seldear | Entries tagged with work

You know, I'm not really surprised when business people tell you the outcome and expect you to instinctively know that it's right or wrong. It's obvious to them.

However I expect much better of my fellow developers. We should know that the outcome is exactly what the system has been told to do; there is no "wrong" answer so long as we get an answer.

Getting the answer that the business wants on the other hand, is our meat and milk.

So do not tell me that this is what it's producing and expect me to know if it's correct, as though by magic.

Also: it wouldn't kill you to say 'please' and 'thank you' once in a while. Seriously.

*sigh*

I do not have time to pander to your egos, to your grandstanding. I. Do. Not.

How many things am I doing? Too many. Including looking over the shoulder of co-worker, dealing with failing client tests, and trying to juggle getting all the information to the right people at the right time in the format that they prefer.

So when you make me call you to discuss something that I already dealt with in email? I am NOT HAPPY.

The forthcoming days are going to be full of work grumbles, I fear...

Of replacing someone who is really good at their job but really bad at communication/documentation.

Basically, I have a dozen questions, none of which anyone else around here is going to know since the guy was the repository of all this information and gave us the "30 minute overview" before he ran out the door to go on holiday to the US for 3 weeks...

Me: [asks a question]
Tech Guy: [answers the direct question I asked but not all the other questions implied]
Me: [tears hair out]

I am a solutions kind of person. Yes, I like my whine (with cheese) but that's an outlet for frustration with a world that doesn't work as smoothly as I think it should. (Frigging entropy.)

Government fiefdoms ANNOY THE HELL OUT OF ME.

Little people protecting their little patches of dominion, with their egos at stake, puffing up their authority to seem bigger.

Oh, please.

Right now, we have a resourcing situation.

Resource 1: knows the work, developed the application, is in another state.
Resource 2: is busy with other work, doesn't know this patch of the work, is on site.

Both resources worked with the project for several months, have logins, all that jazz. Resource 1 is perfectly capable of doing the work remotely.

Guess which one Little Man With His Little Fiefdom went with, because he doesn't want offsite resources.

And guess who's Resource 2.

*grumps*

It would take me a couple of days to get through what Resource 1 can do in a couple of hours. But I'm on site! (And on LJ, waiting for access things to happen - the other thing about government fiefdoms: you have access for precisely the amount of time that's needed, not one iota more. Which means when one comes back to do more work, it's necessary to get all your accesses re-validated again.

UGH.

Solution didn't work.

I really do think it has something to do with the size of the files; if they could cut it down into smaller chunks, we wouldn't have this problem. I don't know why the size becomes an issue, but it does. Every time.

I have a fix for the issue of DOOM. Just have to wait and see if the customer will accept it.

Quilting group is contemplating a new name: Sydney Modern Sewists & Quilters - nicknamed "The Sydney Mod SQuad!" (This is quilting; mum-puns abound.)

I'm still a bit tense, although not as bad as I was six hours ago. I just want to go to bed and get a full night's sleep.

Except that Quiltcon West 2016 - a big quilters' convention in Pasadena, CA - starts sign-ups at 7am PST Thursday 25th. Which is 12am Friday 26th around here.

I'm presently debating whether or not to go - my quilting friends can't, and the person whose workshops I would most like to attend I already saw at the quilting retreat earlier this year...

And there's the job uncertainty, too...

Finally, I don't think I can write "treats" for the

mcu_aufest: they keep turning into several thousand word epics...

Work stress.

Nothing's happened yet, but I can feel it like a wave about to crash over me.

End of year and I have a problem on my plate that could be easy (if they're willing to accept possible ambiguity and fix the issues manually) or really really awful (if they need it to be absolutely correct).

One of the managers said something to me that's got me worried.

One of the people looking through CVs noted that I don't have any 'certification'.

We have performance appraisals in the next two weeks.

And I have a big holiday coming up in August.

I'm always nervous about big holidays thanks to my last permanent job, which made me redundant just before I went away on a month-long holiday to Europe in 2011. (That was a bad time, too: lost my job, my old cat died, lots of stress.)

Right now, my abiding thought in the midst of all this is: Thank God we didn't mortgage ourselves to the hilt.

*breathes carefully and without hyperventilating*

So, my work laptop tried to Windows Update the other night and Ishut it down (I was late for dinner). It has gotten revenge upon me by entering the Infinite Loop Of Startup, where it starts up then shuts down, starts up and shuts down.

