a bad word about us and so forth. I am not sure if that came about because other folks heard about her talk to Falloutboy and I being too "chummy", or what. Maybe she was just saying that she's a great boss because she protects us from ourselves... I don't know. My paranoia believes the former.

Then Jefe transitions to a talk about the project and how we need to be more than people sitting in offices writing code, but a more collaborative effort. Mind you all the while I was throwing in funny comments to lighten the mood that was already palpably uncomfortable, and profusely apologizing to her about any offense she might have taken from the joke email. Round and around the conversation goes, and she finally gets up to leave in a bit happier looking mood than when she comes in. I don't think she likes confrontation much, but I could be wrong.

Regardless I am now at a quandary over how to take this. I was on the complete defensive because of the wrong interpretation of my meeting decline, and didn't have a chance to fire back about her emails over the course of a few months, her attitude that brings me down, and so forth. Damnit - she caught me off guard! I guess it's for the best. If I would have gone on the offensive I probably would be writing this jobless. grrrr...

I have been working under the belief that when this system is done I can get back to my orginal system and fix what the outsourcing folks have broke, and I can continue life in a happy mood. I am now considering when Falloutboy finally kicks out of this place to find a new job and leave as well. Maybe not. Life for the most part is comfortable here. We'll see. I just need to get home, tai chi it up, and get a drink... Put some distance between the talk and now.. ha.

For future reference..


How to Draw Heads Advanced Techniques"
http://www.mangarevolution.com/tutorial_display.php?tutorial_id=146
"How to Draw Heads"
http://www.mangarevolution.com/tutorial_display.php?tutorial_id=21

"You think your schedule is busy, try being director Guillermo del Toro. Variety reports that the "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Hellboy" helmer has such a full schedule that he's got films booked for the next ten years.

First up of course is "The Hobbit" which he is committed to for the next five years. He has begun co-writing the project and is making trips to New Zealand every three weeks to meet with Peter Jackson and co. on the project.
[...]
There's also remakes of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" which in the latter two cases he wants to stick closer to the original work than previous adaptations have done."
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news08/080904j.php

Stone Temple Pilots
October 28 @ 7:30
Pershing Center

Ticket prices are $39.50, $49.50, and a limited number of Gold Circle seats at $65.00 All Seats Reserved (subject to additional fees)

http://www.ticketmaster.com/event/06004115F0A4937E?artistid=752624&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=60

A flood of work items just hit my mail box... I skimmed the titles and noticed, once again, they are vague and ephemeral. *sigh* Oh wow, look, two that are word for word the same thing: "upgrade X".

I'll ignore them while I am working on extracting my things to do transactions... god I would have been nice to have this information up front..

Think happy thoughts!

Work was pretty mundane after a three day weekend... a bit rough getting up in the morning, but oh well... Getting to sleep by 2am probably had something to do with it.

I am still debating if I want to upgrade my pc from a 3800x2 AMD AM2 chip to a 6000/6400x2 AMD AM2 chip or just wait. The wattage consumption is a concern.. as is the 6400 is either 150 with a heat sink or 130 without. Maybe I'll roll another round of bills first and see what happens.

A few major work items were accomplished today, but I saw about four more go in. No idea yet when the deadline is - we might never know.

Time to get some drawing in before 'The Office'.