Hardware support is looking at it and running a diagnostic, and I have a temporary interim computer.

However, the interim compy has very little of the stuff I need on it - all my work project notes, etc. were kept on that computer (rather than on my personal drive on the work servers). Hopefully they let me lift all that if the computer needs to be replaced. (It was on the replacement list for August...)

The personal stuff I've been working on is mostly on Dropbox, so that's still there, just difficult to access, because I don't really want to leave stuff lying around on a temp computer...

Ugh. So frustrating.

That thing that worked PERFECTLY for my colleague (now departed the company) in Dev is failing for me in Test system.

And the functional specialist is insisting it should go through because it worked in Dev, never mind that the indications are that some config in Test hasn't been set up.

I'm already in the bad books of this client, because I couldn't fix this stuff the last time I worked on it, before I got shuffled off to another project...

Torn calf muscle is healing well. I've jogged on it a little (a very little) and walked on it a lot. Going to have to start up a little running again, and probably some gym work.

I played goalie for two teams at hockey last night. First game: lost 3-0 - two to a striker who could do the switch-flick really well (every goalie's nightmare). Second game: won 1-0 after keeping out some tricky goals.

Also: it made a difference that the backs in the second team (which is Team 1 - the team I played with last year) are really solid. Actually, the whole team is solid - I do miss playing with people who know what they're doing and how to play with each other. I probably do belong in Team 2 (I'm not that good) but sometimes it's so frustrating when we hold possession too long, won't tackle the opposition, and don't move in to get the ball first.

--

It's been lovely having

andveryginger around to visit: both staying over and just generally in town to hang out with. *smooches* If you're ever in Sydney for one reason or another, peoples, I would love to meet up with you.

--

June has - as expected - been a little crazycakes on the events frontage. And that's with an injured leg that's taken me out of hockey and out of my quilting work!

Still, it's been so busy that I've had to pull out of

wipbigbang. And I think I'm not going to sign up for the usual panoply of 'summer' ficathons. Besides which Maria/Steve is no longer a rarepairing, so my primary reason for going into the rarepairing swaps is kind of defunct.

--

Work is inbetween projects, which means lots of little jobs and I don't do so well at those. So here begins the next week of 'clients with high expectations and deadlines'.

And it's cold. Why does winter have to be cold?

The same amount of work still needs to be done, only it's being done by fewer people.

Also: my client assignments right now are CHAOS. And Resourcing was trying to co-opt the leave I put in for Wednesday. NO. I put that in a month ago and you are NOT taking it from me.

Plus, I've been working at least one of the support clients which hasn't actually been assigned me. I can put time down for them, but now that's left me short a day for another client this week.

FRIGGING BLOODY BUGGERING GRR.

Coworker - the one who changed the format on me so it would be 'better' (hint: it wasn't) has done it again.

This time, all I needed was a file put in Location 1 so it could be picked up and processed over to Destination 2. It was a test that I needed to do via him rather than the way I usually do it to make sure that the way I usually do it wasn't screwing things up.

I have spent 3.5 hours going back and forth while he fussed over where the file should be going for when we do the move to production and making sure that I had it defined correctly according to the spec (which is screwed up - they changed the format on us two weeks into development).

Locations are the LAST THING I worry about when I'm setting these things up. Because changing the location is as simple as changing an URL. I don't care if the file starts off in /fuckyou/this/filelocation/wont/exist/inamonth/ - just as long as I know where it is so the process can pick it up correctly!

So I spent much of those 3.5 hours fabric shopping for dress fabric, reading a dress pattern, and making a muslin of a dress I'll hopefully be wearing to a Melbourne 'speakeasy' in a week.

But good HEAVENS, man. All I wanted was to test the mapping!

Next time I'm just going to tell him to put the file where I specify, I'll deal with temporary/permanent locations later.

*sigh*

Describing the hydro-electricity client as "the HYDRA [location] project" is probably not going to win any points with them.

Problem W occurs for customer MG. Functional specialist says "we need a fix for problem W which involves Skillset W."

Skillset W generally falls under Area P.

Unfortunately, the project managers and admin personnel don't realise that not all the people who work in Area P have Skillset W.

So Problem W at Customer MG is assigned to me, who has Skillsets A, X, and E, but not Skillset W.

I go through the problem, check that it's not a problem with Area B, which the Functional Specialist indicates it's not, and then have to go back 2 hours later and say "we need someone with Skillset W" which was kind of indicated from the start, but not explicitly expressed.

So now I've just received a mail tagging some poor sod with Skillset W who's got a whole email trail a mile long to follow, and a great deal of expectation.

Ugh. This is why I hate systems support.

Ugh. Work colleague has changed the input format for one of my files; no consultation, no query about what I'd like, no check for what I was already using.

"Oh, it's this format now; it has extra data from custom tables."

Except that my data transformation from input format to output format doesn't use the 'extra data from custom tables' - and the new input format seems to eliminate some of the necessary data that I need to produce the output format.

I am Not Happy. The output format has already changed once before; I had to remap the entire thing. Now he's telling me that I have to remap the input file, too?

This is supposed to be my last week here. I have a torn calf muscle which means: I can't play hockey, I may not be able to endure standing up long enough to quilt my show quilts as they need to be done, and I'm pretty much cut off from doing any of the things I usually do, which does not make me a happy camper AT ALL.

*grr*

The format started in the specifications as format A, then the files we received were in B, so we switched the code to format B.

Now they're saying they're going back to format A again.

WHYYYY?

So, new manager to the project. Who says she's not going to micromanage us, but has called a 10 minute meeting every day for a status report so we can bring up any roadblocks keeping us from getting things done.

Status report? To me, says "micromanaging".

3rd Party Group has changed the spec for an already-written interface, which changes some fairly key things and requires me to pretty much completely recode the spec.

*sigh*

And today I have a headache.

Although at least I didn't go in to work today - I called in a leave day because the parentals needed picking up from the airport and I didn't want my sister driving in the middle of the cyclonic storms that we've been having for the last two and a half days and nights.

I think this afternoon is the first time the rain has stopped in 60 hours.

Finally: I think I need a nap. To combat that headache.

How you know it’s a test HR system:

Wesley Wheaton
Lkjlkjl Jlkjljklkjj
Rocket Rabbit
Bob Bunny
Rose Bush
Tinker Bell
Trevor Wrongly
Phyllis Totally-Wright
Rhonda Colourful-Byrd
Yyy Sjdghfsjdg

So, for the last six months (or thereabouts) I've been sketchy on the 'steady work front'. I'm still employed and paid (salary, thank you, God), but they've been handing me bit-work, and my utilisation rates are waaaay down. I even missed out on the yearly bonus because of my utilisation rate. (tremendous irony: last year, when my utilisation rate was 126%, they didn't pay a bonus because it had been a bad year; this one, they pay a bonus, and my utilisation rate is below 50%. Ugh.)

On the other hand, it was excellent in timing for moving into a house, getting all the house things done, and just settling in. Basically perfect.

I've found myself feeling kind of...weird, lately, though. Restless and despondent and struggling to do anything. I want to flop around on the floor like a fish out of water - or a six year old in the throes of overdramatic despair - and sometimes doing anything is an effort.

I have wondered if it's a case of the SADs (probably not helping) or post-purchase depression setting in (I bought a house-on-land: it's going to be pretty big depression), and yeah, these things probably have some effect on my mood.

Add in the mid-life crisis (pink hair streaks: still cheaper than a fast car and less embarrassing than a twenty year-old boy-toy) and I wasn't really looking forward to winter. Except for hockey. Which is looking...kind of doable this year. (More about that later.)

Well, work has a client for me now: until May, which isn't as long as we'd like, but it's an area I have some familiarity with and can learn some new things, it's accessible by public transport, and it's regular, daily work.

Which means less time to fuss and fluff around with the garden, the quilting, and my writing (which was kind of at a standstill until we got to the December gift-fic period anyway), but eh.

That'll do, pig. That'll do.

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seldear

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Page generated Jun. 11th, 2025 02:45 am

Writing In Twilight

Where Nobody Reads

Entries tagged with work

my fellow programmers

you call me a bitch like it's a bad thing

ah the joy

technical people - guys especially

ugh government fiefdoms

ugh

updates: issues of DOOM and quilting group

i've been here before; it wasn't much fun

gah computer

the universe has it in for me

all the other things that aren't fannish

what happens when people get fired

I think he's a bit OCD

writing too much MCU

the problem of admin who don't know what they're talking about

if it ain't broke, don't change the damn format!

grargh this is a month later and grargh is all

erk work

for great hilarity in work systems

my time of freedom is at an end